Director:Jay Roach
Cast:Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Teri Polo
Release:December 22, 2004
Synopsis:The makers and stars behind the runaway hit of 2000, Meet the Parents, are re-united in the follow-up comedy, Meet the Fockers. Now that Greg Focker (Stiller) is “in” with his soon-to-be in-laws, Jack (De Niro) and Dina Byrnes, it looks like smooth sailing for him and his fiancée, Pam (Polo). But that’s before Pam’s parents meet Greg’s parents, the Fockers. The hyper-relaxed Fockers and the tightly-wound Byrneses are woefully mismatched from the start, and no matter how hard Greg and Pam try, there is just no bringing their families together—which all adds up to a disastrously funny time of “getting to know you.”

Prognosis: Positive. This trailer likes to use the method of reminding people what came before it by using clips from the previous film to make sure everyone is on the same page.

’ I liken what they do here as the same thing that happens in a flick where one of the really smart scientist guys says to their boss, or vise versa, “why don’t you just put that in English for me” or “imagine I’m 13-years-old.” Never mind the fact that all the people that person is talking to is intelligent enough to understand it, they’re really only saying that because of you, the audience. With these clips, made funnier by Barbara Streisand’s “Memories” it helps to soften the audience-as-retards-who-wouldn’t-know-a-sequel-from-their-ass mentality that some of these trailer cobblers have in mind when they create these things.

What’s nice about this trailer, and keeps it from veering into scrotum punch bait-and-switch territory, is that the filmmakers give us some new footage to chew on and it’s pretty amusing. Streisand looks great as Focker’s mother, Stiller plays up the slighted, comedic straight man with great aplomb, and Dustin Hoffman, if he can do it, will hopefully provide a good comic foil to DeNiro’s tougher than-leather-attitude. What’s nice about the cast is that Streisand really can ham up the overbearing mother shtick with Hoffman playing the sensitive dad role if that’s the direction they want to take. If we get two Jack’s together in this thing I am not sure it would work as well. Thankfully we get Hoffman, sitting on the other side of a showering DeNiro, acting like it’s no big deal.

The teaser only gives a little glimpse of actual film, but it’s good enough for now to see that there could be something positive here. What I hope happens, and it looks like the trailer gives but a glimpse of the possibility, is that Focker’s family is somehow subtly twisted in nature. Slapstick really only worked in the first when Stiller’s intentions were always pure. If it’s done intentionally, though, in this sequel I can only portend a turkey worthy enough for your mom and dad to get a giggle before they catch the Early Bird special at Denny’s.

Director:Walter Salles
Cast:Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna, Mía Maestro, Mercedes Morán, Jorge Chiarella
Release:September 24, 2004
Synopsis:The Motorcycle Diaries is an adaptation of a journal written by Ernesto “Che” Guevara (Bernal) when he was 23 years old. He and his friend, Alberto Granado (de la Serna) are typical college students who, seeking fun and adventure before graduation, decide to travel across Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Peru in order to do their medical residency at a leper colony. Beginning as a buddy/road movie in which Ernesto and Alberto are looking for chicks, fun and adventure before they must grow up and have a more serious life. As is said in the film itself, it’s about “two lives running parallel for a while.” The two best friends start off with the same goals and aspirations, but by the time the film is over, it’s clear what each man’s destiny has become.

Prognosis: This deserves a Jeff Spicoli “Awesome. Totally Awesome.” Focus Features, responsible for ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and LOST IN TRANSLATION, have been putting out some great, evocative cinematic gems and this film looks to continue the tradition.

When you have a film that starts with a quote from Nelson Mandela about Che Guevara, you know that the source material is at least going to deal with someone who had something to do with changing the social consciousness of a generation. What’s amusing is the quote that follows after it: Che is fairly intellectual for a Latino. The quote came from a declassified CIA document.

A wonderful guitar soundtrack, rhythmic and soothing, sits gently underneath the narrator letting us know exactly what this movie is about: a road trip via motorcycle. Che and his traveling companion want to go five-thousand miles in four months exploring a single continent. They say the method by which they will explore, travel and experience this trip, as if to be daringly artistic, is by improvisation. All I see is two dudes on a motorcycle, but it is of little matter to me.

Gael looks ruggedly perfect for the role. This shows a dramatic departure from his pot-head role in Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, not to take away anything from the electric performance he gave in that film, and he appears to be the one man who could actually do the part without carrying a lot of baggage from other projects he might have been known for doing.

The content of this trailer, though, mostly uses physicality as its language, as you can’t have people actually speaking Spanish and putting up subtitles because that might scare whitey away from the art house, but it does everything beautifully. The cinematography feels humid and it sticks to you as images of hot days in the sun and sweaty afternoons on the road play out on the screen.

