Trailer Thursday: 127 Hours

It's been a long day, so I won't dwell too much on this teaser trailer for 127 Hours. Like Buried, which I covered a couple of weeks ago, this film walks a fine line of revealing too much or not enough. They both have a plot that centers around one person stuck in one place for a long time, so the trailer has the challenge of making that look good without giving away the meat of the story. Obviously in this teaser they achieve that latter goal by devoting a huge chunk of it to Danny Boyle's back catalogue. It's a risky move considering there are a couple of stinkers in there, and most viewers will only be familiar with Slumdog Millionaire. But this is only the teaser, so I'll let that part go for now. The rest of the trailer isn't bad. There's something slightly offputting about the way it looks - I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, but it's a little too bright, too crisp and too colorful. A little artificial, somehow. I'm not sure if that will be distracting over the course of a whole film. Other than that, it looks good. I'm a fan of both Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn so it's nice to see them, although I'm not sure I would ever have thought of them together. James Franco looks like he has charisma to spare, so it should be fun to watch him, too. I'm interested to see what the full trailer will add or change because this teaser showed about all I want to know before seeing the film. Since it's a true story, I do know how it ends, but still, I don't want to see how the film ends yet.

Trailer Thursday: Black Swan

I'm kind of having a mental block this evening, so I don't have much to say. Luckily, this trailer is so good, I don't have anything to add. Other than this: I'm so glad Mila Kunis is in this movie. She is a very talented actress and severely underrated, so I hope this film will change that.

Trailer Thursday: The Winning Season

There are three trailers I want to talk about this week, so I'll get to the one above later. First, The Company Men: this is the second Ben Affleck trailer that's really impressed me recently, which is unbelievable because I consider him to be the least likable actor around. I can't resist a Boston accent though, and this film has a pretty great supporting cast - it's always nice to see Kevin Costner.  Second, Skyline: man, this trailer is all about Stephen Hawking, huh? I started to wonder if he actually stars in the film (I don't think so?). How weird to focus the whole trailer on him - I mean, you can't find any other expert who said the same thing? The effects shots look OK, but I'm not super impressed.

So my actual pick this week is The Winning Season. Not because I think it's a great trailer - I don't - but because I'm really optimistic about this film. I love Sam Rockwell, particularly in comedies, and he looks good in this one (love the mustache). Now, the reason I say I'm optimistic is that the trailer isn't actually that funny. If these are the best jokes, we're in trouble, but my hunch is that the film is more of a sleeper like Napoleon Dynamite. I don't remember ever seeing that trailer back in 2004, but I just watched it and it didn't inspire a lot of confidence. But whatever you might think of it now, after the endless pop culture saturation, Napoleon Dynamite was a ridiculously funny movie. That's what I'm hoping we have here. Besides, Sam Rockwell knows how to pick a good project, so I trust his judgment (don't think about G-Force).

Trailer Thursday: Catfish

There was a weird glut of fake-documentary trailers this week; it's not my favorite genre, so it wasn't an easy choice. I had heard some buzz about this Catfish trailer, but I still don't really know what's going on. For one thing, I can't even tell if this is a real documentary - I didn't think so, but a little poking around online suggests it is real. So what is it about? Obviously there's the Internet love story, which leads to something mysterious and exciting. If it were fiction, I would want to see it, but if it's true, I'm even more intrigued. How do you structure a genuine documentary with two such seemingly disjointed narratives?

I have to admit, while the story does interest me, I didn't like the trailer. Movies in recent years have trained their audiences to expect specific things - sci-fi and horror movies will have a big twist, for example, and movies with attractive, young hipsters filming each other with camcorders usually end with Blair Witch-y or Cloverfield-style disaster. So I'm watching the trailer, anticipating something unexpected (if that's even possible), and yep, there it is - but it's real? For some reason, I can't get to grips with that. 

More importantly, whoever created this trailer does a huge disservice to the film with the blurb, "The final forty minutes of the film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won't be able to shake for days." You know what that means to me? That it begins with nearly an hour of crap I don't care about. All of the stuff with the Facebook chatting and the painting and the texts? That's meaningless. Surely that's not the message you want to be sending about your film. Brad Brevet at Rope of Silicon suggests that watching the trailer might actually spoil the film. I don't know if it ruins the ending or gives away some big plot points, but it kind of spoiled my anticipation.

Trailer Thursday: Buried

Lots of good trailers to choose from this week, but I really liked this new spot for Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds. Considering it's a thriller about a man being buried alive, there's going to be a limited amount of information they're able to include in the trailer. I like how simple it is, with the stills and the voiceovers; even though we'll hear these exchanges again in the actual film, it shouldn't feel overly familiar. Most of all, I love how the graphic quality of this trailer ties back to the awesome Saul Bass-esque poster. Both are striking and memorable and hopefully, in keeping with tone of the film. I wasn't really interested in Buried when I first heard about it, but the promotion is working for me - I'm expecting a pulse-racing, Hitchcockian thriller now, so I hope I'm not disappointed.