This Week In Trailers: Winter Flies, The Guilty, Loro, After Everything, Free Solo

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 call 911, realize a stranger is a just a friend you haven't met yet, get a look at another country's idea of a leader only in it for themselves, take a road trip, and then climb a mountain without a rope.

I wish we had more of these kinds of movies out there. What director Gustav Möller, if you parse the trailer close enough, manages to evoke is a sense of compressed space and time. We're not talking about the downfall of civilization or the threatening of an entire metropolis; we're here with one man inside an emergency call center. The physicality of the direction is tight, much like Oliver Stone's 1988 classic Talk Radio; Eric Bogosian skillfully acted his way through that performance much like our protagonist has to do here. What's more, the pull-quotes ratchet up my interest level if for no other reason than the drama radiating from every clip as we head into the back half of this trailer is just electric. This one most likely will fly under the radar when it's released. Hopefully, you won't let this opportunity pass.

I have a soft spot for these kinds of movies. Directors Hannah Marks and Joey Power have struck a heartstring with me merely based on charm and effort. What I genuinely do appreciate is that while the entry point by which these two come together is a little wobbly, everything else feels great. Modern romance, young love, the evolution of how people grow to love one another in a way that's not entirely false is alluring. Also, the trailer has excellent pacing and we never linger too long in any one area. It's just the story of two people who find one another, and then we watch as the story plays out. It may be a story as old as time, but when someone can take a fresh look, I welcome it.

Look, we all know we're in a rough place, politically, in this country. Director Paolo Sorrentino, who gave us The Young Pope, is here to talk about Italy's former Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi is, without question, one of the more fantastical politicians of the 20th and 21st century and the material available to be depicted is ample. Sorrentino's latest is described thusly:

Seduction, glamour, corruption, drugs and raucous poolside parties: the life and times of scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi have long-demanded a screen depiction, and who else to deliver it than Paolo Sorrentino, the Academy Award-winning director of The Great Beauty and The Young Pope, who returns to cinema in spectacular fashion with this dazzling, topical and no-holds-barred look at life in Italy under the glistening eye of modern Europe's most infamous politician.

This trailer makes it all seem Iannucci-ian in its outlandishness, but this hews closer to reality than it does fiction, something we all realize all too well now. I know bad times do not equate to great art, but this current US administration is laying the groundwork for something fantastic years from now if this film is any indication.

Yes, yes, yes. Putting young people on the road as they explore the world around them with fresh perspectives is a great premise. Director Olmo Omerzu takes us through the Czech backcountry but, honestly, it could be anywhere, and that's its charm. When you have kids just being kids, doing things that would get any adult thrown into jail, it's an excellent sandbox for exploration. As such, this trailer wonderfully captures that sense of adventure. From doing stupid things, picking up hitchhikers, getting tangled up with the law, this one has it all. It's small, but it seems to have a big heart.

It's all in the film's description:

Follow Alex Honnold as he becomes the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite's 3,000ft high El Capitan Wall. With no ropes or safety gear, he completed arguably the greatest feat in rock climbing history.

This is the kind of documentary that makes my palms sweat a little. Directors of the fantastic award-winning film, Meru, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi have come back to wall climbing. This time they're just focused on Honnold and, regardless if you know the man's name or not, his physical feats are indeed something to witness. I'm obsessed with wondering how people like him go from a toddler to thinking that going up sheer mountain walls without a harness is a solid idea. There's a gene I'm missing, but this is one doc I'm going to catch.

Nota bene: If you have any suggestions of trailers for possible inclusion 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: