Of all the Saturday Night Live alums making a go of it in movies, no one’s career right now is more varied than Kristen Wiig’s. Just this year alone she’s had the indie films Welcome to Me and The Diary of a Teenage Girl. She also was in the Lifetime spoof A Deadly Adoption. Later this year she’ll be in Ridley Scott’s big sci-fi spectacle The Martian, and next year we’ll see her in the much anticipated all-female Ghostbusters reboot. But before that, she has one more indie to bestow upon us: Nasty Baby. Written and directed by Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva, Baby is a really dark and oddly funny bit about a New Yorker named Polly (Wiig) who is trying to have a kid with her gay best friend Freddy (Silva). When Freddy’s sperm count turns out to be too low, she asks Freddy’s boyfriend Mo (TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe) for his swimmers. There is also a situation with a neighborhood guy known as The Bishop (The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey), who won’t stop blowing leaves in the early hours of the morning. We saw this flick at the Sundance Film Festival, and without spoiling anything we’ll just say it’s wonderfully weird. Wait for the twist.
Pause at: 0:18 for tough talk about sperm. 0:50 for babies on-trend. Oh, that was unexpected at 1:45.
Essential Quote: “I can’t do it.”—Mo (Tunde Adebimpe), on giving up his sperm
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After years of being directly next to the leading man conversation, Nicholas Hoult is making a play in 2015 to be the conversation. He was excellent in Mad Max: Fury Road and in the last quarter of 2015 he’ll be front and center in three movies, one of which is Kill Your Friends.
Friends is based on the novel of the same name by John Niven, and it’s a music industry satire set in late 1990s London when Britpop rock bands were doing huge business all over the world. Before writing the book, Niven (who also wrote the screenplay) briefly worked in A&R for a record label, and this is his lambasting of all the backstabbing and fame-whoring and miscellaneous indulgence he apparently observed during that time. Our protagonist is Steven Stelfox (Hoult), and he seems to be everything awful you’d expect—a Patrick Bateman of the music industry, if you will. More than anything it looks like a great chance for Hoult to show us what else he’s been keeping up his well-tailored sleeves. And for the Skins fans out there who’ve been waiting for Hoult to take it back to the dark days of his troubled Tony Stonem character, here’s your chance! Just imagine that subdural hematoma never happened and he grew up to be a sociopathic businessman willing to compromise all moral and legal boundaries to land the music industry’s Next Big Thing. Basically, if you’re excited by watching people in the music biz do excessive amounts of cocaine, this along with the upcoming HBO series Vinyl have got you covered through 2016.
The movie also has a nice little cast of exciting Brits in addition to Hoult like Ed Skrein, Craig Roberts, James Corden, and Georgia King. And if you like comparisons to Trainspotting, Kill Your Friends sounds like it’s already got plenty of that, too.
Pause at: 0:20. What James Corden does when he’s not hosting late-night TV in the United States. Whatever is happening with Nicholas Hoult at 0:39 we’re excited for. Arterial spray at 0:58.
Essential Quote: “Imagine you’re standing on wafer-thin ice. Beneath your feet you can see sharks circling. These are your colleagues. Your friends.”—Steven Stelfox (Hoult)
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Every once in a while in horror movies, you need someone to step in and hit the reset button. The genre needs to be run up flagpole so we can all have a good-natured laugh at its inherent silliness and abuse of tropes and over-the-top expressions sex and gore and so on. It’s meta-horror, and it performs a difficult but important service. Wes Craven’s Scream set the standard for self-referential scaring back in the 1990s. Cabin in the Woods moved the art into the new millennium, and now The Final Girls is finally taking its own stab at the sub-genre.
Director Todd Strauss-Schulson (A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas) takes us on a journey to Camp Bloodbath, the in-world “granddaddy of all campsite slasher films.” It’s the send-up version of every Sleepaway Camp-style movie you’ve ever seen, and it stars the mother of our protagonist, Max (Taissa Farmiga). Max’s mom died before she ever really got to know her, but thanks to a terrible turn of events resulting in a theater fire during a showing of Bloodbath, Max gets a chance at seeing her mom again when they all walk through a dimensional rift in a movie screen and land in the fictional world of Camp Blue Finch. So not only will Final Girls be parodying the apex era of slasher movies, it will be set inside one, complete with flashback sequences and slow-motion escapes. Kapow! It sounds like a fun twist. Normally the horror satire doesn’t actually travel through time and across planes of existence, so we like the boldness of the move, and there’s a nice selection of Very Now comedic actors in play, too. Thomas Middleditch and Adam Devine are on board, presumably to be themselves. Alia Shawkat (forever under-appreciated) is thankfully also in the mix. Malin Ackerman is always good for a laugh. Nina Dobrev is showing us she’s still busy after leaving Vampire Diaries and we will always turn out for Farmiga’s emotionally fraught overwhelmed face.
Whether it succeeds or fails in lampooning its parent genre is yet to be seen, but Final Girls at least looks like it wants us to have a lot of fun. We accept.
Pause at: 0:44. All aboard the Reality Jumping Express! Taissa Farmiga can hold tears at their very limit of spilling over better than anyone else ever. See 1:00. Damn it. Final Girl down at 1:39. These kids know the rules and they are not going down quietly at 2:14.
