This Week In Trailers: The Society, Beats, Broken Bread, Echo In The Canyon, Loopers: The Caddie's Long Walk
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 shag some balls with Bill Murray, come of age across the pond, find inspiration in the heart of some prime real estate, connect with our fellow man through food, and look at a dystopian future where there are no parents, just teens.
Beats
I talked about the initial teaser for this film, which is executive produced by Steven Soderbergh. It look like director Brian Welsh has made a different coming of age story, and this full-blown trailer is fantastic.
Best mates Johnno and Spanner share a deep bond. Now on the cusp of adulthood, life is destined to take them in different directions – Johnno's family are moving him to a new town and a better life, leaving Spanner behind to face a precarious future. In pursuit of adventure and escape the boys head out on one last night together to an illegal rave before parting ways indefinitely.
These stories are so commonplace that you need a different approach to make it stand out, and this trailer delivers. Echos of Trainspotting linger along with the heart and soul of Superbad as two friends who genuinely care for one another head out for one last rodeo before life bucks them to the ground. This is an under-the-radar, balls-to-the-wall, comedy with a bit of drama that looks to mesh heartache with the thrill of being young, dumb, and too stupid to care about anything important. The last dalliance with disregard for anyone else but your friends. Brilliant.
Loopers: The Caddie's Long Walk
You have Bill Murray narrating a documentary on golf caddies, and it doesn't get more on-brand than that. Director Jason Baffa is telling the story of these keepers of the bags, these princes of Pings, and it doesn't look half bad. A serviceable narrative, I'm tickled that they have pull-quotes not from Variety but by Golf Digest who compares this to the Planet Earth series. While I don't think it achieves that level of importance, the trailer is a smooth example of a good subject that's elevated even more by the likes of Murray's jaunty tone.
Echo in the Canyon
Director Andrew Slater has essentially made a trailer reflecting on music and really expensive real estate. Of course, that's a reductionist view, but the trailer exceeds even my expectations of a documentary dedicated to plots of land.
Echo In The Canyon celebrates the explosion of popular music that came out of LA's Laurel Canyon in the mid-60s as folk went electric and The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield and The Mamas and the Papas gave birth to the California Sound. It was a moment (1965 to 1967) when bands came to LA to emulate The Beatles and Laurel Canyon emerged as a hotbed of creativity and collaboration for a new generation of musicians who would soon put an indelible stamp on the history of American popular music.
What separates this from other music documentaries, though, is that this has an even tone throughout. You get different perspectives and, much like the documentaryMuscle Shoals, this looks more like a love letter to a vibe that still haunts a plot of land that is undeniable. I was drawn in by its many musicians, but the stories are what's most riveting.
Broken Bread
Director James Mann is here to present a story beyond fanciful documentaries about famous chefs. Specifically, along with chef Roy Choi, he's on a mission.
The half-hour series profiles individuals and organizations who make a difference in their communities through food. Known for his home-grown approach to conscious cooking and community-building, Chef Choi uncovers innovative culinary and agricultural practices that transform food access, food justice and community. The series explores neighborhoods across Los Angeles, telling the stories of the trailblazers in the social conscious food movement including Father Greg Boyle (Homeboy Industries), Robert Egger (LA Kitchen), Olympia Auset (Suprmarkt), Mar Diego (Dough Girl) and more.
Food as activism. These are the kinds of narratives that help elevate the simple four-walling of a documentary and make it so that there's something more to talk about than the tastiness of someone's sweetbreads. The trailer is inviting, warm, inspiring, and is just what we need as a national community who should be more invested in how we eat as a community.
The Society
This trailer is a mishmash of YA fiction and Lord of the Flies. Director Marc Webb's latest dramatic foray is just plain fun fun. We find teens all by themselves in a land that's populated by only them (curious how pre-teens suffer the same disappearance as their parents). Cue the warmongering, the alliances, and thus, comparisons to series or movies we've seen before. However, it could be worth the time to see if there's anything new to say here or if we would all be better served reading William Golding and calling it a life.
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: