Trailers
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Trailer Watch: Lance Bangs’ Slint Doc, Breadcrumb Trail
Epochal post-rock pioneers Slint are the subjects of a new documentary, Breadcrumb Trail, by Lance Bangs. In 1991, the Louisville-based band made the now-classic Spiderland for Touch and Go and, just before its release, promptly disbanded. In the years since, the album has remained enormously influential, making its mark on math rock, post-hardcore and various other sub-genres with out-of-date critical sobriquets. As Ron Kretsch notes at Dangerous Minds, one thing pops out of this trailer: these guys were young when they laid down this thing! “So, how’d YOU change the world before you finished school?” he asks. Here’s director Bangs […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Mitt
A couple weeks back, Netflix announced that it had acquired another “original” documentary, due for a world premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival: Mitt. Filmmaker Greg Whiteley tracked presidential hopeful Mitt Romney from Christmas 2006 up until the night of his concession speech in November 2012. With unprecedented access, Whiteley was with the Romney family through all of the campaign trail ups and downs, to provide what should be a unique and honest window into the mind of Mitt. The film will be available for viewing on Netflix beginning January 24, 2014.
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 18, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors
The premiere of Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors, hosted by Steven Soderbergh and with Phillip Glass’s score performed live by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, was my most singular experience at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. As I wrote in the current issue of Filmmaker: Glass’s haunting soundtrack is among his best, while Reggio’s film is a radical departure from hyperkinetic works like Koyanisquatsi that presaged the visual language of our connected age. Shot in black-and-white and containing less than 60 cuts, the lulling Visitors is mournful yet concerned elegy for a world in which experience has been subsumed by spectatorship. Amusement parks […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2013 -
A Trailer in Clips: Lars von Trier’s Curious Nymphomaniac Rollout
Oh, Lars, what are you playing at? The court jester of Cannes has remained uncharacteristically tightlipped about his next film, the pornographic two-part epic Nymphomaniac, having sworn off the press following that infamous Melancholia conference. In lieu of his usual stops on the festival circuit, von Trier has taken to releasing “appetizers” from each of the film’s eight chapters. Trailers are for the merely conventional. The first clip, entitled “The Compleat Angler,” appeared on June 28th, and introduced us to Young Joe, the adolescent iteration of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s protagonist. The hallmark handheld sways in unison with the train car where […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 3, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Bryan Cranston and Alice Eve in Tze Chun’s Cold Comes the Night
Tze Chun, a 2007 25 New Face based on his great short, Windowbreaker, appears to have done a 180 follow-up to his first feature, the low-key, character-based drama Children of Invention. Cold Comes the Night stars Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston, rising star Alice Eve and a missing bag of cash. But, note that I wrote “appears” in the above sentence. Last year, Kishori Rajan spoke to Chun about this movie while it was in production, and the director says it’s not entirely unlike his previous work: When his manager sent him as a writing sample a psychological thriller script by […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 24, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: 21st Century
With dozens, sometimes hundreds, of press releases landing in my in-box every day, what makes me click on a link to learn more? Usually, it’s not overuse of superlatives. Nonetheless, there was something about this letter from Manhattan Project Films that made me want to watch the trailer: Manhattan Project Films is set to release its latest movie “21st Century”. We invite you to be part of our celebration and witness first hand the beauty and joy of our new cinematic masterpiece. The event promises you the opportunity to enjoy the charming atmosphere of the movie industry, food and drinks, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 24, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity
Long single takes are some of the most thrilling shots in cinema, and many would argue their thrills are reliant, in part, on the audience’s knowledge that they are choreographed and filmed in real time. But CGI-enabled single takes can be thrilling too, as this amazing trailer for Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming Gravity proves. The film opens October 4.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 24, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: 12 Years a Slave
Set in the years leading up to the Civil War, and based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 autobiographical memoir, Steven McQueen’s new 12 Years a Slave tells the story of a free New York State black man kidnapped and travelled down South, where he is sold into slavery. The film chronicles his attempts to stay alive and maintain his spirit as he dreams of the day when he can be reunited with his family. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Northup, Michael Fassbender a harsh slave owner, and Brad Pitt a Canadian abolotionist. The film was shot on 35mm by Sean Bobbitt and opens […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 16, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Ectotherms
Ectotherms is the feature debut of Miami-based filmmaker Monia Peña, and it mixes fiction, documentary, the Miami landscape and black metal. Peña was influenced, she writes, by Cuba’s “Imperfect Cinema and many derivations of realism,” by her collaborators as well as by the people she met along the way. The suitably mysterious trailer is above, and here’s the synopsis: ECTOTHERMS: organisms that rely on external heat sources When teenager Chelsey finds her grandmother dead, she knows life without the old Cuban woman who raised her will never be the same. So she skips school with her brother Cassidy and his […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 14, 2013 -
SXSW Trailer Watch: Zach Clark’s White Reindeer
As I mentioned when I recommended this film’s Kickstarter campaign, I love depressing Christmas movies. At the time, its writer/director, Zach Clark (Vacation, Modern Love is Automatic), wrote, “White Reindeer takes on thirty-as-the-new-twenty and shows a suburban Virginia where sleaze and sadness may float on the surface, but hope and compassion aren’t too far away either.” From the trailer, I’d say he’s nailed it. Check it out above and the film itself at SXSW.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 21, 2013