Essential Quote: “I want chainsaws and big ass knives and I want them now!”—Vicki (Dobrev)
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Have you been waiting hopelessly for Zombieland 2? As Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone become bigger and bigger stars, the possibility of that sequel happening becomes a longer shot all the time. But if a rip-roaring undead apocalypse is the kind of Halloween entertainment you crave then Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse will fill the hole in your dark heart.
A trio of lifelong friends and brothers in Scout arms think they’ve lucked out when they find a local strip club is without a bouncer to bar them from entry. But, wouldn’t you know, the only dancer on duty turns out to be a goddamn zombie! Panic, misadventure, and follies ensue. The shotgun-toting cocktail waitress looks like she’s going to be the scene-stealer here, but beyond the carnal fun we advise you to mind the lead actor in this movie, Tye Sheridan (aka our dark horse top choice to eventually play a young Han Solo in the revitalized Star Wars universe).
Remember when Miles Teller was in Project X, which came before his excellent turn in The Spectacular Now and right after his quietly lauded role in Rabbit Hole? If all goes as it should, we’re envisioning the same kind of trajectory for Sheridan: some very strong indie work (Mud, The Stanford Prison Experiment) that leads to exposure and therefore slightly bigger productions (see: Scouts Guide) that in turn builds his momentum as he moves towards blockbuster fare (he’ll be the new Scott Summers in X-Men: Apocalypse) that finally leads to meatier scripts with bigger actors (possibly his upcoming project The Yellow Birds, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch). Sheridan is very talented and has a nose for interesting scripts. So keep your eyes on this one starting now—if you don’t already.
But for now, it’s zombies! Grab a Twinkie and a Louisville Slugger because we’re in for a rough ride. And mind the content, because this is surely NSFW.
Pause at: 1:07, because waitresses have surely endured worse than a zombiepocalypse. Zombie cats, an under-represented minority, at 1:19. A different kind of chest-bursting at 2:05.
Song: M.O.P., “Ante Up”
Essential Quote: “All right, Scouts. Let’s kick some zombie ass!”—Ben (Sheridan)
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Horror movies about witches are about as old as witchcraft itself. Or at least as old as the horror genre. But director Robert Eggers’ The Witch is unlike any witch movie you’ve seen before. The flick, which scared the bejeezus out of audiences at Sundance this year, follows a Puritan family in 17th century New England as they try to build a life on the edge of a forest believed to be occupied by—yes‐witches. Life in the New World gets especially hairy, though, when one of the family’s young children gets possessed and everyone starts to suspect their daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) of witchcraft (like you do). And, really, is there more horrific than that? Wait and see.
Pause at: 0:55 for the scariest game of peek-a-boo ever. That goat is not OK at 0:29. What was that at 1:54 and 2:14?! One last scare at 2:24.
Essential Quote: “There’s evil in the wood.”—William (Ralph Ineson)
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To say anticipation is high for The Martian is an understatement. It’s based on a beloved novel by Andy Weir, stars Matt Damon, and is directed by Ridley Scott. Based on the new trailer, that anticipation will be rewarded. While there’s not a ton here that wasn’t in the first trailer, we saw a preview of the first 45 minutes of the movie yesterday, and if you’re worried that the trailer is overselling it, don’t be. Scott’s new film is coming together with the same funny and smart energy that made the book so popular.
The script for The Martian was Cabin in the Woods director/co-writer Drew Goddard’s love letter to science, and it shows. The Martian is an epic story about heroic astronauts attempting the impossible, but its astronauts aren’t the saintly types we usually get on screen (these people swear and break from protocol a lot) and his adaptation—and Scott’s filming of it—bring it all home. We won’t spoil anything here, but watch this trailer a few times and get ready for a nice space romp this October.
Pause at: 0:51 for “Surprise!” 1:00 for some space botany. 1:15 for Venkat Kapoor/Chiwetel Ejiofor’s epic laugh. 1:16 for Kristen Wiig as the best PR flak NASA never had (Annie Montrose). 1:29 for Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), truth speaker. 1:42 for Donald Glover. 2:01 for mutiny! 2:17 for Watney almost blowing himself up. 2:18 for Mackenzie Davis giving an impression of us watching this trailer. Anywhere else for nail-biting and/or LoLs.
Song: The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower”
Essential Quote: “I am the greatest botanist on this planet.”—Mark Watney (Damon), while on Mars. Alone.
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The major bonus of this first trailer for Victor Frankenstein is that you get a prelude with Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy throwing all kinds of personality your way. The two stars had a grand old time at Comic-Con in July trading jokes about all the gay things they may or may not have been doing with each other while filming the gothic horror classic, and from first looks at this clip it feels a lot like a mad scientist version of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies. McAvoy is the narcissistic, sardonic genius as Victor Frankenstein and Radcliffe is his loyal, pragmatic sidekick as Igor (without whom Victor would be lost). It all looks … interesting. Director Paul McGuigan hasn’t directed a feature film since the B-level superpower movie Push back in 2009, and before that it was Lucky Number Slevin. But he did direct a handful of episodes in the smashing Sherlock series starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock alert!). And the screenplay comes from Max Landis, who’s been quiet since his breakout with Chronicle but has four movies slated to come out this year, including this week’s Jesse Eisenberg assassin vehicle, American Ultra.
