This week at the trailer house, we've got so many random goodies it's like a care package from your most eccentric aunt. 50 Shades of Grey finally gets in the game and put some whips chips on the table. Benedict Cumberbatch makes a move to erase last year’s awards-season leading-man turn with another awards-season leading-man turn—but a much more promising one this time. Showtime and HBO put their fall credibility shows on offer, and a big ol' grizzly bear shows us that movies can still be cheap fun even in the serious months. Don’t try and make sense of it; just let it happen.
Know this: We have no allegiance to 50 Shades of Grey—the books or the movie—but this teaser, which premiered via Beyonce’s Instagram, features Queen Bey heavy-breathing and cooing over a plodding beat and Red Shoe Diaries-esque visuals, and it is shamefully effective. The producers of E.L. James’ fanfic-turned-"literary"-sensation know exactly who their audience is, and they’re going to pump every ounce sexual tension they can into the movie’s marketing campaign. Prepare to lose your freedom, Jamie Dornan.
Pause At: :06. We haven’t actually read the 50 Shades series, but we’re thinking this is the whole story right here.
Song: An unnamed Beyonce joint?!
Essential Quote: “Uh oh uh oh uh oh ooo na na.” Beyonce
Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elizabeth Moss) are a couple on the rocks, and they’ve been prescribed a weekend getaway at a particular house by a guy that sounds a lot like a shrink (Ted Danson). Moss and Duplass both have excellent sensibilities with quirky characters and unlikely comedy, so they could make even a trite premise like that pretty engaging, but the thing about this house is that it’s not… well, we don’t know what the hell it is! Sophie seems a little obsessed with it; Ethan seems a little afraid of it, and quotes like “it’s really odd” and “some weird version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” are all we get to establish what exactly is going on in this mysterious getaway. This trailer produces a strange but satisfying anxiety, and it builds as fast as the string music behind it. We want to know what’s going on in this place and we want to know now! So we’re looking forward to being surprised by director Charlie McDowell’s first full-length feature.
Pause At: 1:15. Ethan hurls what looks like a huge rock at a French door that doesn’t even leave a dent. 1:32 shows us a very perplexed Sophie exiting the house, and we want to know: Seriously, what is going on here?!
Essential Quote: “Is it another dimension when you go through the door?” Sophie with the $64,000 question, ladies and gentlemen.
Last year’s WikiLeaks movie The Fifth Estate was pretty bad, but Benedict Cumberbatch did his best in it, so we’re excited to see him back in the biopic saddle with this movie. Imitation Game is about Alan Turing and the crucial role he played in breaking the Enigma code during World War II and, you know, in inventing computer science. And if that isn’t enough to get your November-release Oscar hook all baited up, it’s also stacked with a great Brit cast, including Matthew Goode, Keira Knightly (who’s having a banger of a year), Charles Dance, and Mark Strong. We suspect there will be many teacups and saucers shattered in fits of genius rage, in addition to the requisite paper throwing. For Queen and country!
Pause At: :28 to see Charles Dance giving his signature “Oh, really?” stare down and :49 to see Keira Knightly making the most Keira Knightly of entrances. 1:22 gives us a full look at Turing’s code breaking machine.
Essential Quote: “We’re going to break an unbreakable Nazi code and win the war.” Alan Turing. Oh, that’s all? We thought this was going to be hard.
We feel like we’ve seen this one before, except the last time we saw it, it was called Minority Report. Or maybe it was Looper. This one is a film by the Spierig brothers, Michael and Peter, whose previous two movies centered on populations blighted by the undead. So they’re staying in the realm of the fantastic, but turning towards harder sci-fi this time with Predestination, the story of a Temporal Agent (Ethan Hawke) who gets his Tom Cruise on and thwarts criminals before they can strike, Precrime style. The primary target appears to be The Fizzle Bomber, but it also looks like there’s more going on in this movie than cop/villain cat and mouse—Hawke’s character comes off as far too brooding and pensive to just be a man frustrated by the one that got away. And his time-crime protégé, played by Sarah Snook, is told she is “a gift, given to the world through predestination paradox." So we’re guessing that’s gonna mean something big, too.
Pause At: :06. The mashup of advanced time-travel tech with analogue tools starts giving us the Looper vibe. At :10 our Temporal Agent turns from flesh and blood to an explosion of glass shards—way cool. Do a double take at 1:06 and remind yourself that Sarah Snook is not Jane Levy from Suburgatory, because we were totally fooled. And 1:34 gives us the classic lights-across-the-face image that signifies “working with computers!”.
Essential Quote: “I’m a temporal agent. We prevent crime before it takes place.” Nameless Temporal Agent played by Ethan Hawke.
You’re learned. You’re interesting. You see films. So obviously you need to be up on the movies that took home awards at Cannes. Mommy was a strong contender for the Palme d’Or, and ended up landing the Jury Prize at this year’s party on the French Riviera. Interestingly, the movie was shot in 1:1 aspect ratio, presenting the whole thing in a neat little square, and it is the story of a mother and her troubled son, whom she has just taken out of an institution for problematic children with plans to homeschool him. The manic nature of the boy, Steve, and the brassy, hard-nosed resolve of single mom Diane looks to add up to for some intensely emotional scenes, and with summer fluff giving way to heavier autumn material, Mommy will likely require some deep breaths to get through.
Pause At: :31. Diane and Steve look to be packing their lives on their back walking down the street. Hard times for our protagonists. At :59 we see Steve comforting mom in a highly emotional moment, and at 1:24 we see her scrubbing houses for a living. It’s getting sadder! And at 2:06 we get a glimpse of Steve when things turn dark.
Song: “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic, “Anything Can Happen” by Ellie Goulding
Essential Quote: “Life with Steve’s a roll of dice. You get lucky. Until you don’t.” Diane.
James Marsden, Piper Perabo, Thomas Jane, Billy Bob Thornton and Scott Glenn are all in a movie about a massive grizzly bear known as The Red Machine. This is a welcome entry into the vastly under-utilized killer bear sub-genre of horror movies.
Pause At: :50, 1:15, 1:30, 1:56, 2:04 for the best bear-centric moments. (Yes, we are counting Billy Bob’s face at 1:56 as bear-centric).
Essential Quote: “The Maze is sacred ground. That’s where nature’s in charge.” Sully.
Grizzly (2014) - Trailer - These bloopers are hilarious### The Small Screen Standouts: Homeland and Boardwalk Empire
Let the premium cable battle for Sunday night supremacy commence!
