If you’re anywhere near being a vampire fanatic, then chances are pretty good you know who Neil Jordan is, because he’s the guy who directed Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in the adaptation of Anne Rice’s famous vampire story Interview with the Vampire. Well, it turns out Jordan must have developed a taste for those who have a taste for human blood, because his latest film, Byzantium, is also about undead bloodsuckers. Perhaps even more important than what it’s about though is the fact that Byzantium is a gorgeously shot epic that stars Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton. This is important because Ronan is clearly one of the strongest young actors working, and Arterton could possibly be as well, although I’ve only seen her in mostly terrible movies, but she sure is pretty though, and, oh—just go watch the trailer. It’s got vampires that kill people with coke nails.

If nothing else, a new trailer for James Mangold‘s The Wolverine serves one purpose – to remind us that the Hugh Jackman-starring film is coming out during the already-crammed summer blockbuster season. No knocks on the clawed one here, but am I the only one who can’t seem to remember that we’re getting a brand new X-Men tale within the next two months? That can’t be good, right? Especially when this one involves Logan going to Japan, getting all emo, and meeting up with a bunch of cool Marvel characters, including the Silver Samurai. Shouldn’t this be more on our radar? Wait, did we say an emo Wolverine? Oh, that might be the problem right there. Snooze. After the break, check out the newest trailer for The Wolverine, you know, if you’re still interested.

I knew I recognized Kings of Summer director Jordan Vogt-Roberts‘ name, and it took me a second, but then I realized that he’s the mind behind the incredibly funny short film Successful Alcoholics – a realization that instantly put this coming of age tale on my personal must-see list. Of course I’m late to the game because tons of people have been eagerly awaiting this one since it emerged from Sundance with a lot of love, showcased a fun trailer, and boasted a stellar cast that includes Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Megan Mullally, Mary Lynn Rajskub and several newcomers. Now its red band trailer is here, and while there aren’t a ton of adult situations in it, it’s easy to see why the road to maturity detours through a phase of slicing fruit mid-air in your own personal paradise. Check it out for yourself:

Brimming with touches of a psilocybin-laced Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the trailer for Ben Wheatley‘s A Field in England promises a treasure hunt, screaming freakouts and total damnation. In its mysteriously simple synopsis, a band of deserters run from an English Civil War battle and becoming engaged in a search for buried loot. Somewhere along the way, mushrooms (or something psychedelic) gets involved. Most will want to see it based on Wheatley’s name alone, anyway. The director behind Kill List earned a lot of sharp acclaim for his vision and knack for upsetting, deeply trenchant storytelling. He then followed it with Sightseers and proved his chops with black comedy even further. And now, this:

If the Cannes Film Festival is good for anything, it’s letting a select few people see great movies that the rest of us are going to have to wait months to get our eyeballs on. In one respect it’s a tantalizing glimpse at our film future, and in the other it’s a torturous tease that only gives us whispers about unattainable pleasures. Every once in a while a film debuting at Cannes will at least release a trailer around the same time though, so those of us not at the festival can get a taste of what we’re missing, and this seems to be the case with Guillaume Canet’s first English-language film as a director, Blood Ties. You should be warned that there’s some naughty language in the clip that lies below, but if that isn’t the sort of thing that offends you, then you’re going to want to click through and watch, because Blood Ties is a 70s-set crime drama that stars Clive Owen, Mila Kunis, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts, and James Caan, and if you’re not willing to admit that you have a crush on at least a handful of those people, then you’re just a liar. A stinking liar.

