FRED Entertainment

Director: Stephen Herek
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Kelli Garner, Vanessa Ferlito, Monica Keena, Christina Milian, Paula Garcés, Cedric the Entertainer
Release: February 25, 2005
Synopsis: Tommy Lee Jones stars as a Texas Ranger who must protect a group of cheerleaders who have witnessed a murder.

Prognosis: Negative. This is one you should only watch through the spaces of the fingers that are secure on your face while reeling in horror that Tommy Lee Jones needed money this bad. As it stands, I also don’t think you’ll hear him on Regis and Kelly saying, “You know, I read one page of this script and knew that I was born to play this part.”

As it is, in the beginning of this trailer Lee comes walking through the smoky entranceway of a college football stadium, looking Texas tough and proud of it. Now, in contrast to this, in the next scene a gaggle of cheerleaders are witnesses to some murder. Quickly we are to infer that he’s in charge of keeping them safe because they’re in immanent danger of someone doing something very untoward to them and that these girls need a middle aged man to protect them. The girls act so so cute when they’re all collected together in an interrogation room. They actually start flipping through albums of the po-po’s mug shot books and start picking out the cute convicts. Too bad the Kids In The Hall did the joke over a decade ago but I’m quite sure most of Middle America hasn’t so it’s a safe hack.

Essentially what you have here is a bland blend of Walker, Texas Ranger and a not as near as funny BRING IT ON, which, I still contend and will die believing, is a tour de force of teenage cinema.

Back in this movie, though, Tommy saves our girls from harm as someone rigs their cheerleader van to explode but was shoddy enough to leave some wires dangling in plain view so Tommy could get them out just in time before it all goes ka-blooey.

The plot thickens, or weakens, after we find out that Tommy decides to move in with the girls to really make sure nothing happens to them. One of the other jokes that’s made is a pizza guy comes to the door and I swear it’s the U.S. Marshall I really liked from THE FUGITIVE and then hated in U.S. MARSHALLS comes back to auditory life. He makes the pizza guy put his hands above his head and turn around; I damn near thought I would see a waterfall next. Unfortunately, what I received was Tommy getting stampeded by Grade A co-eds with no real ability to keep the crazy chicks in control and this is when Cedric “The Entertainer” waltzes into things. Again, like a studio joke that will not die, C&C Music Factory starts bumpin’ with “Everybody Dance Now” as Cedric gets into a dance off with the cheerleading ladies. I have no idea what it’s all about, apart from it being an obvious gag for simpletons everywhere to have a good snort, laughing at the funniness of it all, but it doesn’t help wherever the hell this movie is supposed to be going.

Oh, and P.S., middle-aged men like Tommy aren’t allowed to use the words “old school.” I’m positive he had no idea what it even meant before a scriptwriter put it into his vocabulary and it’s embarrassing to both him and us.

You ladies will be happy to know, though, that in this movie Tommy Lee actually allows himself to be emasculated. He gives into the girls, although, hell, who wouldn’t, and dons a cucumber facial mask while getting a lesson in whoring oneself up for a date. From what I can gather I think you girls are supposed to find that amusing.

The rest of the trailer just gives me no positive note to give you. I really tried to find something good in Tommy mistaking the mascot for the killer or when Cedric gives a sin speech about casting the first stone and Tommy wings one at his temple or even where Cedric does a series of back flips down a church aisle only to come down on a wooden table, shattering it.

Sorry, but this one is homogenously bad.

Director: Andrew Douglas
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George
Release: April 15, 2005
Synopsis: A family is terrorized by a demonic force in their new home that was the site of many gruesome murders a year earlier.

Prognosis: Positive I like the beginning and the way it slowly pulls me into this trailer.

It’s totally dark, a completely black screen, and we suddenly hear what sounds like three gunshots.

Static engulfs the picture and then tunes, black and white no less, in on what seems like a news report on a crime committed at a home. Quick flashes of police tape, bodies being carried out; a newspaper title of “Family Slain” jumps erratically into our viewing area; mechanical and static sounds crunch in the audio field while we get pictures of the victims; and then a nice shot of a body bag rolls right into the picture.

Oh yeah, and we’re clearly told that this all based on a true story.

Sweet.

Next, we get a man who looks like Jesus himself, with the exception that Jesus wouldn’t slay his own family, I’m just saying, being arraigned at a trial. A news reporter says that the guy heard voices in his head that told him to kill his family.

The screen goes black again but we’re quickly given a card that says “One year later”¦the Lutz family movies into….” and you can pretty much start guessing this is where the weird stuff starts to happen.

The first thing that’s odd is that Ryan Reynolds is the main Lutz in question as the card then says “They only lasted 28 days.” Of course you get copious amounts of freaky violin music in the background and I have to admit that it’s good, it’s effective. It’s the kind of music that brings me back to the FRIDAY THE 13TH days where the violin would play that one high pitched note right before someone would get a machete right through their melon. Of course, even here, there’s lightning and rain to give it that certain creepiness as Ryan slowly walks up stairs where I assume he thinks something is going on.

We don’t know for sure what’s happening, though, because after that all we’re given is cut scenes of an ax stuck in a stump, some person hiding behind some wooden closet doors (the bad guys ALWAYS know you’re watching them behind those things), a swarm of insects start buzzing around a priest who is obviously trying to use the whole “The power of Christ compels you”¦” and is failing miserably, we get a creepy looking ghoul who seems to be hanging out at the bottom of a pond and then we are treated to a whole lot of chick screams as the woman in question is caught in the middle of a rainstorm and on the roof of her house while doing it.

This film looks promising only because of the buildup to the scattered money shots and even though there isn’t a whole lot of talking I am aware of everything that is happening in this film. A voiceover would have rendered this trailer sterile and I appreciate the way things just happen on the screen naturally.

Director: Ekachai Uekrongtham
Cast: Asanee Suwan, Sorapong Chatree, Orn-Anong Panyawong, Nukkid Boonthong
Release: January 21, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Based on the real life story of Parinya Charoenphol, a Muaythai boxer who underwent a sex change operation to become a woman. The movie chronicles her life from a young boy who likes to wear lipstick and wear flowers to her sensational career as kickboxer whose specialty is ancient Muaythai boxing moves which she can execute expertly with grace and finally her confrontation with her own sexuality which led to her sex change op.

Prognosis: Positive. The trailer opens up at the very beginning of daylight in the Far East. The sun rises over a hilly and grass-covered mountain range.

In the next scene we get two different images being constructed for us: one is of a hand pulling up some fishnet stockings up a leg, the next is of a boxer pulling up his fighting trunks. A dress is pulled up and some manicured red nails are turned upside down as the boxers hands are wrapped up in white tape.

“When did you first realize you wanted to become a woman?”

What we have here, kids, is a movie about a man who wants to be everything he’s always desired to become: a member of the opposite sex. Instead of launching into the exacting details of the here and now we get some exposition into this man’s past.

As a child we see him admiring women. There is a delightfully beautiful dancer on a stage in his small town as she cavorts for the delight of a crowd when a tube of lipstick rolls to within his grasp. He says in a voiceover that he always knew he was different. The kid decides to put the lipstick on and come home to his family and perform the same dance the woman was performing for the town. The dad is looks concerned but what we can infer is that he’s tossed out of the family for his femme ways.

We next see the awards this film has won and assuages any subliminal concerns we aren’t being lulled to believe this is some Chicks With Di%&# Volume 43 advertisement.

It seems this kid was banished to a life of literal wandering for a long long time before stumbling onto a camp where all they do is train fighters. He decides to give it a go and allow himself to achieve mental and physical perfection.

Now comes the kicking in of some heads.

The guy lands some nice punches and even gets in a sweet kick. This is interspersed with his desire to cross-dress while still retaining his desire to achieve greatness with his boxing. Some taiko drumming kicks into overdrive as we are shuttled off to Japan for a championship of sorts. The guy is a superstar and what’s nice is that he still finds in himself the ability to be the woman on the outside he always wanted to become. The kicks get stronger, the violence gets harder, and we see the road of introspection this man has had to go through in order to get to where he is.

His training is embedded in his identity and so is the need to put on make-up before each match. These moments are assisted by the cards from the major press here in the States that have seen this film and want to give the movie its due by saying how moving a picture this is.

The subject matter alone will keep some people away but this trailer is wonderfully constructed to keep the line tight between showing what this man wants and balancing it with who he is. It doesn’t seem like a movie that belongs exclusively to the gay/lesbian genre but with the element of dudes kicking the crap out of one another, especially the wicked awesome monkey punch our hero lands at the end of this thing, it shows some things that could appeal to all different sorts of backgrounds. These words, I know, will fall on some deaf ears but this film, just on the surface, looks like it will be more than a man who just wants to be a woman. It looks like a man trying to define himself as he defiles opponents in the boxing ring.

Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, Beyoncé Knowles, Jean Reno
Release:September 23, 2005
Synopsis: A prequel to the 1964 Peter Sellers original film, where the detective must solve the murder of a famous soccer coach and find out who stole the infamous Pink Panther diamond.

Prognosis: Negative. Quick background on the guy who’s directing this. He has been at the helm for all of the following movies: CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (2003), JUST MARRIED (2003), BIG FAT LIAR (2002). I had to endure the savagery that was JUST MARRIED and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN all on my wife’s insistence. I wasn’t impressed and, as married to a woman who likes her entertainment as mainstream as Friends was in Must-See TV, she loathed it more. JUST MARRIED was a vapid, useless, needless movie that could’ve just as easily been used at Guantanamo Bay to elicit confessions out of all the detainees present there and could’ve avoided all this controversy there now and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN was only good, for me anyway, to watch Hillary Duff start her downward roller coaster ride in films.

And, apart from the directing, what the hell happened to Steve Martin? He isn’t what he once was. He’s no Bill Murray, this much I know, but what’s odd is his taste in art is impeccable (I saw his collection at the Bellagio years ago), his writing is decent (he shouldn’t try so hard, though), but his films in the past few years have questioned my feelings about his brilliance in PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES, BOWFINGER, and even THE SPANISH PRISONER. It’s truly been a confusing times for those who are trying to understand what made him do CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, BRINING DOWN THE HOUSE and even LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION.

I’ve watched the trailer and I just can’t recommend this film. I’ve tried to be open-minded but let me just try and put this into a language we all will understand.

