RogerBW's Blog

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Since I started doing a film review podcast I hate slightly less of everything, but I hate generic film with nothing to say if anything more than before.)

My Hero Academia - World Heroes' Mission: if I ever watch this (which is entirely likely) I'll probably start with the anime series, subtitled, because that's a format that works much better for me and I like to start things from the beginning.

Operation Portugal: could be an interesting story but seems to lean hard on the guy who doesn't know stuff as the source of the comedy.

tick, tick...Boom!: if I already liked the musical I might feel more sympathetic. But I am not pre-engaged the way I'm meant to be.

Red Rocket: Dorothy J. Heydt's Eight Deadly Words: I don't care what happens to these people.

Cyrano: a very pretty production, and the principals clearly know their parts, but… does this come over as too explicitly stagey? Or maybe it's just me.

Paranormal Activity - Next of Kin: could be an interesting story if it didn't have Standard Horror stamped all over it.

Resident Evil - Welcome to Raccoon City: I haven't seen any of these films, but at least the people making them should be vaguely good at it by now… oh wait, completely new cast and crew. Goodness, that's a profoundly unconvincing toppling truck; I hope it's not a final effects shot. Points for casting Hannah-John Kamen, whom I liked a lot in Killjoys, and more for getting James Wan off the project. But there's not a lot to see here beyond jump scares.

Scream (2021): you could try to engage me, or you could just put in a bunch of cool horror or action moments because that's what your target audience wants.

Needle in a Timestack: looks slightly better than the teaser, though sad to say not much. Has some hints of something interesting that have made it through the genericising trailer filter, so maybe?

The Black Phone: seems like very standard horror. But I guess that's what a trailer-watching audience wants to be told.

Zeros and Ones: brother brother brother brother. Grunty action. Bra strap. Yeah, I guess that is all I need to know about this film.

Apex: ah, Bruce clearly needs money, he's showing up in a lot of crap these days. And 97 years later they're still recycling The Most Dangerous Game…

Bruised: and you know, making it a black woman rather than a white man who Doesn't Do That Any More but comes back for One Last Job does shift things just enough that this rises very slightly above the utterly generic. (Director-star isn't a good sign, but Berry's not writing, so she may have had moderating influences.)

The Tender Bar: ah, Fambly. Can't find it engaging. May well work for people whose souls are less clinkered than mine.

The Batman: if you don't already like the character, there's nothing here to drag you in: just another burning-out vigilante, ho hum. This isn't the startling new idea that it was in 1939. This is pure reminder advertising: here is a thing you know, the thing you know is coming back in a new form.

Never Back Down - Revolt: on the one hand it's a fantasy where martial artists have a chance of prevailing against people who can afford lots of goons with guns. On the other it's trying to look gritty. Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but presumably the audience is here for the fighting.

Operation Mincemeat: apparently you need Colin Firth in these things now. I mean, I suppose it looks all right, but I'd rather watch The Man Who Never Was again.

The Lost Daughter: Smells like Oscar-bait.

Being the Ricardos (Teaser): there's definitely a story to be told here, but is it a the sort of story Aaron Sorkin knows how to tell?

Redeeming Love: leaves me cold, but I've seen a lot of stories in this mould; maybe it'll work for someone who hasn't.

The Feast: I am strangely non-awestruck. Horrible people do horrible things to horrible people.

Ambulance: Fambly and Brotherhood and other Capitalised Words. Meh.

Dangerous: Mel Gibson is kind of a problem, and there's nothing else here which comes close to overriding that.

Red Notice: the clichés, they burn. Ryan Reynolds too.

Uncharted: utterly unappealing cast really kills this for me before it gets a chance to begin. And the plane sequence is probably the best bit anyway.

Benedetta: well, before he did those films he got known for, Verhoeven did some subtle stuff. Not much here that appeals, though, unless you still find poking religious sensibility to be gleefully shocking rather than tediously necessary.

Agnes: Wouldn't it be more interesting to make it actual psychological horror rather than tired old demons and eye-bleeding and all the same old crap?

The Railway Children Return: we got a railway to film on. We got the rights to a book by someone safely dead, and a not-terrible film from fifty years ago. And we plugged in an utterly generic-looking wartime childhood story.

The Unforgivable: some decent acting from Bullock, but that's all this really seems to have to offer. Lots of shouting.

Lightyear (Teaser): so in this Toy Story spinoff, the entire toyishness is completely ignored, and it's just a straight space action film? (And an origin story, apparently.) This sort of thing is why I hate the entire concept of intellectual property.

Deadlock: I'm losing track of all these identical-looking films with Old Bruce Willis getting his violence on. Does he have a tax bill to pay? Is he meant to be a good guy or a bad guy this time?