David Lowery

Law is in talks to play the villain of Disney's upcoming live-action movie.

David Lowery’s romantic, winsome heist movie is a perfect send-ff to Robert Redford, starring in his final role.

Robert Redford reunites with David Lowery to play an outlaw in his final role before retiring from acting.

Netflix western Godless may have mis-marketed itself as female-driven, but the idea of a mining town run by women feels notably specific. So much so, in fact, that filmmaker David Lowery mused about the similarity to one of his own projects, and producer Steven Soderbergh has aggressively come out against the notion.

When you go to the movies this summer you’ll be greeted with a plethora of superheroes, action films, and on-going cinematic universes. But nestled within those familiar franchises you’ll find A Ghost Story, one of the most unique movies in decades.

There’s really nothing like David Lowery’s new film. A Ghost Story isn’t the typical haunted house tale we’re used to. But Lowery’s transcendent, meditative film captures the haunting realization of how fleeting our time in this world is. The film was hailed as one of the best out of Sundance this year (you can read our review here), which makes today’s debut of the first trailer all the more exciting.

If people were ever scared of the image of a ghost as a big white sheet with two black eyeholes those days are long gone. Today, the image is a total joke; the go-to costume for lazy children everywhere. One of the most amazing things about David Lowery’s A Ghost Story — and there are a few amazing things about this audacious movie — is the way it imbues that cliched ghost with renewed horror and even poignance. You will never look at that ghost emoji the same way again.

One of the greatest breakouts of the past five years was David Lowery’s Texan crime-romance Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which starred Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. It got Lowery on Disney’s radar to helm this summer’s Pete’s Dragon (which is fantastic), but the trio hasn’t worked together since that first 2013 film. Or so we thought — it appears that Affleck, Mara, and Lowery secretly got together over the summer to make a mysterious new film.

Disney’s 1977 musical ‘Pete’s Dragon’ was my favorite movie as a kid, one I watched obsessively on VHS. In retrospect, I can now look back on it as an adult and admit it was a pretty awful movie — it was about an orphan whose adoptive family chased him while gleefully singing songs about abusing him. The songs were bad (though my 6-year-old self enjoyed them), the acting was as campy and mawkish, and the shoddy animation looks laughable today. But as much as the movie was a dated element of its time, it still told an emotionally relatable story that, when handled by Disney, can become timeless. It only makes sense that the studio remade ‘Pete’s Dragon,’ keeping that same sentiment, but without the hokey songs and with more impressive visual effects.

It’s been decades since I saw the original Pete’s Dragon, but from what I remember, I don’t get a lot of it in this trailer for David Lowery’s remake of the 1977 Disney film. Instead, it feels a lot more like The Iron Giant mixed with E.T., How to Train Your Dragon, and even the recent live-action Jungle Book directed by Jon Favreau. There’s not much in the way of wacky mischief and wild antics from an invisible dragon, and much more wonder and melancholy about the tender relationship between a boy and his amazing dragon, and the close-minded adults who want to destroy him.