Director: Mark Moormann
Cast: Ginger Baker, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Thelonious Monk, Tito Puente, Otis Redding
Release: August 13th, 2004; On DVD, August 24th.
Synopsis: If you picked some of the all-time great albums in American rock, soul, and jazz, chances are one name might be found on the back of almost every one: Tom Dowd–the secret behind five decades of brilliant music, an unsung hero, producer and recording pioneer. From the perfection of live mixing to the introduction of eight-track recording, the mythology of exactly how much impact Dowd has had is still up for grabs. His diverse and genuine love of work is remembered in part through intimate interviews with several musical icons and personal friends..

Prognosis: Positive. Have hook, will travel.

“You always gotta remember the name of the game is: What does it sound like?” How true it is. Ray Charles posthumously opens up this trailer with telling us what makes a great song. In a time when substance passes for what amounts to, really, a turd in a punchbowl while every PR lackey will tell you again and again that it’s really what you’re thirsting for, regardless of its hideousness, it’s warming to see a movie about a man who has helped create the foundation on which many careers have been built.

Yes, we do get the obligatory Sundance Official Selection card flashed at us in all its ripe leafiness, but it’s ok here and they get a pass because not only is this a documentary on music that has stood the test of radio time but because they follow a good introduction by Ray Charles with Eric Clapton. Now, what makes things interesting here is that Eric tells us he wasn’t interested in working with people “like that” and he doesn’t tell us what kind of people he’s referencing. It’s confusing but I assume it’s because they’re just building this guy up.

“A brilliant documentary”- Rolling Stone

Then, after Eric, we get Gregg Allman making some of the same insinuations about the as-yet nameless dude in question. Obviously, they’re both talking about master music producer Tom Dowd but for the average layperson who doesn’t know anything about anyone they might start to get lost or, worse yet, annoyed that they don’t know who this guy is. Ah, but we are not forsaken as, almost as if channeling the spirit of Miss Cleo, we get Tom Dowd’s name tossed out there as the man who everyone in this trailer is talking endlessly about in such cryptic fashion.

So, to head off the next question of what makes this mo-fo so special we hear from the man himself. To hear him tell it he can lay claim to being front, center and accounted for when soul songstress Aretha Franklin, the great Charlie Parker, the cheeky Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Darrin, Rod Stewart, The Coasters, Lynard Skynard, and even the Allman Brothers all laid down some of their best tracks. “Music has been very kind to me,” Dowd says, as he walks down a hallway full of gold records.

“One of the very best music documentaries in recent years” – Film Threat.

Eric Clapton gives the man a high compliment about what Dowd is able to get out a performer when he’s recording and it let’s you know what kind of a force this guy is. Even though this is where the trailer ends it is an unbelievably abrupt stop; there is still not a lot we know about the guy, however, yet we’re asked to go spend the money and see the film. What helps make the decision easier, I believe, is this: the quotes. There are enough high praises that even if you aren’t impressed that the film is being distributed by Palm Pictures, a wonderful company putting out solid and well-executed pictures for the dozen or so people who really dig this sort of thing, you can be assured in the knowledge that someone else has taken the hard part out of guessing whether this is worth seeing and lets you know whether you should spend your money learning about a man most people will never know was behind their favorite oldies.

Director:Brad Anderson
Cast: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sánchez-gijón, John Sharian, Michael Ironside, Larry Gilliard, Reg E. Cathey, Anna Massey
Release:October 22, 2004
Synopsis: Trevor Reznik, a machinist, has lost the ability to sleep. But this is no ordinary insomnia. Trevor has not slept in a year. Fatigue has led to a shocking deterioration of his physical and mental health. Suspicious of his appearance, Trevor’s co-workers first shy away from him, then turn against him after he’s involved in a shop accident that costs a man his arm. They blame Trevor for the accident. He has become a liability to himself and others, and now they want him out.

View Trailer:
* Small (Quick Time)

Prognosis: Positive. Just based on Bale’s committal of the role I am attracted to this film like a fly to a bug zapper.

An industrial looking clock sits on a perch. It’s 7:30. The clock is dirty, grimy, and the time it’s telling is probably sullied with the dank air its hands move around in; the tick-tock doesn’t make a sound, but a series of what seem like air raid sirens go off in the dead of night. Well oiled sprockets jump up and down. Sparks from a cutter methodically do their work without missing a moment of their own time. There’s a hand that appears. It belongs to one of many who choose to work on an assembly line: Christian Bale. He does his work at his workstation, working tirelessly, as the trailer flashes briefly to a moment Bale has to himself, shirtless, on his couch. He looks lost behind the eyes. Christian secures small squares of paper on the wall. He pauses while doing his job to look over at a coworker and who gives him the international signal of “you’re gonna die.”

