Later this week, I’ll be listing my favorite movies of 2008. But before I do that, I’d like to look back at the trailers from this past year that have made my job as Screengrab’s resident trailer guru worthwhile. Despite the lack of really world-beating trailers a la Buffalo ‘66 or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I had no trouble finding seven trailers from 2008 that were pretty rockin’.
In no particular order:
As a fan of the Watchmen graphic novels, I’m pretty conflicted about Zack Snyder’s upcoming remake. On the one hand, it looks really damn cool. On the other, so did the trailers for 300, and look what happened there. That said, it does look really damn cool, and the visuals are surprisingly close to what I’d imagined from reading the books. Snyder’s casting choices are pretty hit-and-miss, but the ones that are on are dead-on perfect. Here I’ve posted the first two trailers, although the third is pretty awesome too.
The Duplass brothers’ Baghead was something of a disappointment for me, largely because the trailer suggested an intriguing combination- a mix between “mumblecore” and the slasher movie. What made the trailer especially interesting was that it didn’t spring the horror element on the audience until almost the very end, making for a finale that’s surprisingly unsettling. Maybe it was just that the trailer gave no hint to the movie’s dumbass denouement, but I still wish I could see the movie that this trailer had me hoping for.
Sometimes, the difference between a good trailer and a great one is a perfectly-chosen bit of music, and no trailer from 2008 exemplifies this more for me than this spot for Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road. In many ways, this trailer is pretty much what you’d expect from Mendes adapting Richard Yates’ novel- suburban discontent, gorgeously shot and designed period settings- but once the Nina Simone song kicks in, the trailer takes on a strange, even spooky element that’s wholly unexpected. It’s enough to make one forgive the curious absence of costars Kathy Bates and Michael Shannon.
