kottke.org posts about trailers
Christopher Nolan's adaptation of The Odyssey is my #1 most anticipated film of 2026 and this trailer has got me revved up! Nolan's trailers never reveal much, but still, it looks gooood.
I am still skeptical of Matt Damon at Odysseus. Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Circe, and Hoyte van Hoytema doing the cinematography tho! And how do you fit this entire story into 2.5 hours? (Unless Nolan's gonna go for 3.5 to 4 hours?) Opens in theaters July 17, 2026.
Over his storied career, Steven Spielberg has made only four studio films about aliens: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — the outsized influence of the first two gives the impression that he's made many more.
Over the past 20 years, Spielberg has favored more realistic fare (Lincoln, Munich, The Fabelmans) but this summer he's back with an alien movie, Disclosure Day, based on an original story no less. Very excited for this! In theaters on June 12, 2026.
Hmm, I really don't know about this one: an animated adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm as a sort of Ice Age-ish comedy adventure? One commenter on YouTube says, "This movie is 100% gonna end with a random dance party scene with the pigs and humans dancing to something like Uptown Funk" and another suggests that "this is like a bad Family Guy joke from 2007 escaped into the real world".
From a review in IGN:
Gone are the specific allusions to the Russian Revolution and the stinging critique of Stalinism laced into Orwell's "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" allegory. Instead, Serkis paints the terrifying rise of porcine dictator Napoleon (Seth Rogen, playing brilliantly to and against type) in a broader brush for a modern era of big business run amok. In toning down the more graphic elements of its descent into totalitarianism and simplifying the depths of its commentary, the director and performance-capture pioneer trades a dystopian tone for something a little more uplifting. It's a fun movie with some creative visual choices and a great cast, but it's also hard not to feel like it lost some teeth on its journey from the page to the screen.
This Variety review isn't much more encouraging:
Serkis' 21st-century update dilutes Orwell's political allegory in favor of what passes for something more "audience friendly": His approach adopts the celebrity voices, cutesy character designs and antic, mile-a-minute energy of big-studio American toons. The result isn't nearly as polished as Illumination or DreamWorks movies, but "good enough for government work," as the saying goes.
In just a few days (Dec 5), the entirety of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill duology will be released in theaters as one four-hour-long film. Here's the trailer:
Quentin Tarantino's KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR unites Volume 1 and Volume 2 into a single, unrated epic—presented exactly as he intended, complete with a new, never-before-seen anime sequence.
And there will be an intermission. I haven't seen KB in awhile and am looking forward to this.
Oh, and QT has a Kill Bill collab with Fortnite? Apparently in the original script, there was a scene where Yuki Yubari (Gogo Yubari's twin sister) tries to get revenge on Kiddo, but it was cut because the director deemed it "too much to chew" for one shoot. Using Unreal Engine 5, Fortnite characters, and a motion-captured Uma Thurman, Tarantino has finally made the scene a reality. You can find it in the game or watch it on YouTube:
This is the trailer for an HBO documentary called Thoughts and Prayers about "the impact of the $3 billion active shooter preparedness industry on schools and communities across America".
It's tough to watch, as is this clip from the film in which a girl describes a bag of supplies that she carries in her backpack in case there's a school shooting.
From David Ehrlich's review in IndieWire:
Bulletproof desks that students can flip over at the first sign of trouble. A robot dog the size of a Pomeranian that jumps and yaps at the sight of an intruder. Inflatable body armor light enough for a first grader to blow up and hide behind. These are just a few of the more sensible products that are on display in the opening moments of Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock's utterly damning "Thoughts & Prayers" — the least farcical selection of props that contribute to America's burgeoning active shooter defense industry, which now grosses more than three billion dollars per year.
Of course, that's a small price to pay for the laughably transparent illusion that we're taking any meaningful steps toward protecting our kids from being slaughtered in their classrooms. In a crumbling empire where common sense has been eroded by ideology, and the political will to solve a problem can't hope to compete with the ghoulish impulse to profit from it, creating a new business sector might just be the only kind of healing that the richest country on Earth can afford.
