Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Will Ferrell, Radha Mitchell, Chloe Sevigny, Amanda Peet
Release: March 18th, 2005
Synopsis: Two alternating stories about Melinda’s (Mitchell) attempts to straighten out her life.

Prognosis: Negative. Yeah, ANNIE HALL is the best romantic comedy ever put to film. Woody Allen is pure genius. He is one of the most unappreciated director/writers of our generation. Everyone in Hollywood always says they’re honored when he picks up the phone to ask them to star in a new production of his. He has the best taste in women.

Stop it already. Seriously.

How long can this guy turn out average fare before people stop believing the hype? I’m not saying people are wrong to say things that are more than complimentary but just adjust your perception of the world and see that his hit-or-miss style, for a long time now, isn’t as genius as the press would have you believe. For every SWEET AND LOWDOWN there’s two ANYTHING ELSEs just waiting to be released. This film, MELINDA AND MELINDA looks like something in-between.

If I could go half-way myself on either positive or negative I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one I’d choose with any great accuracy. This movie almost feels like a more cerebral lost episode of Seinfeld.

“Let me tell you a story and you tell me…is it material for a comedy or a tragedy?”

I like the premise and the way this trailer begins. It already supposes where we’re going with the story and it sets my anticipation that what we’re going to be shown is two scenarios seen through two different emotional lenses.

The cards introducing Woody as the writer/director is simple, the music is nice and as the voiceover says that everything is going to take place during a dinner party I am content. The party’s host, who comments that he’s running out of “obsequious” banter and seeming just like the kind of city-yuppie a-hole intellectual poseur who needs to have his faux ivy-league ass kicked in a bar fight, is a little pretentious but the premise that someone unexpected comes to the party is good. Then, that’s when Wallace Shawn, a near and dear actor for his timeless role in A PRINCESS BRIDE, pipes in and let’s us know we have the makings of a great comedy. It’s odd, a little stilted but it does rise above some other kinds of openings I’ve seen.

So…same dinner party premise, same kind of people, same unexpected guest but this time instead of asking for some wine or champagne (who the hell serves champagne at a dinner party?) she admits to having ingested fistfuls of sleeping pills. Of course, the wackiness ensues with the hostess admonishing her guests from getting up from the table to help the damsel in distress because the food will get cold and before she can yak on the rug Will Ferrell tells her to go to the bathroom because that’s new carpet. The premise is continued when Melinda, the sleeping pill chick, is being introduced to a man who has a successful dentistry practice. Will Ferrell tells his wife Melinda has already been married to a doctor and a dentist is the same thing but…oral. I loved that Seinfeld episode.

The trailer kind of slides here for me as this chick Melinda is the centerpiece for the film and in-between all the talk of finding her a man and settling down, to say nothing of the fact that all we know about this chick is that she likes sleeping pills, Will ends up really liking her as well.

“Love can be a tragedy or a comedy.”

Now, as I see it, it seems that Chloe Sevigny takes a shine to Melinda’s man and they hit it off as well. Things also go awry when, at the end of the trailer, Will catches his wife in bed with another man. He seems pleased because his fantasy to have Melinda to himself seems to be coming true, and I know it is supposed to appear funny, but wasn’t this all a plotline in Rescue Me, another television show?

Yeah, I don’t think the audience who this movie is catering to would watch a show like Rescue Me, either. It’s too gauche and bourgeois for the kinds of educated people this film is aimed at. Still, that was a good episode. Here, though, the joke could work for those not in the know. It looks like a serviceable comedy, if I can be so bold as to say that, but it will live or die on how well the dialogue comes across because there isn’t anything worse than a movie that tries to be clever only to impale itself on its own petard of bad clichés.

Director: Darin Beckstead
Cast: Todd Wall, Aaron Fiore, Kahil Dotay, Bill Allison, Tony Larimer
Release: November 20, 2004 (New York), DVD release soon
Synopsis: Inspired by the making of Spielberg’s 1974 shark blockbuster. Steven, a young filmmaker must find a way to make his monster movie after he and a friend (George) accidentally break the film’s main prop (A Mechanical Shark).

