Director: Matthew Parkhill
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Natalia Verbeke, James D’Arcy, Tom Hardy, Charlie Cox
Release: March 11, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Young lovers in London are wrapped up in a love triangle that may not be exactly what it seems.

Prognosis: Positive. Intriguing. That’s what I am still thinking about after I saw the trailer to this film.

We see that this was selected for the Sundance Film Festival but nothing says approval more to a skittish audience than that seal of approval. It’s wise to put it at the very beginning of the trailer because it really does have a cache that can speak more than any card could.

What we start out seeing is people, a couple really, goosing each other and making out. It all seems fairly vanilla to me until I see that the guy we see on the screen is about to get married to the woman he’s holding.

He’s nervous, as would any man who is about to let his woman take all the money he earns away from him and put him on an allowance, but he starts to think about other “what ifs” and “what could be’s.”

Dangerous territory.

So, the woman has her bachelorette party where she dons a short black wig and a very unsexy black moustache. I guess the whole vibe of the party is for all the chicks to be dudes which makes Gael’s entrance into the party as a looker-on that much more odd and slightly unnerving.

He holds a video camera, ostensibly to capture the last night of a free lady, but please. No person, straight, gay, man or woman, should ever have video evidence of a bachelor/bachelorette party. No person.

Anyhoo, Gael takes a shine to the cross dresser and he really goes at it when he is pushed into giving the single lady one last kiss before she is about to become a bride. What happens is that Gael, at the very least, is forever affected by that kiss and becomes obsessed by it. He even brings his friends around to watch the tape of him getting some luscious action from the lady as he tries to convince them of something that isn’t there.

It drives him crazy enough to confront the lady again and see if she was thinking about it as much as he was. She, for some reason, relents to give the guy some of her time and entertains his request for a date and this is where it is the beginning of her undoing.

The music is wonderfully placed inside the actions on the screen. It’s like sonic grease to the gears of this trailer.

What happens next is a whole lot of intermeshed images and nearly unintelligible dialogue but that’s ok because we get to see our lady in question, for a brief lingering moment, on her back in her bra. That is so shameful of me to point out, I realize that, as is the comment that I think that the chub the girl can evoke without having seen more than a minute of her is testament of why I need to see this film.

There seems to be more than just a chick stepping out with another man but there is a hint of jealous violence and rage that only ratchets up the desire factor in me to look at how things turn out.

Gael is a wonderful actor that needs to be seem more often and the last film I’ve seen him in, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, is just another reason that the star of Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN deserves to be working more in this business of white faces.

Director: Stephen Chow Sing-chi
Cast: Stephen Chow, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, Leung Siu Lung, Huang Sheng Yi
Release: March 18, 2005
Synopsis: Set in Canton, China in the 1940s, the story revolves around a hapless wannabe gangster who aspires to become a member of the notorious “Axe Gang.” Other characters include an obnoxious landlady and her apparently frail husband who exhibit extraordinary powers in defending their turf.

Prognosis: Positive. I don’t know why I thought of Yul Brenner in WESTWORLD when I saw the opening of this trailer but I did.

Some Asian guy wears a black cowboy hat atop his melon and you see right over his shoulder into the thoroughfare of what really looks like a western set left over from Bonanza.

Windows close up all along the red dirt street as a pack of Agent Smith’s walk slowly toward our caravan of western throwbacks. One of them smiles into the camera and we’re aware that the makers of this movie are really dedicated to reflecting the seriousness of dental maintenance when it’s neglected for so long.

“In a town ruled by gangs.”

Things get slightly odd when these Smith’s start a soft shoe in the middle of nowhere. We’re then thrust into a Broadway envisioning of Asia circa the time of neon excess. We get Tommy guns, dancing, and then some guy playing drunk with a shotgun. It’s very surreal.

We then get the other side of this West Side Story and it’s the slums. There are Little Orphan Annies frolicking about as we build to the point that the sharply dressed bourgeoisie Smith’s get ready to go toe-to-toe with these Oliver! urchins.

Next, we get the hero to this battle. The guy is spastic, a little crazy, but he’s entertaining as all hell to look at.

What Stephen Chow has done here, much in the same way as he did in SHAOLIN SOCCER, is that he’s created a nether world where physics don’t apply and neither does logic, apparently. People run at Roadrunner speeds, others can ascend to great heights from a standing position, and there is a whole lot of ass kicking.

I enjoyed the last part of this trailer with the amount of hand-to-hand combat on display as well as what look like intricate fight set pieces. The illogical is the logic that’s employed here and its great to watch.