It is totally and utterly and completely sickening that we choose to live this way in America.
As part of the fascist war on "woke", tens of thousands of books have been pulled from the shelves of libraries around the country over the past few years. On the front line are the nation's librarians, "first responders in the fight for democracy and our First Amendment rights". The Librarians is a documentary film about this latest wave of censorship & persecution of librarians; here's the trailer:
From a review on RogerEbert.com:
"The Librarians" is a documentary about the hysterical, unfounded, personal, and sometimes violent attacks on librarians. It is also about their unwavering commitment to making facts, literature, and inspiration available to anyone.
And:
The film has some indelibly searing moments, linking these efforts to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare, to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' burning books by Jewish authors, and to the Twilight Zone episode "The Obsolete Man," with Burgess Meredith as a librarian sentenced to death. There is a quote from President Eisenhower: "Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence they ever existed. Read every book."
The Librarians is out in theaters now but not very widely, so you'll have to check the list of screenings on their web site.
Here's the trailer for The Age of Audio, a feature-length documentary about the invention and popularization of podcasting, from Adam Curry to Ronald Young Jr.
I ran across this movie via a clip on Instagram that explains how the word "podcast" came to be; here's the same clip from YouTube:
Every time there's a new technology, it always has to be named the dumbest thing.
Whoever came up with the name podcasting, like what a dumbass name.
It's so funny cuz the podcast community gets very heated about these issues.
Whoever invented the word podcast, I'm going to punch him in the throat.
See also blogging. 🫠
High Horse: The Black Cowboy is a three-part documentary about the culture of Black cowboys & cowgirls and their erasure from the history of the western United States.
From executive producer Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw Productions, the pop culture and historical documentary confronts and reclaims the Wild West while revealing the story of the Black cowboy — a history that has largely been untold. It rides into the forgotten corners of history, shattering myths and celebrating the Black cowboys, farmers, jockeys, musicians, and rodeo champions who built the West — and now takes back their place in the saddle, sitting high atop the horse.
High Horse: The Black Cowboy starts streaming Nov 20th on Peacock.
It's not often that a movie trailer makes you cry — but this one might.1
Come See Me in the Good Light is a documentary film about poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley facing a cancer diagnosis that took Gibson's life earlier this year.
This is the beginning of a nightmare, I thought. But stay with me, y'all, because my story is one about happiness, being easier to find, once we realize we do not have forever to find it.
Falley's letter published just after Gibson's death will give you a sense of the spirit of the film & the two humans at the center of it:
A couple years ago, Andrea said, "Whenever I leave this world, whether it's sixty years from now, I wouldn't want anyone to say I lost some battle. I'll be a winner that day."
Whatever beast of emotion bucks or whimpers through you right now, I hope you can hold that line beside it: Andrea didn't lose anything. If you had been here in our home during the three days of their dying — if you'd seen dozens of friends drift in to help, to say goodbye, to say thank you, to kiss their perfect face, if you'd felt the love that floored every hospice nurse — you would have agreed. Andrea won.
The film is set to premiere Nov 14 on Apple TV.
From director Kathryn Bigelow comes A House of Dynamite (trailer), starring Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, and Greta Lee.
When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
A House of Dynamite is out in theaters right now and will be on Netflix in a couple of weeks.
Antonio Scurati's 2018 "documentary novel" M: Son of the Century was a worldwide bestseller about the early political career of Benito Mussolini and the rise of fascism in post-WWI Italy. Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Darkest Hour) has adapted the book into an 8-part TV series called Mussolini: Son Of The Century. Here are a pair of trailers:
One commenter on this YT video says "it's Cabaret meets Clockwork Orange, meets Metropolis..." I stumbled across this via Carla Sinclair, who writes:
It is, unsurprisingly, violent and gritty, highlighting Benito Mussolini's rise to power that began in the year 1919, when he founded the National Fascist Party in Italy. But it's also beautifully shot, with military and fight scenes stunningly choreographed to electronic music by Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers. At times it feels like an intense musical — without the song and dance.
