Preview Review: 'Carol' and the Other Best Movie Trailers of the Week

Old ass rockers, lesbian romance and Jake G's dead wives.

Image via The Weinstein Company

We’re at the start of awards season and with Telluride and the Venice Film Festivals wrapping up, an onslaught of trailers have arrived to welcome in the Toronto International Film Festival. As a result it’s been a particularly good week for film trailers, and many of the following films have already been garnering solid press from critics. Before they drop, here’s a list of six of our favorite trailers, many of which scream Oscar Bait. 

Keith Richards: Under the Influence

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Genre: Documentary

Director: Morgan Neville

Stars: Keith Richards

Release Date: September 18th (On Netflix)

It’s been quite a year for music documentaries, but here’s one that’s probably not as soul crushing as the last couple (think Amy and/or Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck). Keith Richards: Under the Influence takes a close look at the Rolling Stones guitarist, past and present. Richards, who is essentially the grandpa you’re okay with wearing skinny jeans, speaks about his past addictions, his influences, and never growing up. 

Carol

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Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Todd Haynes

Stars: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler

Release Date: November 20th

It’s like you get a wonderful Carol teaser right out of Cannes and you think you’re done. But no. The latest Carol trailer, which is also the official U.S. one, out Carol's itself. Featuring Cate Blanchett narrating in a dreamy and sultry voice, this new peek at the major awards contender not only offers us a closer look at the all-consuming love that blossoms between Blanchett’s '50s housewife character and Rooney Mara’s department store clerk, but also offers more insight into the roles that Sarah Paulson and Kyle Chandler are set to play. Its November release can’t come soon enough, so until then we ask you all to bask in the beauty of this trailer at least 60 more times.

Demolition

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Genre: Drama

Director: Jean Marc-Vallee

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper

Release Date: April 8th, 2016

Jean Marc-Vallee, who is best known for directing Dallas Buyers Club and Wild, both acclaimed, Oscar-nominated and generic (we kid, sorta), returns with another depressing tale. Jake Gyllenhaal, who was CHEATED by the Oscars for his wacky performance in last year’s Nightcrawler, is back in what looks to be a moving, albeit conventional, drama about a man who must reevaluate his life after his wife dies in a car accident. It’s a familiar conceit, but also Jake.

Our Brand Is Crisis

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Genre: Comedy-Drama

Director: David Gordon Green

Stars: Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton 

Release Date: October 30th

Despite the strange title, which caters to “the Internet” too much for its own good, David Gordon Green’s latest feature looks pretty good. It stars the for-far-too-long-absent Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton (riding off of FX’s Fargo acclaim) as rival political consultants who are sent to Bolivia to get their respective candidates elected to office. White savior problems aside, it’s nice to see Bullock in the spotlight. 

Room

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Genre: Drama

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Stars: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, William H. Macy

Release Date: October 16th

Oh god. If you read Emma Donoghue’s Room a couple years back you were probably left destroyed. The novel, and now film, follows a young mother who raises the five-year-old son of her abductor in a garden shed. She raises him oblivious to the outside world until they miraculously escape seven years after her capture. Brie Larson stars as Ma in what looks to be another spectacular performance. Unsurprising. The kid, played by newcomer Jacob Tremblay, also looks like a revelation.

James White

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Genre: Drama

Director: Josh Mond

Stars: Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon 

Release Date: November 13, 2015

It’s Charlie from Girls! But with a new, slightly grander gig that seems to suit him well. In James White, which won the Audience Award at Sundance earlier this year, Christopher Abbott plays a good-hearted but troubled man who must get his shit together to take care of his gravely ill mother, played by Cynthia Nixon. James White mostly looks like a showcase for the two lead actors, but the trailer is sweetly sad and Nixon gets a really great voiceover monologue. 

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