At first I’m kind of excited because I really think this film will be interesting because of its international embracement of football (Americans, read here: soccer) and of the chaotic mess that is a football stadium at mass capacity. We even get Jason Statham who steps out onto the field and brandishes a ridiculously sized ring to the crowd. I don’t know how a dude showing off a ring as hideous as that in front of soccer hooligans would elicit the kind of pandemonium, even if it is the pink panther diamond, but I guess this is the movies so we have to take it at face value. I’m bummed when Jason is quickly killed off and his big ring is stolen in the process. Not that the ring is gone but that Jason isn’t going to be in the film any longer.

Of course we’re told that that only one man can solve the case but right then and there I’m not quite sure why in the hell this bumbling idiot is handpicked to solve the case. I realize this is a comedy but if one wants to build some sort of believable characterization that someone can suspend their disbelief in they are going about it in the wrong way. But who the hell am I to judge, right?

So, Steve Martin, a pale imitation of Peter Sellers, introduces himself, donning a moustache that not even I can believe, to the tune of the Pink Panther. I do, however, have to give proper credit for an amusing gag where Steve whips out his id to show Kevin Kline, one of two foils in this movie, as he introduces himself as Inspector Clouseau and the badge hurls at Kline and sticks in his chest.

It’s all downhill after that.

We’re introduced to his partner, Jean Reno, who seems to be Clouseau’s handler more than anything else. In our first viewing of Reno, Martin and he are walking down a street. Wearing an embarrassing beret Martin lets Reno know that he’s going to attack him to keep him vigilant. (Huh?) Apart from me not understanding the purpose Reno, though, gets him first by sucker punching him in the face. The absurd facial expression that Martin contorts into puts me at a loss to explain what’s supposed to be funnier, his mugging or the fact that Reno hit him first.

The two of them next visit a crime scene where a dead guy is on the floor. Reno explains that what happened to the man was fatal. “How fatal?” is the quip back from Martin. Ha, we’re supposed to say, but I’m seriously not even cracking a smile. What the hell am I watching, I’m asking myself.

Next is a look at the moment where Martin is trying to cut into a piece of glass to get into a drug store late at night. Why he’s trying to cut into glass, while other cars are whizzing by, is beyond me. He makes a circular motion to imply that he’s going to only take small part of the window out the whole thing but, except for the middle he’s cut out, everything shatters around him. That was amusing, I’ll admit that.

After that, Steve puts on a blue light on top of his car (the lights that cops in the old days would put in their dash like in the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” video) and of course it falls off as he’s taking a corner and gets an old lady in the forehead. Nice try, but that’s lame. Seriously.

Beyonce Knowles gets introduced after that gag and I start to wonder why it is that pop singers suddenly feel that they have what it takes to make it as an actor in this business. Far be it from me to judge because I’m sure everyone around her tells her how great she is at everything she does I don’t, however, have to feel secure just because she’s in a film. I’m a little bit less interested that she is, but there’s nothing in this trailer that shows even what kind of part she’s playing so what’s the point other than the fact she can walk well down a street.

The trailer ends with Martin falling down some steps to a subway but it’s not amusing to me to spend the time trying to explain it.

I really am a fan of Steve Martin. There is more than enough to support the assertion that he was definitely one of the best men working in comedy in the early ’80s. With careers of Chevy Chase going the route of a VEGAS VACATION and of Bill Murray’s going the way of Oscar-worthy performances, one has to say that Steve seems inexorably caught right in the middle of these SNL alums. I don’t know why that’s the case but one look at this trailer is more than enough reason for me to withhold my box office dollars from this turkey.

Director: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Elijah Wood, Maria Bello, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Michael Madsen, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Nick Stahl, and the rest of Hollywood’s elite.
Release: April 1, 2005
Synopsis: An adaptation of Frank Miller’s stories based in the fictional town of Sin City. Chief amongst the town’s residents is Marv, who trawls the darkest areas of town looking for the person who killed his one true love, Goldie.

Prognosis: Positive, I guess. This one’s complex so let me just break things down.

The trailer essentially does all the talking. There are no voiceovers and no descriptive cards letting us know how everything fits together. This alone deserves a golf clap.

We first see the image of Marv as realized in comic form by Frank Miller. The live action comes right after with Mickey Rourke smoking a cigarette, looking like a pastiche of assorted foreheads and chins from DICK TRACY. Black and white seems to be where Rodriguez wants to take this and it looks wonderful. Color, though, is used to highlight his girlfriend’s, Goldie, blonde hair and of the red silk on the bed that both her and Marv shared. Cops are coming for Marv and he hears them right outside his flophouse apartment door. He busts through the front door, though, before they can get in, Hulk-style, with both biceps flexed.

Hartigan’s next with Miller’s depiction of the old guy. Obviously, Willis is a younger stand-in from the comic but with X-MEN’s success we can see how film adaptations can benefit with the bending of the rules. He’s in a seedy bar looking for Nancy Callahan. Jessica Alba is Nancy in all her showgirl glory. The music chosen is sultry, the colors used to accentuate her dancer outfit are really choice, and the way she moves is alluring even for the few seconds we see her. Actually, it’s really alluring. Now, even though some artistic license is being taken with the characters I’m a bit torn on the way they decided to go with having Nick Stahl as the yellow guy in the film. It’s really cartoonish but if helps to serve the plot then, oh well.

Dwight, as played by Clive Owen, is up next and he’s as every bit of tough guy as he is a handsome chap out for some trouble. Dwight’s voiceover shows some of Benicio Del Toro’s character as well as some of the other dangerous ladies of Sin City. Some great angles are all cobbled together to create some tension leading into the final half of this trailer. Even Marv’s character has some “weight” as a real person and not some Sunday morning funnies cutout.

There is a moment when a car flips over after going off the side of the road where it does feel slightly artificial but then we’re back into things with a rundown of all the people who are starring in this production.

Alexis Bledel is one who immediately caught my attention as her claim to colorization in this film is her stunning blue eyes and Jamie King gets some props for her blonde locks. Brittany Murphy and Rosario Dawson, however, get nothing but shrinkage from me as I couldn’t get a feel for what parts they are supposed to command although I am sure there are Miller aficionados who could easily tell me how they fit into everything. Elijah Wood’s mysterious appearance as a pair of whitely illuminated spectacles was visually impressive as was all the other cut-scenes included right after his introduction. I’ll take a guess here, as I can’t know for sure because the credits didn’t list her in the trailer, but it may have been Devon Aoki’s moves that I rate second best to Jessica Alba’s. Shurikens always hold a dear place in my heart and I believe it was she who was the one tossing them at one point in this thing as well as the wielding of two samurai-sized blades, descending from a high place in the city towards the camera below.

I do also have to give some love to Marv’s mention that you “can walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything” as the visuals pull back from the city proper, the camera turning, revealing the title of the film. That’s nice.

Now, after seeing this, though, I am still left unsure as to how I should feel about the movie. So much of what I saw did remind me, in a bad way, of DICK TRACY. However, much of everything else had me wanting to see how all these stars come together to tell one of the greatest gritty noir crime stories in the last fifteen years. I’m conflicted and I’m not sure why. Hopefully more footage will either secure my spot one way or the other.

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Gwen Stefani, Adam Scott
Release: December 25, 2004
Synopsis: A biopic depicting the early years of legendary director and aviator Howard Hughes’ career, from the late 1920’s to the mid-1940’s.

Prognosis: Positive. I received an interesting email a while ago.

Someone asked if I had reviewed the AVIATOR trailer since it was about to go wide in theaters soon. I wrote back letting this person know that, yeah, I looked at almost six months ago when it was just starting to get noticed as a holiday movie. I also commented that I thought that Gwen Stefani yanked me straight back to reality when I saw her preening little mug as she walked down the red carpet with Leo; I didn’t know if it was supposed to be a movie or a clip from her new video. He wrote back and wanted to know if I would give the new trailer a look because the new one did away with trying to showcase her as being in it. I was down to compare and contrast, an activity that most likely sends chills up the spine for anyone who struggled with English 101 or 102, and see if in fact things had improved. I don’t usually get these kinds of requests but I decided since the movie was looking to be an Oscar contender this year and since it looks a lot better than the FAT ALBERT tripe that will be vying for Christmas dollars this weekend I had to do anything I could to make sure no one gets the bright idea to ever turn a great cartoon into a worse-yet farce of a film.

I could’ve just B.S.’d here and say, “yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s great, it’s wicked”¦” but I’m serious when I say that his new version of the trailer meshes big budget with big concept in a way that excites me. True, there’s no flaming arrows, but for some odd hetero reason I am oddly pulled in by Leo’s charming tractor beam. I was a fairly big fan of CATCH ME IF YOU CAN but nothing quite that matches to the star wattage the man exudes in this new trailer.

Here’s what I like about the new trailer:

The thing begins with a nice buildup to who this movie is all about. Howard Hughes was a man obsessed, in more ways than one, with flying and we immediately get that with this new trailer. The old trailer was nearly identical in focusing on Howard but we lose focus on the flying aspect and get pushed into the many different ways he was a womanizer and player. Then, in the old trailer, Hughes says how he wants to build a plane that is able to reach heights never before imagined in commercial aviation. By the time this plotline is put out there and developed the old trailer has already wasted its time with shoving too many discordant ideas that don’t inform the essence of the film.

The new trailer dispenses with trying to wear so many hats so quickly.

The same thoughts are put out there but in a series that makes sense to us, the valued audience. First he has his grand idea for planes, then he puts his idea in action, and, lastly, and only then, does the poon hunt begin. Gwen Stefani, I am happy to report, is merely a blur in this new one. Two thumbs up for that, my friends. (What is her allure anyway? She looks like a lanky man-child cross-dresser who hasn’t quite mastered that whole femininity thing)

Additionally, the old trailer focuses heavily on the scandal surrounding Hughes. Mostly, it seems, it obsesses about the way he had many a dalliance with many a lady. The old trailer makes it seem like it’s a movie based on how Howard wanted to create this larger than life airplane but gets caught up in the tabloids. Ok, that’s fine if it wanted to sell it that way, but it doesn’t sound like the Oscar contender people said it was. In its defense there was, though, that awesome shot of the plane Leo’s flying of it ripping into the side of a building. That’s about it, though. It kind of game me a “Meh” kind of a feeling. The new trailer builds off the story but punches these things up in a way that can now get people excited.

