Morbius

Morbius

We last covered Morbius in January 2020; while it’s perhaps obvious why there was a delay of nearly two years, the wait is almost over. Whereas in a previous trailer the musical conceit was a play on Beethoven’s über-popular “Für Elise”, this time we get a trailerized cover version of The Doors’ “People Are Strange” (1967, from Strange Days). The lyrics are on point—“people are strange, when you’re a stranger”—and while there’s an element of obviousness to it, it’s clever enough of a turn on the meaning of the original tune, and the vocals are partly obscured by orchestral atmospherics anyway.

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Lightyear

Lightyear

Pixar’s next foray in essence imagines the movie that Andy, the boy from Toy Story (1995), may have seen to inspire him to want a Buzz Lightyear toy in the first place. It’s a clever way to expand and extend the Toy Story franchise, not unlike what films such as Solo have done for Star Wars; the interest is unapologetically steeped in nostalgia, while also being used as a base for something new.

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The Beatles: Get Back

The Beatles: Get Back

Directed by Peter Jackson (best known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, among others), The Beatles: Get Back is not unlike Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Summer of Soul, in the sense that it takes forgotten or otherwise never-before-released footage from 1969 and offers nothing short of a deep and intimate look at its musical subject matter. In this case, obviously, it’s the Beatles—and not just that, but with a focus on a pivotal 21 days in January 1969, in the midst of the sessions that would become the albums Abbey Road and Let It Be.

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Tchia

Tchia

Self-described as a game “inspired by New Caledonia”, a collectivity of islands to the east of Australia that are a part of France. Finding a trailer for a video game that foregrounds a sense of cinematic narrative is, perhaps understandably, difficult: most game trailers tend to focus on spectacle—graphics—and the gameplay experience, which necessitates a layer of narrative abstraction to be inserted between the audioviewer and the trailer. In other words, games are generally more about the player’s construction of their own narrative, and trailers as such are more of a demonstration of that possibility than the promise of a crafted story.

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The Matrix Resurrections

The Matrix Resurrections

The return of The Matrix was always going to be a much-vaunted event, not least due to Keanu Reeves’ upward trajectory since (see: John Wick, from which Reeves retains the hair). The eighteen years since the last instalment has seen an immense increase in the amount of time with which we live our lives and depend on digital spaces. Moreover, the series and those around it has been a cultural touchstone, for better or worse: since the original trilogy, the Wachowskis have specifically said “the Matrix is a ‘trans metaphor’”; meanwhile, the term “take the red pill” has been co-opted as a dog whistle by the alt-right.

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Dear Evan Hansen

Dear Evan Hansen

The recent surge of film adaptations of musicals—such as In the Heights or the upcoming reimagining of West Side Story—continues unabated with Dear Evan Hansen. Having premiered on stage in 2015, the coming-of-age story won six Tony Awards; the plot follows Hansen, a teenager suffering from social anxiety and seeing a therapist, who writes letters to himself as a part of healing. Original writer Steven Levenson returns for the adaptation, while Stephen Chbosky directs.

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House of Gucci

House of Gucci

Best known as an actor for her role in the remake of A Star is Born, Stefani Germanotta (a.k.a. Lady Gaga) is set to strike filmic gold again with House of Gucci. Based on the novel by Sara Gay Foden, House of Gucci recounts the dramatic story of the titular Italian fashion house. As might be expected, especially for Lady Gaga’s musical pedigree, the way Blondie’s hit single “Heart of Glass” (from the 1978 album “Parallel Lines”) is edited to the trailer is a significant factor for its success. As one YouTube commenter said, “whoever edited this trailer with the music and specific scenes… got me into watching a film about Gucci.”

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UFO (2021)

UFO (2021)

The latest from J. J. Abrams is a four-part docu-series premiering on Showtime, focusing on a fairly perennial topic in American media: Our fascination with whether or not the power of government, corporations, and the military have colluded to shield evidence of extraterrestrial phenomena from the public eye. Though the trailer never directly references the X-Files, the show is one of the tangible influences underlying this preview (and probably the series UFO as well).

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Zola

Zola

In what is most like the first film adapted from a Twitter thread, it’s more than apt that it should start with the sound of a mobile notification; that innocent-sounding, two-ding bell is both complemented and juxtaposed by a woman calmly gliding around a pole. The story—or, as famously known on Twitter, #TheStory—is based on a 148-tweet thread from 2015 by Aziah “Zola” Wells, detailing a Pulp Fictionesque story that’s at first about a stripper, and goes far deeper than anyone could have imagined.

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Schmigadoon!

Schmigadoon!

The narratological space that the music in a musical film occupies—where its characters appear to be unaware that they are engaging in musical performance—is about as fraught as the stylistic inclusion of the exclamation point in Schmigadoon!’s title. That is to say, it’s inconclusive, a bit syntactically awkward, and its purpose and inclusion is subject to one’s opinion on the matter.

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Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho

Edgar Wright has always been particularly well-attenuated to the music and image dynamic. From the original music-laden Scott Pilgrim Versus the World to 2017’s Baby Driver, his unique aural sensibilities are analogous to how Wes Anderson has become synonymous with distinctive palettes of colour; one can practically tell just by the edit who one is dealing with.

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