The last movie Alejandro Jodorowsky directed was 1990′s The Rainbow Thief, and while the visionary behind El Topo, Santa Sangre and others has done some writing and acting, The Dance of Reality (La danza de la realidad) is his first fully realized return to filmmaking in 23 years. That’s been an excruciatingly long wait for fans, but the trailer here delivers a lot of the director’s signature moves. So it’s a return in at least three ways. He’s back in the director’s chair (he also wrote and acts in it), he’s back exploring the circus (and several other thematic favorites), but he’s also looking into his own history as Dance is an autobiographical work envisioning his childhood in Chile with surreal liberties taken to champion the power of imagination. Check out the trailer for yourself:

We’ve got another half year before our eyes, ears and funny bones get ahold of Anchorman: The Legend Continues. The highly anticipated sequel is not even finished filming — though it is close to wrapping up, with shooting moved from Atlanta to New York City this week. To further whet our appetites, and probably to give official supplement to all the set photos of cameo appearances being regularly leaked, Paramount has unveiled a new trailer for the movie. You still won’t find any footage from The Legend Continues, however. Like the teasers we got a whole year ago, this is a simple promo  featuring our four favorite newsmen saying “something fun about the movie.” Well, except for Brick, of course, who doesn’t understand what to do. Again. He gives us some advice on how to avoid being mistaken for a pedophile and wishes us a belated happy Easter. The holiday greeting is kind of fitting, though, we’ll give him that. Narrator “Bill Lawson” introduces the latest teaser talking about returned figures such as Jesus and Jay-Z. Easter pertains to the former, obviously. See, Brick isn’t dumb after all. But Ron Burgandy sure is mean. He calls us fat face. And he thinks we’re going to come see his movie after such an insult? Okay, we will. We can’t wait to hear him call us names and for Champ and Brian to intoxicate us with their alcohol breath and snake venom cologne, respectively.

With The Hangover Part III’s May 24th release date rapidly approaching, it’s now officially crunch time for its marketing people. They’ve got a few short days left to convince anyone who might be on the fence about coming back for a third helping of Hangover-style decadence that this is a movie that can’t be missed. So, in order to round up every last box office dollar they can possibly find, they’re pulling out the big guns—a red band trailer. If there are two things in this world that everyone, no matter what their age, class, or background, responds well to, they’re nostalgia and dirty jokes, so this new trailer makes liberal use of both. After you click through the link and give it a watch, prepare to be pled with to remember how fun that first movie was, and prepare to plug the ears of any kids who might be in the room.

Wouldn’t it be so great if a group of smart, dedicated, ambitious astronauts blasted up into space in search of intelligent life and the pursuit of knowledge and something wonderful happened? Like they didn’t die at the hands of a bunch of screeching, flashing, horrifying aliens? Or they didn’t get abandoned up there, away from the only home they know? Or they didn’t leave behind a bunch of video depicting their last days alive? Wouldn’t that be just the tops? Well, probably not in terms of pure entertainment value, but it would certainly be a different take on the tired space exploration genre. However, based purely on the pull quotes in this first full-length trailer for Sebastian Cordero’s Europa Report, the space-exploration-gone-horribly-awry trope might still have some fresh moonrock to mine, and this feature just might do it. Starring Michael Nyqvist, Sharlto Copley, and Daniel Wu, the film centers on a private mission to Jupiter’s fourth moon (Europa) and apparently a whole bunch of bad stuff that goes down once the crew touches down and starts work. You know how it is. So what happens up there? Oh, we don’t know, but check out the first full trailer for Europa Report after the break to get a tiny idea of what might await us in space.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen drunk Morgan Freeman. The actor has been having a lot of fun lately with his roles, but none of them compare to whatever is going on in Last Vegas. In fact, as Old Dogs Meets The Hangover as it sounds, the trailer for this movie starring Michael Douglas, Kevin Kline, Robert De Niro and Freeman actually makes it look like a bit of harmless fun. Probably not a lot of fun, but fun. Of course, it also looks like a vacation for wealthy actors and director Jon Turtletaub. This is what retirement looks like for living legends. Broad humor, twenty-something eye candy and fruity drinks. Oh, and they probably made a movie somewhere in there. Check out the trailer for yourself:

Another trailer for Guillermo Del Toro‘s Pacific Rim has been released, just in case you’re not already on board. The thing is, there’s not a whole lot that’s different about this new spot and the WonderConone we saw at the end of last month. You’ve got giant monsters battling giant robots in the sea and on land. You’ve got Idris Elba doing his best audition for the next rousing speeches supercut. You’ve got the tagline telling us to “Go Big or Go Extinct.” And you’ve got little bits (littler this time) of the likely comic relief characters played by Charlie Day and Ron Perlman. Honestly, I’d like to see more of the character stuff. Or something else besides big creatures and the kind of action that could just as easily sell a Michael Bay movie. At least the previous trailer hinted at some themes involving the humanity inside the robots. That which make them different from the monsters in spite of them initially being noted for their equal measure — big bad weapons of defense to go up against big bad weapons of offense. Knowing Del Toro, the big ideas are probably there, but of course that stuff doesn’t sell a movie to most people the way explosions and fighting behemoths do.