Por ejemplo, the womanizing and the threat of scandal still exists in the second, more recent, trailer but it’s built upon to give Hughes more depth. We’re given more facets of who he is on the inside. In one instance we get a nice moment as he talks to Cate Blanchett. He tells her about how he thinks he gets ideas about things that “may not really be there.” Good! Now we’re cooking with gas. The man was slowly deteriorating, mentally, but the first trailer never gives us that. That’s the meat of the whole film because all you have, otherwise, is just a movie about a tycoon who had an obsession with planes and chased a lot of tail. If that was the case, and that’s all you needed to make an award worthy movie, then I’m first in line to buy the rights to Chuck Yeager’s life story. Howard Hughes had a great amount of money and, like some of the planes he flew, spun out of control with severe force. That’s the story.

One of the other nice touches to this trailer is one of the moments where, and all you regular watchers of Oprah saw this (God, I am sorry for ever mentioning that, but in my defense it was one of my wife’s saved TiVo shows and I snuck a peek), but in one scene he obsessively asks for blueprints. Asks for them. Asks for them again. And again. And again. And again. It’s a great scene and it’s not bold that it was put in here, it was absolutely needed in order to show how this man was afflicted by mental illness.

The last moments of this new trailer show a feeble Hughes (big fan of the moustache) trying to hold onto the reigns of reality but slowly losing the fight. The other scenes here champion this man’s wild younger days and I even get a treat in seeing the scene where Leo rips into the side of a building is still preserved.

This is what big budget should look like.

Director: Florent Emilio Siri
Cast: Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollak, Jonathan Tucker, Ben Foster, Jimmy Bennett
Release: March 11, 2005
Synopsis: Jeff Talley, a former LAPD hostage negotiator, has moved himself away from his failed career outside of Los Angeles, and away from his wife and daughter. When a convenience store robbery goes wrong in his turf, the three perpetrators move in on an unsuspecting family. But the family’s father has a secret which might compromise his kin, and one of the criminals is about to jump over the edge. Jeff Talley has to get everybody to survive the night……if he can.

Prognosis: Negative I’ll be one the first to publicly admit that I never thought that Bruce Willis was much of an actor, per se. Sure, he was an icon to me as a young child, a veritable laugh riot, in BLIND DATE and was a hero among men who had an entire genre built around the words “It’s like DIE HARD in a”¦” when he played John McClane.

He has, however, only had moments of greatness that seem to come in spurts. His acting was excellent in both 6TH SENSE and the criminally underrated UNBREAKABLE. Even 12 MONKEYS kept me glued to my chair. So what, then, does the future hold for him in his latest, HOSTAGE?

Not a whole lot of anything, actually.

Man, sometimes you just expect something to work better than an amalgam of THE NEGOTIATOR, PANIC ROOM and other hackneyed yarns that weave together in a most unflattering way but there’s a reason why this is all too terrible and allow me to break it down as to why that is.

Trailer starts off with a nice, soothing score.

Willis seems to be the head policeman in what is referred to as a “small town.” Nothing seems to happen in this “small town” but our po-po is hiding a big secret. Ooo”¦

We next see a very expensive looking crib, sitting on top a hill, looking down to other affluent homes in this sleepy little valley town. It is a fortress that has an array of security cameras. That doesn’t stop a group of thugs, here represented by the not too stereotypical dirtbags with greasy hair and a bad fashion sense, who are breaking into the place in the middle of the day.

Some things happen that prompt a cop to check and see if everything is alright, but of course the cop is popped, turning this into a major ordeal.

DIE HARD Flashback #1: Willis’ car is shot up as he tries to get to the home.

DIE HARD Flashback #2: The thugs lock the place down so no one can get in or out. Vault doors secure the exits, security bars cover the windows, etc”¦

After everyone pretty much knows that this is a bad situation Willis calls in everyone in the phone book listed under “Hostage Situation” in this “small town’s” yellow pages and I am amazed how quick these people are able to materialize. I guess Joe Bob and John Johnson who run the hardware store next to the deli that serves hot pie are also trained in SWAT and demolitions operations.

DIE HARD Flashback #3: The FBI comes in and one of Willis’ co-workers let him know that “they’re no longer in command here.” The FBI is.

Hmm”¦then the originality starts. It seems that another group of thugs waits for Willis to go back to his car so they can put a gun to Willis’ head and let him know that either he goes in and gets what those kids, who look like tweakers on a weekend bender of crystal meth, went in there in the first place looking for or they’ll kill his family.

DIE HARD Flashback #4 & #5: A kid inside calls Willis on a cell phone and only talks to Willis. The same kid knows how to get around the house through the air vents.

Are they kidding me with this? Sadly, no. We press on anyway.

The house somehow explodes into flames (DH Flashback #6) and there are a whole lot of incomprehensible cut scenes which don’t really inform me as they do confound the issue of how the hell Willis gets in through the front door and other more practical questions that just serve to confuse me.

Does anyone know if this movie is supposed to be taking place on Christmas Eve? Anyone? Anyone?

Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Ice Cube, Willem Dafoe, Samuel L Jackson, Scott Speedman, Peter Strauss, Sunny Mabrey
Release: April 29th, 2005
Synopsis: Darius Stone, a new agent in the XXX program, is sent to Washington, DC to diffuse a power struggle amongst national leaders.

Prognosis: Negative. I can’t believe my eyes or my mouth as I say this: maybe Vin Diesel was right to Just Say No when offered the part to do XXX part 2.

This had the markings of a sequel that could’ve built considerably on its predecessor and learned from what made it good in the first place, cutting out all the junk that didn’t fly, but what has happened here, apparently, is that the directors and script writers just decided to toss promise out the window and let mediocrity be its guide.

“In the center of American power”¦”

The trailer starts off with throaty voiceover guy. Here, in this trailer, he’s actually the best thing about the whole two minutes. He does his best to really play up the importance of what is actually happening on the screen; we get an outside view of Washington D.C. and the interior of a very nice looking legislative session where a lot of important white guys conceivably are drilling the American public in the rear making crappy policies to ruin their lives.

Before I can dwell on the bombastic talking from one of the important federal officials at the podium there seems to be an underground attack by a bunch of dudes who are dressed all in black with infrared hoo-haas all over their faces and body while carrying big guns. I like that. I’m very appreciative of wanton violence but all they’re doing is walking. No one has even fired a bullet yet. Then, before I’m able to try and get pumped for an armed confrontation, Willem Dafoe shows up. Willem Dafoe. Somewhere, something dies a little bit inside of me. Guess it’s that time of the year when interest payments are needed on that extra extra large townhouse that’s being built on the French Riviera.

Ok, so what happens, I take it, is that someone attacks the XXX facility. (Oh yeah, I can tell you it was the XXX facility because they have a big red ass XXX logo on the outside of their underground lair. What government body puts logos, like they’re competing for mall space next to a Sbarro’s and Charlotte Russe, on its facilities? Dopes.) Well, I am happy to tell you that Samuel L. Jackson makes it out ok but he says to one of the guys working with him, who I assume also survived the melee, that they now need to work “off the grid.” That’s what I thought XXX already was. Sigh. Oh well, shows you how much I was paying attention during the first one.

Anyway, for some reason Samuel needs a felon to help him out but not just any felon, mind you. As it’s told to us by a very tidy man standing in front of a large video screen with a lot of other little screens showing other vitals on our man, Ice Cube, he’s a top notch guy with a bunch of stellar experience. The problem is, da-da-da dummm, he has an attitude problem. Oh yeah, also, just to let you know, Ice Cube is also shown running off the top of the penitentiary where he was kept and catching the leg of a helicopter that’s taking off in what I can only guess is some sort of prison break.

Does anyone out there understand that Ice Cube doing that is a joke? It’s funny, not adventurous. Anthony LaPaglia said he always wanted to do that in SO I MARRIED AN AX MURDERER because he had seen it in so many cop shows. It’s not impressive here as it is a cruel, played out exercise in lazy writing. It’s like a cop saying he’s “too old for this” when something wacky happens. But, whatever, I’m not the one getting paid for this film.

So, we move past that, find out that Ice led a mutiny against a 4-star general and instead of being shot on site and mutilated by a pack of hungry wolverines he was allowed to live. However, his identity was erased forever in government computers. (I love the smell of plausibility in the morning. It smells like”¦THE ROCK) Ice is then recruited to be the new XXX, he makes a lame one-liner, and then I rejoice when the quick clips start rolling. Guns are loaded, cars are rolling fast down a city street late at night, fists are flying, and I finally perk up.

The plot then mentions Willem as a man who is going to take over the capital. I don’t know how, Ice says he’s gonna do it with a bunch of tanks and choppers, but, really, c’mon, the whole city? I give up at this point because we know the eventual outcome won’t be Willem’s conquering of the city but we believe it anyway just to see where this all goes.

It’s about here where I have to give big-ups to the trailer makers. The plot is finally established and as the movie president is giving a speech the lights go out throughout the entire capital. Some operatic music starts to chime in, Ice goes hot as he unleashes his machine gun bad assery, ropes are dangling from roofs where bad guys are repelling into someplace, some hot blonde chick throws herself at Ice, and then we get some tricked out 1968 Ford Torino (at least that’s what it looks like) that’s appears to have been on MTV’s Pimp My Ride, and stuff just blows up from here.

The last 30 seconds of this trailer are really great; it makes me want to see this mindless crap, seriously. I like that everything near the end is either in flames or is about to get reduced to splinters. I appreciate Ice’s astute quote about his soldiers to which Samuel tries to guess which famous general said it but Ice just deadpans it when he says, “Tupac.” Ha, now that’s why I’ll see the film. Not for the shoddy exposition and lead-in that represents ¾ of the running time for this thing. Don’t over think a movie like this. In fact, don’t make me think at all.

Director: Christopher Smith
Cast: Franka Potente, Sean Harris, Vas Blackwood, Jeremy Sheffield, Ken Campbell
Release: Whenever they decide Americans are worthy enough to see it in 2005
Synopsis: Trapped in a London subway station, a woman who’s being pursued by a potential attacker heads into the unknown labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city’s streets.

Prognosis: Positive. This is nice.

I am a fairly big fan of Franka Potante’s work, RUN LOLA RUN being an obvious starting point for my passion in regard to her ability, but this trailer is most excellent in teasing what could be a very effective thriller.

The thing starts off with heavy breathing. Not the kind you have to pay $3.99 a minute for but the kind that comes from laborious exertion.

The camera opens up on a subway entrance. There is no one around and everything is nearly clinically white. The fluorescent lighting and the waxed floor make it next to impossible to even discern what time it is. What’s effective is that with the heavy breathing the camera moves forward slowly and jitters a bit as if it’s in the first-person perspective.

The panting continues as the camera comes to the stairs leading down to the subway platform. The haunting noise in the background just completes the surrealist vibe of such an empty place being filled with so much suspense.

We finally see Franka awaken suddenly in the tunnel as she was catching a few winks before her ride home and realizes she missed the last train for the night. She’s the last one at the subway stop.

She yells out “Hello?” through a gate that is now locked behind her.

The next scene is her walking through a stopped, darkened subway train that was nearby in the tunnel and asks if someone’s there (I sure as hell would never ever do that. I would probably start crying as soon as I figured out I was left in a subway all alone). Franka finds some hands at the end of the subway car of someone trying to pull themselves up from below. It’s a guy in a suit and he looks beaten all to hell. Before he says the word help he is dragged down under the car. Franka takes off, as quick as she can, through the subway terminal hoping to find help of her own.

The camera takes a break from focusing on her as we have a nameless man standing inside a subway car, wielding a tire iron (what the hell is it doing in a subway?), and looking like he knows that trouble is afoot. He’s ready to throw down but Franka is nowhere to be found.

A bunch of odd snippets show more of Franka running through the bowels of this subway station with someone being dragged down a causeway, a different guy looking afraid for his life, lots of water, a long looking pig sticker that is searching for a warm body cavity to be stuck in, more of Franka running, and then a shot of Franka finally settling down in a corner, alone, with only her flashlight to keep her safe.

What’s really freaky, in a SAW kind of way, is that the trailer ends with someone begging “No, please” as a wind-up toy plays on a bookshelf, being book ended by a couple of pickled fetuses, with our killer walking slowly toward his prey with a ferocious looking blade. And that’s it.

Nice. I like to see that the horror genre isn’t dead and this film only has a UK release date so far. I hope you bloody limeys would be so kind as to punt a word or two about whether or not this film lives up to this auspicious trailer because we’re not even on the distribution map yet.

Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Hope Davis, Gemmenne de la Peña, Nicholas Hoult
Release: April 1, 2005
Synopsis: A weather man who lives with his wife and kids in Chicago must deal with problems which arise from wanting to move to New York.

Prognosis: Positive. Fun Fact #378 about me: I think I’m the only one alive who liked THE MEXICAN.

I was doubly bowled over for what Gore Verbinski did with THE RING. Too many people got bogged down, I think, looking back at that crap film MOUSE HUNT and kept it at that. True, that was a horrid affair, but if we look at what the man’s been able to do since then he has shown that he can really assist well in telling a great story. He has done some moves that can put to shame any Michael Bay’s or Brett Ratner’s of the static camera world. The man deserves credit for what he can do and this trailer, for THE WEATHER MAN, is no different.

The trailer is a symphony of soft moments, punching humor and the sense that there is something very good that will come out of Nicholas Cage that won’t have anything to do with whoring Aquafina or have any part of Visa’s win everything you put yourself in debt for this year promotion. And that’s a good thing once in a while.

Right out of the gate this thing grabs your attention with its attention to visual style. What we have here is Nicholas Cage as a weather man who works in Chicago (I notice that Cage’s weatherman is in a station that looks almost exactly like WGN.). A couple of people watch him at home, the weather itself rather gloomy and grey right outside their windows, and the husband comments how he doesn’t like the way he looks. The wife disagrees.

Cage’s voiceover mentions how he really only has to work two hours a day reading a teleprompter. As he walks along a street, having this inner dialogue, someone tries to get his attention as they chuck a chocolate milkshake (Wendy’s, I think) at his head. The scene pauses at the moment of impact. They miss and get his shoulder.

He mentions how this happens regularly. A Styrofoam container of chicken nuggets makes contact with his noggin. Ditto for the half-eaten burrito and the large Coke.

I’m laughing my ass off at this point. I appreciate the slow-mo connecting shots of these items hitting Cage and the calm way he explains this freak occurrence.

Michael Caine is Cage’s father and he, himself, doesn’t understand the phenomenon of why someone would throw something at his son.

Cage has an overweight daughter who seems miserable in her own life as does Cage. Michael mentions that he should help his daughter find something new in her life. Caine seems to care about his son and it’s endearing. What’s more is that we’re not even into the heart of the story yet I am completely convinced of their relationship. Cage mentions how his father was a great writer and was a great father.

Caine then has a slight voiceover as he essentially says that, as a parent, you never stop worrying about your children. It’s sweet but it doesn’t feel like a saccharine lie. In fact, we move in the other direction rather quickly as Cage packs a snowball from the end of a driveway, hoping to hit his wife in the back in a loving sort of way. She turns around and catches it with her face. She’s also wearing glasses. Again, people getting hit with things are always funny as long as you can make it original.

Cage sincerely tries to help his daughter find a new interest, it happens to be archery, as he tries to grapple with his own inability to satisfy simple requests, like bringing home tartar sauce for dinner. He’s making his way through a rough patch in his life.

“Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing?”

Michael Caine cares deeply for his son and it appears he is the patriarch that Cage needs in his life so he can also be one for his own children. Cage appears fired up to take on a life that’s been pushing him around for a while.

There are some wonderful quick clips of the transformation that takes place somewhere in this film’s running time and there’s even a glib mention Cage makes that no one throws things anymore at him; not since he’s been carrying around a bow and arrow, anyway. And what happens is we see this man, with a trench coat on, walking downtown Chicago with a bow and arrow draped around his shoulders like a Roman waiting for a tiger to leap out from around a tree.

With Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” giving this trailer something more than late 80’s era techno crap that has been so pervasive lately, this is a trailer that is a wonder to watch and a joy to listen to; I went and bought the single.

Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly, Anna Sophia Robb, Helena Bonham Carter
Release: July 15, 2005
Synopsis: Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore), a boy from an impoverished family under the shadow of a giant chocolate factory, wins a candy bar contest and is given a tour, along with four other children, of the amazing factory run by the eccentric Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) and his staff of Oompa-Loompas.

Prognosis: Positive. First, you hear a cymbal getting rap-a-tap-tapped. The screen’s black so you don’t know quite what’s going on.

Then, off-camera, Johnny Depp speaks up and says, very matter-of-fact, “Let’s boogie.” At least I think it was Johnny Depp but more on that in second.

Some double doors open up to a wild confectionary candyland that truly only Tim Burton could’ve conceived. It looks like a cross between Beetlejuice’s tabletop town and a stage production of A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS: LIVE. Then, the oddest tune starts to play. It sounds like Oompa-Loompa music. I say this only because if there was one instance when a kind of music was truly sonically representative of a class of orange midgets, this would be it.

While these erratic noises of brass and timpani all go off we get a quick view of all our favorite, rotten little children. There’s Violet, Mike, Veruca Salt (Still love that band”¦), and, of course, Charlie Bucket.

They are all here on display but one would be quite challenged to make anything more than a couple things out in the nauseating and dizzying pace this teaser is hell bent on going.

From what I can make out, though, the filmmakers have the style of the golden tickets down pat just as they were more than two decades ago. That may not seem like much, but it is.

Mike still seems to be the most unlikable little crap bucket that ever had two parents, Augustus Gloop still ranks gluttony as his number one divine sin in the world, but then, suddenly, we get a full frontal of Willy himself. I still don’t know what to make of Depp’s Wonka but he looks crazed, looney, pale, and has a wispy Beatles-style haircut that almost makes him appear to be a deprived child molester that was just set free in a schoolyard. I do apologize for anyone who was ever allegedly at Neverland Ranch, but I calls “˜em likes I sees “˜em.

The crazy boat ride appears to be very surreal; the watery flow of chocolate under the boat’s hull looks delish.

That shrink room where Mike transports himself via TV waves still has that groovy washed-out white vibe to it, and the discordant images just start fleeing by at a pace too rapid to make any sense until”¦

Augustus falls into the chocolate river.

That scene could really be where Burton cranks the skeeve factor to 11 if he gets creative with the young boys misery. I will say, though, wherever Depp is going with Wonka’s new personality in this compared to Gene Wilder’s old one, he is really making a break from the old.

Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, The Rock, Christina Milian, Vince Vaughn, Danny DeVito
Release: March 4, 2005
Synopsis: The continuing adventures of Chili Palmer, strong-arm debt collector turned Hollywood movie producer. By the time the story begins, Chili has abandoned the fickle movie industry. And so his adventures, this time around, concern the music industry where he becomes the promoter of a struggling singer who is being pursued by the Russian mafia.

Prognosis: Positive Yes, I liked the first one.

There was something about Chili Palmer, the way Travolta played him after his “comeback” was heralded in Hollywood as if no one had ever done it before. The movie was just a fun romp and it’s odd that it’s been ten years, an entire decade, since someone was able to cobble together a new one.

It was worth it.

The first thing I thought of when I heard of this film coming down the pike I dropped to both my knees and just prayed that another Elmore Leonard wouldn’t be savagely butchered like the BIG BOUNCE was earlier this year. Well, in all honesty, I don’t know that for sure as I didn’t go near that thing after enough cautious warnings from poor souls who went told me that the story was disjointed and it didn’t really have anything more than a cheap look at some crazy chick’s cans. I stayed away and the box office said all it needed to say.

Here, though, we already know that Chili wanted to get into movies and, hence, GET SHORTY. While that movie lambasted filmmaking for all its pretension and glitz seems to take a different angle in this one as it appears to blow up, in all its stereotypes, the music business.

The trailer starts with Chili wanting to get out of pictures and into music. Simple as that. The plot is quickly gotten to, a big plus in my book, and the events are set in motion quite rapidly. How hard is that to do? Most studios take the entire two and a half minutes in a trailer to get to the friggin’ point. I appreciate that, MGM. Gracias.

One thing that is not going to be par for the course is attention to reality. Within the first few seconds we get thugs who look like they’re straight out of a comic book (with all the dark clothing to match), Russian mafia guys who look every bit like you think they would, and one young up-and-coming star who already is in real life so where’s the conceit? These are small quibbles, though, as the trailer matures like a 13 year-old boy.