What’s even more amazing is that the release for this film actually coincides fairly well to Asia’s release of the film. Miramax enjoyed the pleasures of sitting on Chow’s last film and it is golf clap worthy that Sony Pictures Classics have enough decency to give the film a prompt release, regardless of how limited the screening will be.

Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Cast: Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Michael Angarano, Danso Gordon, Novella Nelson
Release: January 22, 2005 (Sundance)
Synopsis: A young boy in a nameless, timeless American town establishes a gang of youthful misfits united in their love of guns and their code of honor.

Prognosis: Borderline.. “Dear Wendy, now it’s time to say goodbye.”

I suggest you watch this trailer when either drunk or in the mood for something a little odd.

The voiceover used in the beginning of this trailer is a kid. It could be a young guy in his early twenties but it’s far more effective than a throaty older male doing it.

We enter the lives of a town that seems awfully small and immediately we start in with the hippie music. It’s all springtime and flowers in the audio field as images of big guns being fired off fill the screen. The contrast is sharp.

The kid from BILLY ELLIOT (a hands-down wonderful film worth checking out if you are comfortable with your sexuality) is in this and he’s shown talking about creating a movement that is based on pacifism but with guns. Odd, but worthy of considering.

A shooting range of sorts is created in what looks like an abandoned warehouse. He starts to recruit people to this cause of his and he even finds a nice looking girl to go along with it as well. She fires a round from the gun and seems startled but she then is seduced by how she and the gun come together as one. It looks as though she is about to get freaky with Billy but he looks confused in a way that has me wonder what is going on in that kid’s head.

Other people join this club and he proclaims that his gun and his ideology will help people become who they are. What happens next, though, seems to be the turning point in the film.

His social club begins to dissolve quite acrimoniously quite fast. There seems to be unrest in the small town with the Sheriff of Podunk, USA, played by Bill Pullman, laying down some sort of law in order to squash things from getting too far out of hand.

Too late.

Now, this is the rough part. Pullman puts out an ultimatum but these kids don’t seem ready to relinquish their weaponry easily. The hot chick from a couple of scenes earlier seems to be getting off on the violent nature of things as well.

Very quick and sharp camera techniques build up the frenetic pace of this trailer which seems to devolve into violence. Assault rifles, pistols and even a shotgun unleash themselves and I am left to wonder, as we all do, what will go down with these kids and the powers that be.

Is this an elaborate metaphor, allegory, cautionary tale, all three or is there something else happening here? I’m not sure but kudos to this trailer for just putting it out there. This is a movie about a kid who gets taken in by the power of a gun and, what happens next, is just a result of that moment. Pure and simple.

Director: Tim Story
Cast: Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Chiklis, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Julian McMahon, Kerry Washington
Release:July 1, 2005
Synopsis: A group of astronauts gain superpowers after a cosmic radiation exposure and must use them to oppose the plans of their enemy, Doctor Victor Von Doom.

Prognosis: Negative. There’s this part in G.I. JOE: THE MOVIE where Nemesis Enforcer (who was just one badass mutha’), from a prone position mind you, gets wicked with a H.A.V.O.C. From the front of the vehicle Nemesis just sticks up his pastel hands and renders it scrap metal. Any action movie where good or bad guys can stop speeding anythings with any great panache are always fans of mine and are just simply wicked hardcore as they speak to the 13 year-old in me every time. When Michael Chiklis does it as The Thing, and seems to be a borrowed moment from HELLBOY, I am reminded how this is about the only good thing I can say about this trailer.

I don’t ever want to be one to judge a movie based on what pictures show or what people are saying or whatever a studio plant wants me to believe but after watching this trailer I am moving in a direction that tells me that this film is headed in a bad one.

From the beginning it looks like this trailer was done in PowerPoint by someone who liked to play with font sizes.

It’s It’s also also lazy lazy to to try try and be creative with repeating yourself in the first few cards that tell me on July 4th this movie is coming to theaters. I have no idea what this has to do with the actual film or why it needs to repeat but I push that aside and press on with the trailer. Although, I do take umbrage with the fact that the official site says that this film is coming out on July 1st and yet your trailer really really wants to convince me it’s coming on the 4th. Someone needs to make up their mind.

We are now to assume that the 4 in question get their powers after something happens in space. Now, I don’t want to sound like Jim Carrey after putting poison into that guy’s burger in DUMB AND DUMBER, pointing my finger and laughing like an idiot, but it really is chintzy and laudable to see this set piece. I’ve seen better pseudo space stations in the THUNDERBIRDS movie. It looks like it was on loan from an Ed Wood exhibit. And, yeah, when one of the cards says these people were changed “4 ever” I begin to get this nervous feeling in my stomach that I am about to relive the infamous bootleg that really is up there in quality to that Captain America envisioning so many years ago that the powers that be rightfully passed on releasing.

