Return I Will, to Old Brazil.

“An opening title card declares that Brazil takes place ‘somewhere in the 20th century,’ but the date and location are deliberately muddy; it’s a dystopian world built from a mishmash of eras, part future and part past. Sam Lowry (played by Jonathan Pryce) is a competent, content functionary in a world ruled by a hideously broken bureaucracy, under assault by unknown terrorists, and compensating with kidnapping and torture…in Brazil, over and over again, people turn to fantasy to let them briefly step outside a junky, dysfunctional world controlled by an oppressive yet strikingly indifferent government.”

“Sometimes, madness is the right response to a mad world. Sometimes, illusion is the only way out.” By way of a longtime reader, The Keynote‘s Tasha Robinson discusses the origins and greatness of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, one of my trifecta of all-time favorite films (along with Amadeus and Miller’s Crossing) and at least partly the namesake of GitM (Ere I am, JH…) — I got the still above signed at a Gilliam event in NYC in October 2006. Some great stuff in here — I actually never knew, or had forgotten, how close this came to being a Tom Cruise vehicle — That would’ve been a error of Tuttle/Buttle proportions. Da dum, da da da da da dee dum…

Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Lots of catch-up to do in the Trailer Bin…

Finally out of The Master‘s clutches, a lonely Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with, for all intent and purposes, Siri (Scarlett Johansson) in the first trailer for Spike Jonze’s Her, also with Amy Adams, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pratt, and Rooney Mara. I believe this is called going the full-Lars. (Also, I’m never not going to hear the name of this film as “Her?”)

Alan Rickman and Donal Logue — now there’s one of the best buddy pairings on film since Ray Winstone and Brendan Gleeson in Beowulf — meet a lot of 24 Hour Party People American-style in our first look at CBGB’s, with Ashley Greene, Freddy Rodriguez, Johnny Galecki, Bradley Whitford, Rupert Grint, Justin Bartha, Stana Katic, and Malin Ackerman (as Debbie Harry?) I see Severus is now teaching young Mr. Weasley a completely different set of Dark Arts. Hrm, maybe.

Michael Fassbender finds he’s taken a wrong turn into Cormac McCarthy land in the newest trailer for Ridley Scott’s The Counselor, with Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Goran Visnjic, and Dean Norris. Looks very McCarthyish, and no mistake. The good news is Ridley Scott still owes Fassbender a solid film after Prometheus.

It belongs in a museum! WWII soldiers George Clooney and Matt Damon put together a crack team to save priceless art and artifacts in the first trailer for Clooney’s The Monuments Men, also with John Goodman, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jean Dujardin, and Cate Blanchett. As one wag aptly noted on Twitter, this is basically an Elseworlds Ocean’s movie, but I trust Clooney’s choices. Still, here’s hoping it works out better than Clooney & Blanchett’s last trip to Germany.

Over an unfortunately poppy soundtrack, Idris Elba and Naomie Harris channel Nelson and Winnie Mandela in the first trailer for Justin Chadwick’s Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. This looks a bit standard-issue-biopic-y, I’ll admit. But I’ll watch just to see Elba as Mandela — just no Henley poems, k?

Team Silver Linings Playbook joins forces with Team Fighter (sans Wahlberg) to dabble in the luxurious world of art forgery in this brief trailer for David O. Russell’s next, American Hustle, with Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Louis CK, Jack Huston, Alessandro Nivola, Michael Pena and Elizabeth Rohm.

Lowry? Has anybody seen Sam Lowry? Er, sorry, that would be Mitty, as in Ben Stiller’s adaptation of James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, with Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Adam Scott, Patton Oswalt, and Shirley MacLaine. I have to admit, this looks much fresher than I anticipated. Definitely maybe.

A terrible accident, an unexpected boon, and A Simple Plan all add up to another bad day for Sam Rockwell in the trailer for David Rosenthal’s A Single Shot, also with William H. Macy, Jason Isaacs, Jeffrey Wright, Kelly Reilly, Ted Levine, Melissa Leo, and W. Earl Brown. A great cast through and through, but you had me at Rockwell.

And if you need another reason to worry about Found Money, Alice Eve gets into trouble with the Russian mob, in the form of Bryan Cranston, in the trailer for Cold Comes the Night, also with Logan Marshall-Green. If nothing else, it’ll be good for Cranston to get some more menacing reps in before signing up with LexCorp (although, in that department, Mark Strong’s a solid choice as well.)

