This week's trailers are light on dialogue, but heavy on mood. Yes, Community and Kevin Smith have a lot to say, but other than that, we've got a handful of global offerings—and a Jason Reitman movie—that prefer to traffic in ambiance instead of chatter. So we will follow their lead, and let you fill the negative space with your own deep thoughts and keen insights. Watch on.
Yahoo says it's looking to make Community "the world's first bionic show." They might be a little late to claim that title since The Killing has already zombie'd its way back from the dead twice and lived on three different content providers, but still, after losing and regaining its creator and showrunner, constantly living on the bubble, managing Chevy Chase, and then finally surviving cancellation, fans of Dan Harmon's crazy band of under-achievers deserve to be in pure celebration mode for the sixth season of meta-weird life at Greendale Community College. This trailer does a lot of reflecting, giving nods to each of the previous five seasons (even Season 4), but also emphasizes its commitment to Community's future awesomeness, ratings be damned! We're not ready for you yet, darkest timeline!
Pause at: 1:05. Appropriately, the only snippet given of season four is of Pierce and Troy choking on noxious gas. Stop at 2:34 to see Yahoo giving itself a big pat on the back!
Essential Quote: "Where we're going, we don't need ratings."—Dramatic voiceover guy telling Community fans what they've longed to hear for five tumultuous years
What if there was a documentary like Jodorowsky's Dune, except it was about the ill-fated Tim Burton movie Superman Lives? Wait—what?! There is?! Well, let's talk about it! We all pretty much get that Burton's aesthetic isn't exactly mainstream. His tastes skew towards the eccentric, to put it mildly, and had his Superman come to life it probably would have looked like a fever dream from Wayne Coyne. So depending on how much of a comics purist you are, Superman Lives—featuring Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel and wearing a super suit that looks like glass and regenerates—could have been a savage attack on all you hold dear in this world. Or, it could have been really cool. Either way, director and producer Jon Schnepp has the 411 on how this surefire success burned up on entry. (You can fund the movie's completion here.)
Pause at: 0:43, 0:55, 0:57, 1:00, 1:09, 1:23, 1:38, 1:44, 1:47, 1:49, 1:56, and 1:58 for glimpses at what the Burton/Cage/Kevin Smith venture could have been.
Essential Quote: "Even though the internet didn't exist, the internet was still mad. That's how fucking big it was!"—first Superman Lives screenwriter Smith on the backlash to Burton's proposed Superman
Jason Reitman likes to challenge his audiences with unconventional protagonists: A cancer-slinging lobbyist in Thank You For Smoking, a pregnant teen in Juno, a one-hit author and generally deplorable person in Young Adult. And now he looks to be going further into the darkness with his latest quiet dissection of human banality by laying bare the teenage sexual angst, adultery, loneliness, and isolation that is both enabled by and alleviated by the sleepless hum of digital interconnectedness. It sort of looks like that movie Disconnect from earlier this year, but without the contrived, ham-fisted intensity—in other words, without AWOLNATION playing in the trailer. As he is wont to do, Reitman has assembled a strong but characteristically off-center ensemble for Children, featuring Ansel Elgort, Jennifer Garner, Emma Thompson, J.K. Simmons, Rosemarie DeWitt, Adam Sandler, and Judy Greer, among others. Come through on this one, Reitman, and we'll forget all about Labor Day.
Pause at: 0:13 and 0:15. We are our social profiles; our social profiles are us. Stop at 0:23, 0:34, 0:44, 0:50, 1:07, 1:16, and 1:36 to meet our characters through their private correspondence.
Essential Quote: "U didn't tell anyone right?"—anonymous text message
Based on the classic Japanese folk story The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, Princess Kaguya is the story of a bamboo cutter and his wife who extricate a tiny girl from a shining stalk of the plant, and who grows quickly into an enchanting young woman after being freed. But, since that would make a really short movie, the mysterious vegetation-bound princess must face punishment for past crimes—presumably the crimes that got her bound inside some bamboo to start with. The source material is said to be Japan's oldest surviving work of fiction, and the movie is directed by Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, who has come out of a 14-year feature film hiatus to bring it to life. And it looks very beautiful.
Pause at: 0:37 and 0:43 are quite stunning, but really you could stop at any moment you want to see incredible hand-drawn frames.
Horror fans say "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!" Australians have a wonderfully twisted horror sensibility (see The Loved Ones, Wolf Creek) and this movie looks insane-good. Amelia has lost her husband to a violent death, and now she's a single mother raising a boy terrified of imaginary monsters around their house—or are they imaginary?! The terrifying voice of the Babadook roaring "You can bring me the boy," feels real enough to us.
Pause at: 0:46. This trailer has us afraid of paper cut outs! 1:05 is a major "Oh, hell no!" What's a Babadook? Is that a Babadook at 1:13?!
Essential Quote: "You can't get rid of the Babadook!"—Samuel delivering same bad news
We really don't know where to begin talking about this one, but we can tell you it was directed by Jamin Winans, who made Ink in 2009. That movie was about a group of supernatural beings responsible for creating our nightmares. It also involved child abduction. So, yeah, The Frame will probably have a lot to unpack.
Pause at: 0:39 for the first of so many "What?" moments, followed by 0:46, 0:51, 1:05, 1:24, and 1:37.
When a woman in a burqa takes her son and goes to the police in Copenhagen to report her abusive husband, her assigned translator is for some reason unwilling to accurately convey her pleas to the authorities. This looks like a claustrophobic and harrowing drama that walks on the line of being a thriller. This trailer doesn't give us too much to go on, but it hits hard.
Pause at: 0:18 to see the translator, 0:44 to see the son, and 1:01 to see the woman in distress.
Essential Quote: "He did terrible things this time. I'm not going back."—Our protagonist