So Chili wants to be the up-an-coming star’s manager but she has to let her other manager know that Chili’s taking her away from his control. Since the music scene here is all built around the urban scene I was figuring that a black guy would be in charge. I was surprised to see Vince Vaughn but he believes, just like B-Rad from MALIBU’S MOST WANTED (Blech, sorry for dropping that movie title in this column. Won’t happen again.) that he’s every bit from the street. The whole cross-cultural white guys thinking they’re black and vise versa only gets old when old white guys, like Steve Martin, start to employ the gag.

Now, I lose the plot right about here as Uma Thurman comes in as Chili’s record producer. I’m fairly sure that’s the case but I’m busy watching her tie up her bikini top. That’s ok though that I get a little spotty on the events here as all we really need to know at this point is that she’s on Chili’s side. After that’s established here’s where things really speed up.

The Rock is in this movie and he has a kick-ass afro. What’s funny about him is that, at one point in this trailer, he’s in a cowboy supply store and he is purchasing a pair of skin-tight, powder blue pants with a very silky white shirt. He twists in front of the display mirror so he can check himself out, grabs his own butt with a vigor that I am sure a certain percentage, if social statistics are any indication, will enjoy and yells out, “Scorchin’!” After this, in a different scene, Chili is talking The Rock up and telling him he has a certain look. He has “The” look. The Rock seems impressed and gives us an eyebrow raise that many of you “wrasling”enjoyers will find amusing. I’ll admit it: I had a laugh. That’s funny and The Rock can be damn funny.

The giggles and chortles keep coming as we move over to André 3000. From Outkast to the big screen the man, here, seems to be playing a hard core rap artist in this flick. We only see him talking only one time but when he does it’s after he discharges a pistol inside a house. Everyone freaks but his quip back, too lame to transcribe here as a joke described is a joke unfunny, is appropriate. Cedric the Entertainer (I always roll my eyes when I have to write that man’s name.) has a good bit as he harasses a man who is tied and gagged in the back of an H2. The SUV is parked in the front driveway to his house and his little girl waves goodbye as she heads off to school. All his bullet-proof vest posse turn around and wave back with smiles as the two H2’s parked in front spin their obnoxious rims. That, again, to me is not only stupid as it is derivative, not to mention a decade too late to be relevant, but it makes me laugh.

There are a lot of people in this thing (It’s the thing to do, nowadays. Amp up the star power in your flicks) but it doesn’t ever seem overwhelming. This movie looks like a solid Saturday afternoon picture, maybe one you’ll only want to watch once, but it does like an enjoyable once.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast:Tom Cruise, Miranda Otto, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, James DuMont
Release: June 29th, 2005
Synopsis: A contemporary retelling of H.G. Wells’s seminal classic, the sci-fi adventure thriller reveals the extraordinary battle for the future of humankind through the eyes of one American family fighting to survive it.

Prognosis: Negative. Are the rumors really true that it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the budget for this thing is through the roof beyond anything that’s ever been filmed?

I don’t know what’s true and what’s not but I will go on record as saying that the poster design is really very good. I’m not sure if that’s the same one that will be hanging come next June, studio heads would most likely explode if at least one of the posters didn’t have Tom’s mug at least 80% of the size of the damn thing itself, but I like it a lot. I even really dig the way we come into the trailer.

“No one would’ve believed in the early years of the 20th century that our world was being watched”¦”

Yeah, the effects are good but I will say that the voiceover guy is a bit cheesy. I almost want to put my hands to my cheeks, shake my head side to side, and feign like I’m really scared and actually question if aliens had indeed watched us through the last century. The voice just drones on and on about how aliens were enjoying the show for the last century and how we went about our daily lives like miniature Truman Shows to little green men with big bug eyes.

Seriously, is this trailer going to start soon?

The closest I get to a chub-on is when the streetlights of a small town start to flicker as a more colorful light show starts to take place on the horizon of this Smallville of sorts. It’s the very same wicked red, yellow and green alien spaceship color that begins to get more and more intense. The town looks almost good enough to not pass as a soundstage-constructed neighborhood. Almost.

Yeah, I get that H.G. Wells’ own words are fodder for this voiceover guy’s rant but, damn, if I wanted a book on tape I’d go to Barnes and Noble. (Maybe Borders, though, as they have a sweet collection of foreign DVDs)

Things really start to cook, near the one minute, twenty-two second mark of this two minute trailer as this small town just gets decimated by an alien blast of intense proportions. I am chanting in tongues about the wondrous pyrotechnics but then I am yanked back, abruptly, into a black, quiet abyss.

For the last twenty-five seconds I am made to see Tom Cruise’s name in all its full frame glory, followed by Steven Spielberg’s in the exact same size, with a tag line that says “They’re already here.”

I am not teased by this trailer at all.

In fact I would like to go on record and call this a cheap goosing by Katie Carpenter in the hallway of Barrington High School Sophomore year when I wasn’t looking and, therefore, didn’t fully enjoy it than I would anything resembling a tease with this trailer.

I mean, damn, you have THE guy who wrote JURASSIC PARK, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, SPIDER-MAN, PANIC ROOM, STIR OF ECHOES, etc”¦ and not a lick of dialogue? Not even so much as a peep at Tom Cruise? I’m comfortable who I am as a straight male and my own sexuality when I say I enjoy looking at the guy but I feel just jilted I didn’t see him here.

Ok, it’s a tease. I get that. Just wake me up when there’s something to show for all the budgetary hype surrounding this movie.

Director: Jim Fleigner
Cast: John Michael Bolger, Matthew Borish, Michael Dean, Aaron Fiore, Soren Fulton, Sam Semenza
Release: Coming Soon to a Film Festival Near You
Synopsis: Twelve-year olds Joe, Tiger and Chris break out of Little League baseball camp to secretly trail Joe’s parents, who have lied to Joe about a mysterious trip they’re taking. The boys must piece together clues, avoid their parents, dodge the police, trust a stranger ““ and not destroy their friendships in the process ““ during an adventurous road trip in their last summer before junior high. In the spirit of Stand By Me, Rounding First is a coming-of-age dramedy set in the summer of 1980.

Prognosis: Positive. I’m a pretty big fan of The Cars.

Yeah, we all wonder how a man that looks like Lurch’s emaciated younger brother managed to land a piece of tail like supermodel Paulina Porizkova but The Cars made great music in the 80’s. Here, then, the song “Let The Good Times Roll” is played through the duration of Jim Fleigner’s trailer for ROUNDING FIRST.

I like the song and it fits with the laid-back cool of a movie that celebrates the friendship of three young boys who appear to be just coming-of-age.

Since there’s really nothing to go off of in terms of having this a well-known project the story really has to be told within the time allotted for the trailer. Fortunately, it does it well.

What we have, as events unfold, are three kids who are enjoying a summer together. They’re busted early on by the cops and driven back home with a waiting mother in the driveway, one of the kids’ father is a cop who tells him to stay away from the other (we’ve all had one of those kind of friends but those were the ones who the very best to have in one’s social pocket), there’s some ding-dong-ditch tomfoolery against a rather corpulent lady in a very unflattering muumuu (I preferred egging. The sound, as its body crushed against the side of a house with aluminum siding, was glorious), and other things that boys just do when they’re that age.

There seems to also be a sub-plot with one of the parents talking about moving, the threat being of a possible breaking up of the triumphant trio, and the boys react just as anyone else would with impending doom: run away from home.

They’re on a journey somewhere, we aren’t clued in specifically with any destination, but these three boys are picked up by a drifter. Now, as a screenwriter, you could take this story as it was and make a movie out of it one way or go the route of a homicidal maniac who likes to harm young boys. The path chosen here, unfortunately, is one where the boys tag along with the strange man who watches over them in a way, sticks up a Gas N’ Go along the way, letting them shoplift whatever they want, before things slowly break down into tangible plot pieces. Oh well.

The end result here is rather gripping. The boys question whether or not running away from home was a good idea, one seems to lose it emotionally and cries like a lovelorn school girl (sitting next to a toilet no less), and the kidnapper/rebel without-a-Remington- Micro-Blade-to-take-away-his-George-Michael-stubble looks like he may actually not give himself up in the end. That would be nice. Dad’s a cop, crazy man abducts some kids, mentions not wanting to go to prison, independent picture with no real mass audience to serve”¦I smell shootout.

In all, this looks like a great small film. The production values on some of the graphics used are a little computerish but that’s really forgiven easily because of what this trailer does: It gives me, from start to finish, an idea of what’s at stake for the protagonists, a whiff of the complications that ensue through the resolution of their problems and an ambiguous idea of where this story might end. I know that doesn’t seem like much but that’s really what’s needed, basically, in a trailer to make it serviceable. This trailer exceeds that and it has me wondering what is going to happen with these boys.

And to the priest whose house I accidentally double-egged (holding two in my right hand, getting just the right loft) when I was twelve, I swear I didn’t know it was your house until my friend told me as we were running home, evading the police.

Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Adam Brody
Release: June 10th, 2005
Synopsis: John and Jane Smith are an ordinary suburban couple with an ordinary, lifeless suburban marriage. But each of them has a secret — they are actually both legendary assassins working for competing organizations. When the truth comes out, John and Jane end up in each other’s cross-hairs.

Prognosis: Positive. I need more beautiful people in this one. I just do.

The trailer opens stealthily with Brad having a gun tucked in the back of his pants.

Next, at a different locale, Angelina holsters a knife in a thigh-high sheath.

We’re off to a great start with all the mystery surrounding this flick and right away the trailer people have to start effin’ up the works with the old “deaf or blind” approach; this is characterized by having the voice over guy repeat, verbatim, the words that I see on the screen. Are the studios trying to imply most of you are illiterate, after all there are many millions of you out there, needing someone to lead your hand through this thing or are they just incompetent? I would like to say I think it’s the latter but I know it’s really the former. They don’t know what they want in the ice cream shop so they go with both.

So, we are told/shown that these two are the most freaking unbelievable assassins this side of the Rio Grande. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, I would like to think that, yeah, Brad could be a good assassin. He very well could be. He would get all that sweet meat overseas to spill the goods about their governments but, Angelina, on the other hand, would be road kill on her second day of training. I’ve read enough about spy craft that the only job she’d be good for in the intelligence agency is the kind of job I can’t talk about in a public forum. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge) Although, in fairness, if she had her freakish looking brother with her they could team up and be a sort of ambiguously incestuous A-Team, but I digress from the matter at hand.

In the next scene, Brad wields a shoulder powered rocket launcher (I could care less what kind of a movie it’s in but a shoulder powered rocket launcher could be in a Care Bears movie and I would love it just the same) and we get a nice looking explosion. Angelina, on the other hand, repels down the side of a building. Some of you younger readers out there are strongly encouraged to use QuickTime to see if you can slow down the images ever so slightly as I think you get a fuzzy shot of her underwear as her dress hikes up; be first to post it on the Internet and discuss it with your friends, you pervs.

Now, I know it seems like I’m being harsh, I am, but I like where this film is going when we deduce that they are husband and wife and neither of them know what the other does; I’ll admit that’s a good premise. Now, Brad and Angelina as a married couple? I actually believe that without breaking a sweat. We’re getting somewhere, people.

Of course, their lives aren’t all happy as Brad seems to be talking with a therapist. He makes a choking motion with his hands as he describes as how sometimes he just wants to choke the crap out of Angelina. Wow, we’re really hauling down the highway of cinema verite. I, too, can relate to that impulse whenever subjected to her presence for too long of a time.

What’s weird, and I was going to bring this up sooner, is that the first thing that popped into my head when I realized the premise is like it’s a double TRUE LIES. The husband has a secret but the wife doesn’t know, etc”¦ but as we get further into this trailer the music of the dance that Arnold and Tia Carrere shook their groove thang to in the beginning of the film starts playing as Brad and Angelina start dancing to it as well. Déjà vu.

Vince Vaughn makes a brief cameo mid-way though this thing and it adds some levity to the whole shebang when the both of them realize that they are competing agents and Vince approves quite audibly about the weapon of choice that Brad selects.

Then, the fun really begins as they try to kill each other. I could do without the “Who’s your daddy?” jokes as they’re about as tired and busted as any Baha Men “Who Let The Dogs Out?” reference of any kind. The use of a minivan in a high speed chase is a cute twist on the whole suburban life meets COMMANDO thing and I am even more impressed that Doug Liman, the eyes behind THE BOURNE IDENTITY, has taken the reigns for something as enjoyable as this. There are guns everywhere, there are explosions aplenty, and the premise is somewhat engaging.

Dare I admit this public but I very well may pay to see an Angelina Jolie movie.

Director: David Dobkin
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Christopher Walken, Jane Seymour
Release: July 22, 2005
Synopsis: John Beckwith and Jeremy Klein, a pair of committed womanizers who sneak into weddings to take advantage of the romantic tinge in the air, find themselves at odds with one another when John meets and falls for Claire Clearly.

Prognosis: Positive I am a huge fan of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn that it absolutely destroyed me when STARSKY AND HUTCH turned out to be a blasé match-up. It was one of those movies where the trailer truly did reveal all that was really funny.

Now, though, this looks like the two of them are coming together again and, really, this movie appears that it with either survive or die based on whether these two guys can stay consistently funny throughout the flick. With the exception of the great Walken, their personas will carry this film.

What’s refreshing about the trailer is that it doesn’t mind somewhat alienating the ladies in the house with its overt poke on how women react when it comes to weddings. There are enough “Oh yeah”¦” moments that guys will appreciate, much like when Vince described his weekends as a married man in OLD SCHOOL, but first things first.

“Two people will come together to celebrate the sanctity of marriage.”

With voiceover guy talking up the whole marriage as a sacrament the obvious thing that comes next is our two heroes completely disgracing it. Vince seems to the ringleader of the pack as he yells at Owen how it’s wedding season and it means the opportunity for them to take advantage of women who are so overtaken by the thought of marriage that they will, “throw their inhibitions to the wind.” Now, that’s a philosophy I can get behind.

Owen is nearly frothing at the mouth as he anticipates the coming onslaught of women but I am off in some other dimensional space as I wonder why in hell I didn’t think of that myself so many years ago when I was a wee lad.

“Hide your bridesmaids.”

What’s also funny is how these two take on a variety of fake identities to fit the occasion. From the last name of Schwartz at a Jewish celebration, to a Sanjay and a Seamus, at a Hindu and Irish gathering, respectively, these two guys infiltrate the ceremony to take the poon hunt even further than just showing up to take advantage of an open bar.

Vince uses the guise as a balloon animal maker to entice the ladies and Owen employs the flower girl at another to show how wonderful with kids he is. Owen then adds he’ll mention how he’s a charter member of Oprah’s book club. Vince eye-spies a woman with a tattoo on her lower back and he comments it might as well be a bull’s-eye. I would have to agree that both guys are going for the golden ring on this one.

From Green Day’s “American Idiot” providing the soundtrack to displays of all the frivolity these two cats are having, to copious amounts of skin and ladies in their undergoods, this trailer really speaks to me on a sleaze level that gets nothing but kudos from my corner.

The “Save the date” dig at the ladies who send those notices out to the potential wedding guest list is a nice touch and an added bonus that is not missed.

Director: Prachya Pinkaew
Cast: Tony Jaa, Petchthai Wongkamlao, Pumwaree Yodkamol, Rungrawee Borrijindakul, Chetwut Wacharakun
Release: November 5, 2004 (AFI Film Festival)
Synopsis: Booting lives in a small and peaceful village. One day a sacred Buddha statuette called Ong Bak is stolen from the village by a immoral businessman who sells it for exorbitant profits. It soon becomes the task of a young man, Boonting (Phanom Yeeram), to track the thief down to Bangkok voluntarily and reclaim the religious treasure. Along the way, Boonting uses his astonishing athleticism and traditional Muay Thai skills to combat his adversaries.

Prognosis: Positive. This is why it’s nice to keep an eye on Asian cinema. Sometimes you just find something that strikes an interest.

The cards that open this trailer, letting everyone know that there is a long history of martial art masters who have not only proven themselves great at their athleticism but at being able to be charismatic on film, aren’t pretentious. I thought they were when I first read them, as it would be easy enough to compare yourself with Bruce Lee or Jet Li, but could you actually deliver on that?

Tony Jaa delivers quite effectively and quickly, thank you very much.

Since this is a foreign language film there isn’t a need to dwell on the crappy dialogue that usually hampers an action film anyway, so they just show the goods while accentuating on some great selling points.

Right after we go through the history of martial arts on celluloid, there is a nice guitar intro as Tony starts leaping, bounding and swinging his leg at anyone getting in his way. Are they his enemies, bystanders? Who cares! It’s martial arts and it’s wonderful to watch.

“No safety nets.”

Tony seems to be a cross between a ferocious Jet Li while incorporating the confused-dog-head-how’d-he-do-that stunt action that made Jackie Chan a superstar. The man literally leaps many feet in the air, only to do the splits, and other near physical improbabilities, to evade swinging weapons meant for him.

“No computer graphics.”

He scales fences while being chased and he makes it seem effortless. He swings on a hook only to have another man’s chest stop his motion as he plows both feet into the man’s ribs.

There is a really sweet slo-mo shot of him flipping, doing multiple rotations in the Muay Thai ring, while doing the same thing on the streets, again, to avoid getting a beat down from some nameless thugs. Even though this trailer is from way across the sea the inclusion of some nice looking ladies, a fiery explosion and some alone time of him just doing martial arts for no else’s enjoyment but our own, shows a keen awareness of what we Americans demand of our action films.

There are snippets from the New York Times, Time and even Ain’t It Cool News, in praise of this film’s delivery, and it serves to elevate this film just a little bit more above the rest. The level of ass-kickery that is displayed here in the trailer just rivals most anything I’ve seen for quite some time. I used to think Jean-Claude Van Damme was the end all be all, I thought Steven Segal would have some longevity, and I even put a little hope in Ernie Reyes Jr.’s future when I saw him chop socky-ing over on ABC when I was 11, but all these false idols fell out of favor with me when I saw what real martial artists could do.

Without having seen the film I am not sure if Tony Jaa is it, but it would be nice to have someone else who could have a promising career beyond the lives of the Li’s and Chan’s who are as magnanimous as they are memorable.

Director: Clare Kilner
Cast: Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Holland Taylor, Jack Davenport, Jeremy Sheffield, Sarah Parish
Release: February 5, 2005
Synopsis: Wedding Date centers around Kat Ellis (Messing), who returns to her parents’ London home for her sister’s wedding. Afraid of confronting her ex-fiancé, who dumped her two years before, she hires a top-drawer male escort (Mulroney) to pose as her new boyfriend..

Prognosis: Negative. Alright, as soon as voiceover guy says, “What was supposed to be strictly business”¦” I was done. I tuned out Tokyo and called it a night. Everything about the plot was meaningless and without any importance at that point, but I realized that it does have meaning to your girlfriends and wives who will no doubt drag your scraggly ass to see this one. I apologize in advance.

I will give you my honest opinion: if you like WILL AND GRACE you could do worse. If you hate WILL AND GRACE and find Debra Messing is indeed not the next Lucille Ball but a redheaded fraud, you’ll be scratching your eyeballs out by the end of the first act.

To give you some idea what’s happening in this film, it’s essentially a reversed PRETTY WOMAN. That’s all there is.

Debra is off to London to meet up with her family and she feels the need to get an escort. It’s her sister’s wedding, information gracefully given to us by an answering machine that Ms. Messing is choosing to ignore as she crazily gets her suitcase ready for international travel. She obviously feels the need to compensate for something, as it would be absolutely insane to assume that any woman who is comfortable with her singularity couldn’t tell her family that she’s completely fine with not having to depend on a man for her happiness but this is a movie after all so she has to be impetuous.

So, instead of finding someone she works with or maybe finding a friend who wouldn’t mind traveling to London for a quick spin, she hires a male escort. She hires an escort to be her date to her own sister’s wedding. Apart from the strange questions about how quickly this new man materialized into her life from people who know her he ends up being exactly the kind of cover she needs to feel better about herself and her life.

They land in London and her mother greets her new rented man meat with gracious hospitality. Now, in the next scene, where Debra gives us important plot information about how she spent six Gs on Dermot’s company the dude stands in front of her in tidy-whities, man sac on near full display, and I am feeling less comfortable about my viewing of this trailer. I move on past the mental sizzling from that image and then notice that Dermot is the talk of the family. All the ladies who get into the man’s perimeter gravitate to him like an old rich guy with a thick wallet and a willingness to part with his money indiscriminately.