There’s a break in the action to show Jennifer Jason Leigh commenting on Bale’s gaunt appearance. Someone else makes a statement about his weight loss. He gives up some information that he has possibly not slept in about a year.

“How do you wake up…”

One of the pieces of paper is marked with a number 1. It is attached to the refrigerator. “from a nightmare if you’re not asleep?”

Christian looks at himself in a gloomy mirror. He’s spooked by something and runs through a subway station. The number 1 turns out not to be a number at all but the start of a hangman game. Bale spells out Miller. What’s odd is that Bale then confronts a man, possibly or not possibly named Miller, as he yells at him to stop messing with his head, as the possible Miller punches Bale in the stomach. What? Bale is losing it as he goes through different combinations of names he can spell that end in E R. He even goes loopy at the workplace, the very best place to lose it, and starts screaming and shoving people around him.

By the end of this trailer we get the gist that Michael Ironside hasn’t been truly memorable as the throaty bad guy since TOTAL RECALL and that this film, which seems to crib a little from Fincher (but that’s ok), looks about as happy as a Reverend Jim Jones & The People’s Temple Kool-Aid drink-a-thon. There is even some coarse language in this trailer which gets some of my attention but with the way cable television is going these days in shows like Rescue Me dropping an s-bomb here or there isn’t such a big deal.

The movie has a brooding sensibility to it, the likes of which hasn’t been seen for a while in the cineplexes lately. Bale looks riveting and the trailer doesn’t give away one ounce of the plot’s ending. Although, to be fair, the very end, where Bale spells out something else ending in E R, even Ray Orbison could’ve seen that one coming.

Director:John Duigan
Cast:Charlize Theron, Penelope Cruz, Stuart Townsend, Thomas Kretschmann
Release:September 17, 2004 (limited)
Synopsis: When 18-year-old Guy Malyon takes up a scholarship at Cambridge University his world is forever changed following a passionate affair with a stunning, aristocratic but hedonistic fellow student, Gilda Besse, which takes him across Europe from the killing fields of Spain’s Civil War to occupied France… before a dangerous secret threatens to tear them apart.

Prognosis: Negative. Many things can be said about period pieces but they really don’t get my notice unless there’s a really good reason. Lesbians are a very good start.

Stewart Townsend’s pasty face, which I really cannot see in any other role than his vampy vampire bit that he employed in that awful Anne Rice adaptation, QUEEN OF THE DAMNED, is back for a go-around with Charlize Theron. Last seen under a bit of make-up, prosthetic camouflaging, and a box of Krispy Kremes she is back to her blonde bombshell roots.

The trailer begins with Stewart saying that Charlize had no idea how much he adored her at Cambridge. She asks if he was married yet. The images that dance around as they have their little play talk are wonderful to look at and admire. The era that this movie is taking place around is World War two and, judging by the explosions that are rocking the screen, I am betting dollars to doughnuts we’re in Europe. It’s then the announcer guy tells us something about passion and unleashing or something to that effect but I am just too damned interested in Charlize in bathtub to even care what’s being said. Ooo…there’s even a little sensual whimpering as she’s in the terrible throes of passion.

We get some crap about Stewart moving around somewhere but, again, my attention is taken away, this time, by a heavily made-up Penelope Cruz who starts to go at it with Charlize. Stewart is somehow allowed in bed with the two of them but it’s of little importance as the duo heretofore known as Charlize/Cruz start sensually finding their own passion as they dance slowly, erotically, with one another in a club.

Then some Nazis come into the picture. Right on, I say. First you get woman on woman love, then you get some stuff exploding, and then you get some Nazis. It seems that Stewart feels the need to go fight against those evil swastika loving bastards but there is a choice to be made. He has to choose between desire and duty. He can either leave the picture to go off alone and die on the battlefield or he can stay behind and try to horn in on Penelope’s action. I say pick duty and let Charlize/Cruz explore their desires without him around. I’m wrong, of course, as Stewart keeps his heart open for Charlize as Cruz, who ends up being a nurse in the war and finds Stewart, tells him that Charlize couldn’t love her the way she loves him. And then, as if this is one big joke, they show Charlize essentially giving up everything the ancient women from the Isle of Lesbos (it’s for real, I swear) fought so hard for: the right for every woman to be with a woman and live in harmony with those women and get freaky with other women should the need arise. She gives it up and it seems like that’s the end of the frigging movie. There is no suspense, no drama. No need to go to the theater to watch it unfold. It’s all right here in the trailer. This could have been a much more different film but instead they take the safe, hetro route. For shame.

