Trailer Talk: Babylon, The Fabelmans, and more!

Babylon

This looks a lot wilder and wackier than I expected. Though, I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised that the new Damien Chazelle film is very frenetic and tense. That seems to be his preferred mode of operation. Even something as understated as First Man was put together like a horror movie at times. I’m very excited for this, I love movies about movies and moviemaking, I love digging into old Hollywood, this cast is great, the scope of it is the kind of thing we don’t see too often anymore. Everything about this looks like it’s going to hit my buttons, so definitely looking forward to this.

Babylon hits select theaters on Christmas Day, and expands nationwide on January 6th, 2023.

The Fabelmans

Interesting. By all means, I’m very excited for this, I adore Spielberg, and the thought of him making a film loosely based on his childhood is so enticing, and the word on this is pretty great from its festival premiere. However, just as a trailer, I’m not sure if it totally sells the conceit as well as it could have. If I had no idea who Spielberg is, what the context of this story is, then not much of this is being sold well to me. I’m hoping people go out to see this, as it was disappointing to see something as stellar as West Side Story not do well at the box office. I’m not any less excited because of the trailer, just to make it clear. Though, I would have preferred to see a glimpse of David Lynch as John Ford.

The Fabelmans opens in select theaters on November 11th before expanding on Thanksgiving Day.

Corsage

This looks interesting for sure. Can’t say I’m familiar with Marie Kreutzer, but this looks like a fascinating and complex character study. As I was looking up the film, I stumbled upon the page for the character that Vicky Krieps is playing, and accidentally spoiled myself. It’s not an area of history I’m familiar with, so it’ll be cool to see this kind of portrait of this era and the people involved. Krieps is a great actor, and everything she’s doing here looks very interesting. So, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for this.

Corsage opens in theaters on December 23rd.

Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday

I enjoyed the first Accident Man, and this one kind of looks better. There’s a different director this time around, instead of Jesse V. Johnson, it’s George and Harry Kirby, who both have experience in the stunt world like Johnson. So, I imagine the action will be great, the humor looks about on par. It’s fun to see Scott Adkins kick back and go a little silly, and this character lends itself to that really well. I’m looking forward to this, it looks like a good time.

Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday opens in select theaters and VOD platforms on October 14th.

The Stranger

This is one hell of a trailer. I don’t know who Thomas M. Wright is, but I wanna see what else this guy has done because this looks really cool. I love how atmospheric it is, how ominous it is, I love that it’s a Netflix movie that looks like an actual movie movie. I also like that it hardly gives anything away about the story, hell, it arguably gives too little, but I’d rather have that than too much revealed. I’m totally sold on this, and I can’t wait to check it out.

The Stranger hits Netflix on October 19th.

Close

So, this is from Belgian filmmaker, Lukas Dhont, who most famously made the film, Girl, back in 2018, which was fairly controversial due to a lot of LGBTQ critics pointing out flaws in its portrait of gender dysphoria. Interestingly enough, Dhont is back to approaching queer subject matter, or at least queer adjacent, from the looks of it, reteaming with the same creative team and crew behind Girl. I’m curious if there’s anything they learned from their experience with the backlash, since the word was otherwise fairly good on that film outside of those critiques. I think this looks solid from what I’m seeing, and it isn’t too often we get movies about male friendship, so I’ll be cautiously optimistic.

Close will be released in select theaters on a currently unspecified date this fall.

Thoughts on any of the trailers? Feel free to discuss in the comments!