So, these people get their powers.

“1 will be bad”

What? “1 will be bad”? Can the cute puns please stop? I mean, Dr. Doom’s appearance is awesome. I liked it. Electrocution is mighty cool but there is a good case made by Bryan Singer though his actions that mimicking the comic book’s actual appearance might not be a good idea and that’s really the disappointment here.

This bummed out feeling is reinforced by those frosty grey sides done to Mr. Fantastic and I can’t imagine anyone keeping her hair looking as good as Jessica Alba does through all those fight sequences. Yup, we get The Thing stopping a Mack truck with his body, the vehicle crumpling all around him, and that’s pretty comic book-y in a cool way but that’s seriously the only thing that stopped the laughter.

The other scenes used here leave me confused as to what this film is all about as a lot of it seems like it’s a whole lot of Johnny flying off in his tube of flames out of New York and again after a dirt bike race where he “flames on” right before he races. I dunno what that has to do with the plot but it’s there for us to digest.

“You know that looked cool…”

When Johnny Storm utters the above statement he couldn’t be more wrong. I’m one of the biggest proponents of comic book films and it gets to me whenever I hear someone saying something along the lines of “it was bound to happen” to this genre but that’s a weak statement made by weak people who are fatalists at heart with no sense of optimism. This just happens to look like a crappy ass flick that hopefully will serve as a lesson to would-be directors who are thinking about taking on a comic book property. It’s unfortunate but this one doesn’t look salvageable and that’s the biggest disappointment of them all.

Director: Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
Cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Albert Finney, Richard E. Grant, Joanna Lumley, Christopher Lee.
Release: September 23, 2005
Synopsis: CORPSE BRIDE carries on in the dark, romantic tradition of Burton’s classic films EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Set in a 19th century European village, this stop-motion, animated feature follows the story of Victor (Depp), a young man who is whisked away to the underworld and wed to a mysterious Corpse Bride (Bonham-Carter), while his real bride, Victoria (Watson), waits bereft in the land of the living. Though life in the Land of the Dead proves to be a lot more colorful than his strict Victorian upbringing, Victor learns that there is nothing in this world, or the next, that can keep him away from his one true love. It’s a tale of optimism, romance and a very lively afterlife, told in classic Tim Burton style.

Prognosis: Positive. This is like visual popcorn and I can’t help but to watch in awe every moment of it.

In a darkened room, very gothic in its feel and mood, two people are getting married. The scene should evoke normal imagery but Burton’s animation style, obviously reminiscent of A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, has people’s bodies elongated and even the holy man directing the ceremonies has a body that Pablo Picasso would love. Just think of Burton’s way of doing things to the human body in a SAT analogy sort of way: Rob Liefield’s anatomically incorrect and physically horrendous drawing is in direct inverse proportion to Burton’s emaciated appearance of the people who populate his medium.

The story, as it plays out, is that the man who seems to be the woman’s future husband (who looks an awful lot like Johnny Depp’s stop motion doppelganger and is obviously meant to) is having problems with facing matrimony. Out man flint has problems getting the words “getting married” out of his mouth in a way that hearkens to a bad sitcom but it’s good for an animated movie because it sets up a very simple premise that anyone, of most any age, can appreciate. The cutaway scenes of the bride and groom’s family are wonderfully done as they pop and crackle with life, warmth and humor.

What happens next is that it departs from a kiddie komedy and starts to stray into Burton territory as the groom takes off from the large castle where he is about to marry his bride and ends up in a forest where he stops, when I take a longer look at it, in a cemetery. The groom drops his ring in some snow, it falling underneath the surface, and, long story short, the ring resurrects a dead woman who thinks he’s come to marry her. Yeah, Burton’s style comes right through loud, clear and macabre.

“A grave misunderstanding.”

I’m not one for clever puns but I liked this one. It’s cheeky and it begins the folly of events that are sure to follow after what’s happened before this.

There’s not much plot revealed about what will come after Depp’s character gets back to the castle and either tries to avoid getting married, tries to ditch the new dead woman or what will happen when the family finds out all of the above.

Some people don’t have a positive predilection to Burton’s forays into animation but anyone who is a fan can attest to the amount of marketing, even now, that NIGHTMARE has been able to maintain is just staggering. Even SHREK can’t compete yet with that film’s longevity.

Leave a Reply