It's that time of year again. September brings the major film festivals that lead into Oscar season, and things are already heating up with a lot of big titles from big talents. Here are some of the more interesting ones that have put out recent trailers. All links below lead to Trailer Addict.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - Everything I've seen of the ad campaign so far has been excellent, and the trailer is no exception, laying out the premise of a man who escapes his mundane life by indulging in elaborate flights of fancy. This trailer has even been singled out as an example of how to make an engrossing trailer that doesn't give away the whole story, just through the use of strong imagery and emotionally resonant music. I find Ben Stiller very hit-or-miss as a director, but this promo gives me a good feeling that this could be one of the hits.
Dallas Buyers Club - Will Matthew McConaughey finally get that Oscar nomination he's been due for a while now? The trailer for "Dallas Buyers Club" certainly makes a good case for it. McConaughey will be playing AIDS patient and activist Ron Woodruff, who smuggled alternative AIDS drugs into the United States to keep himself and other AIDS patients alive during the early days of the pandemic in the 1980s. The trailer also offers a few intriguing glimpses of Jared Leto, who is practically unrecognizable playing a transgendered woman, Rayon.
12 Years a Slave - Getting huge buzz out of early screenings is the latest film from British director Steve McQueen. The cast is jammed with familair names, including Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, and Paul Giamatti. However, the two actors I'm looking forward to the most are Chiwetel Ejiofor, playing the protagonist Solomon Northup, and Michael Fassbender as the villain of the piece. Ejiofor is one of those actors who hasn't been very high profile, but has been consistently excellent in everything I've seen him in for years. It's high time he had a turn in the spotlight.
The Counselor - Speaking of Mr. Fassbender, I'm still not quite sure what to make of "The Counselor," an original script from the great Cormac McCarthy being directed by the occasionally great Ridley Scott. It's a thriller about drug trafficking with a lot of colorful characters, but I can't tell if it's doing anything differently from all the other thrillers about drug trafficking with a lot of colorful characters that have come before it. The cast is fantastic and all the core creative talent looks good, but I'm a little wary of getting too excited too fast for this one.
The Monuments Men - On paper the movie sounds great. George Clooney and Matt Damon lead a stellar cast, playing untried new members of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, that in real life helped to secure and safeguard many of Europe's historic and cultural treasures during WWII. The trailer focuses too heavily on the comedy, and on the bumbling nature of the older recruits, played by Bill Murray and Bob Balaban. Might just be a marketing thing, but I'm a little worried. George Clooney never had the best directing record - though his projects are always interesting.
Saving Mr. Banks - This is sure to be utterly a feel good movie that is just dripping with Disney revisionism. It's well known to any Disney fan that P.L. Travers detested the "Mary Poppins" film. "Saving Mr. Banks" is pushing the idea that old Walt managed to turn that frown upside down with trips to Disneyland and by listening carefully to her concerns about adapting her beloved novels. Even with Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson involved here, I expect I'll end up cringing through this movie. I mean, it's being directed by the guy who did "The Blind Side," for heaven's sake!
American Hustle - I'm glad that David O. Russell has managed to turn his career around in recent years and assemble a semi-regular troupe of great actors that he gets along with. Returning for this round are Jennifer Lawrence, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro to play a variety of scam artists and special agents in a dramatization of the 70s ABSCAM sting operation. Jeremy Renner and Louis C.K. are along for the ride too. From the set photos that have been circulating around the internet, this one will be worth seeing for the wigs alone.
Diana - Poor Naomi Watts has the unenviable task of playing one of the most famous women of the twentieth century, and trying to justify a biopic that appears awfully thin on story and way too heavy on melodrama. It doesn't help that the film looks like made-for-TV-movie fodder, and so much has obviously been invented or diluted to pander to the tastes of the gossip-hungry mainstream audience. It's going to be up against the similar "Grace of Monaco" with Nicole Kidman, and with the Weinsteins behind that one, I don't think "Diana" or Watts stand a chance this awards season.
Her - Spike Jonze returns after a too-long hiatus to bring us a strange science-fiction romance between a man and his new computer operating system. The man is played by Joaquin Phoenix, in his first outing since "The Master," and the computer is voiced by Scarlett Johanssen. The trailer makes the film look offbeat and idiosyncratic, which is exactly what I expect from Spike Jonze, whose last film was "Where the Wild Things Are" In a season full of so many big movies, it's nice to see that there are a couple of smaller, weirder, unassuming titles in the mix too.
The Fifth Estate - Let's all take a moment to acknowledge that Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't look a thing like Julian Assange, but he does look odd and striking enough in his own way that we can let that slide. "The Fifth Estate," the Wikileaks movie, has patterned itself after a political thriller, and will likely be loads of fun to watch, and not remotely constrained by any actual facts. And that's okay. There will be plenty of dissections and debates surrounding the movie to let the various sides air whatever grievances they need to. The movie just needs to entertain us.
The Wolf of Wall Street - And finally, Martin Scorsese returns in his sixth collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio to take a stab at making the spiritual sequel to "Wall Street" that Oliver Stone couldn't. I love how stylishly in-your-face this trailer is, with the Kanye West track, bright colors, and the gleeful bad-boy antics. I never would have guessed that this was for a Scorsese picture if I hadn't known about the project long in advance. And I happily anticipate getting to watch DiCaprio play another slimy villain - he's proven to be pretty good at those.
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