And one more trailer for good measure, since I haven’t shared earlier ones for Fury Road. Regardless of how good or bad the movie might be, it’s clear it is going to be quite the spectacle!
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trailers! trailers! trailers!
Several people, my wife most importantly, have told me they rely on Roused to Mediocrity for trailers. This makes it sad that I’ve been so terrible at sharing good trailers for quite a while.
I’m not going to dip to deep into the past trailers I’ve missed, but here are three from the last week or so that have me wanting to head to the cinema regularly this year.
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Spectre
Casino Royale was awesome. Quantum of Solace was not. Skyfall was awesome. Time to see if it’s going to be an every other movie pattern. Hopefully Quantum was an aberration. So far so good with the trailer, and we do have Bond basically dressed as Archer in the first poster, so we will always have that, at least.
Slow West
A boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) comes from Scotland to American old west in search of his lost love. Michael Fassbender is the badass who takes it on himself to keep the kid alive.
Dope
A movie about LA kids appropriately obsessed with 90’s Hip Hop culture.
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throne of blood.
Before Akira Kurosawa did Hamlet and King Lear, he adapted Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 1957’s Throne of Blood.
In addition to moving the setting to feudal Japan, Kurosawa also uses original dialogue in the story. He replaces the flowery language of Shakespeare with the stylized, exaggerated gestures of Japanese Noh theater. It’s a device that can be seen in much of Kurosawa’s work, especially the samurai films, but is perhaps at its best in this instance. As we watch the tragedy unfold, with characters manipulated by demonic forces with unknowable motivations, the embellished movement reinforces the eerie wrongness of all that takes place.
The philosophical pondering of Kurosawa is there as always. In Throne of Blood he is illustrating how we are often deluded into destroying ourselves and the people we love because of our own greed and paranoia. The violence and destruction that comes from the self-interested warring between individuals, factions and clans is a common theme for Kurosawa. It’s no mistake that the three Shakespeare plays Kurosawa interpreted are full of this sort of drama and tragedy. By translating the setting, twice to feudal Japan and once to post-WWII Japan, we see Kurosawa’s point that this pointless destruction of peace is timeless. And Kurosawa was always asking if, in addition to its timelessness, is it also unavoidable?
As is so often the case, Toshiro Mifune is amazing. I will always want to be him when I grow up.
Bonus: Tony Zhou did a new Every Frame a Painting installment all about how Kurosawa used movement in his films. I absolutely love the way Zhou teaches us about the art of film, as well as the fact that he is often championing my favorite filmmakers. I have some gripes about the way he frames the negative sides of his argument each time, but that would take too long to explain right now. Feel free to ask me about it, though.
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the one i love.
This is one of those movies that I really can’t say anything about without ruining everything. All I can say is that Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass were both great, I loved the concept, and the execution was fantastic! The metaphors at play remind me of an excerpt I heard once from Dan Savage at a lecture where he was answering questions from the audience about relationships, but I can’t say which one or it could spoil stuff.
This is worth checking out, available streaming on Netflix.
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the history of future folk.
Quirky, super low budget winner about Future Folk, the Brooklyn-based folk outfit comprised of two aliens from the planet Hondo.
They’re like Flight of the Conchords, but they exclusively play folk and are from much, much farther away than New Zealand.
The History of Future Folk catalogues their origin story, as they come earth to wipe out humanity in order to save their own planet, but fall in love with earth music and realize they need to find a way to save both worlds.
This movie is as sweet as it is unique, and as full of heart as it is unselfconscious. As the trailer says, this is the greatest alien folk-due, sci-fi, action, romance, comedy movie ever made.
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glassland. [trailer park.]
This one looks like it could be pretty special, and like it will definitely be really difficult. Irish cinema is offering some pretty great fare the last few years!
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age of ultron, trailer three.
Pretty much entirely new footage, and, our best look at The Vision so far. For the embed to work correctly it seems you need to use fullscreen mode, which is better anyway.
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frank, and also, recommendation avoidance.
I really liked Frank, the story of an Irish kid who meets an American indie band led by a man who never takes off a giant fake head. The film is also on a long list of movies that I really appreciated, but would normally be hesitant to recommend to anyone. I hate endorsing movies to friends when there is a solid chance people won’t like it, mostly because such a vast majority of people hate what they hate with much more passion and intensity than they love anything they love. I initially wrote much more about that fact as I was composing this, but then decided it was best left for a different post altogether. Suffice it to say that I have trouble separating my own feelings from the art I love, and most people are assholes when they don’t like something. Thus, even my best friends don’t normally get recommendations from me unless they read this blog, wherein I get to share stuff in a bit of a vacuum.
Anyway, the trailers for Frank make it seem like the film is about a lovable Irish kid who finds a genius songwriter who is a diamond in the rough, and a bit nuts, and nudges him toward a wider audience. In reality, the film is much better, and at times much much more uncomfortable than that. There were scenes later in the film where I literally had to pace my living room because I was so uncomfortable about what was taking place and how casually terrible people can be.
Frank is about genius, and mental illness, and being talentless (but too talentless to know it), and it is about that age-old conversation about the relationship between creative genius and mental illness. It’s about community, finding those people who see you and understand you and accept you for who and what you are, and make you better. The film is small and intelligent, and it is one of the few movies about brilliant and weird music that actually includes brilliant and weird music. Most of the time they just keep telling us it is weird and brilliant and we are supposed to go along with it. Everybody in it is great, which is what sells the uncomfortable moments so well, but also what makes the heart and beauty land perfectly.
I absolutely loved the closing moments of the film, for reasons that are best explained in a long conversation with someone who gives a shit about my two cents, instead of in a hastily written blog post. I’m sharing that scene so people who have seen the film can enjoy it again, but I would recommend skipping it if you haven’t watched Frank. Both because of spoilers, and because you won’t know what the fuck is going on. I just needed a scene about a man who can often only express himself indirectly and through an artistic medium included on RtM.
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kingsman.
If you find yourself wanting to head to the movies to have a great time, go see Kingsman: The Secret Service. I’m hard pressed to think of a better time I’ve had at the cinema in quite a while.
The trailer, back when it was released, was enough to intrigue me, but it also left me worrying this would be another hastily rendered spy movie that was at best mildly entertaining. The way the trailer was edited made me wonder if the main character would be hard to like, and if Samuel L. Jackson’s super-villain would be more irritating than not. As it would turn out, it was just an instance of misleading trailer editing, an all too common problem. Taron Egerton’s turn as our protagonist ‘Eggsy’ was wildly likable, and Samuel L. Jackson’s lines were actually perfect when allowed the proper pacing for humor or tension, or both in most cases.
Taron Egerton truly was great. His performance had the perfect mixture of cockiness and vulnerability that is so coveted in roles like this, but can be really hard to get right. He made it look effortless. He has all the makings of a star, and the higher than expected opening weekend for Kingsman is going to speed his ascension.
Anyone who has read this blog at all knows that a contemporary take on a genre that is at once a sendup and a celebration is a quick way to my heart when done well. Kingsman is so very much that. It’s hilarious, dark, and violent, not to mention risky with it’s solid R rating for a movie that would often have been watered down to increase the box office with a PG-13 sticker. Instead, it pulls no punches (and throws in some dirty extra jabs), and does to the gentleman spy sub-genre what Kick-Ass did to capes and tights. Unsurprising, since both films are adaptations of Mark Millar comics.
Best of all, this is just the world-building and table setting for a franchise that could bring joy to audiences for some time. Especially because it leaves more possibilities for future installments than Kick-Ass did, which is a part of what led to that horrible sequel.
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