Welcome to a brand new weekly feature here at WorcesterMovies.com, “Trailer Stash.” As a remedy to Monday morning, we will offer up a quintet of trailers for your information, entertainment and misappropriation of company time while at work. We will do our best to theme them appropriately, though if we’re really tired from watching movies all weekend, they might be just five trailers that we want to share.Make sure you have QuickTime installed, as most of the trailers we share with you will be in that format (yes, we are Mac loyalists).
[WINDOWS XP/VISTA DOWNLOAD] [MACINTOSH DOWNLOAD]
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD [October 19]
Not only does Casey Affleck step out of his Oscar-winning brother Ben’s shadow in Oscar-winning brother Ben’s directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (also opening October 19), but he throws down and holds his own opposite Brad Pitt in this account of famous outlaw Jesse James’s last days. The Boston-born actor’s stock sure is shooting up in value, and soon, Ben might be referred to as “Oscar winner Casey Affleck’s brother.”
POSSIBLE OSCARS: Best Actor (Affleck)
AMERICAN GANGSTER [November 2]
This crime drama has Oscar written all over it. Literally. Star Denzel Washington, who plays a self-made crime boss, has two. Russell Crowe has one. Cuba Gooding Jr. has one. Writer Steven Zaillian has one. And director Ridley Scott has been nominated three times. The film that will surely be the first grown-up hit of the season also has the best chances at winning come February (and Crowe has a shot at a nom with 3:10 To Yuma, as well).
POSSIBLE OSCARS: Washington (Best Actor), Crowe (Best Actor),
Scott (Best Director), Film (Best Picture)
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN [November 9]
Here is another film that seems destined for decoration, with Oscar winners for Fargo Joel and Ethan Coen directing a golden cast. Tommy Lee Jones, who plays an over-the-hill lawman in a Midwestern town under siege, has one statue already, with his turn in In the Valley of Elah seriously increasing his chances of another. Spanish heavyweight Javier Bardem, who earned a nomination for Before Night Falls (and deserved one for The Sea Inside), plays the mysterious psycho who drives the story.
POSSIBLE OSCARS: Bardem (Best Actor), Jones (Best Actor),
The Coens (Best Director), Film (Best Picture)
ATONEMENT [December 7]
Director Joe Wright puts his Pride and Prejudice star, Kiera Knightley, in this epic story about a tragic love spanning decades. Based on the novel by Ian McEwan, the story, which also stars James McAvoy of The Last King of Scotland, is the kind of grand, weepy tale that gives actors, composers and cinematographers all the chance to shout, “Hey, look what I can do!” and hope that the Academy remembers them through the Oscar season din.
POSSIBLE OSCARS: Knightley (Best Actress), Film (Best Picture)
GRACE IS GONE [December 7]
As the flag-draped coffins continue to pile up, so do the films about the Iraq War, like The Kingdom, In the Valley of Elah and this emotionally raw drama. It stars John Cusack as a war widower who must find the strength to move on and raise his two daughters by himself, and it appears to be not only the kind of movie that presses all the right buttons with Oscar voters, but one that also earn the title “career best.” You’ve come a long way since Better Off Dead, Johnny…
POSSIBLE OSCARS: Best Actor (Cusack)