Hot Trailers

Ewan McGregor and Jennifer Connelly (both above). PHOTO: YOUTUBE
Tom Hanks. PHOTO: YOUTUBE

AMERICAN PASTORAL

Ewan McGregor has the sort of face that remains beguilingly calm when the most un-calm things are happening around him.

He projected this look of Forrest Gump-ish unhurried blitheness to the max in 2003's Big Fish and as young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars flicks and, heck, in virtually every movie he's been in.

This is why this drama, based on the 1997 Philip Roth novel, is tailor- made for him. He seems to know it, too, since he is also the director here. The art here in this compact, concise, classy and thoroughly effective little clip is the subtle disintegration of McGregor's placid visage as he and his wife's (Jennifer Connelly) perfect world falls apart.

Their teen daughter (Dakota Fanning) apparently commits a violent act of domestic terrorism in the radicalised 1960s which kills someone in a bombing. Branded a most- wanted terrorist by the United States government, she goes missing.

The entire trailer is hauntingly scored to 13-year-old half-English, half-Chinese singer Jasmine Thompson's version of a 1983 Tears For Fears song, Mad World.

Man, if the movie is going to be as good as the trailer, I'll RSVP right now for both DVD and CD.


INFERNO

Tom Hanks returns as Robert Langdon, the professor who solved the obscure historical clues in those frenetic Amazing Race-style thrillers, The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009).

And this time, you can almost literally say, "What the hell?" because it really is about hell, or rather, purgatory in Dante's Inferno.

There is apparently a prophecy to release an apocalyptic plague.

So Hanks goes into super- kancheong mode in Europe, scrambling after ancient maps, paintings and artefacts, as he himself becomes a prime suspect with scary people chasing him.

"Everything is out of focus," he tells his ally played by Felicity Jones, who looks like she is prepping for a bigger whirlwind coming when her starring role in Star Wars: Rogue One hits the screens.

Hey, what's a little Inferno compared with big old Darth Vader, right?

Tay Yek Keak

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on June 29, 2016, with the headline Hot Trailers. Subscribe