For some people like Ernest Hemmingway, traveling defined their character. For those who could do it, traveling took on a different meaning than it does now. Some now are able to afford the luxury to travel to different continents, to be immersed in other languages and experiences. These things shape the people they actually become and it nowhere does it look better illustrated in recent history than it does here.

I don’t usually opine for many artistic films in any given year, flicks like a new one entitled FATHERS AND SONS just reeks of the kind of art that’s destined to languish in its own dense pretentiousness, but this one really gets me wanting and waiting for the time when I can go out and see if Gael can become the kind of man who will eventually lead a nation to think differently about itself. Bravo, good sir.

Director:Joseph Ruben
Cast:Julianne Moore, Dominic West, Gary Sinise, Alfre Woodard, Linus Roache, Anthony Edwards
Release: September 24, 2004
Synopsis:Julianne Moore stars as Telly Paretta, a grieving mother struggling to cope with the loss of her 8-year-old son. She is stunned when her psychiatrist (Sinise) reveals that she has created eight years of memories about a son she never had. But when she meets a man (West) who has had a similar experience, Telly embarks on a search to prove her son‘s existence and her sanity.

Prognosis: Positive. Julianne Moore is the kind of A-lister who seems to from movies like EVOLUTION to things like THE HOURS with seamless grace and without a whole lot of people noticing the difference. Good for her.

This film, not poised to win any Oscar for direction, looks like one that your mom and dad, or your girlfriend because this movie deals with kids and we all know how the ladies respond to those little people, will have a good time seeing.

The flick starts out harmless enough. There are kids playing on a playground. They’re having a good time, probably are eating sand and slinging rocks at each other’s head while doing it, and Julianne Moore is the quintessential mother just watching it all with motherly grace. While this seems like a movie that’s going to end with the demise of her kid, per the policy on heavy mood music that chimes in what is supposed be family time, things start to drift from her fingers. While her husband, played by Gilbert aka Anthony Edwards (hey, that’s two Nerds in two weeks for those keeping score at home), seems like he’s not the one who is going to have anything to do what’s on the horizon I am stupefied by what is coming around the bend.

As Julianne appears to drift off to sleep, she gazes at a nicely taken JC Penny-style 5×7 of her and her family. Next morning, she wakes up, and, as the sun comes up, I am chanting for zombies to come barreling through her bedroom door. Unfortunately, this isn’t the right kind of movie. I’m bummed for what seems like hours but I did find the fact that the kid is no longer in the picture beside the bed, amusing. Of course Gilbert has no idea what’s going on when he’s confronted, he’s too busy trying to reconcile feelings of guilt for having left his first true geek love back at Adams College, but Julianne is adamant. She checks old scrapbooks: blank. She looks at old video tapes: blank.

Awesome. The kid never existed. She’s getting frantic, hysterical and about to lose her mind. This is the kind of film I can get behind.

Of course, Julianne is freaking out, calling out her kid’s name in the very same park from the beginning. Gary Sinise steps in as the resident shrink and lets her know some people invent entire lives and so we’re not too sure if she’s crazy or, because this is a Hollywood movie, if this isn’t some plot by bobble headed Martian extraterrestrials looking to do an anal probe on ol’ Moore. Then, like a page ripped right out of the TRADING PLACES script, she finds her husband again only to find out he doesn’t know who the crazy chick is. Me, personally? If I didn’t have anything going on, and I was as old as Anthony, and looked as old as Anthony, and didn’t already have a lady in my life, I might’ve played along and had a little crazy love. However, what does happen is that she tracks the dude from the beginning of the trailer, who was in the park with her, Dominic West, and lets him know how crazy she is. Of course, he doesn’t believe a word she’s talking about and tries to show her the quickest way to Bellevue but, before he can say “How long have you been off your meds?” Julianne rips some fabric off the man’s wall, a shocked look glazes his O face, and she shows him she’s not entirely insane.

After this it’s go time as the man from the Wire tells Julianne that he remembers things now, she’s not alone, blah blah blah, but before he can completely reconcile, and apologize for being a little bitch with her, some dudes accost homeboy in the street and try to shut him up. Julianne takes off on foot before she’s taken out and both she and our main man manage to not only escape but are able to kidnap an “agent” who was trying to kidnap them (I know, I’m getting confused at this point, too) strap him to a chair and try to find out what’s what. When they start asking questions about what is happening to the two of them our hostage quietly whispers says that “they” are listening (we’re never really told who) and then, in one of the most abrupt non sequiturs I’ve seen in a while, an entire roof of a house is ripped off and we’re all left holding our collective Johnson’s wondering what the hell just happened.

