Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett hatch up a con job in trailer for Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley
The star-studded noir psychological thriller comes to town on December 17
Aux News Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo Del Toro’s wheelhouse involves dealing with outsiders and magnificent creatures. Now in, his Shape Of Water follow-up, Nightmare Alley, his focus is on those considered otherworldly in our society: carnies.
Our cast of colorful characters consists of Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Mary Steenburgen, Ron Perlman, and David Strathairn.
In the remake of the 1947 Edmund Goulding flick, a charismatic but down-on-his-luck carny named Stanton Carlisle (Cooper) endears himself to clairvoyant Zeena (Collette) and her has-been mentalist husband Pete (Strathairn) at a traveling carnival. He then crafts a golden ticket to success using some newly acquired knowledge perfect to grift the elite society of 1940s New York.
With the virtuous Molly (Rooney) at his side, Stanton plots to con a dangerous tycoon (Richard Jenkins) with the aid of a mysterious psychiatrist (Blanchett). Both the original film and Del Toro’s remake are based on the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham.
The trailer boasts lightning, fire, and sex appeal, as things go topsy turvy for the seedy Stanton. Cooper as Stanton bolts down hallways smearing the walls in blood, answers questions while hooked up to a lie detector, all the while Blanchett maintains a powerful yet ominous presence throughout.
It’s not only the burning flames that build heat around Stanton, but with the police on his tail, he better think quick to get himself out of this one. It’s unusual for Del Toro to not implement supernatural elements, but he’s keeping this one focused on the “real underbelly of society.”
For the score, Del Toro recruited composer Nathan Johnson, whose most previous work is Knives Out. Once again, it appears as though Johnson was able to perfectly master grace with tension with another cutting score, previewed in the trailer.
Nightmare Alley opens exclusively in theaters on December 17.
22 Comments
Guillermo del Toro is awesome, Cate Blanchett might be our greatest working actress and it looks like this is going to be suffused with Art Deco gorgeousness, so I am all in.
Look at that freaking cast! Not a dud in there.
I used to think that about Blanchett, but I’m beginning to question it. I think she can be really mesmerizing onscreen, but some of her performances like in Blue Jasmine and Where’d You Go, Bernadette? have been really, um, not great. I guess it’s more that I no longer think she’s infallible.
Agreed on Bernadette, but putting aside the Woody Allen aspect I thought her performance in Blue Jasmine was brilliant. If any of her performances are overrated I’d have to suggest her Katherine Hepburn impersonation in The Aviator. That Oscar win felt like a “sorry we gave it to Goop because you should have won for Elizabeth” make up award.
Agree to disagree on Blue Jasmine, but I’m with you on The Aviator and Elizabeth. I did genuinely like what she did with the Hepburn turn, but Elizabeth was special and might have been when I really started thinking of her as one of my favorites.
The Shape of Water is going to go down in history as one of the most baffling Oscar wins in film history. Like, aren’t we already embarrassed?
Best Picture winners are rarely considered to be the best film of the year (at least with hindsight, though there are exceptions) so while I thought The Shape Of Water was only quite good, it was pleasing for something odd to win it for a change, instead of a biopic or a clumsily written message movie.
I did think it was kind of fascinating how The Shape of Water, because it was up against Call Me By Your Name, Get Out and Lady Bird, kind of became the “conventional,” boring choice in the various Oscar discourses going around at the time. Like, the number of critics whose tone suggested, “Oh, ho hum, once again the Oscars awarding the safe, easy choice, plain vanilla movie about a mute woman falling in love with, and boning, a sea monster” was pretty funny.
That year also had Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Phantom Thread and Three Billboards as other BP nominees, so Shape of Water was hardly the most conventional awards-bait movie of the bunch.
Fair enough. Better something weird than some treacly bullshit like Crash or Green Book.
Just call it The Fish Fucker movie like I do.
Just call it The Fish Fucker movie like I do.
I don’t want to confuse it with Splash, The Fish Fucker movie without the Oscar but the bigger box office.
Not baffling. But, not that good a movie either. I found the story pretty straightforward. I was expecting a few more twists and turns. I think people that don’t normally watch a monster movie or more “weird” movie found it exciting to be supporting something different. But, as someone who does watch and enjoy those movies, I didn’t find it that transgressive or thrilling.
Why would I be embarrassed about The Shape of Water when The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, Braveheart, Crash, and Green Book exist. Oh, and Dances with Wolves. Driving Miss Daisy. Rain Man.I want to put Cavalcade in there, too, but it feels like cheating, because I’ve never actually made it through it, and maybe it suddenly gets less excruciatingly plodding halfway through. You never know!
Half those movies are better than The Shape of Water. Half aren’t. Your taste requires calibration.
Better yes. Oscar worthy? No
Hm, no, I’m fairly certain that my taste reflects, you know, my taste. That’s how it works. And I’m pretty confident that while I liked but didn’t love The Shape of Water, I still found it both better made and more interesting than any of the movies I listed.
Like cats aren’t devalued enough already, the bald man (who has his baldness ‘cured’… ok, when I think about it, there are more problems with this film) goes ‘watcha gonna do; animals gonna animal’ (and more or less simultaneously also ‘yes, of course he can consent to sex, he’s an aquatic man, after all’).
“That Guy” time – wouldn’t someone’s most previous work be their first, not last?
*zzzzzzz*
Latest Criterion Blu-ray bought at the Barnes & Noble half-price sale.
“Alley” not “Valley.”