If you're in the US, you can stream Mussolini: Son Of The Century on Mubi — four of the episodes are available so far and the new ones debut on Wednesdays.
Even after reading a couple of reviews and watching the trailer, it's difficult to understand what the Austrian film Little, Big, and Far is actually about. So here's the official synopsis:
Austrian astronomer Karl is at a crossroads in his life and work. He finds his physicist wife growing distant and his job being reshaped by environmental crises as thoughts about science, fascism, and his grandson's future spin above his head. After attending a conference in Greece, Karl decides not to return home and heads for a small island in hopes of finding a dark enough sky to reconnect with the stars. Abandoned at a remote mountain trail, he ascends and waits for darkness to fall.
Disney dropped the trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu today, a feature-length film that will debut in theaters in May 2026. As this Star Wars Explained breakdown, er, explains, that the trailer was going to come out earlier but:
Word on the street is that it was supposed to come out this past Friday, but Disney was and is in the middle of some hot water. Acting like cowards in the face of authoritarianism will do that, especially when one of the franchises you own {shows footage of Andor} is about the exact opposite.
Last week, Disney made the decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live from the schedule because of threats from the Trump regime, prompting protests. Kimmel returns to the air tomorrow night:
"Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive," the company said in a statement. "We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday."
I haven't watched it yet, but I have seen so many recommendations for this gonzo birdwatching documentary called Listers over the past few days that I wanted to share it with you.
Two brothers travel across the United States in a used minivan on a mission to find as many bird species as they can in a single year.
Yeah, not your typical birdwatching fare...the vibe of the brothers' quest is more like a surf or skate video. Here's the trailer:
And the whole 2-hour movie is available on YouTube as well:
I've hoping to make some time to watch it this weekend; it looks great. The two brothers have also released a companion book, Field Guide of All the Birds We Found One Year in the United States.
The trailer for Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out movie; looks like another great prestige caper.
Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns for his most dangerous case yet in the third and darkest chapter of Rian Johnson's murder mystery opus. Starring Daniel Craig, Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church.
It's coming out in "select theaters" on Nov 26 before its debut on Netflix Dec 12.
This is the trailer for a documentary celebrating the life and work of actor & comedian John Candy.
I loved John Candy; how could you not? Uncle Buck was my favorite of his movies. I can't believe he died more than 20 years ago already. (via craig mod)
For her newest film, director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) has adapted Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel Hamnet; both book and movie are about William Shakespeare and his wife in the aftermath of the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Paul Mescal stars as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his wife Agnes. Here's the trailer.
The film recently premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and the reviews are very good.
Premiering at the Telluride Film Festival ahead of a November theatrical release, Hamnet is devastating, maybe the most emotionally shattering movie I've seen in years. The book was overwhelming, too, and going into a film about the death of a child, one naturally prepares to shed some tears. Still, I did not really expect to cry this much. That's not just because of the tragic weight of the material, but because the picture reimagines the poetic act of creating Hamlet. Shakespeare's play sits on the highest shelf, fixed by the dust from centuries of acclaim. It is about as unimpeachable as a work of art can be. And yet, here is a movie that dares to explore its inception. The attempt itself is noble, and maybe a little brazen; that it succeeds feels downright supernatural.
The film premieres in the US on Nov 27 with a nationwide release on Dec 12.
I read Project Hail Mary (by The Martian author Andy Weir) a few summers ago; it was fine. I suspected at the time it might make a better movie than a book and after watching the trailer, I'm excited to see this next summer. Ryan Gosling stars and Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, produced the Spider-verse movies) are directing. Out in theaters March 2026.
Premiering this Friday June 27 on the PBS, an episode of the series American Masters on Hannah Arendt, historian, philosopher, and one of the 20th century's most influential political thinkers.
Hannah Arendt came of age in Germany as Hitler rose to power, before escaping to the United States as a Jewish refugee. Through her unflinching capacity to demand attention to facts and reality, Arendt's time as a political prisoner, refugee and survivor in Europe informed her groundbreaking insights into the human condition, the refugee crisis and totalitarianism.