Prognosis: Positive Ok, so when I had to access the trailer for this independent movie I had to first go to the movie’s home page. When I opened it up I seriously thought I was going to be watching something on the Branch Davidians as I could swear the man looking back at me on that site bears a strong resemblance to David Koresh.

What this movie is, really, is something that feels along the same lines of GEORGE LUCAS IN LOVE and I think that may have something to do with Lucas being depicted again in this short with the tell-tale beard and semi-morose attitude. Plus, at 25 minutes, the film looks like that’s just about enough to keep a gag like this going before it becomes tiresome and annoying.

The trailer is really amusing as it shows how JAWS really came together after Spielberg accidentally destroys the shark, trying to secretly show it off to Lucas one night. Right off the bat we get into why I need to see the movie, the conflict, and that’s too important not to make mention of here. Sometimes first time directors are so eager to show off everything they’ve done that they feel a need to cram but this trailer feels open and it doesn’t rush me through things. Within the first 20 seconds I know this is a comedy and that in a moment of child-like exuberance Spielberg kills the one thing that the entire movie rests on: a killer shark.

The trailer could’ve started right into how this malfunction affects the other people in the movie but we get an introduction into the various other members of the cast. Some people that are shown are good in their own thespian right. The producers of this interpretation of JAWS are rightly concerned about how this will affect the rest of the production when the shark is no longer usable, there is a guy who bears a wicked resemblance to Richard Dryfus and eerily sounds like him too, but the sheriff’s line about Spielberg, when commenting about this young auteur and his film style, saying that he wouldn’t be able to direct his way out of a paper bag is a groaner. It is. It’s just like those people who like to use a sentence that has the predicate of “on crack” and they insert someone or something that’s really just crazy or loony to them. “Out of a paper bag” is another one that needs to be jettisoned out of the earth’s verbal lexicon.

This doesn’t take away from the trailer’s ability to tell me why I should give a crap about its existence, though. I like parody. I am the fiscal reason why “Weird Al” still cranks out CD’s every couple of years. Comedy is, by some people’s estimation, a far more tenuous medium than any other genre. I was smiling at a couple of things in this trailer and I think that says something. Does it mean the movie might be great? Yeah, but it also could mean the rest of the film is filled with duds.

The trailer here sets the premise up, gives us a little look into the chaos that ensues after Spielberg trashes one of the most important props in movie history and it even tosses in some moments that would have me, at the very least, seeking this one out on television.

Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Christina Ricci, Shannon Elizabeth, Portia de Rossi, Michael Rosenbaum, Scott Foley, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Joshua Jackson, Mya
Release: February 25, 2005
Synopsis: Set in Los Angeles, “Cursed” centers around an estranged brother and sister dealing with the recent loss of their parents, whose lives are irrevocably altered one dark night in Los Angeles by a vicious animal attack.

Prognosis: Negative. I think one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever seen put on a screen involved Bill Paxton, an enormous toadish outfit and a little fly. For those who don’t know what scene I was talking about it is when Bill is turned into a hideous little creature in WEIRD SCIENCE. He’s just sitting on his stumpy little legs and thwips a fly right out of midair, enjoying it, before he realizes what he’s done. Somehow description doesn’t do it justice but you never forget a funny like that when you’re a kid as everything that comes after it just seems weak in comparison. Cases in point: Daniel-san grabs the buzzing fly with his chopsticks in KARATE KID, Jeff Goldblum in THE FLY, and even Booger in REVENGE OF THE NERDS II: NERDS IN PARADISE when he gets the fly with the monstrous loogie he jettisons from his mouth just don’t compare to Bill.

Even Christina Ricci’s fascination with catching flies out of the air with her hands just doesn’t do anything for me.

