Welcome to the unlikely return of the feature where I watch trailers for all the movies coming out this week and make unfair judgments based on said trailers using my invaluable years of movie and trailer watching experience.

Dr. Strange

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One thing I learned from trailers is that Dr. Strange is that guy who corrects you when you call him Mr. Strange, like it is in any way relevant to you that he is either from a well-off family or spent many years severely in debt. Otherwise it’s hard to get a read on just what is happening in this movie. It seems to be an origin story: at one point Dr. Steve asks Baldcap Tilda Swinton to teach him magic powers and then the world becomes some sort of Inception/Winamp-visualizer hybrid. The story and dialog all seem to be your typical Marvel fare, but if you can tolerate that bullshit and you want to see some potentially actually cool visual effects then maybe this movie is worthwhile. I don’t know, I haven’t seen it.
On the “how weird does Benedict Cumberbatch look though, really guys” scale, this movie is definitely in the lower ranges mostly due to the jerkass-stepdad facial hair that somewhat hides his monstrosity of a chin and draws attention away from his alien-like protruding cheekbones.

Trolls

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Guys, they made a movie about Troll dolls. I wish I had something funny or interesting to say about this movie. But it appears that is simply a 2016 animated film from the creators of Shrek. It is what you would think it would be. I guess it’s about a troll guy named Branch that reluctantly falls in love with an annoyingly upbeat character named Poppy (sadly not That Poppy) while battling some big evil monster thing. Dreamworks Animation done dreamworks-animationed all over this thing.

Hacksaw Ridge

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Unofficial subtitle: Vince Vaughn continues to trick casting directors into thinking he can be a serious actor.
From the Academy Award winning director of Braveheart (whose name we will neglect to put in big letters on the screen for obvious reasons). The movie is based on the true story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who helped save the lives of many wounded soldiers while serving as an unarmed medic in World War II. It’s a story that seems ripe for adapting to the big screen, and while Mel Gibson may be an anti-semitic alcoholic asshole, he does make pretty entertaining movies. I’d watch this.

Limited Releases

Loving

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Alright, this trailer made me feel like an asshole for being so soft on Hacksaw Ridge. One is a war-glorifying action mess and the other is a personal and emotional story whose repercussions on civil rights are as relevant and important now as they were 50 years ago. Loving is based on the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who married in the 1950s and spent several years fighting anti-miscegenation laws, ultimately leading to a Supreme Court decision that ruled those laws unconstitutional. So yeah, fuck that dumb WW2 action movie. Go see this instead.

The Eagle Huntress

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This is a documentary about a 13-year old girl from Kazakhstan that learns the tradition of hunting with eagles from her dad. Seems like the sort of thing that would be uplifting for about 45 minutes before you decide that no, the world is still bullshit.

Peter and the Farm

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This is a documentary about a Vermont farmer that was just waiting for a film crew to follow him around and validate his life choices. I don’t know, this trailer portrays a film coasting on attitude, but maybe there is something interesting in there.

That’ll do it for this week’s releases.