With Landis and McGuigan combined, that’s quite the mish-mash of sensibilities, but off-kilter action with a strong central relationship at the core seems to be a connecting factor. To Radcliffe’s credit, he has been making enjoyably strange choices since turning into a full-blown grown-up actor, and like Horns before it, Victor Frankenstein looks like it’s either going to go horribly right or horribly wrong, depending on your sensibilities. Personally, we land in the camp of people who enjoyed the genre paint splatter that was Horns, so we’ll stay hopeful that this project, with the ultracharismatic McAvoy front and center, can hit a sweet spot of full tilt weird fun that turns Mary Shelley’s tragic tale into an action buddy comedy with possible subversive romantic tension between its male leads. It’s 2015, y’all!
Pause At: 0:28. Radcliffe already looks like he’s got overwhelmed befuddlement down as Igor! Franken-eyes at 1:01. The Monster at 1:29. Possible other monster at 1:40.
Essential Quote: “It’s…alive!” Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy)
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And the award for best actress in a motion picture goes to…
Todd Haynes’ new movie Carol made a big impression when it premiered this spring at Cannes, where Rooney Mara took home the shared honor of Best Actress (along with Emmanuelle Bercot for her performance in Mon Roi) for her role as Therese Belivet, a shop girl in 1950s New York who ends up in a forbidden romance with an older married woman named… wait for it… Carol! And who plays Carol? Only the grand high cheek-boned Priestess herself, Cate Blanchett. It’s like Haynes is just daring Meryl Streep to put out a movie (that’s not Ricky and the Flash) before Oscar season just so someone can step to this one-two punch of lithely framed screen dynamos. What’s most exciting about this simmering character study is that it looks as implosive as it does explosive. Surely there will be a climax in which the previously more vulnerable and inexperienced Therese becomes the emotional alpha, thereby sending the once-cavalier Carol into a lovelorn spiral of desperation (a classic Rooney Mara finishing move), but until then there will so much under-the-surface tension. You know, the stolen glances, lingering tight close-ups, and eyes flitting back and forth in repressed homoeroticism in the midcentury. That kind of thing. If Haynes was smart—and he is—then he just set the camera on these two top-tier performers and just let them play. Mara and Blanchett can take it from there.
Pause at: 0:06 for doe-eyed vulnerability on fleek. Stop at 0:09 and just drink in Carol. But really, though, can anyone tense up their mouth with stifled anticipation better than Rooney Mara? See 0:18 and 0:22. The cuckolded man at 0:29. The entire movie summarized at 0:55. Dry your own tears at 0:59.
Song: Margaret Whitting, “My Foolish Heart”
Essential Quote: Carol.”—Carol (Blanchett, saying it all)
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It’s always fun to find the through lines in an actor’s career. They’re sometimes entirely imagined or circumstantial or more meaningful to observers than they are to the actual performers, but hey, still fun! So walk back with us now 10 years to a 30-year-old Bradley Cooper fresh off the success of playing Ur-Douche Sack Lodge in Wedding Crashers. He was still years out from The Hangover and just about to get off the Alias train for good when he appeared in the one-season wonder Kitchen Confidential on Fox (co-starring Nicholas Brendan!). The show was based on Anthony Bourdain’s book of the same name, and Cooper starred in it as Jack Bourdain, a hard-living, drug-addicted rockstar young chef given the chance to take over a major Manhattan restaurant and stage a career comeback.
So here we are now, in 2015, and Cooper is playing Adam Jones a hard-living, drug-addicted rockstar young chef given the chance to take over a major London restaurant and stage a career comeback. Kapow! Burnt is a had-it-all lost-it-all story, and the biggest differences between his new movie and his cancelled TV show seem to be that Adam Jones is also wanted by some people who will kill him if he starts working restaurants again, which feels extreme, and he’s chasing his white whale third Michelin star, which is also extreme. But no matter! Cooper is coming off his third Oscar nomination and thanks to his acumen for picking boffo directors with strong signature styles, he’s on a fantastic hot streak. Burnt looks to continue Cooper’s run of playing characters with big mood swings that give him a lot of room to stretch on screen, and we like the guy’s moxy. Co-stars include Uma Thurman, Sienna Miller, global treasure Emma Thompson, Daniel Brühl and 2015 MVP candidate Alicia Vikander, so Burnt is looking like an exciting proposition indeed.
Pause at: 0:30. Did they have to make the Bad Boy Chef this kind of obvious? We definitely want this kind of Bad Boy Chef at 1:03, though. Wondering what’s going on at 1:26.
