15. “Arrival”
Normally, we have little truck with teasers for trailers, but we were nearly swayed with the one that was our first glimpse at “Arrival,” which cut to black before we saw the aliens themselves in any real way. It was nicely done and certainly appetite-whetting, but the trailer it trailed, which is the one below, has the much harder job and does it just as well. The difficulty with selling “Arrival” is correctly communicating its thoughtfulness, in the context of an alien-invasion sci-fi movie and this trailer, by focusing on Amy Adams as the emotional core of the film manages to hint at the story’s real impact without spoiling any of its reveals. For contrast, you can watch the international trailer that seems to be trying to make “Arrival” look like “Independence Day.”
14. “Free Fire”
Ben Wheatley‘s high-concept gun opera is eminently trailer-able – when you can describe your movie is as few words as “70s warehouse gun deal goes awry with splattery consequences” you’re probably going to be able to cut a dynamic couple of minutes from it and stick a cool track over it, and Bob, or rather Quentin Tarantino, is your uncle. But that while that approach guarantees a certain coolness, it doesn’t necessarily showcase jokes, and that’s what this spot for “Free Fire” does so well, alternating gunshots with wisecracks and suggesting that every member of the cast is having a blast, with tongue firmly in cheek. Even the slightly cheap-looking gun graphic title treatments work in this context, and you know you’re in for an arch, silly, noisy spectacle that doesn’t take itself, or anything, very seriously.
13. “10 Cloverfield Lane”
All the debate about whether or not the tie-in to the “Cloverfield” universe works aside, Dan Trachtenberg‘s scratchy thriller hit is still one of 2016’s pleasantest surprises: neither “monster movie spinoff” nor “grimy kidnap exploitation flick” nor “single-location bunker thriller” suggested it would be anything other than a pretty shoddy b-movie. But elevated by terrific performances, particularly from Mary Elizabeth Winstead and the great John Goodman, and also by a clever (Damien Chazelle-co-scripted) screenplay and a mastery of tone that moves from horror to zany to sitcom and back to horror – a trajectory this trailer captures brilliantly – it’s a genre treat in a not-great year for genre films in general.
12. “Logan”
We think this is a good trailer, but there’s really no way to be sure because we’re too busy having our solar plexuses (plexi?) kicked in by its inspired choice of music track. Johnny Cash‘s cover of “Hurt” is such a monumental track that it’s kind of an act of hubris to put it on a trailer, let alone one for a superhero movie, however de-glammed and gritty it may purport to be. But damned if it doesn’t work here, coupled with images of a rough-riding, aging, scarred and possibly broken Wolverine living the kind of desolate backwoods life that we’re more used to seeing as the backdrop for a hardscrabble indie movie than an “X-Men” franchise entry. And given that this year’s ‘Apocalypse‘ was such a garish stinker, this feels like not just its opposite, but its antidote.
11. “American Honey”
Andrea Arnold‘s headrush movie is about youth and restlessness and transience; a collection of impressions and episodes with minimal plot and a sense of forward momentum that derives almost exclusively from the propulsive soundtrack and fleetingly gorgeous imagery. And so it lends itself peculiarly well to the trailer format, with this spot also showing the film’s propensity for on-the-nose but nonetheless hugely effective music choices. In fact, the collision of the noisy graft of Carnage‘s “I Like Tuh” with the millennial-tribe anthem “God’s Whisper” from Raury pretty much perfectly encapsulates the film’s headily romanticized look at life outside the fringes of grown-up, moneyed society.