This trailer ranks right up there with WIMBELDON as one of the most wantonly revealing trailers of the year. I get the beginning, the middle and end all in under two minutes. Regardless of the argument that those who find the story intriguing will still want to go I am wondering about that pesky small contingent of people who still want to see a film and be surprised by how it ends. I guess I’m in a minority.

Director: Gabriele Muccino
Cast: Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Laura Morante, Nicoletta Romanoff, Monica Bellucci, Silvio Muccino, Gabriele Lavia
Release: Fall, 2004 (limited)
Synopsis: REMEMBER ME, MY LOVE, Muccino’s bittersweet drama delves into the lives and loves of a modern Italian family whose individual aspirations pull at the seams of their increasingly fragile unit. As their children come of age and begin to follow their own dreams, Carlo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) finds himself torn between a passionate affair with Alessia (Monica Bellucci) and his wife Guilia (Laura Morante), while Guilia must face her own buried desires. REMEMBER ME, MY LOVE premiered at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival and screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. It was nominated for 10 Donatello Awards (Italy’s Oscar) and was one of Italy’s most successful films in 2003. It stars Monica Bellucci, currently seen the world over in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST.

Prognosis: Positive. Monica Bellucci.

I wasn’t really exposed, you could say, to her body of work until IRREVERSIBLE dropped into movie theaters last year. Even though a rape scene is no way to really be introduced to a person’s oeuvre, the movie on the whole gave me an appreciation for an actress who simply glows on camera. Here, she looks just as enrapturing.

As this trailer opens up we get the sound of alarm clocks. The noise, for me anyway, grips the bottom of my nerve center in my brain in a way that some people get when they hear the high pitched whine of a dentist’s drill. The clocks in question here wake up your average, well-to-do, Italian family. The dad, who looks like a younger, better looking Mikhail Baryshnikov, seems to be the Bill Cosby kind of dad. His kids dig him, his daughter is way way fine, the family looks like they could be models straight from a J. Crew catalog shoot, the golden retriever doesn’t show any sign of being whipped with a broken piece of garden hose for skootching his ass along the carpet, his wife still probably gives him some and life is, essentially, dulce. And it’s all bread and roses until, “the return of a past love.”

Monica is the past love and what a past it must have been. Short of being certifiably insane, having real problems with grown men digging comic books and kung-fu cinema or end up really being a dude under that dress, there would never be an excuse to leave that kind of lady. That’s probably why, though, the dad decides to throw his life in the crapper to hook back up with her.

What I like so far about this trailer, apart from Bellucci, is that not only does this seem like a story about infidelity but that it’s a story shot on DV while following the lives of the kids and the wife. The husband’s life is not the sole focus here as we also get to see how his actions affect all those around him.

It’s nice, especially for a foreign language film, that we get a small sentence on each one of the main player’s motivations in this film. The dad is a writer looking for inspiration (if inspiration comes in the form of Monica I am all for that), the wife is an aspiring actress, his daughter is a dancer (who looks like she’s constantly trying out for some kind of nude revue), and his son seems like a kid who is just trying to get some attention. But, as the twists continue, the dad ends up in the hospital. How does this affect the plot? I have no idea but this trailer, if you’re open to it, really does make you want to see how it ends.

Director: Forest Whitaker
Cast: Katie Holmes, Marc Blucas, Michael Keaton, Amerie Rogers, Margaret Colin, Lela Rochon Fuque
Release: November 19, 2004
Synopsis: Samantha Mackenzie (Holmes) wants what every college freshman desires: to experience life away from home and parents. But it’s not going to be easy, because home for Sam is The White House and her dad (Keaton), is the President of the United States. Despite her fishbowl existence, Sam meets and falls for James (Blucas), the Resident Advisor in her dorm. As romance blossoms, Sam discovers her new beau is a secret service agent assigned to protect her.

Prognosis: Numb. This is exactly the kind of movie Cindy would’ve talked my ear off endlessly about wanting to go see.

Now, it’s not so hard to peg what makes this movie an easy lure for women in their mid-twenties. You have a preposterous plot: you have a dad who is the president of the United States and his daughter wants to go to college. However, surrounded by so many accoutrements of being a president’s daughter, shucks, it’s just hard for her to fit in. You have a director who has done superb work in front of the camera but has only managed to create rental worthy chick flicks behind it and a couple of writers who can only count having BRING IT ON and being the fat kid from STAND BY ME as their crowning achievements. I did like BRING IT ON, though, but I’m not giving anything to Jerry O’Connell as he was to blame for KANGAROO JACK. This is not the kind of triple threat that many could make this out to be. Still, what’s here in the trailer is more than enough to make any woman deaf to my protests.