Where’s a mermaid when you need one? Tom Hanks is in considerable peril on the sea in our second look at Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips, also with Catherine Keener, Max Martini, Yul Vazquez, Michael Chernus, Chris Mulkey, Corey Johnson, David Warshofsky, John Magaro and Angus MacInnes.

I thought Greengrass’ most recent film, 2010’s Green Zone, was an overly preachy dud — I get annoyed with edutainment that aggressively berates me to endorse opinions I already hold. (I’m looking at you, Aaron Sorkin.) But Greengrass has a lifetime pass after United 93, Bloody Sunday, and the Bournes, so hopefully this is a return to form.

Thor Odinson, meet Clarice Starling: In a tight spot with a new Big Bad, Earth’s mightiest Asgardian (Chris Hemsworth) is forced to enlist help from his brother in the joint in the second trailer for Thor: The Dark World, also with Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Christopher Eccleston, Idris Elba, Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Jaimie Alexander, Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgard, and Ray Stevenson.

After The Dark Knight, Skyfall, and ST:ID, I’m not sure we need any more villains unfolding their master plans from behind prison bars this decade — Heck, even Loki himself was doing this same shebang in The Avengers last year. Still, the first Thor was better than expected, and Marvel’s on a pretty consistent streak at the moment. I’m in.

I also thought the Nick Stoller’s 2011 reboot of The Muppets was decent enough, but I’m not getting good vibes at all from this first teaser for James Bobin’s Muppets: Most Wanted, with Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey, Salma Hayek, Frank Langella, Till Schweiger, Debby Ryan, Danny Trejo, Ray Liotta, and Christoph Waltz. Early yet, and I do like Stoller and Bobin’s prior output, but right now this looks like it’ll hit at about Smurfs 2 level.

So, yeah, Harrison Ford hasn’t gotten all that much better at voiceovers since Blade Runner, has he? Anyway, there’s also a new trailer for Gavin Hood’s Ender’s Game, also with Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin, and a ridiculous number of clichés (the Inception BWOMP, “We’re running out of time,” etc.) Everyone wants a Ford comeback, but it’s hard to imagine this one getting my money, even if Orson Scott Card wasn’t a jackass. Oh well.

Smorgasbord of Vengeance.

Lots of scores to settle and cold dishes served in the trailer bin of late…

Antebellum musician Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds himself way down on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line in our first look at Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, also with Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Michael Fassbender, Paul Giamatti, Lupita Nyong’o, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, and Alfre Woodard.

Some strange musical cues here, including the themes from Pearl Harbor and The Wolfman (the latter used to better effect in the original, still-creepy Tinker Tailor teaser). In any case, I liked Hunger and Shame less than most, but I’d be up to give this a go.

Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: Josh Brolin discovers to his dismay that he can check in but never leave in the red-band trailer for Spike Lee’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, also with Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Imperioli, Lance Reddick, and James Ransone. I’m still trying to un-watch the original — some things involving octopi and tongues I wish I never saw in that there film.

One good remake deserves another: Deserve’s still got nothing to do with it as Ken Watanabe fills Clint Eastwood’s shoes for Sang-il Lee’s Yurusarezaru mono, the Japanese remake of Unforgiven, also with Akira Emoto, Koichi Sato, and Yuya Yagira. From The Seven Samurai to The Magnificent Seven, there’s a long and fertile history for this sort of cultural exchange, so I’d watch it.

What I likely won’t be watching is Sergei Bodrov’s fantasy epic Seventh Son, based on a series I haven’t heard of called The Wardstone Chronicles, even if it does have Jeff and Maude Lebowski operating on opposite sides of the ball. (Between this and R.I.P.D., Bridges seems to be in full “paying for an extension to my house” mode these days.)

I thought at first this might be based on Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, but then I remembered they already made a lousy adaptation of that a few years ago. In any case, also along for the ride: Ben Barnes, Kit Harington, Alicia Vikander, Djimon Hounsou, Jason Scott Lee, and Antje Traue.