Guests ask what he does. She lies to one and says he’s a therapist. What I don’t know is if that’s meant to be funny. Debra looks like it’s somehow supposed to be amusing in that whole Grace/visual shtick thing she does on Thursday nights but it’s only killing the chances to recommend the flick as I get an underwear butt shot of Dermot taking off his briefs.

What’s not supposed to be funny, but is, is when Dermot the man whore whispers into Debra’s ear about how she should feel safe and know what an incredible woman she is. She looks like she’s just learned it’s now possible for her to have an orgasm. She’s the female equivalent to those insipid guy friends we’ve all had that swear that a stripper they see on a consistent basis is spending time with them at the club because she really likes his company and has nothing to do with the piles of money being forked over.

After some montage to Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” where Debra finds herself falling in love with her mimbo and seeing how absolutely wonderful Dermot is with everything he does we get more strategic viewing of Dermot’s naked body. Seriously, when can this end?

Dermot then starts spouting about how it’s important to have the courage to let someone love you back (I can just hear the ladies amping up their charge cards to get advance seats for this), we get Dermot’s naked chest, again, as we wind down with him talking about how it was just “something” in Debra’s voice that made him want to take on this assignment.

What would be neat, and completely possible, is if Dermot wasn’t a man whore after all and it was all a joke. I’m already predicting that the two of them somehow end up together, but I could really care less at this point.

Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn
Release: April 22, 2005
Synopsis: Political intrigue and deception unfold inside the United Nations, where an interpreter overhears an assassination plot.

Prognosis: Positive. Sean Penn, again, pops his head up for the second time in two weeks in a movie that no doubt steps right up to the line of the mainstream and knocks on its mediocre door. With Nicole Kidman onboard this vehicle you can be sure Sean will probably be on Oprah with her as he shares his feelings and innermost secrets about romance, home decoration, how freaky Kirstie Alley looks nowadays, before they ever get around to talking about the film for all of five to seven minutes.

Things for this trailer open up interestingly enough. Nicole is an interpreter at the UN in New York and she overhears a possible assassination attempt against a UN ambassador for some piddly little country.

Some guard at the UN, when approached by Secret Service foreign dignitary protection, which includes some lady and Penn, lets the two of them know they’re not on US soil. It’s international territory. Ooo”¦the international intrigue thriller has begun, ladies and gentleman.

Penn, looking very mature action movie star-like, asks Kidman if she could pick out the voice again if she heard it. She says yes and then the whole background of this movie is set up like a softball toss at a drunken picnic. Essentially, Kidman hears this assassination attempt after having to go back to the UN after hours for something she left behind. Only she and, according to Penn, about eight other people could understand the language that the plot was discussed in which puts her on a very tiny list of possible suspects.

I’m already tossing in some Jiffy Pop as I get giddy trying to think of whodunit.

Penn doesn’t really put a lot of credibility into Kidman, Pollack (who has a very distinctive look about himself) pops up as a player in his own film, and then the cat and mouse games begin. Kidman begins to have delusions about being followed, Penn still has problems believing her, and then a dude, with a weird gold lamee mask, dangles outside of Kidman’s apartment in a tree as the mystery deepens about who could be behind it all.

“Is she a victim or a suspect?”

Penn interrogates Kidman after he uncovers some photos of her at a rebel rally (that is, men with guns and not a pack of inebriated Billy Idol fans in a parking lot before his concert at the Topeka, Kansas state fair) and wants to know what her deal is.

This trailer asks more questions than it really does in informing the plotline.

Things really start to heat up as Kidman boards a bus. Someone hollers back on a radio that she’s getting on the bus as Sean realizes that she’s about to become a part of a bombing. Kidman gets off, confused at what’s happening when someone tells her to shag ass off of it, as the bus lights up in a whopping explosion. Nice.

The rest of this thing is filled with so many discordant images, as it tries to throw everyone into a spin cycle of confusion, that I’m not sure what the hell is happening by the end of it. I definitely see a snipers rifle, a lot of running, a lot of guns, and Sean closes this thing by ominously saying that, during the investigation, the person with the darkest history is Nicole. Ooo”¦.

So what that it’s not going up for an Oscar or that it’s not out to change the way movies are made; its only purpose is to entertain. Keeping these three tenets in mind when looking at a film of this kind will help to adjust expectations accordingly.

It’s been a while since a really good “check your mind at the door” flick has come out and I think this is worthy for consideration to keep on the radar.

Director: James M. Johnston, David Lowery, Nick Prendergast, Yen Tan
Cast: Rebecca Bustamante, Mark Forte, Harry Goaz, Kelly Grandjean, Jeff Griffin, Grant James, Alana Macias, Lydia Miller, Bill Sebastian, Paul T. Taylor
Release: Coming Soon to a Festival Near You
Synopsis: A unique and challenging collaborative effort from four talented filmmakers, Deadroom is a narrative drama made up of four interwoven vignettes in which conversastions are held between the living and the dead. It is not a ghost story, and indeed there is no context for these otherworldly conversations; they are simply a vehicle for words that could not be said or emotions that could not be felt without the touch of death.

Prognosis: Positive. This film has four teasers.

They’re quick and I thought I would expound on each one before explaining things.

Teaser 1: Strands of hair curl around a woman’s eye and all we see is her forehead and cheek. The woman awakes, or opens her eye, as the narrator talks from above.

“Something terrible happened to you last night. I need you to remember what it was.”

The camera pans out to reveal this woman is wearing a white hospital gown (dress?) as she appears to be in a police interrogation room.

The woman appears distressed as she recounts the moments leading to this moment. Her own narration takes over and we have shots of her face and hands as she tries to answer the policeman’s query.

The interrogator reaches down from the table, pulling out a picture, and asks the woman to tell him what the picture means to her.

A quick flash of a violent altercation snaps quickly in and out of focus.

The woman says she doesn’t understand. The interrogator says to answer his questions and she will eventually understand.

A lovely piano suite takes us to the card that tells us the name of the movie.

Teaser 2:

An interviewer of a different sort, seems like a grad student or a young journalist, goes through a litany of facts about two people.

We don’t know who these people are but as the camera is tightly focused on the man’s glasses, actually the upper left-hand of the man’s glasses, his inner dialogue overlaps snippets of events and happenings that seem like a bunch of gibberish.

The man who consumes this young man’s thoughts eventually comes into the room. The kid stands up and introduces himself to the subject of his fixation.

Really quiet music plays in the background while a card tells us the name of the movie.

Teaser 3:

“Do you enjoy speaking with the dead?”

No one is present as these lines are spoken by a man. He’s very calm, soothing. A yellow room with small grey pictures hangs before us. The camera pans to the left.

“I guess you could put it that way.”

It’s a woman’s voice. The screen goes black.

“Why is that? It seems kind of pointless.”

The man speaks again to which the woman replies about why she enjoys what she does. She can say things that she didn’t get to say before. The screen goes black again as the man asks what she didn’t get to say to him.

The screen illuminates alive with color as we see the two people share a small table. He looks to her and awaits her answer. She keeps her head down as she doesn’t know what to say back to him.

Again, a quiet piano suite plays as a card tells us the name of the movie.

Teaser 4:

Grey room. A man stands at the end of the room which has a single table and two chairs. The man wears a suit and he is adjusting his tie. He faces a wall as the camera pans back to reveal someone is standing behind him.

It’s a woman who stands there, looking at the man. She knows his name and says it out loud. He turns around and says hers.

She’s overcome by emotion and can’t coherently put anything else together between her lips. The camera’s P.O.V. changes to where the man is shown standing static with his arms at his side. The woman asks “Are you really”¦?” before she quickly walks over to touch him.

The screen goes white and a card tells us the name of the movie.

Hmm”¦.Ok. These are vignettes, from what I can gather. We’re not told anything about why we should see this film. There isn’t any indication of the plot, that much is true, but I think its power derives from when you know what the premise of the film is about before you launch into these trailers. Without knowing the information beforehand there is a perplexity of trying to understand what it is, exactly, that you’re seeing.

We’re introduced to a good number of people, sure, but even though I am intrigued I am not sure why I should hunt this movie out if, let’s say, all four were pasted together to make one long trailer. If this was a movie’s trailer, and we had nothing else to go off of, I would say to give voiceover guy a call and have him say just a few lines. It’s ok to be ambiguous when you know what you’re watching but if I don’t know anyone or anything about the film I need only a few lines for me to really enjoy what’s on the screen and not waste their time or my time asking, “what in the hell is going on?”

I love the premise of the film. I thoroughly enjoyed FOUR ROOMS and I am a big fan of mixing vignettes up with different directors that are all swirling around the same idea; for sheer unique value I would see this film over another nameless film at a festival because of it.

Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman
Release: December 17, 2004 (Limited)
Synopsis: A hardened fighter-cum-trainer works with a determined woman in her attempt to establish herself as a boxer.

Prognosis: Positive Quick, what do Milli Vanilli and Marisa Tomei have in common?

Besides both having a predilection for spandex and bad pop music they both found themselves being prize winners in the game of life (a Grammy and an Oscar, respectively) and they both took a wrong turn in their careers after having received their awards. One was busted for lip-synching and the other, well, evaporated from the mainstream consciousness. This all brings us, then, to Hillary Swank.

Apart from having a name that I connote with a certain gentleman’s magazine every time I hear it, I can’t remember the last quality flick she’s been in since winning that golden boy. Is getting the Oscar so early on a death sentence in a person’s career? Sure, Anna Paquin went on to be the object de jour for so many comic book nerds after X-MEN hit (myself included with hands way high in the air in affirmation) but where has Hillary been? Exactly. So, it was with a cautious eye that I crept into this trailer.

This thing starts off with a nice opening shot. Clint is on his knee, next to his bed, praying to the Man above. Visually, it looks dark and the mood is heavy.

In the next shot Clint walks down a large hallway. Hillary walks up to him and asks whether he’s the man she’s looking for. He asks if he owes her money or knows her momma. I love it; the old coot has some good lines left in him. She asks him whether or not he would train a girl. After he denies it once I already know that a) he’ll eventually say yes and b) wasn’t this movie also called GIRLFIGHT?

Morgan Freeman does a quaint little voiceover about one’s own dreams as we see a lonely Clint and a lonely Swank doing their respective things. Next day, new day, Hillary is training on the bag when Clint talks tough about her not being in control of it while walking away from her. Since there’s nothing really progressing with the story (see above paragraph) I watch the way the camera seems to move, the cinematography and how it all affects the environment being shown. It’s all very pleasing to the eye.

