Preview Review: 'Ferrari', 'Sly', 'Napoleon', and 'Rustin' pump up the winter volume

I'm a longtime fan of a good teaser trailer. Here's a few that do it well.

Yeah, it’s official. Since its release yesterday by NEON, the new trailer for Michael Mann’s Ferrari has been watched about ten times by yours truly. I can’t get enough. Adam Driver disappears into the lead role of Enzo Ferrari. The focus of the screenplay on a pivotal moment in his life. Penelope Cruz and Shailene Woodley steaming up the screen.

All of it mixed seamlessly, scored brilliantly, and presented like a sports car inside a cinema. When it comes to making movies, Mann is a truffle hunter. He roams the woods for years, searching for a powerful story about a man hurdling himself towards a destiny that may make him, or undo his life completely. From Heat to Last of the Mohicans to The Insider to Ali to Collateral to Blackhat, Mann loves to plunge the depths of the male soul and see where the dirt is made.

The role that the brutal race, Mille Miglia, plays in Enzo’s life is substantial, colliding with the undoing of his marriage to Laura (Cruz) and his affair with Linda Lardi (Woodley), and the death of his son. Pulling a page from Danny Boyle’s book for his fascinating character study on Steve Jobs, Mann isn’t doing the standard biopic treatment. He’s going for the heart, and then making his way to the soul of Italy’s car-making champion.

Here’s the new trailer. Bring a towel to clean your desk afterwards.

“I’m in the hope business!”

Sylvester Stallone knows a thing or two about underdogs. He was a big one before Rocky took his career from life support to cloud nine back in the 1970s. First Blood/Rambo followed, and an action career built on brawn and words took shape-remember, he wouldn’t be here without his Philly pugilist script.

Shortly after his longtime rival and friend Arnold Schwarzenegger received the Netflix documentary treatment-the three part docuseries is very well done-Stallone gets his moment on the heavyweight streaming platform in early November. Simply titled Sly, it chronicles his amazing career, and the price that all of that fame and fortune come with. Count me very biased, and highly excited for this deep Sly dive. Check it out:

It is my belief that Joaquin Phoenix will go down as one of the best actors of all time. After all, going from Johnny Cash to the Joker to one of history’s most notoriously sinister kings isn’t a route that even a solid performer could take. But there is Phoenix rising once again as Napoleon in Ridley Scott’s latest epic film, sans an accent or any sense of overacting.

Vanessa Kirby spices up the plate as the lady who attempted to keep the powerful (and classically short) king in check, and one can expect large-scale action and big time drama. Black Sabbath cranking up alongside the destruction of the trailer sure doesn’t hurt the desire to see this one.

Before Martin Luther King Jr. could form a legendary march, he needed Bayard Rustin to have the audacity to help plan and put it together. Netflix is shining a big light on two things: the man behind the legend in Rustin, a troublemaker of the best kind who wanted to form a peaceful protest for civil rights, and an amazing actor deserving of the stage.

That’s Colman Domingo, who has stolen scenes in If Beale Street Could Talk and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. George C. Wolfe, the director of the latter gem and Chadwick Boseman’s bittersweet cinema swan song, is the mind behind Rustin, a movie that should rouse the spirits and get people talking… about Colman! The man is cooler than cool.

That’s all for now. Go find something to watch, and forget about the world for a couple hours.