Coming Attractions: Collateral Beauty + Live By Night

 

Hey! How’s everybody doing? In this post I want to showcase two pretty cool trailers I saw today. One is a kinda dark holiday movie with a star cast and the other is a stylish gangster film that could get a lot of award attention later this year.

 

First we have Collateral Beauty, directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada). In it, “a tragic event sends a New York advertising executive on a downward spiral into other events in depression, tragedy, romantic tendencies and hope. During these events, he encounters three mysterious people who encourage him to forget about the past while his friends try to help him get back on track with his life”.

Collateral Beauty stars Will Smith, Edward Norton, Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Michael Peña, Naomie Harris and Jacob Latimore. Check out the trailer:

 

This kind of concept could go either way (isn’t that always the case?) but I’m really hoping this one is good. Don’t let that amazing cast go to waste!

 

We also have Live by Night, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. Affleck’s first film behind the camera, the underrated Gone Baby Gone (which I just rewatched this week), was also based on a Lehane novel.

This stylish gangster flick seems like it’ll be one of the stars of the upcoming award season. Set in the 1920s and 1930s, the story follows Joe Coughlin, the prodigal son of a Boston police captain, as he becomes a bootlegger, rum-runner and, later, a notorious gangster.

Apart from Affleck, the film stars Chris Messina, Zoe Saldaña, Sienna Miller, Brendan Gleeson, Elle Fanning, Chris Cooper and R&B singer Miguel (so random I had to mention it). Here’s the trailer.

 

I personally loved the song (Hozier’s “Arsonist’s Lullaby”) and I really hope for my sanity that the blonde seen having sex with Affleck in the trailer is not Fanning because that would be way creepy.

 

So, there you have them. Thoughts on “Beauty” or “Night”? Both? Tell me in the comments!