I may not be too far off with my mutant alien theory.

Director: Peter Hyams
Cast: Edward Burns, Ben Kingsley, Catherine McCormack
Release: August 8, 2004
Synopsis: Based on a short story by master of science fiction Ray Bradbury, the sci-fi action adventure A Sound of Thunder is set in the future, when time travel is not only possible – it’s a lucrative monopoly. It’s especially profitable for Charles Hatton (Kingsley), the owner of Time Safari Inc., a travel agency that specializes in escorting wealthy clients on exclusive hunting trips back to the Prehistoric Age. Under the leadership of seasoned scout Dr. Travis Ryer (Burns), participants are permitted to hunt and kill dinosaurs provided they follow a set of strenuous rules. These guidelines are intended to protect the creatures’ natural habitats and prevent time travelers from impacting the course of evolution. When an expedition is compromised and the rules are broken, the hunters return to the future…and discover the world is a markedly different place than it was when they left. As “time waves” ripple from the Prehistoric past through the present to the uncharted future, Ryer teams up with Sonia Rand (McCormack), the inventor of the time travel technology, to unravel the mystery behind the catastrophic historical changes that are threatening to erase humanity from existence.

Prognosis: Negative. This movie looks so bad that I am not sure if the fault lay in the hair helmet on Sir Kingsley or if it’s the Sci-Fi Channel movie-of-the-week look to this B-movie.

The movie starts out sweet enough, though. We’re told how life is a balance and how a minor infraction can cause total insanity. There is thunder and rain and slo-mo effects made with water droplets but what’s weird is that all that other imagery stops and from that point we go from a lecture on nature to a screenshot that says Chicago: 2054. Even before I start to mentally ponder the implications of my home town Chicago circa 2054 (I wonder if I can still get an Italian Beef? I hope the Cubs have at least made it to another playoff game. Is Daley still the mayor? ), you know, the basics, I get a glimpse of Ben Kingsley I’ve never seen before. That is quite the silver coif. Does this flash of the future imply that hairstyles will all change? Hell no, because Ben’s the only mo-fo with a ‘do that looks like he stepped out of a time machine set 100 years too late. Everyone else looks perfectly normal.

Disregarding that minor quibble, Ben lays it out cryptically: someone is going out on a hunt and someone’s gonna die; again, I know, it confused me too. The professionals involved, who ostensibly are going out to do the “hunting,” as Ben puts it, look like soldiers from HALO but don’t have quite the same heavy hardware to back them up. I am still confused how everything goes together and am trying to figure out why these solider guys look like they’re walking into X-Men’s Savage Land, but it’s the T-Rex that pulls this thing together. Dinosaur? Huh? Where the hell is this going? In true Harryhausen fashion we get a dinosaur that appears to be on loan from PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE. You know the part I’m talking about. It’s that dream sequence where the thing eats Pee-Wee’s bike? Yeah, in all its 1985ian splendor we get a T-Rex that looks as menacing as a case of scabies.

Some of the more astute readers of Ray Bradbury out there know the plot already but what I understand this movie to be about as I watch Edward Burns pick up a paycheck, er, I mean, act is that someone stepped off a path somewhere in this jungle land and this accounts for why there are dinosaurs that are out of control (seen it in JURASSIC PARK). There are small bugs that seem to eat people whole (already done in THE MUMMY), and this adds up as to why there are big bats and large snakes (LOST BOYS and ANACONDA, respectively). There are baboons, though. If they have red asses I will, at the very least, give the film a pass; baboons are funny and cool.

I really can’t explain what is going on by the end, not with the plot but with the actors who agreed to do this, but call me crazy when I say this looks like an utter disappointment. It’s too bad as I saw Ray Bradbury looking genuinely happy as he introduced this at the Comic-Con this year. I do like director Peter Hyams’ work and I hate to think this may tarnish the reputation he built off of TIMECOP which seems to me to be a better time transplanting movie than this. Where’s some Van Damme when you need it? I can imagine it: Jean-Claude is in a pith helmet and some green Steve Irwin plum smuggler shorts. He spots a T-Rex and walks slowly towards it with his shoulder blades raised above his neck, spinning his head around back and forth, up and down, ready to inflict some Van-Damage. “Aaa..’scuse me Mr. Dinosaur, have you met these two fists of human evolution? You ‘bout to, my good friend.” A couple of splits later, some ballerina moves to look like he can actually practice some martial arts, he ends everything by vaulting a coconut into the T-Rex’s mouth.

I would see that movie.

