The trailer for Netflix’s The Laundromat, a Steven Soderbergh-directed, Meryl Streep-starring satire about the Panama Papers, arrived just last Friday; it owns a playfulness in its dialogue and narrative that is matched in the way it so effusively engages in an interdiegetic interplay between voice and music.

As sure as the October air, NYCC 2019 has come and gone, and with it left a minor dust storm of this fall’s slate for streaming television. Much like our San Diego Comic Con writeup before it, here are just a few of the trailers that caught our ears for their diverse uses of music and sound to punch up the image.

Ian McKellen (Richard III [1995], The Lord of the Rings trilogy, among others) is at full front and centre here in this second trailer for Bill Condon-directed The Good Liar. Narratively, the film centres on career con artist Roy Courtnay’s difficulty performing what ought to have been a simple swindle of rich widower Betty McLeish, but he finds himself inadvertently enamoured of her.

In this psychological thriller we find novelist June (Naomi Watts) in 1977 New York City during the blackout riots, barely staving off paranoia and writers’ block in her South Bronx apartment.

After a very brief Universal studio card with bridging audio—no micro-teaser here—right away we are introduced to the protagonist’s cloistered world through a series of shots the contrast heavily in aural perspective. First we’re inside a bowl of water, only to taken out with the buzzing of a shaver; an tinnitus-like shrill sound gradually overtakes the radio, the latter of which serves to ground the chaotic symphony of domestic sequestering on display.

A reimagining of the 1993 Francis Ford Coppola film based on Frances Hudgson Burnett’s 1911 novel, the music in this trailer for The Secret Garden (2020) enlists an inventive and evocative harmonic move to spur the audience’s sense of wonder.

Based on 2013’s Stephen King novel of the same name, Doctor Sleep is a direct sequel to The Shining (1977 book; 1980 film adaption). Perhaps in part driven by the success of It and its sequel in theatres currently, Warner Bros. took advantage of the fact that there is already a famous visual language and memory to draw (and market) from the 1980 original. It’s clearly more the product of director Mike Flanagan, rather than paying any serious homage to Kubrick. The trailer music, however, starts from the original’s score, subsequently building on it.

Even Zach Galifianakis couldn’t have predicted that Between Two Ferns would not only be so successful to have lasted ten years (albeit sporadically, with a spread of twenty-one shows in total), but also that it would receive its own feature film edition. Almost naturally, the show that served as one of the progenitors of the Internet-based comedy show medium is premiering its movie on Netflix. Given the streaming giant’s predilection for picking up and ordering somewhat similar shows dispensing bite-size, reality TV humour such as Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, it’s a natural fit.

You’ve got one guess as to what song is embedded in the trailer for director Noah Hawley’s Lucy in the Sky. Rather than simply insert the Beatles tune, however, motivic fragments from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” are scattered across the two and a half minute running time like a fever dream, with just the faintest hints of the tune’s famous, chromatically tumbling piano line in the first few seconds.

Over the past few months and culminating in an avalanche of news and content at this past weekend’s D23 expo, Disney has released a steady array of trailers, confirming to us that the trailer remains the chosen vehicle for the promotion of moving images. The latest bunch are for properties exclusive to its upcoming Netflix competitor, Disney+, which launches in North America on November 12th. To that end, it’s worth investigating how the campaign fits together on an aural level. Here are four of the most notable-sounding trailers released this past weekend.

The first trailer for Martin Scorsese’s latest, The Irishman, has arrived and with it comes a decisive homecoming to the director’s flair for crime and gangster culture. Upwards of $200 million was spent on CGI work for younger versions of Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino, in service of the decades-spanning plot. 

Now that we’re well past San Diego Comic Con, Amazon Studios has released the trailer for Honey Boy in advance of all the trailers for films with a holiday release sure to come.

In a synopsis that sounds difficult to realize on paper yet confounds expectations, Honey Boy sees Shia LaBeouf—best known for the recent entries in the Transformers franchise—turning deeply introspective and semi-autobiographical. Based on his own experiences as a former Disney kid pushed to success by his father, the film promises to track a young actor’s difficult childhood, rise to fame, and recent turn to rehabilitation following substance abuse. 

The Goldfinch, adapted from the Pulitzer-winning 2014 novel by Donna Tartt, is directed by John Crowley and arrives mid September, in the thick of awards season. The trailer shrewdly leans into the complexity of its 780-odd page source material, featuring a musical source known for its sense of depth. While scored by Trevor Gureckis, the trailer opts for a rearranged and embellished version of “Terrible Love” (2011) by art rockers The National.

Last week San Diego Comic-Con wrapped up, and in its wake lies a treasure trove of trailers for the next year of big-league film and television. Although we didn’t get an appearance by Warner Bros—and, consequently, no Wonder Woman 1984 or Dune—we did get even representation from the cable network landscape and the world of streaming alike, with promo by The CW, HBO, TBA, Amazon, and Netflix each garnering attention, among others. Here’s our annual trek down Hall H, with—as always—an ear towards the musical element.

With Knives Out, writer/director Rian Johnson shows that his bona fide blockbuster outing with Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the exception that proves the rule: here, we are back into the familiar auteur stylings of Looper or Brick. An ensemble cast, classically styled whodunit plot, and a standout soundtrack ground Johnson’s next filmic foray.

It’s hard to say exactly what is driving the current spate of musical biopics that seems to be taking hold of Hollywood and never letting go, but the team at Trailaurality is all for it. This go around we have Judy, which, as the unadorned title may suggest, is less bombastic than it is contemplative.

HBO’s upcoming comedy about a family of televangelists is a mildly political skewering of this American phenomenon. Starring Danny McBride and premiering August 18th, the trailer pairs a classic song with comedic trailer editing techniques to showcase the uniqueness of its satire.

After an original TV series running 1976-1981 and a film revival franchise with entries in 2000 and 2003, Charlie’s Angels returns to theatres this year with a reboot. Elizabeth Banks takes the helm as director, with Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska taking up the mantle as the eponymous angels.

An adaptation of the 2012 novel by Maria Semple, Cate Blanchett stars as Bernadette Fox in this eponymously-titled Richard Linklater film. After a decidedly obscure first trailer, the second trailer for Where’d You Go, Bernadette offers much more in the way of exposition and musical accompaniment that effectively imparts the reasoning behind its billing as “a mysterious comedy.”

Another series that enjoys occasional resurgence (Rambo III was released 1998; Rambo IV, 2008), the trailer for Rambo V recently dropped and with it the use of a recent popular song that itself balances old and new with a judicious blend of hip hop and country. Throughout the trailer we hear a movie that celebrates what can be called at this point its heritage, while also serving the action and aesthetics of 2019.

On May 29th, the 20th annual Golden Trailer Awards were held at the Ace Theatre in Downtown LA. Once again, we learned that Trailaurality covered many of the trailers that would go on to be recognized for their excellence, not least due to the role that music and sound plays in their narrative power (though the GTA officially has only two awards exclusively devoted to music).