Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?

Mammoth Trailer

Two things:

1. Lilja 4-Ever is a heartbreaking, sad, dismal film from 2002 and could not be more worth hunting out and watching.

2. Nothing good ever happens in a movie when businessmen go to Thailand. Nothing. If I could submit anything to Roger Ebert’s compendium of movie minutia it would be this.

Much to my delight