Life of Pi I’ve not read the book this movie is based on, so I’m going in cold. This trailer only traffics in broad strokes, vaguely highlighting “triumph.” That’s fine, teaser trailers aren’t supposed to give too much away. They are, however, supposed to present a tiny morsel of the movie in a way that makes people want more. This trailer doesn’t really do that. Although the rest of the trailer looks beautiful, it opens in a MORE

Jack Reacher I was completely prepared for this to be the signature trailer of the last two weeks. It was the buzziest, and Tom Cruise doesn’t do that many movies. I suppose the buzz is all attributed to him because of Katie Holmes’ recent return to sanity though. There is nothing unique about this trailer. Cruise plays some sort of vigilante ex-cop. He doesn’t care about the law, he only cares about what’s right. Given the MORE

Silver Linings Playbook This is about all I could hope for from a Limitless sequel. After going through NZT withdrawal, it’s obvious that Bradley Cooper’s character would lose his mind a little. Moving home makes sense, and it’s nice to see that Robert De Niro’s character is taking more of a fatherly role and acting like more of a mentor. That’s a nice progression. It also seems that Cooper is still suffering residual effects MORE

There were too many trailers this week, so here are some (briefer than usual) thoughts on five of the movies represented. The Master In PT Anderson's new film The Master, Joaquin Phoenix plays veteran Freddie Sutton, who is barely holding onto his sanity. The trailer doesn’t explicitly address that, but its structure does a good job of representing the chaotic nature of sanity. The sounds are mixed in an annoying pattern that feels MORE

For A Good Time, Call ... This is a really solid trailer, but I don’t trust it at all. Phone sex is the kind of topic you can have a lot of fun with, and this trailer does that about as well as possible in as much time as it’s given. The chemistry between Ari Graynor and Lauren Miller is really great. It nails all of the beats of the story without giving anything away, and there are a handful of legitimately funny moments (the opening, MORE

Django Unchained Remember when Quentin Tarantino made a revenge fantasy about the Nazis and everyone was uncomfortable with it until they weren’t? He liked that idea so much he decided to do it with slavery in America. It’s a dark subject, in which Jamie Foxx’s Django is enlisted (I think he’s stolen, but he might be bought) by Christoph Waltz’s Dr. King Schulz to hunt down some KKK types. In return, he will get his freedom and MORE

Les Misérables Without any dialogue, this trailer doesn’t give a lot to react to. Anne Hathaway’s singing covers the all of the video, and she sounds good. She’s not great, but she’ll get it done. Meanwhile, the setting looks suitably grimy and all of the other leads (Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried’s eyes) also look like good fits. That’s exciting, right? At the very least, it’s a good start to have all of MORE

Skyfall I don’t know what’s going on in most James Bond movies until the end, so it doesn’t bother me that this trailer makes little effort to reference the plot. The tenor is excellent, and it has just the right combination of intrigue and action. The polygraph test at the beginning is the only part that really matters, and Daniel Craig’s reaction to the word, “Skyfall” speaks volumes. The only hint about what that means comes MORE

Anchorman 2 On the surface, this trailer is actually a little disappointing. It feels like a parody of the first movie, and none of the jokes are particularly funny. Brick being an idiot who’s incapable of his own thoughts is a good one-off joke, but they stay with it too long. Having said that, they barely had any time to write this teaser. Ferrell and McKay don’t know what the movie is going to look like yet, and the only reason they MORE

Gangster Squad Intrigue! Hollywoodland! Noir! Dirty cops! Gosling! This trailer talks around what this movie is about without really saying anything. As best I can tell, Sean Penn plays a crime lord who has sway over a number of dirty cops. Josh Brolin is tasked with bringing him in, while Ryan Gosling is somewhere in the middle romancing Emma Stone. While the trailer doesn’t give much away plotwise, it does an excellent job of conveying MORE

The Dark Knight Rises This is the final trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, and it is more subdued than the previous two. It favors crippling citywide depression to action, even though two bridges blow up and a football field implodes. It is dark, and drives home how much danger Bruce Wayne is actually in while focusing on Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s characters. He appears to be an everyman member of Gotham PD, and she MORE