The best movie trailers of 2020

The for John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place elegantly (if perhaps out of necessity) highlighted its spooky stretches of silence and generally wordless storytelling. There’s more action, more dialogue, and more characters in the preview for the sequel, presumably as a reflection of the uptick in all three we can expect from the film itself. Paramount doesn’t reiterate the premise, counting on audiences to remember the dire consequences of, say, setting off a noise trap of dangling glass bottles. The Aliens-to-the-first-film’s-Alien vibe extends to the most inspired choice here: the nearly minute-long excerpt of a Children Of Men-style oner shot from the inside of a car—a flashback sequence the trailer wisely, thrillingly sticks up front. The clip’s as tense and exciting as you hope the movie might be, once it finally makes it to theaters next year.

It’s almost unfair to cite the trailer for a Wes Anderson movie as among the year’s best. The director’s style is so visually appealing—and so simpatico, in its symmetry and bright colors, with the principles of advertising— that you could practically put images from one of his movies in random order and it would still be enticing. Truthfully, this first look at The French Dispatch might be more organized than strictly necessary; it probably didn’t need as much exposition as it offers. Still, like most trailers for the guy’s work, it’s a giddy, nonstop blast of capering movie stars, striking compositions, and priceless sight gags—a Wes Anderson movie in miniature. And credit whoever put it together for preserving his comic timing, particularly during an absolutely perfect closing joke. Sometimes letting something sell itself is the smartest way to sell it.

Spike Lee is another filmmaker with a style so electrifying and one-of-a-kind that you don’t really need to gild the lily to get asses in seats. But the trailer for his summer Netflix joint almost works as its own self-contained blast of agitprop entertainment: less a summary of the movie’s pleasures than a companion piece assembled from its parts. Set to the psychedelic soul of The Chambers Brothers—in one of the more eccentric touches, shots of the band performing “Time Has Come” have been spliced throughout—it’s a propulsive montage of jungle warfare, spelled-out lyrics, still images, archival footage, and one incredible change in aspect ratio. At nearly three minutes, this may be a little long for a trailer. But hey, it’s for a Spike Lee joint. Including everything but the kitchen sink is sort of in the spirit of the work.

Editing is crucial to Garrett Bradley’s black-and-white documentary . The team that cut the trailer for the film recognizes that and mirrors it beautifully, taking cues from the director’s elliptical approach, how she juxtaposes past with present. As in the movie, the focus is on the emotional toll Fox Rich’s decades-long crusade to free her husband from a draconian prison sentence has taken on her and the family. In one echo of Bradley’s structural strategy, the trailer breaks up the flood of poetic achronological footage (and the voiceover that sometimes guides it) with the periodic ring of a telephone and the conversations an increasingly weary Rich has with the courthouse representative on the other end of the line. This is a preview in the truest sense—you don’t just get an idea of what Time’s about but also, in Roger Ebert’s parlance, how it’s about. And it’s as elegant and nonlinear and lovely as the movie it’s marketing.

Speaking of nonlinear… The relentlessly studied first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s knotty time-travel thriller actually dropped last December. But given that we usually publish this feature before the end of the year, anything from late 2019 seems like fair game. Besides, no list of 2020’s finest movie campaigns would be complete without this perfect object of obsession, a tantalizing microcosm of jaw-dropping imagery, teased sci-fi mythology, and very Nolan cosmetic concerns. One might even argue that it’s the ideal version of —all sleek style and no headaches, and humming with all the possibilities of where the film could have gone, like a mystery box designed by Schrödinger.

There was no way to make Charlie Kaufman’s unclassifiable mind-bender about identity and the nightmare of meeting the parents seem like a “normal” movie. Thankfully, the reliably brilliant editors at Mark Woollen & Associates (who also cut the spots at No. 3, No. 4, and No. 7 on this very list) don’t aim for misleading accessibility. Instead, they key into the unusual rhythms and tonal/genre shifts of , borrowing some of Kaufman’s own tricks (like the way people keep stepping on star Jessie Buckley’s voiceover) while deploying some of their own (like a soundscape that grows more chaotic with the addition of noises put on loop—a dog endlessly shaking, Toni Collette cackle-crying, etc.) The result teases everything this deranged movie offers without spoiling any of it. What more could you want from a trailer?