Another week in the books. The spookiest month of the year starts off with a ranging lineup of trailers, from new Denzel to eerie Netflix originals. You can check them all out below, along with some brief insight from yours truly.
Roman J. Israel, Esq.
What is happening in this trailer? What is Denzel’s character? The first minute is him, appearing to be some sort of disheveled, oddball lawyer. Next minute he’s some sort of lawyering criminal scumbag? Maybe the trailer gives off the wrong vibe in such a tonal shift, but this looks to be like some of Denzel’s worst work in a hot minute. Not even Colin Farrell is getting me excited.
Crooked House
A lesser known, lesser hyped, lesser star powered Agatha Christie adaptation here. Another murder mystery naturally, centered on a family of bad people. A classic mystery cliche, one that they take no hesitation in pointing out in the trailer. Not inspiring any hope for greatness with that, but it could still be a decent mystery for a rainy day.
Newness
Throw this in for the romantics out there. From the director of Like Crazy which is one of the more depressing romantic dramas out there, comes another that frankly has the same feel. Drake Doremus clearly has a feel for relationships and getting into the intricacies people have. This looks fine, I think we could all predict how it’s going to go. At the very least, you can watch and crumble at the underlying message that love is not lasting.
Wonder Wheel
Woody Allen takes no days off. His movies are generally average to above average, with no real change despite his output. This looks to be a bit more interesting than his past few films. Still focusing on a classic era, drenched in yellow light, with odd characters, he mixes it up with some crime drama as the moving factor in the plot. Jim Belushi popping up here after who knows how long is an intriguing sight, and Kate Winslet is bound to get awards talk. JT, my boy, deserves to be in more movies so it’s nice to see him nab the role here. Hard to tell what he will be doing but give him all the work.
Replicas
Yo, nice. Keanu switching into sci-fi land here. This is a bit close to home for him, I would imagine, as his girlfriend (who had a stillborn birth to their child) also died in a car crash. For all the “whoa”‘s we make fun of him for, Keanu is still a great actor. He has a subtle emotion and heart in a lot of his work that goes unappreciated. This role seems to draw a lot of that. It veers into action thriller territory toward the end of the trailer, losing what appears to be the character-centric drama and sci-fi theory experiment we see for the first half of the trailer. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t go too off the rails.
Mayhem
Like The Belko Experiment, but better. Steven Yeun, the former best character on The Walking Dead, finally popping up in something is encouraging and exciting. This premiered at SXSW and generated quite a bit of chatter. It looks to be tonally fun, darkly funny, and most importantly entertaining.
How to Talk to Girls At Parties
Do with this as you wish.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
Oh man, making John Krasinski stare into the camera for the first teaser for this is hilarious. Not much given here, but we all know what to expect. We’ve already seen Jack Ryan in a billion other adaptations.
Dark
What. In. The. Hell. Is going on. Murder? Time travel? German village? WHAT! All in. This trailer is pitch perfect in eerieness and I was thoroughly creeped out for the entirety. It moves at a perfect speed and doesn’t give anything really away, other than the “The only thing that matters is WHEN” thing which is kind of needed as a selling point. How time travel works into it, I don’t know. And I don’t know if this is going to be all in german or what. But, either way, it looks like a great way to ward off the post Stranger Things sadness.
Future Man
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything that screamed HULU more than this. Not to say it doesn’t look good (I 100% will be watching this), but it just looks like a Hulu show more than anything ever. Hopefully they don’t run some of the jokes presented in the trailer into the ground, and that it’s a bit more than just “we gotta stop this guy from getting herpes, also this badass sent back in time takes everything literally just like Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy“.
The Babysitter
I’m torn. Does this look good because it clearly isn’t meant to be? Or does it look terrible because it probably is? I have no idea. On a surface level, it looks pretty entertaining and strikes a nice balance between horror and comedy (residing a bit more on the comedy side). That said, McG makes some stinkers of movies and the cast in this (mainly Bella Thorne, Earth’s most famous trashy person that looks like if you touched them they would be sticky) is iffy. But if they make fun of some of the typical tropes we see effectively, this could be a good Friday night watch for good old Spooktober.