Clint eventually relents to Hillary’s begging (obviously) and when I expect to get a high octane soundtrack montage of scenes showing how tough Hillary really as she trains really really hard I’m surprised when I don’t get that. I get a slow montage of scenes showing how tough, and delicate, Hillary is.

The relationship the two of them have is fraught with Clint being a tough-as-crap old codger but there seems to be something else. While there’s a story with Hillary being from a very financially depressed segment of the population, there’s an undercurrent with Clint. Something is going on with him that’s influencing his relationship with Hillary and I’m not sure what it is and it’s not explained. It’s a good thing that I don’t know, and it’s wonderful that the trailer ends as ambiguously as it does.

An honorable mention has to go out to the fact that there isn’t one damn voiceover in this thing and there isn’t a whole lot put on the screen to make us read. Sometimes a trailer like this just glides by on its ability to show how well a movie is put together and it does exactly that. Extra props need to go to Clint for looking as tough and as good as he does. I know the guy’s pushing 97 but, damn, he looks like he could easily take my candy ass in a fight. Good for him.

Director: Gary Chapman
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Jim Broadbent, John Cleese, Tim Curry, Ricky Gervais, John Hurt, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Williams
Release: March 25th, 2005 (Only in the UK)
Synopsis: While set in WWII, Valiant is described by insiders as more Private Benjamin than Private Ryan, following a lonely and comically misfit pigeon through boot camp at the Royal Pigeon Service. Vastly unqualified for the job, Valiant squeaks his way through RAF training and is abruptly sent on the most important mission of the war, charged with carrying key dispatches from the French Resistance to Allies regarding the D-Day landing in Normandy.

Prognosis: Positive. Is it possible the Brits could give an animated feature some more laughs than recent actors like Will Smith or Matt Damon have been able to do in the past few years? It seems with the Japanese and American dominance of animated features that a British take on comedy that could service young moppets and also give adults a reason to go to the theater has been a long time coming. How much, as well, of what seems to work nowadays in animation is its visual appeal but VALLIANT doesn’t seem to want in that category either.

It’s nice that the trailer starts off stoic and plays everything very straight.

A WWII bomber starts its propellers. It stays steady as it flies in the air. Zeppelins, and the rope dangling from them, fill the sinister, foggy skies over London.

“In Britain’s Darkest Hour”

The bomb doors of the bomber open up and the air is filled with black puffs of anti-aircraft fire and streams of machine gun bullets trace across the skyline.

“One hero will light up the sky”

A very stalwartly, British voice gives a speech off-screen as he lets his troops know that they should feel proud for doing their part in this war. Of course, when the speech gets to the end, we don’t see a person but, in this film, the animals which possess great linguistic capabilities are birds.

From here a very jolly British voice lets us know that this film is being brought to us by the same producer who gave us SHREK and SHREK 2. Valiant Pigeon, voiced here by Ewan McGregor, is the protagonist in this flick and what protagonist would be complete in an animated feature without a wise-cracking sidekick? The voice talent of this comedic relief isn’t mentioned but, let’s face it, all Brits seem to talk the same (That was a joke”¦), and it’s actually amusing when you understand that the target audience isn’t my age.

It could be my predisposition for British humour or a desperate need to have more well-made CGI films out there like THE INCREDIBLES but this one doesn’t irk me in a way that both SHARK TALE and POLAR EXPRESS did. The animation looks more than serviceable, the colors seem in line for the kind of environment it’s taking place in, and who the hell out there doesn’t love WWII movies?

What’s odd about this feature, though, is that it’s going to open next year in Britain without a US date slated. I can understand keeping things from this country. We’re bullies of the world and I don’t blame anyone for keeping their toys to themselves but when France, the Netherlands, and Russia all get their advance date set I just have to question why. Aren’t we all in the Axis of Hey-Let’s-Get-That-Guy?

I do like that this could be one of the very few movies not from Japan that could be an animated import should it do very well. It would be an odd thing to see packs of little kids vying to get into the art house but I’m sure if it did well enough there would be a release not unlike CHICKEN RUN.

Director: Niels Mueller
Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson, Brad Henke
Release: December 29, 2004 (Limited)
Synopsis: Based on real life events, Assassination is set in 1974 and centers on a businessman (Penn) who decides to take extreme measures to achieve his American dream.

Prognosis: Positive. I’ve really grown to enjoy the work Sean Penn has done over the years.

Be it his Spicoli or his work in THE THIN RED LINE or even the often overlooked THE GAME, the man has it and it’s nice he has enough wherewithal to continually put his energy into projects that have more weight than the collective press most mainstream fare gets in US Weekly and Access Hollywood. (In fairness, his odd appearance with his son in an episode of Viva la Bam was more surreal than anything I’ve seen as of late that didn’t involve a shameless pimping of any film project)

What this trailer does, delicately, is set everything up with cautious precision. With a movie title like this it would be hard to really not know what you’re getting from the get go. However, things open up with Sean speaking into a tape recorder. We don’t see him, but the plastic reels of the recorder unwind as he speaks.

He gives us the date. It’s February 22nd, 1974.

In the next scene Sean wrangles his kids around the front of a porch for a picture before having the shot ruined by being hustled off the property by a woman who I assume is his ex-wife; she says he can see the kids next Sunday. The musical score in the background is morose as is the expression on his face. I already feel sorry for the guy.

Sean then introduces himself into the tape recorder, the messed up picture of his kids from the previous shot hangs on his mirror. He says he’s as significant as a grain of sand.

He sells office furniture.

Someone in the next shot points to a television showing some footage of Richard Nixon as he says that Tricky Dick was the best salesman alive; he sold himself twice on the American population. Sean seems affected by the statement.

Someone at the office starts Sean on a program to help him be a better salesman. Empty affirmations, like the kind you see enclosed in tiny glass frames at a store like Successories, start ringing in his ear.

Naomi Watts, de-sexified in this role, asks if everything is alright at work. His boss then asks him if everything is alright at home. He looks lost.

Roger Ebert gets a long, lingering soundbite on the screen, touting this film’s veracity.

Sean has a problem with Naomi being a cocktail waitress because of the outfit she has to wear. He starts to show a little rage, even begins to spy on her every move, and then, in the background, you hear his voiceover say that all he wants is to have his piece of the American dream. His boss lets him know that divorced salesman simply don’t have what it takes to succeed; the profession is a marriage.

He mentally goes over a cliff at this point.

Sean starts to rant a little more vehemently into his recorder, starts to construct a makeshift ankle holster to hold a big ass gun, begins to plot out his misguided attempt at gaining some kind of life affirming satisfaction, and essentially starts his breakdown.

His last line iterates the point that as soon as he is done the world will remember that he was there and that no one will ever forget his presence.

This is the kind of movie that warrants penciling into a day planner.

Director: Walter Salles
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Ariel Gade, Shelley Duvall, Perla Haney-Jardine, Camryn Manheim, Pete Postlethwaite, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott
Release: August, 2005
Synopsis: A mother and daughter, still wounded from a bitter custody dispute, hole up in a run-down apartment building. Adding further drama to their plight, they are targeted by the ghost of former resident.

Prognosis: Visually, positive. Plot-wise, dumber than a short bus filled to the brim with low achievers. Yeah, so this thing opens with a straight shot down one of NYC’s many main drags. I half expect Spidey to come careening out from the side, being chased by the Sandman or Electro, but instead I get Jennifer Connelly and her daughter walking with a hoity spring in their step to a new apartment.

From the first few lines about how they think this new place will be such a wonderful place to live and how they cavort and giggle like they’re all hoped up on Pixie Stix you know something bad is about to happen.

With drab and dreary colors that range from the nasty weather on the outside to one of the foulest looking elevators this side of Skid Row things aren’t looking that swell. John C. Reilly starts talking up the neighborhood school system as mother and daughter take a ride but then the crazy stuff starts to make an inroad. The elevator door closes suddenly after Jennifer’s daughter runs out, John giving chase, and the elevator goes haywire before coming back to where it began. At first you think John has something to do with the weirdness but no, the crap gets existentially weirder.

Jennifer’s daughter, again in the middle of all this craziness, sees something in the corner of her room. On the ceiling there is a bubbling red spot and they stare at it. I’m sure every instinct in me as a parent would not to go upstairs to find out what it is, as Jennifer does, but to pack up my crap, grab a couple of Ginsus from out of the kitchen, and be ready to stab anyone who comes between me and the exit doors. No, the crazy single mom (which I haven’t made a comment but here it is: There is no way I believe for a moment that women like Jennifer are single parents. I call bullshiat on this one.) decides to play Murder She Wrote and goes upstairs and down a creepy than all hell storage hallway. By herself. It’s dark.

A little girl’s voice quietly recites the Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Yeah, also, what makes me giggle is that John incredulously, and without an ounce of irony, says to Jennifer when she says that it seems like there’s running water coming from the space above her apartment, “There hasn’t been anyone up there for years.” Yeah, my Ginsu plan would be in full-effect at that point.

Alright, so the bitch goes traipsing down the hallway by herself (Yeah, I said it. Any chick who actively seeks to get killed this way deserves a moniker half as nice as that one.). She finds out that the elevator button leading up to that floor has been burned off. (Do you hear the signal bells going down the When Should I Get The Hell Out Of Dodge check sheet?) She next, and boy does it get better, she goes to the door of that apartment and opens it herself. The place is flooded with lake deep water. What does she do? Steps inside, of course. Then, later on, three water faucets come on by themselves.

After we’re told that this movie is brought to us by the author of THE RING Jennifer’s kid gets possessed while creating refrigerator art at school.

“Some mysteries were never meant to be solved.”

So, the final moments are just chockfull of water; coming out of the washer, the walls, the windows, out her pants, everywhere. I try to slow down the quick clips, hoping to see some creepy images of ghosts or demons, but all I get is some Large Marge (pre-freak-out) and some kid who looks like he should be playing bass for Matchbox 20. Disappointing.

Bottom line: oh yeah, I’ll see this. I was astounded by THE RING and I will give this one a chance but if the trailer is already giving me some pause about the preposterousness of it all this can’t be good for what the whole movie will hold. Maybe I’ll check out the Japanese version; their versions are like book versions, simply more satisfying.