It’s no surprise the movie studios are releasing trailers more frequently this time of year. In the weeks leading up to San Diego Comic-Con, just as studios are holding back more genre and “pop culture” trailers to showcase in San Diego, they’re giving audiences a peek now at everything else. We have five new trailers today, three for films we haven’t yet previewed, and two are new trailers for films you already know about. What do they all have in common? They all feature stars from the British realm.
So what’s new from Keira Knightley (why doesn’t she have an Oscar yet?), Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith, and Katherine Kelly? You’ll find them in the political thriller Official Secrets, based on the story of Katherine Gun, who leaked a secret memo exposing an illegal U.S. spying operation. The Good Liarstars master thespians Dame Helen Mirren and SirIan McKellen in a swindler story about meeting online. Luke Evans and Ed Skrein lead a new World War II historical drama in Midway. And from the two films you’ve probably heard of: Jason Statham, Vanessa Kirby, Idris Elba, Helen Mirren, and Eddie Marsan all star in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, and Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate and Damian Lewis plays Steve McQueen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Finally, don’t forget, another Brit, Tom Holland, stars in next week’s latest Marvel movie, Spider-Man: Far From Home. Check out these trailers:
It’s the performances of the leading actors that stand out in this weekend’s theatrical release, Colette. Colette is a biographical story of an avant-garde couple in turn-of-the-twentieth-century France, famed authors who wrote under the pen names Colette (nee Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) and Willy (nee Henry Gauthier-Villars), and the writing of four popular books by Colette that were published under her husband’s name: Claudine à l’école (1900), Claudine à Paris (1901), Claudine en ménage (1902), and Claudine s’en va (1903). In the film, directed by Wash Westmoreland, genre favorites Keira Knightley(Pirates of the Caribbean, The Imitation Game, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Never Let Me Go, Domino) portrays the younger spouse Colette and Dominic West(Les Miserábles, Tomb Raider, The Hour, The Wire, 300) her very showy and ostentatious libertine husband Willy. As a tangent for Star Wars fans it’s a Naboo reunion–Knightley was one of Queen Amidala’s handmaidens and her decoy in several scenes, and West one of her royal guards nearly 20 years ago in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
In Colette Knightley and West have great rapport. It’s a mix of love and conflict that rises to the level of hatred, but along the way their chemistry is quite strong with a carousel of humorous moments throughout their relationship. It would elevate the writing too much to equate Colette and Willy with Beatrice and Benedick of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, but their back-and-forth repartee is quick and sharp. They are portrayed to have been a successful (at least financially) if not unorthodox pair. When Willy courts the much younger Colette in the opening of the movie he has already established fame as a writer (as an early James Patterson-type who took credit for the actual writings of a few employed ghost writers). But after gambling, over-spending, and other debts catch up to him he turns to Colette to pen the stories she has told him of her youth in pastoral France. Her work proves to be much more popular than anything he had ever written. Although he does pout a bit, he spends the large advance for the second book on a country house for Colette. Not quite Dangerous Liaisons (but close), their equal opportunity games and his spiraling debts ultimately bring their marriage to the breaking point.
Along the way their lifestyle begins to dip even beyond the hedonism and joie de vivre the Belle Epoque, Bohemian, and Decadent movements France was known for, as their marriage branches out to include others: two women (one for both, one for him), played by Eleanor Tomlinson(The Illusionist, Jack the Giant Slayer) and Shannon Tarbet(Inspector Lewis), and ultimately Colette leaves Willy for a third, acting partner Missy, played by Denise Gough (’71, Star Wars: Battlefront, Mass Effect: Andromeda). Some brief sex scenes and nudity account for the R rating. Although the film ends with the split of Colette and Willy, Colette would go on to be an early feminist icon, writing many more novels and stories, her best known would be Gigi, the 1944 novel that would become the famous Audrey Hepburn film (Colette specifically selected Hepburn for the role).
Whether or not Keira Knightley wins the Academy Award this year for her role as a World War II codebreaker opposite Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game (which we reviewed previously at borg.comhere) we’re confident she will have one or more Oscars on the shelf years from now. She was one of our picks in our Best of 2014 review. A lead actress who could pull off any role, she seems to opt for more quirky and challenging roles. These include her role as a bounty hunter in Domino, but also classic costume drama parts, like Lara in the remake of Doctor Zhivago, Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, and an against-type Guinevere in King Arthur, genre roles like Padme’s double in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, a withering-away clone in the disturbing sci-fi drama Never Let Me Go, or Disney franchise star in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Last year Knightley also co-starred in a major studio release, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, as the future Mrs. Jack Ryan opposite Chris Pine, holding her own with the likes of Academy Award winners Kevin Costner and Kenneth Branagh. The first expansion film of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan stories, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is now out on DVD, Blu-ray and On Demand.
As Cathy Muller, a role previously played by Gates McFadden, Anne Archer, and Bridget Moynihan, she’s the first actress to take the part beyond emotional support stalwart for Jack. In a franchise full of large, in your-face-drama: a nuclear sub about to explode in The Hunt for Red October, battling terrorists in Patriot Games or drug kingpins in Clear and Present Danger, and a dirty bomb smuggled into the country taking out an entire city in Sum of All Fears, it’s a big surprise that Shadow Recruit’s big event is tied to a discovery in forensic accounting by Ryan, leading to a potential economic crisis and small scale bombing. Yet unlike A Good Day to Die Hard, a sequel using a similar plot (proving that once popular franchise is too tired to continue), the prospect of a young couple working together within Ryan’s secret CIA world in Clancy’s universe of global espionage is a bit refreshing. And Knightley is probably the highlight of the film.
