A little self-awareness can go a long way in a business where everyone tends to take themselves too seriously. There’s a difference between paying due respect to serious subject matter in a movie and understanding that the marketing needn’t be as grave as the movie’s themes. The folks behind this week’s new World War II drama, Pressure, seem to have struck a sweet spot in the run-up to its release. On Sunday, a special sneak preview was hosted for a very specific audience. Some would say that this is the film’s target audience. For the marketing to have clarity about this instead of trying to appeal to everyone between the ages of 7 and 70 is a refreshing change of pace — it’s certainly more refreshing than the bald-people-only screening held for Bugonia some months ago.
Pressure unfolds in the tense 72 hours before D-Day, and a meteorologist on a mission to convince Dwight D. Eisenhower to delay the Allied invasion of Europe by a day. The future of civilization was at stake, and something as innocuous such as bad timing could have changed the face of the world as we know it. The film stars Brendan Fraseras Eisenhower and Andrew Scottas the meteorologist on a race against time to delay the invasion. Pressure was directed by Anthony Maras, who broke out with the very tense, fact-based thriller Hotel Mumbai.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
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🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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Find Out More About the ‘Pressure’ Sneak Preview
The movie will be released (in a rather underwhelming number of screens) on May 29, the same day as A24’s Backrooms. It will likely have a difficult time competing with the new horror movie, especially with holdover titles such as The Mandalorian and Grogu and Obsessionstill vying for attention. Pressureneeds all the help it can get, and what better way to generate buzz than by hosting a sneak preview screening for its target audience: dads. The screening took place on Sunday in Culver City, and guests were “encouraged to attend with their dad (or favorite father figure) and fully commit to the bit by dressing like them.” Patrons were also encouraged to embrace the bit and come dressed in “polos, cargo shorts, white sneakers, tucked-in tees, grilling aprons.” Described in the event description as “the most dad movie ever made,” Pressure is certainly designed to appeal to audiences who’ve made similar WWII programming such as Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and more recently, Greyhound and Nurembergsuch massive hits at home. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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