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New trailers: Knock Down the House, Men in Black: International, and more

New trailers: Knock Down the House, Men in Black: International, and more

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Photo: Netflix

With all of the Endgame hype, I decided to watch Infinity War for the first time this week. As someone who hasn’t seen a lot of these movies, there was some confusing stuff. For example, why did Thanos wait so long if he could capture all of the Infinity Stones in, like, a day and a half? Where did this Vision dude come from?

The thing that’s the hardest for the movie is giving any of its characters due time to build out the actual problems they’re facing (beyond the semi-destruction of the universe). The film is most effective when it comes to Tony, in large part due to a really quick pair of conversations with Pepper Potts that do a ton of heavy lifting to set him up for failure.

Other characters don’t quite get that level of attention (Thor, somewhat; Star-Lord, somewhat more), making their stories a bit blander. The really smart thing the film does is in giving that kind of focus to Thanos, creating a far more complex (if totally twisted) narrative around everything that’s happening. Of course, it’s also just half a movie, and it sounds like Endgame dives into the remaining characters a good bit more. I guess I’ll let you know my thoughts next year.

Check out nine trailers from this week below.

Men in Black: International

The latest trailer for Men in Black: International is almost exclusively moments of Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson goofing around with sci-fi tech. And to keep the movie from (somehow) getting too serious, it seems that a tiny alien voiced by Kumail Nanjiani will be following them around pretty much the entire journey. The film comes out on June 14th.

Knock Down the House

One of the buzzier films at Sundance was this documentary that went behind the scenes with four women running for seats in the 2018 midterm elections, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The documentary offers an important look at the challenge of mounting a campaign as a woman, particularly when doing so against an established incumbent. The film comes out on May 1st.

Gemini Man

Ang Lee directs a pair of Will Smiths in this thriller about an old Will Smith assassin hunting down a young Will Smith assassin. Or something like that. The movie looks weirdly low budget and cheesy for what ought to be a high-profile production, but it’s not like you can ignore a movie with this many Will Smiths in it. It comes out on October 11th.

See You Yesterday

Spike Lee produced this film about a pair of black teenagers in Brooklyn who invent a time-travel device and use it to warp back in time to save their friend from being killed by a cop. Despite the seemingly fun time-travel premise, at its core, this seems like a really dark story that has this duo going back again and again Russian Doll-style as they try to get things right. The movie comes out on May 17th.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

The director of the new Godzilla seems to have believed two things: the first movie was lacking in giant impersonal monster battles, and most of the plot can be replaced by shots of Millie Bobby Brown looking all at once scared and in awe. I’m not saying that’s the right call by any means, but it’s certainly a way of dealing with the last film’s shortcomings. It comes out on May 31st.

Swamp Thing

Here’s the first real look at DC’s Swamp Thing series. As James Wan’s involvement suggests, it’s very much being turned into a horror show, though this teaser doesn’t give the best impression of how it’ll actually work on an episode-by-episode basis. The series debuts on May 31st.

Catch-22

Hulu put out a new trailer for its six-part, George Clooney-directed adaptation of Catch-22, which looks like an appropriately kooky take on the satirical novel. It comes out on May 17th.

Deadwood

HBO’s long-awaited Deadwood movie is almost here. I’ve never seen the show, so I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but there are plenty of great mustaches and old men pointing pistols at each other, which seems like what people want. The film comes out on May 31st.

Perfect

Steven Soderbergh? Flying Lotus? Indulgent ’80s vibes? I’ll be real: this looks bad. But it will be responsible for Tumblr GIFs for a generation to come.