When bad things happen to his brother (Casey Affleck), Christian Bale goes vigilante to take down the local ne’er-do-well (Woody Harrelson) in the first trailer for Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace, also with Zoe Saldana, Willem Dafoe, Forrest Whitaker, and Sam Shepard. (TL;DR: Bale meets Death Wish meets Winter’s Bone.) Alrighty then.

When bad things happen to his brother (Matt Barnes), Ryan Gosling goes vigilante to take down the local ne’er-do-well (Vithaya Pansringarm) in the newest trailer for Nicholas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives.

Along with presumably another hyper-catchy soundtrack like Refn and Gosling’s Drive, this also has the added benefit of Kristin Scott Thomas apparently doing her “Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast/Ralph Fiennes in In Bruges” turn. As with Oldboy, I expect this to be hyper-violent, tho’.

And finally Wong Kar-Wai, Yuen Woo Ping, Tony Leung, and Zhang Ziyi band together to tell the story of Ip Man (again) in the newest trailer for The Grandmaster. This still looks to me like an unnecessary remake of the third Matrix movie, but you can’t fault the pedigree involved.

Update: One more down the pike today: Benedict Cumberbatch channels Julian Assange, and has some Social Network-style angst with his partner Daniel Bruhl, in the first trailer for Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate, with Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Peter Capaldi, Carice van Houten, Dan Stevens, Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney. Linney’s smarmy “truth, justice, and the American way” line is wince-inducing, but otherwise this could be promising.

Update 2: Blanchett, meet Blanche DuBois? After Madoff-y husband Alec Baldwin becomes only the second person in America to be prosecuted for misdealings during the financial crisis, Cate Blanchett learns how the other half lives in the first trailer for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, with Sally Hawkins, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay(?), Michael Stuhlbarg, and (hopefully) the Woodster’s new best friend, Louis C.K.

Talkin’ oUtLawwW Blues.

(That’s a a Robin Hood joke, FWIW.) The third trailer for The Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis is now online. (Here’s #1 and #2.) Before Midnight notwithstanding, several of the big anticipated summer films this year — Man of Steel, Star Trek: Into Darkness — have been out-and-out duds, so here’s hoping the Coens help right the 2013 ship on the back end. This looks beautiful, if nothing else.

Shudder Island.

If Gatsby didn’t satisfy your hankering for Leo di Caprio amid the playgrounds of the idle rich, the trailer for Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is now online, also with Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Jean Dujardin, Jon Bernthal, Kyle Chandler, Spike Jonze, Shea Whigham, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, and the inimitable Joanna Lumley.

I dunno…I know it’s Scorsese and all that, but at least Gatsby had period panache going for it. This looks like yet another generic Rise and Fall of the Financial Sector Douchebros, and Boiler Room, Margin Call and the Wall Streets, among other films, already covered these useless yahoos enough to my satisfaction. We’ll see.

The Incident with the Dragon.

Almost that time again: Part the Second of Bilbo Baggins’ Great Adventure gets a trailer in this first look at Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Lots of Legolas and Thranduil (Lee Pace) here, as well as our first looks at Bard (Luke Burns), Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), Beorn (in CGI-form), and even the Great Wyrm, tho’ he does not speak (perhaps because he sounds a mite like…”John Harrison.”)

Kneel Before Zod.

“My name is General Zod. I have crossed an ocean of stars to reach you. Your world has sheltered one of my citizens…To Kal-El, I say this: Surrender within 24 hours, or watch this world suffer the consequences.” I’ve been hard on the Man of Steel trailers to this point, so credit where due: I really like this one — Great sound mixing, and Michael Shannon seems like he’s going to be a good deal of fun.

After the Candelabra.

“The setting: downtown New York in 1900, a tumultuous time of massive change and great progress. The series centers around the groundbreaking surgeons, nurses and staff at Knickerbocker Hospital, who are pushing the bounds of medicine in a time of astonishingly high mortality rates and zero antibiotics.”

Speaking of the Knicks: On the eve of Behind the Candelabra (this Sunday on HBO), Steven Soderbergh — still ostensibly retired from feature filmmaking — is set to direct 10-hours of a period hospital drama, The Knick, for Cinemax, with Clive Owen.

As a hobby, apparently, he’s also gotten into the film cognoscenti hipster t-shirt business. “While designing the shirts, Soderbergh told Reuters, ‘I would test them out by wearing them to the set to see if people knew the movie references.'” Citizen Kane aside, most of them are pretty esoteric. (Second link via The Late Adopter.)

