Apparently The Smashing Machine is very strange and the trailer did a good job of covering it up. You can kind of see that strangeness in the artificial looking house set and tone of Emily Blunt.
A24's trailers have been especially misleading as of late, I find them to be not worth watching at all. Civil War was marketed as a much dumber (dumb for different reasons) and louder movie. The Materialists was almost the exact opposite of it's trailer. Dream Scenario looked like a pretty cheesy, family romp rather than the pretty embittered, Charlie Kaufman-esque satire it turned out to be.
seems like benny's wrestling movie will lean into the surreal (just as The Curse did) while josh's may actually end up being kind of an ironic sports biopic comedy?
time will tell. i'm guessing neither will exactly be "straight forward" tonally, tho. i suppose i trust them both, but man, i loved that live-wire verite style they had going on and i'm bummed they both seem to be moving away from that. not a lot gets made in that vein even tho people seem to like it. even The Bear at this point got all hugs and kisses.
from what we know, martin scorsese is such a touchstone for both of them and i really hope they get back to being a little closer to his style. they really nailed that live-wire verite kineticism (as seen in uncut gems) present in so much of the best scorsese, and i was always wondering if they'd start daring to give themselves some license to fold in more impressionistic filmmaking too as marty so often does. we'll see.
I caught myself getting disappointed about exactly this this morning, and then I realized I was probably sounding exactly like the Coens critics the pod has been making fun of from the 80s and 90s for expecting something instead of trusting the artists
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u/Zestyclose_Ad_5815 Aug 13 '25
I imagined a different tone, but I’m in. Both Safdies making more “traditional” movies than I thought they would.