Essential Quote: “I don’t want my restaurant to be a place where you come and eat. I want people to sit at that table and be sick with longing.”—Adam Jones (Cooper)
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Tinsel Town loves to navel-gaze and present its tastemakers as the smartest, most important chroniclers of cultural artifacts in America. They love a message movie. And you know what? Great! Because when Hollywood goes to pat itself on the back, big stars turn out to pitch in. Trumbo tells the story of McCarthy-era screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted from the industry when we were hunting communists like witches. Trumbo wrote A Guy Named Joe and the Oscar-nominated Kitty Foyle before being submarined by politics. He continued to write under pseudonyms for years after being ostracized and was pretty much better than ever before, winning two Academy Awards for The Brave One and, after his death, for Roman Holiday. That Oscar was originally given to Ian McLellan Hunter, whose name was on the script despite the work being done by Trumbo. Byran Cranston stars as the titular character, which is enough to get us excited, but this supporting cast is awards bait all the way: Helen Mirren, Elle Fanning, Diane Lane, John Goodman, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Louis CK, Alan Tudyk, and Michael Stuhlbarg. So this one definitely has us stroking our beards with curiosity.1
Pause at: 0:57. Mid-century costume design for daaaaaays. Young Kirk Douglas at 2:32. John Goodman doesn’t want to hear your nonsense at 2:04!
Essential Quote: “The radical may fight with the purity of Jesus. But the rich guy wins with the cunning of Satan.”—Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston)
1Correction 7:15 EDT 08/12/2015 — An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the writer of the film as Jay Roach. The screenwriter is John McNamara. Jay Roach is the director.
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We’ve only seen little teases of Quentin Tarantino’s eighth film The Hateful Eight, but finally—a little over four months ahead of its Christmas release date—the first trailer is here. And as Leonardo DiCaprio’s Monsieur Calvin Candie said in Django Unchained, “Gentleman, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.” We know the bare bones of the story: John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) takes wanted murderer Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) hostage, but is forced to take refuge in a stagecoach stopover with a few unsavory characters during a blizzard. There are glimpses of the rest of the eight throughout, from Major Marquis “The Bounty Hunter” Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and Chris “The Sheriff” Mannix (Walton Goggins) to Joe “The Cow Puncher” Gage (Michael Madsen) and Oswaldo “The Little Man” Mobray (Tim Roth). It’s a star-studded lineup of actors who turn in their very best work in Tarantino films, alongside newcomers like Demián Bichir as Bob/”The Mexican” and Bruce Dern as General Sanford “The Confederate” Smithers. Compared to Tarantino’s blaxploitation Western Django, this looks to be a more traditional entry in the genre, eccentric facial hair, stagecoaches thundering down snowy roads, and all. But one look at how Leigh makes a mockery of Russell’s introductions in Minnie’s Haberdashery, and you can tell it’s quintessential Quentin. The film will play in 70mm for its first two weeks, and from the looks of this trailer, the blood, snow, and wood will be rendered even more gorgeous in that format. We’re like gunslinging duelists with itchy trigger fingers waiting to see this one.
Pause at: 1:06 to catch a glimpse of Bichir buried under a mountain of coats and scarves. 1:08 to see Leigh yucking it up with some gallows humor. 1:51 to see a man in his red long johns getting tossed from a carriage into the snow.
Essential Quote: “Move a little strange, you gonna get a bullet. Not a warning, not a question—a bullet.”—Major Marquis “The Bounty Hunter” Warren (Jackson)
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If you spent the last trailer for Jem and the Holograms wondering “Where on Earth is Synergy?” then this new clip should make you feel better—kind of. Or maybe not at all. Instead of being a hologram-projecting computer intended for use as the “ultimate audio-visual entertainment synthesizer,” Synergy in the new movie appears to be a hologram-projecting adorable robot that shows Jem home videos from her youth and beeps at her like a cute android chimp. That’s almost like an ultra-advanced computer system working in conjunction with a pair of micro-projector equipped earrings to cast disguises over Jem’s body, but significantly less badass. It’s feeling less and less clear who this movie is intended for, besides maybe just kids who like Disney channel original movies. And that’s totally fine! Those people need movies, too! But why call it Jem? The animated Jerrica Benton ran a record label and a home for young girls and was at constant odds with her nemesis Eric Raymond to keep control of her company, because she was a Boss. This Jerrica is a young girl and works for Erica Raymond (now a lady, played by Juliette Lewis) and just seems set to deal with a lot of teen angst confusion. Again, that’s fine, but is it Jem?
There are close-ups of YouTube views and mentions of Twitter here that suggest the screenwriters have no idea what Twitter is or how people use it. Like, we almost wonder if someone scrawled the word “Millennials” onto a storyboard and decided that was their guiding principle. The girls talk about being “Internet famous” and probably take Snapchats of everything. In the best-case scenario this will be an entertaining romp with wildly catchy original pop songs and Juliette Lewis being an incredible bitch villain. Great! But if you’ve been waiting for the old-school Jem and the Holograms to come to life, this movie isn’t going to fill the void.
Pause at: 1:13 and 1:24 for… Synergy. Earring touch at 2:20, but what is it even for?!
