The Wachowskis’ strange, celebratory, and globe-spanning series Sense8 returns for a second season on Netflix this week, so my colleague Tasha Robinson sat down to talk about the show with actor Naveen Andrews, who plays one of its more mysterious figures. I’d definitely recommend checking it out if you’re a fan.
I never quite got hooked on the mysteries of Sense8’s first season, but what I did love about it was how it felt like such a pure distillation of the Wachowskis’ interests: from martial arts to shared bodies and minds to larger-than-life forces keeping people from living the lives they want for themselves. The show has so many characters and locations and styles, it’s kind of incredible they’re able to stitch it all together.
Check out 11 trailers from this week below.
The Dark Tower
The long-in-the-works adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is almost here, and this week we got a first look at it. The film looks appropriately epic for a world-spanning story featuring gunfights and magic. But the film’s backstory is pretty involved — the series spans eight books, and this movie seems like it might be both a sequel and an adaptation — so I’d recommend checking out my colleague Andrew Liptak’s explanation of exactly what’s going on if you’re at all interested. The film comes out August 4th.
Marvel’s The Defenders
After years of planning, Netflix’s four Marvel series are all coming together. The Defenders puts Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist into a superhero supergroup for an eight-episode series that’s pretty much bound to be a hit. There’s lots of action. Lots of jokes. And of course, a hallway fight. It comes out August 18th.
Dunkirk
This new look at Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk gets us right up close with its characters, and yet, the whole thing feels surprisingly lonely. The movie seems to treat people, ships, and planes like pieces in a chess game — and that makes this trailer pretty tense for just a two-minute clip. The film comes out July 21st.
House of Cards
In case the past year’s actual politics hasn’t been horrifying enough for you, Netflix is back with a new season of House of Cards. Something about Frank’s “I know what’s b
est” speech here feels oddly familiar. The series returns May 30th.
The Big Sick
Silicon Valley‘s Kumail Nanjiani stars in this romantic comedy that seems to twist free of the genre’s tropes with a focus on the culture clash that happens when Nanjiani falls for a woman and bucks his parents’ plans for an arranged marriage. It comes out June 23rd.
It Comes at Night
A24 keeps picking up offbeat but extremely creepy horror films. Last year it had The Witch. And this year, it has It Comes at Night. The movie looks claustrophobic, mysterious, and also just beautifully shot. It comes out June 9th.
Whose Streets?
Whose Streets? documents the people of Ferguson, Missouri, and the protests that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown. The film got some great reviews at Sundance,
and it’s easy to see why: it looks like a surprisingly intimate and raw portrait of a community coming together amid a crisis. It comes out August 11th.
The Woman Who Left
This movie has a ridiculous 3-hour, 47-minute run time, but it really does look intriguing. The Woman Who Left is about a woman who’s released from jail after 30 years when she’s f
inally cleared of committing a murder, and thus far, reviews have said it’s a great watch if you’re willing to put in the time. The film comes to the US on May 19th in limited release.
5-25-77
After more than a decade in production, director Patrick Read Johnson’s film inspired by his own childhood and fandom for Star Wars is finally coming out. The conceit behind this movie is entirely ridiculous, and I also find it impossible to take a movie seriously when its lead actor looks like a young Julian Casablancas. But it seems funny in a Napoleon Dynamite kind of way, and there’s no question o
thers out there will relate to Johnson’s passion for Star Wars. The film comes out May 25th — or, you know, 5-27-17.
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
PBS has a really interesting-looking documentary about Abacus Federal Savings Bank, the only bank brought to trial after the financial crisis. It’s another story that seems to expose the ludicrous nature of the banking system and its regulators, but in doing so, the film also steps into the small immigra
nt community the bank popped up to serve. The documentary comes out May 19th.
Kill Switch
I’m always very skeptical of movies shot in the first person, and Kill Switch, the latest, really seems to be playing up its video game roots. There’s not a lot to see in this teaser, but first-person movies like this are still few and far enough between that it seems worth checking out. The film comes out June 16th.