In today's politically charged world, a film about the G7 might not initially seem like your next must-watch addition to your ever-expanding watchlist. But what if it were a G7 movie featuring Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Alicia Vikander, and Roy Dupuis, all adopting peculiar accents, portraying bumbling world leaders whose cozy Summit is disrupted by the discovery of a mummified corpse, some quirky dealings with a giant brain, and more ill-advised, high-powered liaisons than you'd find in an early season episode of Game Of Thrones? That's precisely what we're in for with 'Rumours,' a genre-bending new satire from the filmmakers behind 'The Green Fog,' Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, and producer Ari Aster. Check out the wild new trailer below:
Where do you even start to dissect that trailer? It has the visual style of a Wes Anderson film, the tone of something you might find in a mid-90s video store, and its pool of references seems to span from 'Night Of The Living Dead' to 'Carry On' to 'The Cabin In The Woods.' Within the first 10 seconds, we hear Blanchett's German PM Hilda Ortmann discussing unearthed 'bog bodies' and Charles Dance engaging in some Kenneth Williams-worthy innuendo. By the time the two-and-a-half-minute red band trailer is over, we've seen Roy Dupuis hurling makeshift projectiles at the undead, Blanchett engaging in a tryst in the woods amid a suspected apocalypse, and, of course, the giant brain. For what it's worth, here's the official synopsis: 'Rumours follows the seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies at the annual G7 summit, where they attempt to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis… These so-called leaders become spectacles of incompetence, contending with increasingly surreal obstacles in the misty woods as night falls and they realize they are suddenly alone.'
In a week where Lionsgate inked a deal with Runway to mine its library for AI training, James Cameron joined the board of directors at Stability AI, and London's Evening Standard newspaper unveiled plans to use Artificial Intelligence to perform necromancy on art critic Brian Sewell amid significant job cuts, 'Rumours'—as utterly bonkers and wildly entertaining as it appears—seems to be a timely reminder that no machine can match the sheer creative spontaneity of the human brain. Giant brains, Iron Age mummies, and questionable-accented Cate Blanchett and Charles Dance? Bring on December 6, the UK release date of 'Rumours,' we say. And may such cinematic madness, handcrafted by humans, continue.
