Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Entertainment
  3. News

Watch the intriguing new trailer for Woody Allen’s Irrational Man

By
Irrational Man Official TRAILER (2015) Emma Stone, Woody Allen Comedy Movie
The next film from director Woody Allen, Irrational Man, has a new trailer and boy is it interesting.
Recommended Videos

The film tells the story of a small-town philosophy professor Abe Lucas (played by Joaquin Phoenix) who is suffering from an existential funk. Thankfully, his life is given new purpose once he begins a relationship with one of his students, Emma Stone, who plays a character whose name is yet to be revealed.

Related

The trailer starts off with faculty members joking that Lucas will be like “Viagara for the University’s philosophy department.” Later, we find that Lucas is actually having “performance” issues, as he spirals deeper into depression and alcohol. Judging by the first few scenes, the film seems at first to be another by-the-numbers tale about an aging white guy who has a mental breakdown, only to find true meaning in a younger companion. However, then the story seems to break left, as Abe has a sort of awakening.

Frankly, it’s hard to tell what sort of relationship Lucas and Stone’s character have. The trailer shows them getting closer and closer while Lucas is down, and then pulling apart after his new-found zest for life appears. Then there’s his affair with a different woman (played by Parker Posey), who says he brought out the caveman in the bedroom. Where did this transformation come from? Why is Lucas playing Russian roulette at a party? And where are we being led by the film’s many inner monologues?

It often pays for a director to be a little vague about plot points in a trailer to lead the audience in. Still, the whimsical nature of the trailer and the enigmatic characters certainly give many more questions than answers here. Luckily, this is Woody Allen, so even if the film fails to lead us to a definitive truth, we can be confident in a character-driven journey that is entertaining, if not always satisfying when it comes to wrapping up the storyline with a nice bow. Anyone who saw the acclaimed director’s 2013 beauty Blue Jasmine can relate to that.

Irrational Man will be the 51st of Allen’s illustrious career and along with Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, the film costars Parker Posey, Ben Rosenfield, Ethan Phillip and Jamie Blackley. It will be released in theaters July 24, 2015.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Steve Smith
Steve Smith
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Steve doesn’t really like to write about himself in the third person. He’s not The Rock. He is, however, a writer who has…
The 50 best shows on Netflix in May 2024
Jeff Bridges in A Man in Full.

Netflix keeps such a regular schedule of updates that there's not much difference in terms of new content between the beginning of the month and any other week. To kick things off in May, Netflix has debuted David E. Kelley's adaptation of Tom Wolfe's novel A Man in Full, while also adding the supernatural thriller Evil.

Neither of these series have broken into the list of the most popular shows on Netflix yet. But that could change by the end of the weekend, especially since A Man in Full is the first Netflix original of the month. Thankfully, it won't be the last, as more new shows are on the way in May. And you can keep up with all of them by checking back every Friday as we update our list of the best shows on Netflix right now.

Read more
The best new shows to stream on Netflix, Hulu, Max (HBO), and more
Elisabeth Moss standing by a mirror, looking behind her in a scene from The Veil.

FX and Hulu's spy thriller The Veil debuted on the last day of April, and it's still one of the best new shows to stream this week, alongside the third season premiere of the Max original comedy series Hacks. However, Star Wars fans are going to have to wait until Saturday, May 4 to watch the new animated anthology Star Wars: Tales of the Empire.

But if you missed any of last week's new shows, Knuckles, Dead Boy Detectives, and The Big Door Prize are still worth watching this month. You can find those series and more in our weekly roundup of the best new shows to stream below.

Read more
10 best movies of 2024 so far, ranked
Paul walks in the desert in Dune: Part Two.

This is sure to be an unusual year for Hollywood cinema. With the regular cadence of franchise blockbusters disrupted by the Hollywood strikes of 2023, there are fewer surefire bets at the box office. And some of the studios’ supposedly safer gambles, like Madame Web and Argylle, have already fallen flat upon release. Of course, this doesn’t mean there hasn’t been anything worth seeing in theaters or streaming at home.
In addition to a few standout franchise entries, the year to date has seen a number of terrific smaller-scale dramas, horror flicks, and indie comedies, many of them by debuting filmmakers. With luck, the relative lack of competition for audience attention will allow one or more underdogs to make a big cultural splash.

10. Abigail

Read more