This trailer begins with everyone wanting a picture of Samantha, the commander-in-chief’s daughter, on her first few days of college. We are told she’s America’s princess but, gasp, her dad is the one running the country. Even just trying to think about how any girl of the president can be mistaken for a princess is beyond my perceivable ken, but I do know that if Jenna and Barbara Bush (the younger one, natch) wanted to star in their own presidential Girls Gone Wild I would not only be first in line to get the DVD but I would gladly kneel before General Zod and declare the Bush twins as true American princesses. (In reality, and gauging their behavior in recent years, I know I am merely one election away from this actually happening.)

Now, about the trailer. It seems that Ms. Holmes wants to be a normal gal. Reality is so far removed from this girl’s life that it appears she doesn’t know how to function like any other woman at a drunken fraternity bender. She actually whines in one moment that she doesn’t want to get her outfit dirty when drunken revelers are sliding down a wet, muddy hill. Just look at the chick. She’s a walking simulacrum, bordering on clichéd, of someone who sees normal life as alien and strange. Our girl Friday, though, decides to throw major caution into the wind as she goes careening face first down that muddy hill and finds a lovely little frat boy who, unlike his inebriated revelers, seems to take care of his appearance. What happens after this, though, is a chick flick Tet Offensive that throws up every sappy, frilly, and downright lame bits the filmmakers could have left on the cutting room floor. Katie gets our dude to take his shirt off, Katie remarks how easy it would be to find some real inside information on our man, we even get one of those white flashes of teeth that only beaus playing boyfriends in movies can give after a dumb joke is made and we even get the vibe that , awww, they might be falling in love. It’s enough to make me seethe with jealously.

What really pisses me off, though, is that she says, again, how she just wants to be like everyone else. Ok. All right. I got it. Your master plan has worked, Mussolini. I somehow realized this was a movie about wanting to fit in the first time it was mentioned, but if I wanted to be nagged this much about getting the main point of the movie I could’ve had Cindy review this and tell me what she thought the point of the trailer was.

Then, to exacerbate the situation, the chick does it again! She asks her frat boy lover how he would feel if she was just a normal person. Ahh, here’s my take, honey: as long as you are still that hot when you become “normal” and are still willing to “explore romantic possibilities” after a few rounds of Jager and Rumplemintz shots, I’m sure the dude won’t mind what happens when you decide you’re normal.

Ok, at the end of this trailer, the bitch does it one more time. She is like a one track record. What a downer this freak is. If I was the lothario who was looking to tap that Holmes action I would’ve moved onto the women’s wrestling team before having to listen to that droning on and on about fitting in, being normal, being left alone to be her own person, and on and on and on.

“It’s like you’re experiencing everything for the first time.”

The above quote comes from the jock, not Holmes. I am downright ashamed for our college men if buying into crazy women’s issues with their own self-image is the only way to score some of that fine early adult action. He does, though, get pretty deep with that Gene Simmons tongue action he busts out on our fragile heroine. High fives all around for that, though.

Man, does this movie look like emasculating garbage. I would, honestly, pick every other movie that was playing, had I seen it twice or not, before I would ever give this one a chance. Thing is, since I’m married, I don’t get a choice anymore when it’s not my week to pick. Lord only knows how hard I am going to be watching out for any sort of commercial pimping this movie as I will be blazing a fast-forwarded TiVo path right past it. May God have mercy on all male souls out there who are harangued into seeing this.

If I would have made the above comments out loud to Cindy, as I did when asked about THE WEDDING PLANNER, HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS, SWEET HOME ALABAMA, and most every Julia Roberts movie that’s come out in the last two years, she would’ve clapped her hands quickly. She’d bounce her head back and forth, laughing while she did so, as she knew that it was the perfect movie for her simply based on my protests. No matter how hard I tried to tell her all the good reasons why she should avoid insulting cinema like this it would only embolden her will even further. There are too many “you were right” conversations had on Monday mornings as she inhabited my cube but I never once mentioned I told her so.

It’s genuinely sad to know that in a few weeks she won’t be there to ask me what I thought of this movie. I would have told her to read the column but she would most likely just roll her eyes, would feign asking for the website address, somehow start whimpering, and would just end up make me retell her from memory. I did it most every week and now, without her here, there’s no one left to fill that space.

I hope wherever she is that she’s enjoying all the movies I’ve told her not to go see.

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