Director: Hugo Rodríguez
Cast: Marta Belaustegui, Rosa María Bianchi, Lucas Crespi, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Rafael Inclán, Enoc Leaño, Diego Luna, Carmen Madrid, Jesús Ochoa
Release: August 20, 2004
Synopsis: From the producers of “Amores Perros” comes “Nicotina,” a highly stylized crime caper set in Mexico City about a simple exchange that goes awry, causing the lives of nine unsuspecting characters to explode in one tumultuous night over a fortune in diamonds. Diego Luna stars as computer hacker Lolo, who is infatuated with his neighbor Andrea (Marta Belaustegui) and catalogs her every move via high-tech peeping devices. Lolo teams with amateur criminals Tomson (Jesús Ochoa) and his younger counterpart Nene (Lucas Crespi) in a deal with a Russian mobster (Norman Sotolongo) that involves the exchange of diamonds for computer access to Swiss bank accounts. But the deal goes terribly wrong after Lolo’s attempts to spoil Andrea’s romantic trysts spiral out of control. Down the street, the irritable pharmacist Beto (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and his fed-up wife Clara (Carmen Madrid) get inadvertently entangled in the exchange, along with the humble barber Goyo (Rafael Inclán) and his domineering other half Carmen (Rosa María Bianchi). Infected with diamond lust, these characters become obsessed with the intoxicating possibility of an easy life and their greed quickly transforms into fiery desperation. When the haze finally clears, computers have been hacked, people have been whacked and lives have gone up in a cloud of smoke.

Prognosis: Positive. I think the reason I liked this trailer the most this week is that it tries to emulate a genre, the multiple story line film, and it keeps things gritty, interesting and doesn’t let up until the end.

I’ve seen comparisons of this film to PULP FICTION, SNATCH, LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, but this only serves to understand the thin surface of what looks like an interesting caper flick. When this trailer opens up, with Tejano-esque trumpets blaring, we see that what we have here is a kid, the other half of the self-gratifying duo from Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, hacking into some Swiss bank accounts. Now, I understand the derivative use of the Swiss as the nexus for all things crime related. In fact, I half expect, when I eventually get there in real life, to find men with briefcases handcuffed to their wrists, trench coats pulled close to the body, women with ostentatiously large and bushy blonde wigs on as they don dark sunglasses and pull their trench coats even closer to their bodies, but, as it pertains to this trailer, all is forgiven as we quickly see this movie is all a matter of diamonds, chicks, guns, and a pissed off Russian; it’s a quadfecta in my book.

Anyhow, after the opening, the trailer breaks things down real stupid-like so even you at home, who don’t parlez Espanol or who are illiterate, can enjoy all the foreign goodness as we are introduced to all the main players. For those of you who can decipher English I encourage you to read the labels given to all the people shown in this trailer. We see that a hacker in Spanish is called El Hacker, a Russian is called El Russian, a barber is called El Barber, and a woman is called La Chick. Had I known Spanish would’ve been this easy I really would’ve paid attention to Sra. Riesco’s lectures on the benefits of using the past imperfect in everyday Spanish parlance.

A pervish related note about La Chick: you get a little sneak peek at her lacy undergoods so it may behoove you to actually check this thing out. So, after we get some of her, the narrative picks up and we are thoroughly contorted and twisted as we try to understand who is playing whom in this grand scheme of thievery. I don’t know if the hacker kid is above reproach, but it makes sense that he should be our protagonist. For the rest of the clowns that pack this movie I am not really sure if it’s a free-for-all or if there is someone we should be pulling for by the end of the credits. I do have the keen vision to see that there is a lot of bumbling and cat-and-mouse type chasing that is always a hoot to watch on the big screen. Also, the folks at The Truth may agree with it but there is a damn large amount of cigs being puffed in just this trailer alone, hence the Spanish cognate as a title, but I am not sure how it plays into the larger narrative. Again, without knowing any more than the gravelly, throaty narrator is giving up I don’t know any more about how things may or may not end. I do like the mariachi music near the end of this thing and it adds a Latin flavor that doesn’t escape my attention.

Now, it may or may not help that this movie is assisted by the producers of AMORES PERROS, the definition of a producer nowadays being open to more interpretation than Bill Clinton’s examination of the word “sex” under oath, but it does give this otherwise small film a name cache that can only help it get into a few more theaters than it otherwise would in a couple of months.

Now, if only someone can explain why in God’s name someone decided to defraud the fine Spanish speaking population of the world into thinking the accordion is a socially acceptable instrument, which it is not unless you live in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and like to say “ya hey der” as a way to start a conversation, I think I’ll be all set.

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