I watched Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods over the weekend, and it’s just such a good reminder of the kind of film it sometimes feels like only he can make — where a bunch of people just speak their mind about the world, often more to the camera than to each other, because that conversation essentially is the film.
Da 5 Bloods is a complicated one, dealing with America’s legacy of destruction and violence and how it impacted both the black soldiers sent to fight in Vietnam (who represented a disproportionate number of US soldiers, as the film points out) and the people in Vietnam who suffered from their attacks. The film shows the pain that remains decades and generations later.
I don’t know that every beat in the film worked for me (or even made sense moment to moment), but the broad strokes that Lee paints create a more challenging scenario than most other filmmakers would attempt to grapple with. That’s enough of a reason to check it out.
Check out 10 trailers from this week below.
CANDYMAN, at the intersection of white violence and black pain, is about unwilling martyrs. The people they were, the symbols we turn them into, the monsters we are told they must have been. pic.twitter.com/MEwwr8umdI
— Nia DaCosta (@NiaDaCosta) June 17, 2020
Candyman
Writer and director Nia DaCosta posted a new teaser for the revival of Candyman earlier this week. It’s not exactly a trailer — it’s something far more interesting: essentially a short film all its own, done in a beautiful papercraft style, that explores the origin of the film’s mythical killer and the racist killings the story grapples with. Slate explored in more detail how the short reflects real-life events. The movie is scheduled to come out September 25th.
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Palm Springs
The Lonely Island-produced comedy Palm Springs broke Sundance records for the biggest sale ever (by a very intentional $0.69) earlier this year, and now it’s headed to Hulu. The film has Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti playing a couple stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque time loop and exploring the ridiculous possibilities of living a day over and over again together. It comes out on July 10th.
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Warrior Nun
This series is sort of what it sounds like… but also not even close? It’s a sci-fi/fantasy teen action series about a bunch of teenagers who have weird nun superpowers (and also a lot of guns) and fight ancient evils. The show comes out July 2nd.
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Nobody Knows I’m Here
Jorge Garcia, who played Hurley in Lost, stars in this Chilean film about a former hit child singer who escapes to a sheep farm and seems to live in near isolation — at least, it seems, until people start to realize who he is. The film comes to Netflix on June 24th.
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Athlete A
Netflix has a documentary coming up about the sexual abuse scandal surrounding USA Gymnastics and the team’s doctor, Larry Nassar, who was convicted after more than 150 women testified in court that he had abused them. The film looks at how the Indianapolis Star broke the story and how USA Gymnastics failed its athletes. It comes out June 24th.
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Cursed
Netflix put out a first teaser this week for Cursed, its new series based on a book illustrated by Frank Miller that reimagines the legend of King Arthur with Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, as its hero. It comes out July 17th.
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The Nest
Jude Law stars in this quiet thriller about a husband who becomes more and more controlling as he moves his family from extravagant home to extravagant home in order to live some sort of impressive life of his dreams. The film screened at Sundance this year, and now it’s headed to theaters on September 18th.
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Peninsula
Peninsula looks like a ludicrous zombie film that goes way over the top and refuses to slow down. The film is the sequel to 2016’s Train to Busan, which got great reviews for its only slightly less ridiculous take on a zombie infestation. There doesn’t appear to be a US release date just yet.
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The Rental
Dave Franco makes his directorial debut with The Rental, a thriller about two couples who rent a house for a vacation, where things naturally begin to go awry and get violent and creepy. It comes out July 24th.
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Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic, A Healing Art
I have no idea.
Correction June 20th, 11:15AM ET: I finally did it, I miscounted the number of trailers in this column. There are 10, not nine. The Verge regrets the error.