The SXSW Film Festival starts tomorrow(!) and to kick it off early, Netflix has premiered three whole trailers for their offerings at the fest: Everybody’s out to get Melissa Leo, Jake Johnson goes on a desperate gambling spree, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau just can’t catch a break.
We’ve seen some insane things in the Fast and the Furious franchise, but eight movies in and now they’re straight up throwing cars out of buildings. The latest trailer for The Fate of the Furious is, as expected, bigger and crazier, with more cars, more explosions, and even bigger motor vehicles creating even bigger explosions. If you ever wanted to see Dwayne Johnson skate across an icy tundra and use his muscle to change the direction of a torpedo, you’re in luck.
James Gray’s newest film The Lost City of Z has quietly become a hit with critics and Gray devotees ever since debuting at last year’s New York Film Festival. It’s about to hit theaters here, and its newest trailer, while the briefest look we’ve gotten of it so far, shows off the immense scope of what looks like a modern movie that dreams of being an Old Hollywood epic.
In Summer of 2015 we entered the era of Charlize Theron, Badass Action Star, and that was only the beginning. Following her Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron is on her way to becoming the ruthless action hero the movies need with her villain in the upcoming The Fate of the Furious and now Atomic Blonde.
Could this be it? Could Rough Night be the hilarious female ensemble comedy successor to Bridesmaids? A handful of films have made that promise since 2011; few have succeeded, many have disappointed, but Rough Night seems like a real winner based on this great red band trailer — appropriately released on International Women’s Day, no less. Starring Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Ilana Glazer and Jillian Bell, you could hardly ask for a better ensemble of funny women.
It’s odd — as our planet rapidly hurdles towards any number of very real oblivions, disaster-porn movies have started to play a little more fancifully. ‘Malfunctioning weather-controlling spacecraft triggers climate cataclysms’ sounds like a kinda quaint way for the world to end, as opposed to nuclear holocausts or World War III or a total breakdown of humanity’s societal order. It’s been a minute since the Earth last swallowed up its inhabitants with the earthquake-sploitation picture San Andreas, and frankly, it’s just a relief to see a fictitious vision of the apocalypse that’s not entirely our fault.
Now that March is officially part of the summer movie season, the deluge of blockbuster marketing has started earlier than ever. We used to be able to wait until the summer to comb through a batch of brand new television spots for new footage from upcoming releases; instead, with Ghost in the Shell landing at the end of this month, we’re being treated to the same escalating series of theatrical trailers and short television spots. No wonder the climate seems to be changing so rapidly: if Mother Nature gets her news from basic cable, she’d be forgiven for thinking it’s almost Fourth of July weekend.
Isn’t it just like Ryan Reynolds to upstage a colleague? After listening to critics sing the praises of Logan for the past few weeks, fans around the country took their seats on Friday night ready to watch Hugh Jackman strap on his metal claws one last time. And so it came as quite a surprise when the first superhero to appear onscreen wasn’t Wolverine but Deadpool, everyone’s favorite violent and profane superhero — and, if we’re being honest with each other, the entire reason an R-rated Wolverine movie was greenlit by 20th Century Fox.
T2: Trainspotting is the surprise sequel that no one saw coming, but is welcome all the same. What have Mark, Spud, and the rest of the gang been up to for all these years? What kind of vibe will this movie have, now that they’ve all seemingly given up their drug-pushing ways and are committed to detoxing? According to all the trailers, this one no exception, four sober blokes can get up to just as much trouble now as they used to.
Javier Bardem was looking pretty rough in the first trailer for the new Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. His ghost pirate killer Captain Salazar had cracked drywall for a face with some nasty black goo dripping from his lips. In the new trailer for the latest film in the Disney franchise we get to see him with some life back in his face (literally), and another Pirates character looking mighty youthful.