Arriving by way of Amazon Prime Video, Small Axe is an anthology of five films directed by Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, 2013).

It’s been said on this blog before, but the past few years have shaped up to be something of a minor Renaissance for musician biopics. Besides Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody and a cavalcade of lesser-knowns, we now have one for the inimitable Frank Zappa by way of Magnolia Pictures, with Alex Winter (yes, that Alex Winter, of Bill & Ted fame) directing.

Mank is a biopic on the life of Herman J Mankiewicz (aka Mank), best known as the co-writer of the seminal Citizen Kane. Mank faced both personal challenges and creative differences with the director and producer of Citizen Kane, Orson Wells; this film promises to explore both.

Starring Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, and Chris Rock, and directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), The Witches is a 2020 take on the 1983 novel and its original 1990 film adaptation. The trailer achieves memorability and poignancy by not just taking an existing song and trailerizing (or covering) it, but rather, does so by first laying out the constituent elements before bringing them together, as a sort of exposition of musical subversion.

Landing on Amazon Prime one week before the US election, Sacha Baron Cohen is reprising his role as the Kazakh national Borat, a character whose earnestness is steeped in satire.

Making its premiere September 6th at the Toronto International Film Festival, Sound of Metal is a visceral and touching exploration of what it is like to experience hearing loss. Drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is forced to confront this disability with his bandmate and girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke). As first-time director Darius Marder puts it, it’s an exploration of “what happens when you strip away who you think you are.”

From Denis Villeneuve as a directorial follow-up to 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, this remake of Dune takes David Lynch’s 1984 original and reimagines it with today’s special effects and aesthetic sensibilities.

The latest trailer for The Batman recently premiered at DC FanDome, and with it comes an unlikely collaboration. Composer Michael Giacchino has added an array of accoutrements to a lesser-known track in the catalogue of 90s rock group Nirvana.

Justice League was first released in 2017, but practically since then, the “#ReleasetheSnyderCut” campaign continually lobbied for original director Zack Snyder’s take on the film. He originally was forced to step aside after a family tragedy, with Joss Whedon (The Avengers) taking the helm. Late last year, the Twitter campaign reached a fever pitch. This, possibly in combination with the need to promote the new HBO Max streaming service as well as the punishing economics around theatre-going for the foreseeable future, has led to this special Director’s Cut being realized.

By way of Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) comes the equally-unsettling i’m thinking of ending things (sic). Based on the 2016 novel by Canadian writer Iain Reid, this adaptation stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, and Toni Collette (the latter having starred in The Sixth Sense and Little Miss Sunshine). Although Kaufman’s previous work obviously delved into the unique and unusual, he hasn’t quite entered thriller territory until now. As a result, this trailer puts a highly artistic twist on horror and thriller trailer conventions. Usually, in horror trailers we hear ominous sound design, perhaps a creepy musical theme, and definitely one—or, more likely, multiple—jump scares, reinforced of course with a scream or sudden, loud sound of some sort. Here, we hear little of that type—instead, this trailer takes benign sounds and renders them as remarkably disconcerting.

It’s unsurprising that Zack Hemsey’s “Mind Heist”—written when the composer was in his mid-20s—has been used again for Inception’s re-release trailer on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. So strong is the “Inception sound” cache that it’s the name of a Toronto recording studio; the origin and ongoing influence of the sound has since been profiled in multiple features, including those by Indie Wire (2013), The Hollywood Reporter (2015), and Longreads (2016). Not to mention the endless variants in trailers!

Director Gillian Flynn is adapting the series for American audiences from the original British drama, which follows comic book fans of a fictional graphic novel, Dystopia. While attempting to get information about its sequel, Utopia, they enter grave danger—and then the protagonist from the aforementioned comic book series shows up.

Disney shows little sign of relenting in providing reasons to sign up or stick with its streaming service Disney Plus, and post-Hamilton, that reason is Beyoncé’s latest visual album, Black is King. The choice of platform is of course not coincidental, as Black is King is heavily inspired by 2019’s live-action remake of The Lion King, to which Beyoncé contributed. It’s worth noting that the record, intended to incorporate and celebrate both African and Afro-diasporic musics, arrives at a particularly apt time as the world continues to reckon with the fact of systemic anti-Black racism.

Much like the return of Dumb and Dumber with 2014’s Dumb and Dumber To [sic], the Bill & Ted franchise (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves, respectively) is set to return with a third entry after its 1989 and 1991 heyday.

Tesla, directed by Michael Almereyda and opening in theatres and on demand August 21, is a highly unusual take on the biopic format whose trailer has a musical score to match.

This weekend, a screenplay by Tom Hanks found its way not into theatres, but onto streaming services, with Apple TV+ having picked up exclusive rights. According to Hanks, those rights only came begrudgingly, as he lamented the inevitable loss in the overall quality of the experience in homes versus silver screen exhibition. Directed by Aaron Schneider, Greyhound is based on the United States’ participation in the Battle of the Atlantic in early 1942.

After years of speculation as to when exactly the filmed version of Hamilton—complete with original cast, of course—would arrive, Disney recently announced that Disney+’s latest exclusive would premiere on July 3rd. In addition to arriving just in time for Independence Day in the U.S., of course, the release was probably also timed and decided upon as a result of the ongoing pandemic. 

Dave Franco (Superbad, If Beale Street Could Talk) sits in the director’s chair for the first time with The Rental, a fairly on-the-nose horror film centred on the conceit of a vacation rental property gone awry. In the age of COVID-19, of course, it’s a bit easier to imagine such fears manifesting themselves. Musically, the trailer follows a three-part structure that’s both through-composed and is clearly purpose-built to gradually guide the dramatic arc from suspenseful to thrilling.

Originally due out May in tandem with Eurovision, the latest from Will Ferrell has him co-starring with Rachel McAdams as part of a songwriting duo hailing from Iceland. Eurovision, of course, is famous for its colourful and bombastic performances—material well-suited to Ferrell, and in this trailer he naturally leans into the spirit of the occasion.