A movie about one member of a famous New York City string quartet feeling inferior and making a power play doesn’t, on its face, sound enthralling. Sprinkle in some Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the story’s arrogant, entitled Walter White, Catherine Keener as his also-in-the-quartet wife, and Christopher Walken, and suddenly you’re looking at an intriguing film. Walken appears to be doing some real showpiece acting, playing the quartet’s leader, who’s facing retirement due to Parkinson’s. The latter half of the trailer is set to Walken monologuing about Beethoven’s “Opus 131,” a difficult seven-movement piece that’s totally analogous to the plot of A Late Quartet.