It seems that Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson (it’s a true Marvel Team-Up if there ever was one) came together to make a werewolf movie but you would never know it by watching this trailer.

The thing starts with Christina taking her brother home. They’re bickering and I can’t really follow it, and it’s really late at night. The road is dark and of course there is heavy foliage besetting both sides of the street so Christina doesn’t see this mysterious something crash into her windshield. In the process of swerving her car away from the point of impact she knocks some lady off the road. I am genuinely curious to know what’s happening but it honest to God seems like it’s a promo for the TV show Lost as this other woman is yanked out of her car by some faceless creature and we have nothing but a blur to go off of. End of scene.

Some days later the brother says he is displaying some odd traits (like the aforementioned fly thing with Ricci), he’s able to bound some school bleachers in a single jump, and dogs start to gather around his house just like the whole cat thing from SLEEPWALKERS (a fairly strange Stephen King movie that I didn’t terribly dislike). His own dog, as well, turns into one of those freak HULK dogs but without the overtly odd physical transformation. It’s not scary, it just seems funny.

The whole trailer is trying to convince me that this is a new chapter of what AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON did for werewolves in the 80’s but I just don’t buy an inch of it. And I really do want it to be good, honestly, I do. Wes Craven gave me NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, Kevin Williamson gave me SCREAM, but all this looks like is an inbred mix of crap acting and bad attempts at trying to seem like a horror film when this only seems like a great cautionary tale as to what film should be avoided come the end of February.

The real reason here why I can’t even be kind of helpful towards this movie is that I have nothing to invest in any of these people. They seem, first of all, like bratty little whelps that need a reed across the ass; second, there isn’t really an explanation as to what’s at stake for any of these people as for all I know killing their friends in werewolf fashion might be a good thing; third, the transformation into a werewolf isn’t even hinted at until the end when we really do get a nice Dracula-like shot of Christina gorging into the neck of what I think is her boyfriend.

Disappointing, to say the least.

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons
Release:May 6, 2005
Synopsis: During the Crusades of the 12th Century, Balian of Ibelin (Bloom), a young blacksmith in Jerusalem, rises to protect his people from foreign invaders.

Prognosis: Negative. “From the director of Gladiator,” the copy says. What it should say is, “From the director of Gladiator comes the exact same thing but just add many hundreds of years…”

I joke, I kid…sorta.

The trailer opens up wonderfully enough. Orlando Bloom has a voiceover where he is trying to rally the troops about some noble cause they’re involved in. We get an overhead shot of galloping horses that kick up lots of dust and that makes it seem more “epic.” We even get some nameless hottie hugging a young kid as he’s probably sold off into male slavery but the chick is squatting among the same damn crop field that looks exactly like the kind of agricultural product that Russell Crowe walks among at the end of GLADIATOR. It’s probably left over from that film but I can’t say for absolute sure just yet, and then we get some badass wielding a huge blade on a nice sunny day. Is it a knight in battle? Orlando makes me think it’s so but we press on for a before I have a chance to ascertain that.

The hottie shows up again, looking like one of those goth chicks I wanted to mack on in high school with the amount of black eyeliner she has on, but it looks like she’s spoken for by Orlando.

Ok, here’s why this is a bad beginning so far to the trailer: I don’t have an idea of who Orlando is supposed to be (good guy or bad), I see Liam Neeson but haven’t a clue what or who he’s scripted to be and as someone who might be a little helpful in getting people into the seats with the buzz surrounding him for KINSEY this might be a prudent time to get him more properly introduced, and, moreover, where the hell is the story? I feel like David St. Hubbins from THIS IS SPINAL TAP looking into an empty olive and feeling a sense of anger and dejection.

I get a flash of Liam getting surgical with his own sidearm sword but we come upon his voiceover as he talks, again I can only assume, to Orlando about being part of a kingdom of conscious. This time we get Jeremy Irons who looks all suited up for battle on a Hollywood screen, some shots of people riding horses, a lot of pomp of kings and queens and I am completely lost without a road map. Who the hell are these people and what are they doing?