Song: One Direction, “Story of My Life”
Essential Quote: “Who is Jem? We’re getting reports that’s the number one trending topic on Twitter.”—newscaster guy
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It’s brief, but powerful. At the beginning of the new Korean trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens we get a glimpse of the evil group known as The First Order. The group—hundreds, if not thousands, of Stormtroopers and other soldiers—stands amidst a snowy mountain terrain facing what appears to be Captain Phasma (Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie). Standing next to her is maybe Domhnall Gleeson’s General Hux? Hard to tell. There are also myriad TIE Fighters and what appear to be AT-ATs. Director J.J. Abrams has been fairly quiet when it comes to explaining why the Imperial Army is now the First Order, but no matter what you call it, this trailer’s brief glimpse of the new regime is ominous. (It’s even, as some have pointed out, visually reminiscent of gatherings of the Third Reich.) The rest of the trailer is mostly stuff we’ve seen before, but please do play it again and again just for those couple seconds at the beginning.
Pause at: 0:02 for the First Order. 0:24 for what appears to be Captain Phasma piloting something.
Essential Quote: “There has been an awakening. Have you felt it?”—probably Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis)
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OK, so the premise here is a little nuts: Vin Diesel saves the world from the worst witches of all time. But once it sinks in, it actually sounds like a lot of fun. Diesel plays Kaulder, an immortal who has been fighting the forces of evil for years and is now teaming up with a man of the cloth (played by Elijah Wood) to face down the biggest threat to humanity yet. In other words, Diesel is just doing Diesel—only this time he’s doing it to witches. Sounds good!
Pause at: 0:08 for Vin Diesel’s massive beard. 1:01 for Ygritte, er, Chloe (Rose Leslie). 1:30 for a creepy monster thingamabob. 1:55 for a scary-ass witch.
Essential Quote: “You know what I’m afraid of? Nothing.”—Kaulder (Diesel)
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Back in 2000, a bunch of State alums and their friends went out into the woods to make what would become the cult classic Wet Hot American Summer. During that time some 25 hours of behind-the-scenes footage was shot. Now, just in time for the release of Netflix’s Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp series, you can finally watch that footage for yourself in director Amy Rice’s Hurricane of Fun: The Making of Wet Hot. This doc, which is now available on Netflix and iTunes, is pretty much everything you need on this Earth. You’re welcome.
Pause at: 1:02 for baby Bradley Cooper. Pause anywhere for much younger versions of everyone who is anyone in comedy right now.
Essential Quote: “I’m just hoping that not just us will see this film. I have a feeling it’s going to be a great home video.”—Janeane Garofalo
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Sadness, misery, hopelessness, sadness, broken dreams.
Liv Tyler is still smoking. Ann Dowd is still creeping. Justin Theroux is still searching. Looks like bleak business as usual for all The Leftovers, except in Season 2 the Garvey family is leaving Mapleton in their rearview and heading for Miracle, Texas, where no Departures were recorded. There are lots of familiar faces, but lots of new ones, too. Who is ready to see who gets it the worst this season?!
Pause at: 0:27. Who the hell is this watcher?! Casual lawn maintenance at 1:05. Oh, she’s still here at 1:41.
Song: Ruelle, “Take It All”
Essential Quote: “I could sit around and cry about how the world ended, or I could start it up again.”—Kevin Garvey Sr. (Scott Glenn)
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You wanted it, you got it, motherfuckers! Sorry for the salty language, but this blood-soaked, full-length red band trailer for Deadpool has us feeling all giddy and inappropriate. Ryan Reynolds teased us earlier this week in a luscious leather chair while holding a distinguished pipe and promised the meaty visual we’ve been salivating for since Comic-Con International would arrive by morning. But now it looks like the aforementioned chimichanga is being served ahead of schedule—if anything you’ve been waiting impatiently three weeks for can be considered early, that is! Deadpool is a Marvel creation, but this sure isn’t a Disney property. Fox wants you to know it’s got all that R-rated goodness you’ve been craving in a superhero movie, brought to you by the always mouthy and always game Ryan “The Ultimate Body” Reynolds. Sex, guns, massive head wounds, nudity, blood spatter, Salt-N-Pepa, katanas, Gina Carano and more are all here for your viewing pleasure. Between this and Suicide Squad, 2016 is going to be the breakout year for hard living antiheroes. It’s about damn time.
Pause at: 0:40 for the former Daario Naharis. Gina Carano at 0:44. (We’ve missed you!) There’s a hole in Deadpool at 1:38. It’s going to be this kind of movie at 1:40. Wade has a Colossus problem at 1:51. Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead at 1:52. Very R-rated at 2:17.
Song: Salt-N-Pepa, “Shoop” and DMX, “X Gon’ Give It To Ya”
Essential Quote: “[Inhales gun smoke] I’m touching myself tonight.”—Deadpool/Wade Wilson (Reynolds)
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Are y’all ready for this? Hollywood’s chief architect of our doomed future is directing a tale of triumph at the local level. The name Roland Emmerich is a stand-in term for “we’re all going to die” (see: Independence Day, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, et al), but with Stonewall he’s chosen to tackle his most meaningful topic yet: the 1969 riots in New York City that would become a watershed moment in the gay rights movement. White House Down was about one guy trying to save the president, but this looks like Emmerich’s most intimate and political project since The Patriot all the way back in 2000. What is perhaps most heartening is that despite his filmography, Stonewall was a major passion project for Emmerich, one that he fought budget cuts and location changes and casting challenges to get made. The film focuses on a young man (played by War Horse’s Jeremy Irvine) brand new to the Big City who ends up smack dab in the middle of building tension and hostility between the gay community and police. He meets Trevor (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an outspoken activist; Ray Castro (Jonny Beauchamp, who withered us in Penny Dreadful as Angelique), his out-and-proud ambassador to the New York scene; and many more. Other supporting cast members are an eclectic, but very enticing lot, including Ron Perlman, Joey King, Matt Craven, and Caleb Landry Jones. We’re feeling very optimistic.