There are a ton of great movies playing at Cannes 2013, but you can’t be there. We feel your pain. I specifically feel your pain because I’m not technically allowed back in the city (parking tickets), so I can’t partake in all the grandeur of The Croisette. We’re lucky to have the fantastic Shaun Munro reviewing for us from the sandy beaches (and watching a few films), but it’s still a bit sad to think that we have to experience the festival from the couchly confines of our home in a town whose name we actually know how to pronounce. To help bring the festival experience just one inch closer to reality, let’s all dive deep into the cold, Mediterranean-like sea of synopses, pics, clips and trailers for the films that are playing at Cannes 2013. It’s just like watching a highlight reel! Swimsuit optional:

Between August 1942 and February 1943, Nazi Germany battled with Soviet Russia for control of the city of Stalingrad. It was a staggeringly bloody turning point that saw the German 6th Army destroyed and the beginning of the end for Nazi power on the eastern front, and it cost the Soviets 1,150,000 soldiers and airmen with another 650,000 injured. This immense historical moment is the focus of Fedor Bondarchuk‘s Stalingrad which takes the Saving Private Ryan WWII gloss and lays it with intensity on top of a different part of the war. In fact, it even seeks to make the action more personal by making the focus of the story a young girl that several Soviet soldiers vow to keep safe while on the wrong side of enemy lines. The trailer looks impeccable with a ton of fighting and broad overhead shots where piles of rubble get turned into smaller piles of rubble. Not bad for $30m:

It might sound kind of weird to try to set a thriller in a sound design studio, what with their being the domain of nodes, dials, tech geeks, and whatnot, but that’s exactly what writer/director Peter Strickland has done with his new thriller Berberian Sound Studio, and various FSR reviewers seem to be in agreement that the results of this experiment are gorgeous and intriguing, if not a little bit befuddling and empty. The consensus seems to be that it’s a solid B-. If you want to catch a glimpse of what everyone is so interested in and confused by, as well as a taste of Toby Jones being innocuously creepy like only he can, and some insight into how they make all those gross wet noises for slasher movies, then follow the link and watch the film’s new trailer below.

Do you feel it in your fingers? Do you feel it in your toes? Love, Actually writer/director Richard Curtis has a new science-fiction romantic comedy on the horizon. And so the feeling grows. In About Time, a young man (Domhnall Gleeson) is told by his father (Bill Nighy) that the men of their family have the ability to travel in time. Naturally, he sets upon using the incredible talent to get lucky Daft Punk-style and sets out to woo a young lady played by Rachel McAdams. There’s a touch of Groundhog Day here, what with the opportunity to call Mulligan and redo specific moments in time, and knowing Curtis’ strengths as a storyteller, it may turn out just as rich and lively. He’s never been one for the surface-level gimmick, and the trailer tilts in that direction (while adhering to the strange rule that McAdams has to run around in her underwear for at least one trailer-bound scene):

Ari Folman‘s The Congress appears to play its hand quite quickly – the Cannes film’s first trailer opens with a shot of star Robin Wright being talked to by a faceless man as if she were, well, Robin Wright. Sure, this is a slightly skewed “Robin Wright” (it doesn’t seem as if this Robin starred in House of Cards, but damn if it doesn’t seem like she started her career with The Princess Bride), but it’s a version of “Robin Wright” nonetheless. And someone has a proposition for her. At first, it all seems relatively straightforward – a Hollywood studio (“Miramount,” which certainly looks like another studio that ends in “-mount”) wants to purchase the rights to Wright’s likeness and, thanks to technology, that essentially means they will scan every bit of her (not just physical, by any means) and use it to “star” in any film they see fit. It’s not a great deal, but it might be her last shot, so she takes. Obviously, it’s not all going to end well, but Folman’s film subverts our ideas of what would follow from such a deal, and it all goes totally wild, nuts, and (maybe even) amazing, as The Congress unfolds into vibrant animation and stirring score, with a possibly epic adventure thrown into the mix. It’s really one stunning trailer, and our hopes for the final film are now suitably high. Um, also? Wright might have animated sex with animated Jon Hamm (it certainly sounds like him). You’re sold now, right? Get a taste for The Congress after the break.

