Fifteen out of 16 is pretty good odds, right? Let me just do the math here… yes. That’s like 94%. So if something happened 15 out of 16 times, including the 12 prior times, you’d have to say there’s a very good chance something is going to happen again. What the hell am I talking about? Well, The Life of Chuck, the new Mike Flanagan film based on a novella by Stephen King, won the prestigious “People’s Choice Award” last year at the Toronto Film Festival. Fifteen of the last 16 films to win that award were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards and it’s happened the previous 12 times. Oh, and five of them have won.
So yeah, Neon has every right to be confident about the film, which opens in limited release Friday and goes wide June 13. We’ll have a full review later this week but, spoiler alert, we agree that it’s fantastic—and in this final trailer for the movie, which is very, very spoiler free, you’ll see the chorus of praise being heaped on it.
What great about that trailer (If you can really even call it a “trailer” at a whopping 75 seconds) is that it doesn’t tell you anything about the movie except “it’s really freaking good.” What The Life of Chuck is actually about is right there in the title. It’s the story of a man, played by Tom Hiddleston and others, who we watch live a life that seems relatively normal on the surface, but goes beyond in other places. It’s so close to release, it would be a sin to spoil much more than that but it’s told in reverse order as three separate, but related, stories, and as those critics say, it’s wonderful.
It also has an incredible cast, which is led by Hiddleston, but also has Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara, Matthew Lillard, Carl Lumbly, Harvey Guillén, Kate Siegel, Nick Offerman, David Dastmalchian, Rahul Kohli, Heather Langenkamp, and others. Everyone wanted to be a part of this one, and it’s better off for it.
Again, written and directed by Mike Flanagan based on a story by Stephen King, The Life of Chuck opens in limited release June 6 and everywhere on June 13. And, odds are, it’s one that you’ll have to see for those Oscar polls later this year.
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