What Movies Are We Watching? Plus Repertory Film Chat

Actually, with John Wick coming out, I’m reminded of a spot my friend filmed for the Alamo Drafthouse. It was specifically when they were doing a Tim Burton marathon, but it’s just as appropriate now

Nicely done!

The Prince Charles Theater in London is showing several films in 70mm throughout February, March, and April, including several showings of 2001: A Space Odyssey (an absolute must-see in a theater in 70mm) and Interstellar, along with Brainstorm, Hook, and Poltergeist.

Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY (aka The Place That Shia LaBeouf’s Livestream Was) is a month into their massive three-month Martin Scorsese retrospective. In the next month you can see GoodFellas, The Last Waltz, Casino, Kundun, The Last Temptation of Christ, and After Hours, all in 35mm prints! Most interesting is a double feature screening of The Hustler with Scorcese’s two-decades-later sequel The Color of Money on March 5th.

Man I should’ve made an Oscars thread… You guys see that shit? That was wild.

Anyways, I did see a really good docudrama yesterday called Wolf and Sheep, about shepherds in Afghanistan. It is scripted, but its filmed using non-actors in the locations in which they actually live. Kind of like Pather Panchali, though this has a bit of magical realism to it as well. It hasn’t been picked up for distribution in the US, but since it played at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight I’m guessing there’ll be some way to see it within the year.

So to keep this thread alive, what are some of y’all’s favorite trailers? I’ll post a few below

The Public Enemy: One of the earliest trailers I know of that introduces the movie without any footage.

Dr Strangelove: Wild trailer by Pablo Ferro, who also designed the film’s titles.

Point Blank: Matches the style and feel of the movie perfectly.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Alien: Often called the greatest trailer of all time. Hard to argue with that.

Star Trek - The Motion Picture: Reintroducing the cast for their first film is none other than Orson Welles!

The Abyss: Part behind-the-scenes piece, part trailer.

Terminator 2: In theaters a year before the film itself, this teaser was directed by the late great Stan Winston and features no footage from the film.

GoldenEye: There hadn’t been a Bond movie in 6 years before this trailer premiered. What a way to reintroduce the character.

Strange Days: Presented as if its a commercial for the virtual reality device seen in the film.

Cloverfield: This trailer played before the first Transformers and didn’t have a title, just a release date.

Comedian

The Social Network: This is the start of the modern trend in trailers of 'play slowed down sad piano version of pop song’

Green With Envy

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It’s definitely hard to argue with Alien, that trailer is genuinely perfect. I also posted Suspiria’s American Trailer early on in this thread, so please scroll up and watch that masterpiece.

I love Creepshow’s trailer, in part because I adore Creepshow, but I think it’s trailer does a really good job of capturing it’s goofy EC comics vibe.

I think Maximum Overdrive’s trailer is pretty great too, because the film is just awful and a high out of his mind Stephen King does a perfect job of setting up exactly how ridiculous it’s going to be.

If you haven’t seen it, Hitchcock’s original trailer for Psycho is really remarkable. Hitchcock’s trailers were always really fun, and this one functions as a nice tour of the set full of wry little jokes from the director and I think it does a great job getting you intrigued.

On the polar opposite end of the spectrum, Hitchcock’s main directorial rival (and the man responsible for getting Rosemary’s Baby made) William Castle had a similar sort of conversational approach to the start of his trailers, but unlike Hitchcock he absolutely refuses to operate in subtlety. Every Castle film was essentially a new gimmick, The Tingler being maybe his most famous, in which the seats in the theater were rigged to give you an electric shock. Hitchcock and Castle had a pretty famous rivalry going, both of them trying to one up the other. For example, Psyco showings would not allow anyone to enter the theater when after the movie had started. For one of Castle’s films, Homicidal, he offered viewers a fright break: a 45 second break in the film for those who were to scared to leave and get their money back, when people started gaming the system, he set up a “Coward’s Corner” they had to stand in where people could make fun of you, you got your blood pressure checked, and were made to sign a document saying "I am a bona fide coward."

If you are really interested in classic or rare trailers, I suggest giving the youtube channel Trailers from Hell a look. It’s run by Joe Dante of Gremlins and The Howling fame, and basically it’s just him and his director friends (John Landis, Guillermo del Toro, Edgar Wright, etc) talking about their favorite movies while watching their trailers. It’s a great way to learn about really interesting movies you may not have seen.
For example, here’s Ti West (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) talking about The Changeling, which got me to watch the film and I’m very glad I did, because it is absolutely fantastic.

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Can’t say I’ve ever really been fond of any trailers; too often misrepresentative/manipulative, and they just generally bug me.

But, definitely looking forward to seeing The Founder and Gold when they’re out in my part of the world. And new Blade Runner! :toot:

Can’t believe I forgot that Psycho one. North by Northwest has a fun one as well.

Trailers From Hell is great. Joe Dante actually used to cut trailers for Roger Corman. This was one of his last.

@Gordonzilla Tried to think of some misleading trailers and I came up with two in particular.

Alien 3: The script was going through so many changes that they thought the movie might be set on Earth when they made this very early teaser.

In Bruges: Here’s one that tricked me. The actual movie is much darker and more brutal than this trailer would suggest. Seeing it in theaters there’s a definite moment where the audience realized this was not going to be a fun little Guy Ritchie style romp. Good movie though!

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Quick little bump; Moonlight is getting re-released to 1,500 theaters this weekend. Go see it! Its really fuckin’ good, and beautifully shot, worth seeing on the big screen.

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Having recently seen Get Out a weekend ago I can say that it is so satisfying when a movie is worth the wait, because holy shit that movie may be my favorite of the year so far

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Definetly going to try and see Get Out on Saturday.

In other news, if there’s any Madison, Wisconsin readers, the UW Cinematheque is showing the rarely screened Academy Film Archive restoration of Richard Williams’ unfinished The Thief and the Cobbler. Dubbed ‘A Moment in Time’, this recreates the final workprint Williams had made before the film was taken away from him. This is not the recobbled cut, this is an officially sanctioned restoration, and it has only been screened a couple of times and is not available online or on video (and probably never will be due to the legal clusterfuck around the movie). And the screening, like all UW Cinematheque screenings, is free!

Over the weekend we watched Alien: Covenant & Ghost in the Shell.

Alien: Covenant was a mess where I was expecting a horror/slasher film and got an action film instead with the continuation of a crazy android.

The opening 45 mins is just building the setting and characters dealing with loss (really confused why James Franco was murdered in the opening, I assume he’s got a bunch of deleted scenes.)

The crew dislike the new captain because he’s religious and because he’s being fairly reasonable with “Hey we should repair the ship before we give our crew a proper sendoff. We could die otherwise.”

Why is the crew on this planet they just discovered, which they were already suspicious about not wearing gas masks or anything.

Why did the captain trust David enough to stick his head in an egg after David showed him his death gallery.

Why do the aliens now come out as just tiny versions of themselves instead of the larva state the other films show them as.

I just saw The Snowman. I haven’t read the novel it was based off of, so my view of the story might not be what it could be.

I went in expecting it to be a more cat and mouse sort of set up between the killer and the detective. It wasn’t that, but it wasn’t bad because of it. I liked the story and the characters for the most part. I feel like the actors did a good job across the board.
My main hang ups come from how the plot doesn’t feel well paced. And I think that comes from the fact that it’s a novel first. But the visuals are really good and the story is as well. If I get the chance I’ll probably pick up the book.
Depending on ticket prices, I might say to wait to see it a cheaper way, but it’s definitely worth a gander if you’re looking for something.

Keep in mind, there is gore so if that’s not something you can watch I would say not to watch it.