Pause at: 0:55. Jonny Beauchamp is still working that Angelique charm. That looks like Caleb Landry Jones working the pole as Orphan Annie at 1:38.
Song: Motion, “Pardon My Reflection” and Seinabo Sky, “Hard Time”
Essential Quote: “I have not seen one dream come true on Christopher Street, baby.”—Cong (Vladimir Alexis)
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If you like Billy On The Street, the show where comedian Billy Eichner yells at passers by on the streets of New York, sometimes with celebrities, you’re likely the target audience for Hulu’s new original series, Difficult People. Eichner is joined by fellow comedian Julie Klausner; both are in full misanthrope mode, which basically means playing less-famous versions of themselves (which are, perhaps, genuine reflections of their pre-fame selves). Klausner and Eichner are very funny, which is a good start to any buddy sitcom, but the cavalcade of guest stars in the trailer alone is encouraging. Seeing Fred Armisen, Kate McKinnon, Seth Meyers, Martin Short, Andy Cohen, Ana Gasteyer and Amy Sedaris (not to mention Debbie Harry) in a single minute is kind of like being showered with comedy confetti—and you never want it to stop raining.
Pause At: :46. We are expecting lots of this. Magician Kate McKinnon at :50. Oh, wow, those eyebrows at :57.
Essential Quote: “You know who you look like? A really beaten up young Shari Lewis.” Martin Short
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This movie is going to be harrowing. Cary Fukunaga, who directed the first season of True Detective, wrote and helmed this adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala’s novel of the same name about a young boy forced into the life of a child soldier in West Africa. Beasts will get a simultaneous theatrical rollout alongside its Netflix premiere, and if Idris Elba plays the role of child-snatching warlord with half the intensity we know he’s capable of, it’s not crazy to think he could garner the streaming service’s first Academy Award nomination. Prepare to clutch your chest for two straight hours when this comes out.
Pause At: 1:03. This face. This poor, tiny face. Seriously these are just kids at 1:19!
Essential Quote: “Agu, you are going to kill this man.” Commandant (Idris Elba)
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Let this be the one. Let this finally be the movie that puts Brie Larson on the map as an actress who gets to demand big salary numbers for the consistent, fantastic work she does. You’ve loved her in United States of Tara and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and 21 Jump Street and everywhere else her supporting work has lifted up the cast around her. You also loved her in 2013’s Short Term 12, where she finally got the chance to show her range with a powerful leading performance. But now it looks like the magic spell could finally be cast, with a role that has the emotional weight of Short Term and the source material to capture a wider audience. Emma Donaghue’s book of the same name was a major hit when it came out in 2010, and this first trailer is completely haunting. Larson plays “Ma,” a woman who’s been trapped in a one-room shed for a very long time with her 5-year-old son, Jack. Jack has no memories or impressions of the outside world, and Ma will do whatever it takes to ensure his freedom. Let this be the Oscar nomination that Larson didn’t get for Short Term a few years ago. She’s going to break our hearts, and her co-stars William H. Macy and Joan Allen won’t do much to piece them back together.
Pause At: :30 for home sweet home.
Song: Brie Larson singing “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”
Essential Quote: “I wasn’t always in Room. I’m like Alice.” Ma (Brie Larson)
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Does True Detective make you sad? Is the woeful misuse of Rachel McAdams at least part of the reason you are sad? Because that makes us sad. You know what makes us happy, though? Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo and Billy Crudup and Stanley Tucci and Liev Schreiber and John Slattery and McAdams starring in a movie about investigative journalists unearthing the truth behind sexually abusive Catholic priests in Boston. Boom! That’s the plot for Spotlight, which is based on the actual Pulitzer Prize-winning work done by the Boston Globe to bring sinning clergy into the cleansing light of day for a good scrubbing with wire brushes. The gumshoe work took a year, but it uncovered decades of abuses and cover-ups and corruption. It’s also directed by Thomas McCarthy, who most recently would like us to forget that he directed The Cobbler. We are willing to forgive and forget, though, since he’s also done The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win. Perhaps Cobbler can be chalked up to a fugue state? But in any event, the idea of Michael Keaton back in the saddle as a hard-driving newspaper man practically gives us chills! It’s been 21 years since The Paper and we’ve been missing Henry Hackett ever since.
Pause at: 0:30. This face. How smug is Billy Crudup at 0:56?! So much tension at 1:23 and 1:27! Oh my God it is The Paper at 1:52!
