Trailer Round-Up – January 14, 2017

Raw Everyone in Justine’s family is a vet. And a vegetarian. At 16, she’s a brilliant and promising student. When she starts at veterinary school, she enters a decadent, merciless and dangerously seductive world. During the first week of hazing rituals, desperate to fit in whatever the cost, she strays from her family’s principles when she eats raw meat for the first time. Justine will soon face the terrible and unexpected consequences of her actions as her true self begins to emerge… If you're in any way squeamish, this movie and its red-band trailer are not for you. The green band trailer does a better job of tricking you into thinking this is a different movie initially, while slowly unveiling the disturbing premise, while the red-band dives straight into the blood and gore. I'm normally pretty adverse to violence, but I found myself wincing and looking way often - and that's just the trailer, so Raw definitely knows how to, for a lack of a better term, get under your skin. From first time director Julia Ducournau, Raw is set for a March 10, 2017 release. (US) iBoy Tom is an average teenager whose world is turned on its head when a violent encounter with local thugs leaves fragments of his shattered smartphone embedded in his brain. He wakes from a coma to discover that returning to normal teenage life is impossible because he has developed a strange set of superpowers. With these new powers he sets out to seek revenge on the gang, who also assaulted his best friend Lucy. iBoy is a Netflix original film starring Bill Milner, Maisie Williams, Miranda Richardson and Rory Kinnear. iBoy looks like a boring and derivative attempt to cash in on the popularity of superheroes, with stock characters and a ludicrous premise that the movie takes far too seriously. When the source of your superpowers is smartphone shards embedded in your brain, you can't really go for a Chronicle vibe. This is a premise that could have worked if you dialed up the silliness of the movie to match that of the premise, but as it stands, it just looks flat and uninteresting. iBoy will be available on Netflix globally on January 22, 2017. CHIPS In CHIPS, Jon Baker (Dax Shepard, who also directs) and Frank “Ponch” Poncherello (Michael Peña) have just joined the California Highway Patrol (CHP) in Los Angeles but for very different reasons. Baker is a beaten up pro motorbiker trying to put his life and marriage back together. Poncherello is a cocky undercover Federal agent investigating a multi-million dollar heist that may be an inside job—inside the CHP. The inexperienced rookie and hardened pro are teamed together, but clash more than click, so kickstarting a partnership is easier said than done. Talk about unfunny! The CHIPS trailer goes for tired and outdated gags, seems to be mainly low effort apart from the stunts and action set pieces (which honestly look pretty cool) and overall doesn't seem all that interesting or funny. It's weird to see Michael Peña in another dumb buddy movie so soon after War on Everyone. CHIPS is scheduled for a March 24 release. Gold Gold is the epic tale of one man’s pursuit of the American dream. Starring Matthew McConaughey as Kenny Wells, a prospector desperate for a lucky break, he teams up with a similarly eager geologist and sets off on an journey to find gold in the uncharted jungle of Indonesia. Getting the gold was hard, but keeping it would be even harder, sparking an adventure through the most powerful boardrooms of Wall Street. Directed by Stephen Gaghan and written by Patrick Massett and John Zinman, the film stars Matthew McConaughey and Edgar Ramirez and Bryce Dallas Howard. Not sure if getting a good, long look at McConaughey's ass was really worth bumping this up to a red-band trailer, but apart from that, this is a decent preview of what looks to be a decent movie. It doesn't look like it's in the league of movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short, but neither does it look like a terrible return to the greed, corruption and depravity of that world. Gold is playing in limited release and is set for a wide release on January 27 (US) and will come out on 3 February (UK). Cars 3 Blindsided by a new generation of blazing-fast racers, the legendary Lightning McQueen is suddenly pushed out of the sport he loves. to get back in the game he will need the help of eager young female race technician Cruz Ramirez. Proving that #95 isn’t through yet, he will test the heart of a champion on Piston Cup Racing’s biggest stage against his new rival, Jackson Storm. I've never seen, nor do I care to see the first two Cars movies, so the fact that the Cars 3 trailer actually had me interested goes to show how good the movie looks. The premise focuses on racing with high personal stakes, which suits the characters and the world well and the trailer does a great job of setting up the conflict and making you care for Lighting's struggle. Directed by Brian Fee, Cars 3 is scheduled for a June 16, 2017 (US), 14 July 2017 (UK) release. Baywatch Directed by Seth Gordon, Baywatch is based on the hit NBC TV show of the same name, which originally premiered in 1989. The live-action movie stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Alexandra Daddario, Zac Effron, Kelly Rohrbach, Jon Bass, Ilfenesh Hadera, Priyanka Chopra and Hannibal Buress. These two international trailers are a great example of how different edits can drastically change how effective a trailer is. They use a lot of the same footage, most notably in the way they start and finish, but while the first is tightly-paced, funny and really brings out how much the movie drew inspiration from the excellent Jump Street movie franchise for its comedy, the second is slower and less interesting - the jokes, while still funny, feel a bit drawn out and deflated. If Baywatch does end up being a slightly inferior take on the Jump Street formula, I'd be perfectly alright with that, cause those movies are hilarious. Baywatch is set for a 12 May 2017 (UK), 26 May 2017 (US) release.