We get bombarded with teasers, trailers and promotional clips relentlessly – each weekend Steve Newall sorts through the best of the week for you to check out and get excited about.
Anyone But You
The teaser to Anyone But You sets up the pic’s premise in economic fashion, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell playing exes who can’t stand each other (but for some reason pretend to be dating) when they both attend a wedding in Australia. It may be a ruse, and Sweeney may be playing it up in the teaser, but the pair’s chem is real (as earlier seen in their gossip-fuelling appearances together while the movie was in production).
Napoleon
Ridley Scott is back, licking his wounds after highly entertaining (but box office misfire) House of Gucci with this account of Le Petit Caporal’s rise to power. In a Gladiator reunion with Ridley Scott, Joaquin Phoenix brings Napoleon Bonaparte to life, with Vanessa Kirby as Empress Joséphine—in what looks like an epic full of battles, scheming, sex and scenery.
Saltburn
Writer-director Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman sees a uni student (Barry Keoghan) who’s invited by a schoolmate (Jacob Elordi) to stay at his aristocratic estate over summer. They’ve got a palpable vibe, and the pic has more than a sniff of Brideshead Revisited or The Talented Mr. Ripley about it—as well as superb casting in Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant.
Ferrari
Speaking of House of Gucci, Adam Driver tries on an accent again here in Michael Mann’s biopic on motor racing driver, entrepreneur and legend Enzo Ferrari (maybe to more success than in Gucci? The trailer is promising, if inconclusive). Penélope Cruz plays Enzo’s estranged wife Laura, Shailene Woodley his mistress Lina, while there’s also plenty of action happening on the track.
The Zone of Interest
Ten years after Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer is back with what sounds like a chilling potential masterpiece, one that’s received acclaim on the festival circuit (winning the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes). Next door to Auschwitz, Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel, Babylon Berlin) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall) strive to build a dream life—but the horrors of the concentration camp next door seep into their life, and presumably every frame.
Eileen
Ottessa Moshfegh helps adapt her novel of the same name, set in a juvenile detention facility in the 1960s. There, a withdrawn young woman (Jojo Rabbit‘s Thomasin McKenzie) works as a secretary, clockwatching while living life mostly in her head—until the arrival of a glamorous director of education (Anne Hathaway). Eileen’s finally found a friend, but their relationship is going to head in places she does not expect…
Faraway Downs
If you liked Australia, you’re gonna love Faraway Downs… Some people say “less is more”, but Baz Luhrmann has always seemed the opposite—and here he expands Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman cattle ranch drama Australia into a mini-series. The director says he was “inspired to re-approach my film Australia to create Faraway Downs because of the way episodic storytelling has been reinvigorated by the streaming world. With over 2 million feet of film from the original piece, my team and I were able to revisit anew the central themes of the work.”
Sly
First there was Arnie, and now Sylvester Stallone gets the Netflix doco treatment. Following the filmmaker’s 50-year career, Stallone takes his through his story—full of rejection until he created his own starring vehicle Rocky, a film that changed everything. From Rambo to The Expendables there’s a lot to cover—hopefully some Demolition Man, Tango & Cash and Over the Top, too.
For All Mankind
Apple TV+’s alternate history of the space race continues, now in its fourth season. Taking another trademark jump forward in time, the action moves to 2003, with a now firmly-established settlement on Mars and a new focus—the capture and mining of asteroids. But simmering tensions on the base threaten to undo the spirit of cooperation that’s essential to success, not to mention, survival.
Beacon 23
In this new sci-fi series, set aboard an intergalactic lighthouse, an unexpected visitor (Lena Headey) arrives, to the surprise of the solitary beacon keeper (Stephan James). Adapted from the short story by Hugh Howey (author of Silo), it’s another confined mystery with the pair unsure of whether they can trust one another—or if there is still another threat to come.