Song: Cover of “Dear God” by XTC
Essential Quote: “When you’re a poor kid from a poor family and a priest pays attention to you, it’s a big deal. How do you say no to God?”—Phil Saviano (Neal Huff)
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So by most indications, the new Vacation movie will only serve to crush your childhood if you grew up loving the Griswold clan. That’s a shame. But since we probably won’t be able to count on a new Christmas classic from Rusty and family, how about trying this one on for size? The trailer cutely points out that The Night Before is from the team that brought us Neighbors and “almost” brought us The Interview, so it should be pretty clear what brand of comedy is on offer here—especially since it’s a holiday comedy with a red-band label. Seth Rogen stars alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie as a trio of best friends who have spent the last 14 Christmases together. But as time has marched on and everyone has grown up (sort of), they’ve decided the upcoming holiday will be their final one together. So, naturally, they’re going to get hammered and do ‘shrooms and snort coke and hit up a Christmas party with Miley Cyrus! The great thing about Seth Rogen-style comedies is that they often have a warm heart at the center of all the dorm humor, which makes you feel pretty OK about laughing at things like farting on your roommate’s pillow and intellectually-induced erections. It’s a good mix, and so is this cast! Jillian Bell, Lizzy Caplan, Mindy Kaling, Michael Shannon, and, yes, Miley Cyrus also show up at various points, and that sounds like a festive nog recipe we can really get down with.
Pause at: 0:50 for idea baby gifts. A bad trip at 1:39 and 1:42. For real at 2:01. Good parenting at 2:08.
Song: Kanye West, “Runaway” and Miley Cyrus, “Wrecking Ball”
Essential Quote: “I think the cocaine and the mushrooms are reacting… poorly!” Isaac (Rogen)
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One of the hottest topics in Hollywood today is China. How do we get Chinese audiences interested? Can we film in China? There are so many people in China with money and eyes how do we get them to pay for our movies?! (That last one is just our best guess as to how these backchannel conversations go in a major studios.) But here’s something we don’t wonder aloud often enough: What about movies from China? Well here’s a hint about what’s going on across the ocean blue. The movie Monster Hunt just became the highest-grossing Chinese film of all time—taking in $211 million in two weeks—and it’s a half-animated, half-live-action tale set in a “fantasy world far, far away.”
So what, you ask, is the movie about? Well, in this trailer you’ll see a pregnant man give birth to an anthropomorphized white radish, which is totally chill, other than the fact that monsters are forbidden to roam free in this “far, far away place” as a result of a monsters vs. humans war at some point in history that resulted in zero-tolerance monster banishment policy. But what the humans don’t know is that a new monster king is destined to rise and reshape the balance of both societies. The pregnant guy is named Tianyin and he ends up in a family way after the pregnant monster queen spills her egg into his mouth in a final act before succumbing to mortal wounds. Tianyin tries to sell the baby creature. Changes his mind. Then realizes the baby has been shipped off to a restaurant known for making “5-star” monster-based delicacies. Finally, he teams up with a rookie monster hunter named Xiaonan after realizing he himself descends from a line of monster hunters also. But this, as the movies description says, is “only the beginning of their epic adventure!”
So, that’s what’s going on at the movies in China.
Pause at: Anywhere, really. But the nipple-bite at 0:57 is truly something special.
Essential Quote: “Some people are not what you see; some monsters are not what you think.”
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Last week’s trailer selection was a cornucopia of different styles and genres: A new Pixar offering, some TV bait from Fargo, and—of course—that beautiful new clip from the upcoming Bond film Spectre. This week, however, is starting out with more of the same. Just a few weeks after the trailer for the Danny Boyle-directed Steve Jobs dropped, we now have a teaser for the documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine. Check out that trailer below, and here’s hoping the rest of this week offers a little more variety.
The Jobsian Double Down Trailer: Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (Above)
It’s the Hollywood rule of pairs: Deep Impact and Armageddon in 1998, Dante’s Peak and Volcano in 1997, Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove in 1964, and now Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs in 2015. Both movies will come out this fall. Both will tell the tale of the mythic man behind Apple, and both come to us from the hands of big time, Academy Award-winning directors. But where Danny Boyle’s narrative feature about the turtlenecked one will be animated with a Sorkinese lilt, Alex Gibney’s documentary will deal in cold, hard facts. Neither Apple’s board of directors nor Jobs’ wife Laurene Powell agreed to participate in the film, and considering Gibney specializes in takedowns of All Mighty institutions (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), this is probably going to make Jobs look… pretty bad. Perhaps not unfairly—we didn’t know the guy, after all—but if you just want to see a nice movie about a luminary and titan of industry, this movie probably won’t satisfy you. Just consider it all a part of your balanced Jobs diet.
Pause at: 0:27 for hunky Jobs. Baby Jobs at 1:36.
Essential Quote: “His stuff was beloved, but it wasn’t that he was beloved.”
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After Comic-Con International WIRED senior editor Peter Rubin asked on The Monitor podcast if people (read: this writer) liked the Hunger Games movies on their own or if they just loved Jennifer Lawrence. As the new Mockingjay—Part 2 trailer proves, the answer is “both.” Folks stan hard for Lawrence, but Suzanne Collins wrote a pretty good saga in her original book trilogy and it’s managed to translate well to the screen. But in the end there is still just Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) and her quest to take down the totalitarian government lead by President Snow (Donald Sutherland), and this latest trailer shows just how crazy things will get before that journey comes to an end. (Bless Katniss for showing the power of the individual without getting totally Rand-ian about it.) The saga ends Nov. 20.
Pause at: 0:14 for walking through the snow to Snow. 0:30 for a Plutarch Heavensbee (hilip Seymour Hoffman)/Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks)/Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) 1-2-3 punch. 0:45 for the march on the Capitol. 1:14 for the 76th annual Hunger Games. 1:45 for mad archery skills. Those parachutes at 2:02! Heartbreaking hugs at 1:18. 1:48 for Peeta wisdom. Anywhere from 2:12 to 2:15 for “aaahhhhh!”
Essential Quote: “Tonight, turn your weapons to the Capitol—turn your weapons to Snow.”—Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence)
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If Bond 24 really is to be Sam Mendes’ final dance with 007 he seems to be going for absolute broke. The interiors, the exteriors, the wide shots, the tight ones—every frame of this new Spectre trailer is rich and beautiful and art directed within an inch of its ever-loving life. Ben Whishaw looks like he was born to play a young Q. Naomie Harris, even in just the tiniest serving here, is deliciously Moneypenny. Daniel Craig is of course all the James Bond he can be, and he’s joined by perhaps two of the most exciting Bond Women (we’ll leave the term “girls” out of this) ever put on screen: Monica Bellucci and Léa Seydoux, playing Lucia Sciarra and Madeline Swann, respectively. Those names! Bellucci is simply one of the most captivating women in cinema, full stop, and Seydoux has demonstrated her capacity to kick ass and emote hard in roles from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol to Blue Is the Warmest Color. Only through the combined power of these women can the wounds of our dear, lost Vesper Lynd (played to perfection by the perfect Eva Green) finally begin to heal. And then, of course, there’s the villain. Christoph Waltz’s mustache-twisting capabilities will be put fully to the test as Franz Oberhauser, who doesn’t seem a far cry from the most enduring of Bond foes, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Blofeld tormented James for years, first appearing in 1963’s From Russia With Love and last seen in Never Say Never Again from 1983. He was the head of SPECTRE (the Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), and in case the title of this movie didn’t tip you off, SPECTRE is pretty central to the plot this time around. Mendes looks like he’s made his best Bond yet if this trailer is any indication, and we are so ready to find out.
Pause at: 0:37. So is this, like, a supercar showdown or something? Welcome to the party at 1:01, Lea! Dave Bautista sighting at 1:04. Notes of the Casino Royale train scene at 1:57. Not normal at 2:03.
Song: “James Bond Theme”
Essential Quote: “It was me, James, the author of all your pain.”—Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz)
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Seriously, consider the actual residents of Fargo, North Dakota right now. They wake up. They shovel snow. They go to work. They hermit themselves away from the frigid temperatures outside because ice coats the ground 365 days a year (and 366 on leap years). They are normal. They are ordinary people. But thanks to the Coen Brothers they exist in a mythical town that’s knee-deep in murder, mystery, and shady characters. Do the people of Fargo know they are living in such a rich cultural tapestry?! While you and the residents of Fargo ponder those questions, check the second season trailer for FX’s quirk-tastic show, which has moved to a 1979 timeline in Luverne, Minnesota. Patrick Wilson is now playing the character of Lou Solvers (previously occupied by Keith Carradine), and in Season 2 he is tasked with investigating a local crime syndicate while also watching out for Ronald Reegan (Bruce Campbell), a politician passing through town on the campaign trail. Other outstanding cast additions include Jesse Plemons, Brad Garrett, Kieran Culkin, Kirsten Dunst, Jean Smart, Jeffrey Donovan, Cristin Milioti, Ted Danson, and Nick Offerman.
Pause at: 0:11 for an update on Nick Offerman’s facial hair. An interrogation that went too far at 1:27.
Song: Dr. John, “Right Place Wrong Time”
Essential Quote: “The word ‘we’ is a castle, hon, with a mote and a drawbridge. Don’t be a prisoner of ‘we.’”
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It might feel weird to have another Pixar film on deck so soon after Inside Out—and that’s totally natural, since the studio has never released two films in the same calendar year before. (It’s not Marvel, after all.) But The Good Dinosaur went through some production delays and the now-familiar directorial shakeup behind the scenes (co-director Peter Sohn taking over for Bob Peterson), which pushed it back to Thanksgiving. So far, we’ve seen that it’s a speculative take on what would’ve happened if that fateful asteroid simply passed Earth by and didn’t cause an extinction event. This mostly dialogue-free full trailer gives a glimpse of the journey that Arlo the Apatosaurus and a wild young boy named Spot take across a sprawling landscape. Without much dialogue, this trailer makes the movie seem like the mostly-silent first act of Wall-E mixed with the colorful animal discovery of Finding Nemo’s central journey, and a couple dashes of the emotional bonding in Up. Given that the voice cast includes Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn, Sam Elliott, and Ann