If The Great Gatsby didn’t already convince you that perhaps it’s time we all revisited our high school reading lists, now James Franco has gone ahead and adapted a William Faulkner classic for the big screen, one that’s about twenty times more inscrutable than Baz Luhrmann’s all-singing, all-dancing Gatsby spectacle. Don’t remember “As I Lay Dying”? Ha, good luck watching Franco’s As I Lay Dying and figuring out a damn thing about it, if this first trailer is to be believed. Franco directed the film (of course), and he also stars in it alongside a uniformly great cast, including Tim Blake Nelson, Logan Marshall-Green, and Danny McBride. Beyond that, we’re totally at a loss here, as the film’s first trailer is a combination of pretension, unintelligible accents, complicated violence, and even a rape. Faulkner’s novel used no less than fifteen different characters to tell a relatively simple story – a family attempts to honor their dying matriarch’s request to be buried in a nearby town – and it’s hard to imagine that such a powerful novel will translate well to the screen, especially when its first trailer looks so terrible, but hey, now high school teachers can have a movie to put on that might actually interest the teens. (Teens like James Franco, right?) Brush up on your teen literary endeavors and check out the first trailer for As I Lay Dying after the break.

Emerging from work that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2008, Tracy Letts has adapted his black comic play into a film with John Wells at the helm, and August: Osage County is downright overflowing with prestige. It also looks awkward enough to make Home For the Holidays feel like an old, warm blanket. To that first point, let’s do the math on the people involved: Oscar Winners: Meryl Streep (3), Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, George Clooney and Grant Heslov (Producing) Oscar Nominees: Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis, Sam Shepard Not too bad. Undoubtedly, a lot of people will be clamoring pre-release for Streep to win her fourth Oscar, but you know what would be even better? Getting Margo Martindale her first. That woman is a powerhouse whose earned her spot on the Academy stage. If this trailer is any indication, she might find herself with a nice shot at Best Supporting Actress and Best Inappropriate Comments. Check it out for yourself:

Nobody was surprised to learn this week that ABC officially picked up Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the TV series spun-off from the Avengers movie franchise. After all, it’s a Disney-owned property and the network is also a Disney-owned company. And, well, it’s a tie-in to some of the highest grossing films of all time. Even if Iron Man 3 had somehow been a box office disappointment (fat chance), the main source of the series is last year’s enormously successful The Avengers. As we learned last fall, the popular character Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) would even be the lead, meaning he somehow didn’t actually die at the hands of Loki in that movie. Within days of the confirmed pick up for a full season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC has now unveiled the first look with a teaser trailer that premiered on the air during prime time this evening. Coulson is definitely at the center of the thing (marketing hashtag is #coulsonlives) as head of an elite yet not super powered team of agents who investigate cases involving the “strange” and “unknown,” stuff that hasn’t been classified by the agency yet. Sounds like an action-packed mix of X-Files and Heroes. It kinda looks more like the (best of the) latter in this promo, which you can watch after the jump.

A woman awakens one day to discover her mountain cabin has been separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall. She can see through it, but she’s unable to pass. As the days turn to weeks and the seasons begin to change her solitude becomes more and more of a threat to her survival. What caused it? Why is it happening? When will it end? Damned if I know, but my ignorance doesn’t stop me from loving the first trailer for Julian Pölsler‘s new film, The Wall. It’s wonderfully atmospheric and creates a real sense of isolation, and if nothing else it makes for an interesting companion piece to the upcoming limited TV series of Stephen King’s Under the Dome. Check out the trailer for The Wall below.