The dearth of Super Bowl trailers shows that Hollywood is still living in fear
Usually, whether or not you care about American football, you’re promised cinematic thrills. But this year, where are the heroes on screen?
5 February 2021 • 5:00pm
Will Scarlett Johansson s Black Widow make a second appearance at the Superbowl?
Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney
A few weeks ago, when Tim Robey and I compiled a list of our most anticipated films of 2021, we realised that neither of us had any idea what most of them looked like.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Soggy Bottom, Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Robert Eggers’s The Northman: we’ve seen the odd production still and long-lens peek at a set, but otherwise nothing: no clips, no teasers, not even a viral snippet. Even box-office titans-in-waiting such as Mission: Impossible 7 and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remain unknown quantities at this
In the wickedly cruel The Rental, Dan Stevens and co shack up in a deadly Airbnb
4/5
Dave Franco’s smart film doubles as slasher flick and character study, with the tension ratcheted up and bloody thrills to spare
Alison Brie, writes Tim Robie, gives Dave Franco s The Rental its wittiest turn
Credit: IFC
Dir: Dave Franco. Cast: Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White, Toby Huss, Anthony Molinari. 15 cert, 89 mins
Dave Franco’s Airbnb chiller The Rental has a great poster – remember those? It’s an upside-down shot of a holiday home, invitingly warm inside, but with a silhouetted figure falling out of it into the night, or maybe the Pacific Ocean. “Secluded getaway. Killer views.”
Joan Collins in Land of the Pharaohs
Credit: Getty
In April 1954, a scorching day of slave labour was afoot, in a stone quarry near the unfinished Egyptian pyramid of Zawyet El Aryan, outside Giza. Many thousands of extras were needed to achieve one of the grandest location shots in Howard Hawks’s Land of the Pharaohs, which had just started production in an extreme state of unreadiness.
An uncharacteristically nervous Hawks hoped to put his best foot forward by getting at least one huge money shot in the can. To court favour, he sent the rushes post-haste to Jack Warner at Burbank, to show where the $1.75m budget – which would balloon to an ultimately ruinous $3.15m – was going.