Trailer Tuesdays: June 4, 2013

Trailers are usually the first step in getting an audience’s attention and building the momentum for many films - Far and away more profoundly and proficiently, trailers can help explain a film and package a film even better than word-of-mouth. 

Fresh Roasted Films searching weekly for the best trailers that have been released in the past week to bring you, our dear readers the best of what’s to come on the horizon of Film, and unlike the blog that is devoted more to Independent fare, we don’t discriminate here at Trailer Tuesdays - we screen all and show all: Foreign, Domestic, Indie or Major Release - all are welcome. (As a side note, if you have a trailer you would like to be up for consideration, feel free to send it to Freshroastedfilms@gmail.com).

With that…..

Welcome to Trailer Tuesdays!

=== A Field in England ===

A trailer for Kill List director Ben Wheatley’s latest film, A Field in England, has arrived offering the first footage we have ever seen since the project was announced.

Billed as “a psychedelic trip into magic and madness,” A Field in England follows a group of English Civil War soldiers in the 17th century who are captured by an alchemist and led into a vast mushroom field, where they fall victim to violent and nightmarish forces.

A theatrical and VOD release is planned for 2013. Drafthouse Films will distribute.

==== This Is Martin Bonner (2013 Sundance Film Fest Next Winner)====

Chad Hartigan‘s Sundance entry, This Is Martin Bonner, quietly snuck up on audiences this past January, with the character-driven tale eventually picking up the Audience Award for the Best of NEXT section. Starring Paul Eenhoorn as the eponymous character, the film centers on Martin’s late-in-life transition from a full (but complicated) life on the East coast to a quiet and unassuming one in Reno. Bankrupt, Martin takes on his first job in two years – a volunteer gig that sees him helping newly released inmates transition back into normal life. In the course of his work, Martin makes an unexpected new friend in former prisoner Travis (Richmond Arquette), a relationship that is soon put to the test.

This Is Martin Bonner opens in limited release on June 28th, thanks to Monterey Media.

=== Maniac ====

Though there have been multiple trailers released for Franck Khalfoun‘s remake of Maniac, and we’ve even seen the first few minutes of the movie, this marks the first time the official US release gets some love.

On June 21 IFC Midnight will release the film, which stars Elijah Wood as a deranged killer whose point of view makes up most of the movie. They’ve now released a trailer and brand new poster. Check them out below.

==== The Act of Killing ===

I know no one who has emerged unscathed from The Act of Killing. The film might be one of the strangest ever made, as it forces men to confront their actions by recreating them in movie form. But these aren’t just any men — they’re guys like Anwar Congo who, as death squad leaders during the “Thirtieth of September Movement,” staged a coup d’etat in Indonesia in 1965, and then committed genocide through an anti-Communist purge.

Estimates of the death toll vary widely, from 80,000 to one million. By any standard, these are heinous crimes. ”War crimes are declared by the winners,” Anwar Congo says, before happily proclaiming “I’m the winner!”

Today Anwar and other death squad leaders have not been tried as criminals; rather, they hold positions of some social standing. The Act of Killing features their full cooperation. It invites the death squad leaders to recreate their actions as genre movies — westerns, musicals, and so on — and in so doing bring their past back to life. The trailer below shows you some of the effect, and even in this abbreviated form it is deeply chilling.

The Act of Killing hits limited theaters on July 19.

In this chilling and inventive documentary, executive produced by Errol Morris (The Fog Of War) and Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man), the filmmakers examine a country where death squad leaders are celebrated as heroes, challenging them to reenact their real-life mass killings in the style of the American movies they love. The hallucinatory result is a cinematic fever dream, an unsettling journey deep into the imaginations of mass murderers and the shockingly banal regime of corruption and impunity they inhabit. Shaking audiences at the 2012 Toronto and Telluride Film Festivals, The Act of Killingis an unprecedented film and, according to the Los Angeles Times, “could well change how you view the documentary form.”

=== This is the End ===

Here’s the red-band TV spot:

This Is The End is out June 12.

When Jay Baruchel and Seth Rogen head to James Franco‘s house for a party, they’re not surprised to see the likes of Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart, Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Rihanna and Emma Watson.What they are surprised about is when the apocalypse starts right outside their door and many of those friends meet their untimely deaths. That leaves six of the friends (Franco, Rogen, Hill, McBride, Robinson, Baruchel) in survival mode.