Her major works, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), On Revolution (1963) and Crises of the Republic (1972) remain among the most important and most-read treatises on the development and impact of totalitarianism and the fault lines in American democracy.
The PBS site has a few clips from the documentary to whet your appetite.
The Criterion Collection is releasing a new boxset of Wes Anderson films, The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years.
Wes Anderson's first ten features represent twenty-five years of irrepressible creativity, an ongoing ode to outsiders and quixotic dreamers, and a world unto themselves, graced with a mischievous wit and a current of existential melancholy that flows through every captivating frame. This momentous twenty-disc collector's set includes new 4K masters of the films, over twenty-five hours of special features, and ten illustrated books, presented in a deluxe clothbound edition.
The boxset's trailer is predictably Andersonian:
More details:
New 4K digital masters of Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs, and The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, supervised and approved by director Wes Anderson, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
This boxset will set you back a cool $400 ($350 on Amazon), but look at all that stuff!
The Quilters (trailer) is a short documentary about a group of men in a Missouri prison who spend 40 hours a week making birthday quilts for foster kids and kids with disabilities.
The Quilters follows the daily lives of several quilters inside the sewing room at South Central Correctional Center, a Level 5 maximum-security prison in a small town two hours south of St. Louis, MO. From design to completion, the men reveal their struggles, triumphs, and sense of pride in creating something beautiful in this windowless, sacred space deep within the prison walls.
The Quilters is now available to watch on Netflix.
A few months ago, I wrote about Pee-wee as Himself, a two-part HBO documentary about the life and career of Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) that had then just premiered at Sundance. Now we've got a trailer and a premiere date: May 23.
It's weird to be in this situation, having a documentary made, because I'm used to having control of my alter ego.
Filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt have made a 12-hour documentary series on the Revolutionary War that will debut on PBS in November 2025. Here's a preview (YouTube, Bluesky):
From the press release:
An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.
An interesting thing about this series that sets it apart from some of his others is the star-studded cast: "Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Daniels, Mandy Patinkin, Claire Danes, Ethan Hawk, Josh Brolin..." These aren't narrators; they're playing actual characters in the series (Giamatti reprises his role as John Adams and Claire Danes plays Abigail):
Our cast list has never been surpassed by Hollywood or any streaming service. [No one could afford to] film all the people who have read for us, but they've all generously done SAG minimum: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Laura Linney, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Damian Lewis, Matthew Rhys — and that's [just] a third.
In this recent interview, a charmingly shoeless Burns shares his team's philosophy when working on projects like The American Revolution:
Given his and his team's past few projects, including The US and the Holocaust & The Vietnam War, it will be interesting to see how the Revolution is presented and how the film is received.
Ok so I've watched the trailer for the new Wes Anderson movie, The Phoenician Scheme, a couple of times and I still don't know what it's actually about? But from the looks of things, it is more of the same for people who like that sort of thing, which is lucky for me.
Also, Michael Cera might be the most Wes Anderson-coded actor that's never before been in a Wes Anderson movie.
I am still stinge watching my way through the second season of Strange New Worlds, but the third season of the show premieres sometime this summer, so I'd better finish it up before then. Anyway, I love this show and crew and the trailer looks appropriately kooky and wacky so let's goooo!
In a stage production that premiered last year in London, Steve Coogan played four roles (Dr. Strangelove, Captain Mandrake, President Muffley, and Major TJ Kong) in an adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. The play was adapted for the stage by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley. A filmed version of the play is currently playing in theaters...here are some trailers and clips from that:
The play's run has ended and I don't know if it will be restaged elsewhere, but like I said above, a filmed version is showing in theaters and you can look for tickets near you.
