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“Toy Story 4” Final Trailer!

On June 21, for the last time, we will join Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Little Bo Peep and their gang of toys on an epic adventure to save a spork.

While the previous trailers for this final Toy Story outing have mostly been designed to bring tears to our eyes and leave us heartbroken, this one is a fun and goofy callback to this franchise’s golden age and the characters we love – with a few new additions, like the aforementioned Forky the spork, as well as Canada’s Greatest Stuntman, Duke Caboom (Keanu Reeves) and a plushy duo voiced by Jordan Peele and Keegan Michael-Key. Bo Peep herself might as well count as a new addition, considering how much she’s changed since her last appearance in 1999.

The new trailer gives us a lot of great humor but very few plot details, so there’s not exactly a lot to discuss. Woody is taking a leap of faith on the back of a toy-motorcycle, Bo Peep is a daring adventurer who seems to have great proficiency at zip-lining, and Bunny and Ducky ambush an elderly lady – which, to me, is the most interesting moment in the trailer: in all the previous Toy Story movies, the toys have kept their existence a secret, “playing dead” when a human would enter a room – but here we see them literally attacking a lady. I’ll be interested to see if that has any consequences, or if it’s a purely hypothetical scenario, as it’s edited to look like in the trailer. Even if it is, Bunny and Ducky imply in their conversation with Buzz Lightyear that they’ve done “the ole’ plush rush” before – so…how does that work? Do the human residents of this town know about the animated toys waiting to attack? Why does this sound like the premise of a horror movie?

The trailer doesn’t bring much to the table, but it reinforces my tentative faith in this upcoming movie. I’m going to need that faith when walking into the movie theater – endings are the most difficult part of any story. I don’t expect Toy Story 4 to be a perfect finale to my favorite Pixar franchise, but it needs to be better than Toy Story 3. Fingers crossed.

Trailer Rating: 8/10

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“Downton Abbey” Trailer!

The Crawley family has been expecting us at their iconic English country house, and this time around they’ve got company. The Downton Abbey movie places these familiar characters in a new predicament – preparing for a royal visit from the King and Queen.

If you ever doubted whether interior decorating could look epic, you should watch this trailer: you are wrong, I assure you. The situation might seem like proper fare for a comedy, but not here. There is drama and elegance in every folded sheet, every polished banister, each and every meticulously-scrubbed silver dish. There is suspense as Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith) holds the family together even as the tension threatens to break them apart. There is a palpable sense of fear as the dreaded car arrives at the very end of the trailer – the music swells to a crescendo. Will the King and Queen be properly entertained by the royal luncheon, parade, and dinner? To quote Mrs. Patmore – “I think I might have to sit down!”

Downton Abbey knows the kind of audience its targeting – the audience that will cheer and gasp when all of the characters are revealed at the opening of the trailer, getting out of their fancy automobile; the audience that watched the TV series and will recognize every little Easter-egg hidden throughout the trailer, tiny British callbacks to the show. Downton Abbey‘s new status as a feature-length film, however, also means it’s targeting another type of viewer – the critic. The show broke the Guinness World Record for the highest critically rated TV show of all time, winning 3 Golden Globes and 15 Emmys, and an 86% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Focus Features, the studio behind the Downton Abbey movie, is itself a critical darling, and star Maggie Smith has two Oscars to her name. Is this small-stakes, charmingly antiquated movie about laundry-folding and royal brunch actually going to aim for an Academy Award? It would certainly be a triumphant way for all involved to finally leave the show.

Well, I am certainly intrigued by the possibility that this movie might be more of an event film than previously guessed. It’s time to polish up the silverware and pour yourself some tea, sit back and eagerly wait for September.

Trailer Rating: 7.5/10

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“Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil” Trailer!

Angelina Jolie is back in business as the horned witch Maleficent in the first full-length trailer for Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (great title, by the way), looking just as demonic as ever. Coming hard on the heels of the announcement that Jolie will be joining the Marvel Studios team in next year’s The Eternals, it looks like the actress is going to enjoy our undivided attention – as we try to figure out which Marvel role she’s taking, and how she’ll match her performance in the first Maleficent, which was lauded as pretty much the only good thing about the movie.

Jolie is going up against Michelle Pfeiffer in the Maleficent sequel, which looks to be an interesting conflict – villainous female characters have always been relatively rare in Disney movies, so it’s cool to get not one, but two, here. If great acting is the best thing going for the Maleficent franchise, then Pfeiffer is probably a good choice – but her character, Queen Ingrith, doesn’t have much to do in the trailer: which is very upsetting, considering that Pfeiffer was already cheated of a cool action-heroine role in Ant-Man And The Wasp last year, even when she was armed with a wicked-looking javelin. Hopefully we’ll see her in a more active role here. The official synopsis says that Maleficent and Princess Aurora will be joining forces to protect the magical creatures of their homeland from “new adversaries” – i.e. probably Queen Ingrith. I have hope that Ingrith will be an active magical-beast-hunter, rather than someone who just sits around in a castle all day, exchanging witty quips with Maleficent.

Oh yeah, Princess Aurora is back, obviously, but she makes no impression on me from her brief appearance in the trailer, so we’ll just skip over her.

And on to…well, not much else, honestly. A few shots of ravens flying. One truly awful freeze-frame at 0:52 (which I just realized is also the trailer thumbnail) where Jolie’s costume looks horrendous – the wings do not work, in any way, shape or form, and the horned hairpiece looks like a cheap Halloween-store prop. The lighting in that shot is pretty bad, to be fair (green isn’t too flattering, in general), but Jolie’s makeup also seems odd.

Overall, pretty decent trailer, without a whole lot to offer. Nice to see Jolie donning the horns again, though (even if they do look ridiculous).

Trailer Rating: 6/10

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“Judy” Trailer!

While it’s only a little more than a minute long and features no dialogue, the first trailer for the Judy Garland biopic Judy is a poignant and powerful statement about one of the 20th Century’s most tragic and beloved celebrities: it goes straight for the heart – and it doesn’t miss.

Firstly, there’s no denying that Renée Zellweger looks the part: and no surprise, considering the two-hour long transformation Zellweger had to go through daily on set to become Garland. The trailer features a heartbreaking rendition of Over The Rainbow by Zellweger herself, who makes it her own in a new – yet immediately familiar – fashion. The song, in fact, looks to be one of the key focuses of the movie, which will be set in the year leading up to Garland’s death at the age of 47, during which the singer and actress performed in London at a series of famous concerts. We catch brief glimpses of her life onstage in the trailer, including song-and-dance routines and filming for the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. Garland’s Oz co-star Margaret Hamilton will even make an appearance, played by Fenella Woolgar.

But Judy will also look into Garland’s personal life, with Game of Thrones‘ Bella Ramsey portraying her daughter Lorna, while Finn Wittrock and Rufus Sewell will play Garland’s fifth and third husbands, respectively. There are hints of her drug addiction and her struggles with a life of stardom. Biopics such as these have a tendency to dig a little too deep into the dark sides of the people they portray, but musical biopics can leave us with an uplifting feeling even when the story being told is uniquely depressing. Just as Bohemian Rhapsody showed Freddie Mercury’s legacy of great music, so Judy must also: showing us the tragedy of her passing, but reminding us of the hope she left behind.

Judy has to compete with many other musical biopics, but the legacy of its larger-than-life protagonist will probably boost it into consideration for awards season, just like Bohemian Rhapsody before it. Hopefully we’ll get another trailer – one that perhaps doesn’t aim to rip out our heartstrings?

Trailer Rating: 10/10