Sounds and Furies.

In today’s trailer bin, Guillermo del Toro tries to out-Bay Bayhem in the new trailer for Pacific Rim, a.k.a. Monsters vs. Robots, with Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Rinko Kikuchi, Clifton Collins Jr., Burn Gorman, Willem Dafoe, and GLaDOS. Hrm, ok. This looks ridiculous, and I’d rather just see a straight-up Del Toro Cthulhu film, but I suppose this’ll do until the trouble gets here.

If giant robots aren’t your bag, how about some Faulkner? For his directorial debut, James Franco aims to bring to life As I Lay Dying, also with Tim Blake Nelson, Danny McBride, Logan Marshall-Green, Richard Jenkins, Ahna O’Reilly, and Beth Grant. Haven’t read the book myself, but this might be interesting — I’d have gone with a different font, tho.

Starbuck, Riddick; Riddick, Starbuck. After misfiring several years ago with The Chronicles of Riddick, David Twohy and Vin Diesel apparently set to remake Pitch Black again, given the new trailer for Riddick — also with Katee Sackhoff, Karl Urban (who’ll presumably explain what happened since end of the last film), and a bunch of creature fodder (Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine, Jordi Molla, Noah Danby, Nolan Gerard Funk). Er…this looks…no.

Meanwhile, Foley artist Toby Jones discovers working on a Dario Argento-style giallo film isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in this trailer for Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio, with Tonia Sotiropoulou, Cosimo Fusco, and Suzy Kendall. Looks like somebody’s seriously bucking for that Sound Editing Oscar…

Presumably sick of playing second fiddle to Kevin Spacey on House of Cards, Robin Wright sells her persona to Harvey Keitel and Danny Huston in this look at Ari Folman’s The Congress, also with Kodi Smit-McPhee, Sami Gayle, and Christopher B. Duncan. Wasn’t expecting traditional animation after the intriguing set-up.

Elsewhere in the Cineplex, Rachel McAdams is falling in love with time travelers again in the trailer for Richard Curtis’ About Time, with Domhnall Gleeson, Bill Nighy, Lindsay Duncan, and Tom Hollander. I like the cast, I like Sliding Doors, but I still haven’t forgiven Curtis for Love, Actually, so this, as with the last two above, will likely be a Netflixer.

And, since I somehow missed this last month, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke check in again with Celine and Jesse in the official trailer for Before Midnight. Vaguely spoiler-y, in that this basically tells you what happened after Nina Simone in Paris nine years ago. But hopefully the journey is the reward with this one.

The Worlds’ Ender.

In the trailer bin, Asa Butterfield gets trained for interstellar war by a grizzled Harrison Ford and a tattooed Ben Kingsley in the first trailer for Gavin Hood’s adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, also with Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin. Eh, seems a bit big and busy for this particular book, but I guess Ford should gets his reps in before Episode VII.

Meanwhile, Simon Pegg’s plan to get the lads together for a pint or twelve is muddled by an altogether different alien invasion in the first trailer for Edgar Wright’s The World’s End, closing out the trilogy started by Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Along for the ride: Nick Frost (naturally), Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, David Bradley, and Rosamund Pike. I’m in.

Update: Another arrival today: Paul Greengrass of Bloody Sunday and United 93 dramatizes another bad day on Earth in the first trailer for Captain Phillips, a.k.a. the true story of Somali pirates vs. the MV Maersk Alabama, with Tom Hanks, Catherine Keener, Max Martini, Yul Vazquez, Michael Chernus, Chris Mulkey, Corey Johnson, David Warshofsky, John Magaro and Angus MacInnes.

Update 2: Also in this week’s queue, a red-band trailer for The Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis, based on the memoirs of Dave Von Ronk and starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, Garret Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham, and John Goodman. To be honest, this is barely indistinguishable from the one making the rounds in January, but I’m not averse to double-posting for the Coens.

And finally, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney experience mechanical difficulties at the ISS — er…was ammonia involved? — in the first teaser for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. I’ve been looking forward to this one for awhile, but I gotta say, all the noisy explosions in space vex me. It’d be a much more powerful trailer if you couldn’t hear any of that.