15. “Beau Is Afraid”
A hilarious, surreal, absurd, nightmarish anxiety horror, or as filmmaker Ari Aster put it, a “Lord Of The Rings”-style odyssey, only it’s a Jewish story about visiting your mom (lol), “Beau Is Afraid” is one of the wildest movies of 2023. Chaptered into what could arguably called five acts, one of them feeling ripped out of Martin Scorsese’s hellish “Taxi Driver” New York, only twice as disgusting and collapsing, another seemingly tapping the suburban claustrophobia often depicted in a Michael Haneke home-invasion-style thriller, Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid” starring Joaquin Phoenix as a born loser, is a lot of movie, with a lot of fever-dream-esque bizarreness, hilarity, fear, disquiet, apprehension and more. And this wild trailer really encapsulates the wild, ambitious sprawl of this unique and oddball movie.
14. “Succession” Season 4
“I love you, but you are not serious people.” What a year for HBO, where two of its biggest shows (“Barry” and “Succession”) suddenly announced their endings just as the excitement for a new season was about to kick off. Both shows were brilliant, but the emotional stakes of “Succession” and all the family knife fights about to transpire, the way everyone is willing to blow things up, spit their venom, or snake their way to the top by any means necessary, was just thrilling stuff. And the way this “Battle Royale” trailer just builds, tees up betrayal, manipulation, and death blows to come, it really rang the alarm bell for the final fight that would be bloody, cutthroat, ruthless, and leave no family member unscarred.
13. “The Creator”
A mix of lo and high-tech, sleek sci-fi meets guerilla means, the premise of Gareth Edwards’ “The Creator,” which hybridizes these concepts into a futuristic world where A.I. has unleashed an atomic bomb on the world, and robots rule the “Apocalypse Now”-ish setting of China and the East, is deploy intriguing. The striking contrast of images throughout the initial trailer, the icy, cynical white sleekness of future designs, mashed next to the street-level sweat and grit of unnamed Asian cities, brings to mind the brilliant design collisions inherent to “Blade Runner.” Now you might not have been sold on the movie itself, but the sense of scale and scope that this trailer presents, right next to the realness of damaged humans who don’t believe they’re good enough to get into heaven, is undeniably compelling.
12. “The Curse”
TV trailers often don’t make these lists, but the trailer for “The Curse” from Emma Stone, comedian/writer/director Nathan Fielder, and filmmaker Benny Safdie is just an absurdist delight. A show skewering white privilege and do-gooders, “The Curse” centers on a newlywed couple struggling to bring their vision for eco-conscious housing to a small New Mexico community via their HGTV show. But a hex was put on them, and a meddling TV producer just makes everything spiral into chaos. If this show looks eerie and bizarre in a David Lynch-ian way, uncomfortable funny in the way that Nathan Fielder always is, cinematically daring like the aspiration of the Safdie Brothers’ filmmaking, and comedically delightful like only Emma Stone can deliver, all rolled up into one strange and unique package, then yes, get ready for something deliciously unusual, which this trailer captivatingly captures well.
11. John Wick: Chapter 4”
“Man has to look his best when it’s time to get married or buried.” New days are coming, new rules are being written and maybe it’s time to say goodbyes to the old guard. The old guard’s like John Wick. The trailer for ‘Chapter 4’ impresses an intriguing, solemn note of finality. Maybe Keanu Reeves’ time has come and maybe not. As the mythology of ‘John Wick’ expands, revelations are made, and Keanu’s John Wick has to choose how he will write the final chapter of his story; this trailer deftly lays out all the stakes with great gravitas. It might be the end of John Wick, the ‘Chapter 4’ trailer says; the assassin may finally find salvation and freedom from the constant warring, but it’s gonna be a fight to the bloody end then some.