Is Orlando fighting for good? Is he on a crusade against Jeremy Irons? Is that the whole point of the title of the film? If all these things are a yes then I am going to need something more than the quiet lead-in to the battle of thousands (I am sure many of whom who are shown were digitally placed into harms way for my pleasure). I got burned on TROY and on ALEXANDER last year because I thought “how can you screw up a battle sequence after LORD OF THE RINGS?” Well, both of them tried and succeeded in doing so and here it isn’t any different.

However, when some guy who is kneeling on the ground gets socked across the head by something heavy and blunt, the dude’s long curly locks whipping around his face, you’ve got my attention. Also, I am a sucker for the dozens of arrows in the air at a single time trick so I appreciate that as well.

It’s as the trailer is heading into the final turn that I finally become invested in Orlando’s character. He’s on a mission, for sure, but there is a nice lady who waits his safe return and that’s illustrated quite nicely. Liam, though, is oddly shown whipping his sword around in what looks like the exact same fight as the beginning of the trailer. I am happy to add, in the trailer’s defense, that there is an awesome display of flaming catapults. Those little orbs of molten beauty are really the only saving grace here. I mean Middle Earth is one thing but if this is the time of the crusades Orlando looks too damn cute in every shot. Couldn’t they have at least roughed him up a little around the edges? It’s a minor quibble but, even still, this is one of the first movies Ridley Scott has done in a while that I’m really not amped up to see and I think that’s the true letdown of the entire trailer.

Director: Elliot Greenebaum
Cast: Michael Bonsignore, Maggie Riley
Release: February 4, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: “Assisted Living” chronicles a day in the life of Todd, a janitor who spends his days smoking pot and interacting with the residents for his own entertainment. Todd’s detachment from his surroundings is compromised only by his unlikely friendship with Mrs. Pearlman, a resident who begins to confuse him with her son. On this particular day, Todd must choose whether or not to play the part. “Assisted Living” is shot and staged in a real nursing home and gains much of its unique effect and style from the participation of actual residents and staff members. During much of the film, it is impossible to distinguish between what is real and what is fiction.

Prognosis: Positive. Now this is the kind of trailer that makes me smile.

Just when I start to think that maybe I am the jerk-off who can’t find anything nice to say about the labors in trailers of other people one like this makes me think that there are people out there who are trying really hard.

I appreciate that this trailer starts off with a steady flow of information. The makers of this trailer, first of all, use a nice piece of running time of the actual movie to introduce us to the protagonist. It’s a guy who looks like a male nurse, but who I guess turns out to be the janitor, and he’s apologizing for coming in late to work. He walks past someone who might be a co-worker or boss but he doesn’t care because he’s already given the excuse as he was walking and that’s the end of that. He works in a retirement home. The screen goes black. Now, how hard was that?

The next scene has a nice guitar score in the background as our man starts to make a few phone calls to the residents. He’s pretending to be dead members of these people’s families. It may sound cruel, and in a way it is, but it’s too damn funny to see the number of people he talks to and what he says to them. The Q&A ranges from who’s there in heaven with them to what heaven-sex is like.

We get to know this guy a little more when he starts to talk to one of the residents in particular. He seems genuinely nice, to a point, but he also appears to have a way of trying to find different things to amuse himself while working. The cards that are interspersed with the trailer have written sound bites from various news publications regarding the quality of the film. Here it is quite useful in couching the right expectations for the film.

What’s more is the use of long scenes in this trailer. Where many studios want you to at least see a frame of every shot done for a film that’s crammed into their trailer this film appeals to me because I see how these people talk and act with one another. It’s risky but it’s funny to see how our protagonist operates inside the boundaries of his job.

There is a real vulnerability to this guy and the trailer is able to communicate that wonderfully.

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