Trailers for Upcoming Films

[DarkImbecile]

Hong Sangsoo's Walk Up

[flyonthewall2983]

Somewhere In Queens, Ray Romano’s first directing effort

[senseabove]

Benjamin Millepied's Carmen

[dadaistnun]

Helena Wittmann's Human Flowers of Flesh

[colinr0380]

The latest Makoto Shinkai film inevitably involves more star cross'd lovers, although this time instead of gender swaps and apocalyptic weather events of Your Name and Weathering With You, the romance in Suzume involves dimensional doors and the heroine falling in love with an anthropomorphic wooden chair whilst seemingly on a road movie adventure!

[DarkImbecile]

Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings

[DarkImbecile]

Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N.

[hearthesilence]

Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N.

One of my favorites from last year that wasn't theatrically released until this year.

FWIW, Roxy Cinema will be screening this on Thursday, March 30th, as part of the 17th Romanian New Wave festival playing at several venues this year.

[Computer Raheem]

Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings

While this doesn't exactly look like my type of movie, I'm happy to see a film made for grown-ups being given a proper theatrical release, as well as Nicole Holofcenter being given a proper platform after a decade of seeming obscurity. It is funny that A24 are the ones releasing it; seeing the comments online, it's clear to see the divide between people who this film is aimed at and the A24 hypebeasts who are only interested because they're releasing it (I saw on Instagram yesterday that someone said the film is "giving Focus Features vibes", and I almost spat my coffee out )

[therewillbeblus]

Tommy Wiseau is back with Big Shark

[DarkImbecile]

Verena Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica

[Matt]

They’re going all in on their recent turn toward gross-out cinema. I’m sure it’s fascinating, but I don’t think I want to watch someone’s colonoscopy.

[dekadetia]

They’re going all in on their recent turn toward gross-out cinema. I’m sure it’s fascinating, but I don’t think I want to watch someone’s colonoscopy.

For me, this was indeed fascinating, and not gross-out or exploitation-adjacent in the mode of Caniba — mainly because all of this footage (most of which is too abstract to provoke disgust) is documentation of the effort to extend and improve lives. Left me with a hopeful feeling overall. See it on the biggest screen you can!

[colinr0380]

They’re going all in on their recent turn toward gross-out cinema. I’m sure it’s fascinating, but I don’t think I want to watch someone’s colonoscopy.

How about some random person's gallbladder surgery from 1991? (NSFW) That this is around is another example of why the internet is so amazing, although presumably the camera crew were traumatised for a long time after filming.

I'm squeamish about surgery myself and the wobbly insides of bodies so I am very unlikely to see this (although it seems to completely fit with Paravel and Castaing-Taylor's themes of bodies and how they get used and cut up by others, from the fish in Leviathan to the cannibal of Caniba), but perhaps even more disappointing is that, at least from the trailer, there was no Raquel Welch in a skintight white bathing suit anywhere to be seen! Worst remake of Fantastic Voyage ever!

[brundlefly]

Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley‘s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

A promo spot featuring a Freaks & Geeks (well, Geeks) reunion.

[flyonthewall2983]

Fools Paradise, the directing debut of Charlie Day

[DarkImbecile]

Zachary Wigon's Sanctuary

[colinr0380]

The Japanese stop motion film Junk Head just received a UK theatrical release on the 24th April (actually the French trailer from last year works the best in capturing its qualities). Its quite an achievement for its first time director Takahide Hori who directed, wrote, did the special effects, composed, provided a number of the (grunting) voices, did the sets and presumably had a hand in every other aspect of the film. Its a very strange portrait of a stratified future world after some sort of societal collapse, where our main character is a human from the upper levels who, bored with his confined existence and in search of some adventure decides to join a government programme to explore the lower levels of the world, with the goal of finding out if there is a cure down there for some sort of disease ravaging the population on top. However (major spoiler, though it probably will help to avoid a sense of disappointment if you know this beforehand) that cure never gets discovered throughout the course of the film (which really feels like the first part of a longer epic storyline, so hopefully in another few years we may get Junk Head 2!), and instead on his descent into the depths our main character's pod is blown out of the sky by one of the groups of inhabitants on the lower levels, which causes our main character to quite literally lose his head!

There's a bit of a Battle Angel: Alita vibe to this whole story, particularly in the main character having come from the skies above and in their 'fall from grace' having lost their memories. The protagonist gets re-built like Alita as well (although he does not have the same lethal fighting abilities as Alita does!) and has their head put into a robot body before becoming another member of the group of characters who came across him (but who know that he was a human from the upper levels and therefore consider him God), only to end up falling prey once more to the various monsters inhabiting the labyrinthine tunnels, getting ripped apart again and going to an even lower level where he goes through the same process all over again, only this time falling in with the group of characters who shot him down originally (and who are part of a gender segregated society where the butch and muscular women go out hunting, leaving their wimpy men at home to look after the place and bicker over the local politics!) where he goes from the "All Is Full of Love" Bjork-style robot shell into an even boxier robotic body! Which is the cutest look really, with its 'junker' appearance and inability to speak leading to having to do Wall-E style mime actions in order to communicate!

A lot of that middle part is the main character just being sent out on busy work quests by their companions and having to deal with either monstrous worms or someone just wanting to steal all of their basket of food that they have collected from them (before getting their highly gory but amusing comeuppance!), as well as making friends with a mysterious red hooded girl and her mutated companion (which only solidifies the Red Riding Hood connection that the basket of food fetch quest had suggested!), and then when 'junk head' is reacquainted with his initial set of companions that sets up a final confrontation with a giant and aggressive (and which looks very influenced by H.G. Giger's Alien designs) monster that is threatening the community. It all ends in a very impressively animated action scene, with some quite moving moments, and then - definitively separated from returning to the village by a collapsed bridge over a bottomless chasm - the remaining members of the group band together to continue their journey further out into the unknown.

I found it a satisfying story on its own, although I could completely understand if many viewers found the 'big question' of searching for a cure to this broadly defined virus not reaching any resolution as being an anti-climax. However the film is much more interested in notions of being accidentally perceived as a God and the questions of the afterlife that brings with it; as well as how our main character gets fit into the various communities of people that he meets along the way, and how by going into the depths he finds the adventure, friendship and companions that he yearned for in his boxed in apartment on the surface of the world. The world below is much more dangerous, bloody and violent than anything we see of the upper world from the main character's slowly returning memories of it, but it is also giving that character agency again... even if he does ironically get reduced into being the robot companion figure for most of the time when the community he falls into do not particularly know what else to do with or make of him!

So I'd recommend it - its dark and unafraid of painting the concrete walls and floors red with blood, although also has a great sense of humour about it too (I was particularly taken by the motorcycle-powered lift, as well as the moment of pushing a doorbell over and over again until the person angrily answers!). I have not really seen anything this harshly brutal in how it depicts its world yet also strangely sweet with its characters at the same time since that Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb film from the early 90s!

[flyonthewall2983]

Neill Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo. Looks rather good, surprisingly.

[DarkImbecile]

Japanese trailer for Takeshi Kitano’s Kubi

[dadaistnun]

Two by Hong Sangsoo:

In Water

In Our Day

[brundlefly]

Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott's follow-up to Shiva Baby, Bottoms (NSFW). With Ayo Edebiri and Marshawn Lynch.

[Matt]

I guess every generation gets the Heathers it deserves

[therewillbeblus]

There's a good chance that the trailer's digestible vibe is a misdirect, given Seligman's talent for bold tonal blending. I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic that this'll be closer to Thoroughbreds than Booksmart

[criterionsnob]

Priscilla