P.S. In the original version, Peter Sellers was supposed to play the same four characters as Coogan does in the play but was reluctant to play Major Kong. In the end, Sellers sprained his ankle and couldn't play Kong in the cramped airplane set, but he still played Mandrake, Muffley, and Strangelove. (via @fritinancy.bsky.social)
Here's the trailer for Shopping for Superman, a crowdfunded documentary on the 50-year history of local comic book stores — as well as their shaky future.
Shopping for Superman, guides viewers through a 50-year journey revealing the origin story of their friendly neighborhood comic shops and the people fighting to keep their doors open.
Since it began, the retail comics industry has contracted by over 75% with more shops closing every month.
After five years of diminished sales, a global pandemic, and the digitization of retail shopping dominating most markets, Shopping for Superman asks the question, "Can our local comic shops be saved?"
Shopping for Superman, does more than explain the history of retail comic book shops. Its underlying narrative reveals how shops directly influenced comic book publishing to cultivate some of the most daring and controversial materials ever committed to print.
Through the evolution of comics, bolstered by shop owners, local communities gained access to safe spaces for individuals having a crisis of identity, a place that promoted literacy and critical thinking in areas where those things are scarce.
Audiences will see, first-hand, just how necessary their support will be in keeping these shops open and available for future generations.
(via @scottmccloud.bsky.social)
I recently rewatched Glass Onion and had a couple thoughts about it.
1. Before settling in to watch, I'd remembered that Edward Norton's mega-billionaire character Miles Bron bore some resemblance to Elon Musk, but I'd forgotten that the whole plot of the movie revolves around what a blustering dope, what a dumb charlatan, what a dim-witted con man Bron/Musk is. As we endure this political moment dominated by halfwit flimflammers, witnessing Bron's downfall orchestrated by a gay detective and a Black woman was surprisingly cathartic.
2. I love films like this! Like Knives Out, Glass Onion is stacked with acting talent, helmed by a great writer/director, funny & dramatic, and, crucially, doesn't take itself too seriously. There's a sense that everyone is having a good time, with a wink at the audience. And they're just flat-out fun to watch. Is there a name for movies like this? A micro-genre? The type of movie you could imagine Muppets being a part of without too many changes?
I'd include movies like the Ocean's series, Lucky Logan, some of Wes Anderson's films, perhaps Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot trilogy, and maybe even Mike White's The White Lotus series. Like, what do we call these winking prestige ensemble dramedy thrillers? (Surely we can't call them "winking prestige ensemble dramedy thrillers".) And what other films would you include?
Whoa, HBO has made a third installment of Eyes on the Prize, the landmark series on the American Civil Rights Movement. The trailer is above and you can watch the six-part series on HBO or Max right now.
The first two series, which are amongst the best television ever aired, covered events from 1954–1965 (part one) and 1965–1985 (part two). Eyes on the Prize III covers significant events from 1977-2015, including:
- Community activists in the South Bronx and Philadelphia fighting for fair housing and healthcare during the Carter administration
- Reaganomics and the AIDS crisis
- How the criminal justice system affected the Black community from 1989-1995 in Washington DC and South Central Los Angeles (the LA Uprising).
- The Million Man March in 1995.
- The environmental movement (1982-2011)
- "The complexities of affirmative action policies and how a changing demographic landscape affected school desegregation in new ways."
- The soaring police brutality of the Obama years.
- The birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Featured participants include Angela Davis, Al Sharpton, congressman Kweisi Mfume, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Al Gore, Black Lives Matter co-founders Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors, and dozens of other activists, scholars, and politicians.
In a review for the Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Fienberg writes:
Eyes on the Prize III is, as the title suggests, a formal sequel to Eyes on the Prize II, a six-hour exploration of the "aftermath" of the Civil Rights Movement that makes it very clear that the movement has never ended, just as its real concerns were never fully resolved. It's an emotional, inspiring and righteously angry series of vignettes that looks backward, while very clearly intending to reflect upon and instigate conversations about our fraught current moment.
The series isn't perfect, but it's utterly essential, sometimes feeling disheartening for the immediacy of that necessity.
In a post on Bluesky, Fienberg says "nothing you could watch this week is better".
Older posts
Socials & More