This Week In Trailers: Free To Run, Abortion: Stories Women Tell, Away, Free To Run, Spring Break Zombie Massacre
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they're seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: What better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? This week we get in the ring with Mexican wrestlers, talk candidly about abortion, put one foot in front of the other, try to find something novel about two strangers becoming friends and then champion a film project about zombies spawned from the imagination of two teenage boys. Away Trailer
Really, it's just a chance to talk about Timothy Spall.
What director David Blair has done here isn't novel but that's not the point. What is so noteworthy is how Spall takes a well-worn yarn of two people coming together who don't have anything in common and how they connect as human beings after yadda yadda yadda and simply lets his strengths as an actor take over. It's the performance that does it and it absolutely pops in this trailer. I may not rightly enjoy the over-the-top voice over but that's a mere quibble compared to what they get right.
Lucha Mexico Trailer
Coming back to reclaim the title.
Back on October 25th of last year I wrote about this trailer but directors Ian Markiewicz and Alexandria Hammond are back with a new one and I'm still entranced. I don't know why this appeals to me but, from a purely sociological perspective, I'm riveted by this modern day bread and circuses event that appears to pull in entire communities with its pomp and circumstance. You can feel the passion that these athletes have for the sport as they . To be sure, that same passion exists north of the border for the fellas who want to hit it big on WWE, but the stakes seem a lot lower in terms of worldwide success. However, that doesn't take away from the stories that these luchadores want to tell.
Spring Break Zombie Massacre Trailer
Passion.
When I read the story about two teenage friends, Sam and Mattie, who wanted to make a zombie movie, then made it happen through Kickstarter, getting Pauly D to make an appearance in it, and then release the kind of trailer for it that is better than most of the dreck I have to sift through on any given week I just had to include it. There may not be anything new about the space they're playing in but it looks like too much fun not to sit back and enjoy for simply being out there. It's flat out nuts in the best way possible.
Abortion: Stories Women Tell Trailer
This is a touchy subject but one that deserves some attention.
I don't think, and this is purely subjective, you could come close to matching the fist to the face that was director Tony Kaye's powerful documentary Lake of Fire. That being said, I can't say enough great things about the documentary Rich Hill which was co-directed by this movie's director, Tracy Droz Tragos. The same things that made the trailer for Hill so compelling and so engrossing make this a trailer that has stayed with me for days after watching it. No matter how many times I see stories about this subject it never gets easier to sit and listen to the stores of women who have had to make what is, ostensibly, the hardest decision of their lives. Whichever way you fall on the matter, this is pure emotion.
Free to Run Trailer
Keith Richards outlived Jim Fixx, the runner and health nut. The plot thickens. You remember Jim Fixx? This human cipher used to write books on jogging. Now, what do you fuckin' write about jogging? "Right foot, left foot, faster, faster, oh hell, I dunno, go home, shower." Pretty much covers the jogging experience, I do believe. Then this doofus goes out and has a heart attack and dies... while jogging. There is a God. "Right foot, left foot, hemorrhage." – Bill Hicks
When I started running around the time I was 18 I thought there was no better way to get out and experience something while getting healthy. Director Pierre Morath is taking an interesting approach as he examines running, not through a technical lens, as I think Bill Hicks summed that up, but through a sociological one. It's interesting viewing to see how we've come from a society that once rebuked the idea of women being able to put one foot in front of the other with an elevated pace to the one where we are now. It's lighter fare, to be sure, but that doesn't make it any less intriguing.
Nota bene: If you have any suggestions of trailers to possibly be included in this column, even have a trailer of your own to pitch, please let me know by sending me a note at Christopher_Stipp@yahoo.com or look me up via Twitter at @Stipp
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week: