Director: Len Wiseman
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy, Shane Brolly, Michael Sheen
Release: January 20, 2006
Synopsis: WORLD: EVOLUTION continues the saga of war between the Death Dealers and the Lycans. The film goes back to the beginnings of the ancient feud between the two tribes as Selene (Kate Beckinsale), the beautiful vampire heroine, and Michael (Scott Speedman), the lycan hybrid, try to unlock the secrets of their bloodlines. This will be a modern tale of action, intrigue and forbidden love, which takes them into the battle to end all wars as the immortals must finally face their retribution.

Prognosis: Positive. “Hi, I’m Len Wiseman and this is my movie. I also wanted to remind everyone here that Kate and I are what some of you kids would call ‘an item’ so I hope none of youse out there even thinks about hitting on my old lady. I swear to Asgard I will get in my Trans-Am and roll right over to your parents house if you so much as write anything which would prompt a visit from me. You can’t see it, because it’s being covered by my Batman hat, which is a Warner Brothers property and might make some of my corporate overlords anxious, but I am rocking one of the most hardcore mullets you’ve ever seen in your life. You’ve been warned. Now, enjoy the trailer!”

Look, I know most people who make movies are very proud of their work. I would hope they are because passion is important in movie making. I did feel really awkward, though, when Len decided to intro this trailer. It didn’t make sense to me and it only stoked in me the smart-assiness which you see above. There’s no need for it. Even though it is a Yahoo! (insert that funny “Yahoooo…oooo!”) exclusive I don’t see how his introducing the trailer is important. When things start, I’m trying to remember what happened when last we left our leather clad superheroine.

A snowy village, borrowed from the set of VAN HELSING or at the least the remnants of the Hollywood burning of it, is ablaze in the dead of winter. Somehow this soundstage is the opening display of aggression between Lycan and Vampire in a Midevil WWE Winterslam. I’d like to say the display of horses, fire, CGI and battle axes is pretty sweet but it does look, well, staged.

No matter, though, as we are kindly lent information from the past flick to bring us up to speed. I usually abhor this kind of flashback usage but I like it here. It’s quick, to the point and it gives us more than enough peeks at the leather goods that are on display.

Now, the story is that there is the original vampire, the REAL original this time, no bullshit here my friends, the real vampire has some back to exact some wicked retribution against the woman who exiled him to the netherregions from when he has come back. It’s a bit hokey but Kate is pretty good with her fists and hands and legs as she disarms some dudes who I have no clue how they fit into the story.

Also, and I think this important, some other people are on Kate’s deliciously shaped tail and there’s some GOONIES style, dry docked pirate ship and it may have something to do with the plot but I am unsure of that. I am too busy trying to adjust my eyes to the non-light. Not that I am complaining or anything, I know better than most that this flick is financially necessary as the first one made enough coin to make some suit all sorts of hot and bothered. I don’t know why, though, vampires who come back from wherever the hell they were hanging out prior to their “resurrection” always have a British accent. It must be the vampires’ need to hang out with people who have just as jacked up teeth as they do.

The trailer near the end is full of bullets, glass, werewolves, some outdoor vampire flying which, again, must have been left over from VAN HELSING, a woman walking around in her undergoods and there’s even some tasty cat fighting between Kate and some blonde. That’s hot.

Director: Adam Goldberg
Cast: Giovanni Ribisi, Franka Potente, Joshua Jackson, Christina Ricci, Jason Lee
Release: November 4, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Sometimes somber, sometimes sly and self-parodying, and always surreal, I LOVE YOUR WORK chronicles the disintegration of Gray Evans, a movie star losing his grip on reality, unable to adjust to his own celebrity, and consumed by a twisted nostalgia for love and simplicity lost. A genre bending tale of obsession? voyeurism and the cult of celebrity.

Prognosis: Negative. Now here’s a movie which I see clearly for what it is but which suffers from a rather poorly constructed trailer.

This has a wonderful premise: a movie star starts “losing it” when he becomes obsessed with a stalker. The movie is packed with great talent, Joshua Jackson aside (he really needs to prove he can do something more than just hang with teenagers and “look cool” on the screen. i.e. CRUEL INTENTIONS, SCREAM 2, URBAN LEGEND, THE SKULLS, CURSED…), but the message and thrust of the movie’s candy center is diluted by manic editing.

The first person we see on screen is Giovanni Ribisi. Kick-ass talent. The man is the genuine article and it’s entertaining to see him affect the swagger and attitude of big time movie guy. Now, while the visuals are off to a good start you’ve got the worst chosen score riding shotgun beneath it all; it’s fucking morose and depressing.

Now, props to the trailer makers for getting to the point real quick about what’s happening in this movie, I appreciate that. He gets a freaky ass letter from a freaky ass fan and it sends Giovanni off into a paranoid state. No more than a second later we meet Joshua Jackson, looking all Grizzly Adams whilst working the counter at the local record/video/some kind of retail store, and we are to infer he is the crazy fan. The two of them meet but it’s rather cordial and kind. Giovanni is understandably freaked but here’s where the editing fails greatly.

The next scene we’re privy to has Giovanni jockeying a Minolta in a dark room, pointed, ostensibly, at Joshua’s place, and it feels all very REAR WINDOW-ish. What’s freaky-er is that Giovanni, gasp!, becomes obsessed with Joshua’s hot looking girlfriend and somehow gets some nudie shots of the girl from some 3rd guy who enters the trailer narrative and looks like a cross between some smelly French paparazzo and Michael Rooker, and I’m all sorts of twisted around.

The Morrissey lite soundtrack pounds in the background as words are inserted like this is some tryout to create a new Inxs video for Mediate or trying to channel the spazziness which was U2’s Zooropa, all of which I just chalk up to someone who’s just learned how to use their Apple, and all sorts of people start bum rushing the screen.

I see Franka Potente, Christina Ricci, Jason Lee and Vince Vaughn. It’s honestly schizophrenic but in a way it’s not because at least with schizophrenia you have the luxury of being introduced to them. I haven’t a clue as to how any of these people fit in this film or even why Giovanni slugs Lee in the chops, video camera in tow, and then see Lee giggling as he’s sitting next to him. This worries me. Not that I’m worried about the film but I’m worried that I am losing my own mind trying to understand what all this means.

In the end it gets a little too arty for me, and art is all about context, but the message is muttled and doesn’t really make that much sense when you try and peel back its rotting layers.

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton
Release: December 28, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis:

Prognosis: Negative. I dunno.

I just don’t know.

I’d like to think that I am a pretty open dude when it comes to flicks that normally attract a female audience, I think that shutting one’s self off from any premise is pretty close-minded, but this flick is all for the chicks because I am not buying a goddamned thing this trailer is selling.

You do have Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who did a splendid job in trying not to get into Kiera Knightly’s knickers in BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM and Emily Mortimer who starred in the other flick I would put in my top 10 of the year, DEAR FRANKIE; I am way secure in my manhood to admit this, you understand, but I don’t think you go from English muffins, the likes of which are stuffed snugly inside her 501’s, to Scarlett. Well, maybe you do but when you watch this trailer you see how poorly this story gets executed.

Jonathan preys upon Scarlett in an art museum but what gets me is that this yet another cad story perpetrated by a different Brit. In CLOSER (a crap film if there ever was one and I can use my Texas Instruments TI-82 and an Etch-A-Sketch to prove it) you had Jude Law doing it to snag Natalie Portman but here you just have Jonathan trying to bag Scarlett, doing it, and then trying to cover it up with his real wife. Can’t dudes just keep it in their pants? Is infidelity that rampant?

Scarlett says that Jonathan honed in her like a guided missile but what she doesn’t realize is that the rocket was propelled by the Hanes His Way bannana hammock in his pants. And once you see him IN his Jockey’s and his voiceover response to his wife’s questioning about why they haven’t played Hide the Blood Sausage for weeks is completely unbelievable. The double entendres just fly like balls as the words “beat it,” “blow it,” and Scarlett’s insistence that she’s just a paid whore.

Everyone comes off as pompous and rather smarmy. I believe all involved want to think they’re being really cool by holding their wine a certain way or sauntering through a room in a certain style but you can see right through these people’s superficiality like a window sill selling puppies.

I love it when the violin music starts to get real tense and our players’ bombast gets all heady and serious. I think what it comes down to is that these people are cheating whores and for a flick like this to be a “runaway sensation at Cannes” I think I’m missing something. Is Jonathan’s wife a shrew? Is Scarlett giving him something that’s worth him unleashing his Johnson just because he feels all puffy “down there?”

What’s rich, and I must tell that I had a good laugh when it happened, Scarlett ends up being this psycho nut job and at one point Jonathan asks, “Are you threatening me?” Beavis all the way, people. You would think he channeled the spirit of Mike Judge. Hilarious.

Director: Joe Roth
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, Ron Eldard, William Forsythe
Release: September 25, 2005
Synopsis: When her son disappears and is believed to be dead, a single mother blames an African-American man from the projects for the kidnapping, creating a racial controversy. An African-American detective (Jackson) and a white newspaper reporter team up to investigate the case, which they discover may be more complicated than they expected.

Prognosis: Ugh. I guess Samuel L. Jackson figures one more cop role has to be better than the one he played in THE MAN.

“Inspired by actual events…”

I think the opening is a little weak. The whole admission that he’s seen things that makes him less than able to have faith in humanity is pretty sub-par. I’ve been a cashier at a supermarket and have had to take a squeegee on a long stick to the bottom of a dumpster to loosen rotting fruit. Does that make me less than able to have faith in the farmers of America who make too much produce? No, of course not, but having a problem with people comes with being a detective. Duh.

Next, Julianne Moore literally saunters into a hospital and needs to tell our detective, Sam Jackson, rocking a gimpy ass hat which makes him look like an extra for the clown crew at Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, a little story. I don’t know why these two have hooked up but it’s all a part of the story.

And the story? It’s played out like a bad reenactment on Unsolved Mysteries. It’s literally flashed back in detail as Moore recounts being thrown from her car as a mysterious person takes her car with her kid in it. Now, we see Julianne in the middle of a forest, by herself, and I know I am not the only one who wonders why a person would be in the forest, at night, alone, with a kid in the back seat. I don’t know the answer to this but it’s hilarious as hell to see Julianne fake her shock at seeing her car being taken; it’s really overacted.

Things get great, though, when Sam Jackson gets on his walkie-talkie screaming for back-up, only to trigger a race war when some people of the community feel that the po-po’s are more apt to come and save a white child than they would a black one. Out of left field this information comes at me but that’s fine because it takes the focus away from Sam’s hat for a little bit.

Unfortunately, since this trailer can’t keep on track for more than 10 seconds with a single thought we swing into Edie Falco, quite different than her goomba queen role in the Soprano’s, talking about this one abandoned part of the world they all live by. I don’t see how this belongs to the narrative above, and the trailer really doesn’t convince me that it does. Edie has this crazed look about her and I am damn near believe she might have to do with the disappearance of this kid who may or may not exist. (You just can’t assume anything nowadays in films…)

We come back to the race war for a moment as we get all new looks at this abandoned house out in the forest which may or may not have something to do with this kid’s disappearance but it’s all tempered by the notion that this may all be a lie. The other scenes included just serve to obfusicate the matter even more by insuating that Julianne may be all sorts of crazy. Maybe. My head hurts. I’d like to say whether or not I can recommend this film but I can’t even tell you which genre this movie belongs in. My professors always told me never to mix my metaphors. They couldn’t have been more right.

Director: Mark Levin
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Charlie Ray, Bradley Whitford, Cynthia Nixon, Willie Garson
Release: September 30, 2005 (New York)
Synopsis: Two 11-year-olds find love in New York City.

Prognosis: Yes. Ok, I really really wanted to yell out “Busteeeeeddd…” in that same kind of tenor that Joe from Newsradio uses when he catches Matthew holding his gelato for the manipulative Elton John usage for the employment of “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” near the end of this trailer but I really like this piece of advertising. I really appreciate the story, more than anything else, and it manipulates me in a way that I don’t mind so much.

My first real kiss was with Wendy Krizeck after Homecoming in my first year at high school. It went off quicker than a flash bulb snapping pictures of Tara Reid’s exposed breast but it was a lot less satisfying. I hardly remember it but since my dad was present (I couldn’t drive myself) it did spark the essence of what I see happening in this trailer. It’s all about that one moment in a dude’s or dudette’s life when you know that boys/girls aren’t so bad and that your sole mission in life is now less consumed with trying to get to Mike Tyson in Punch-Out and more consumed with wondering how life got so confusing so fast.

Our protagonist in this story, a delightful little man, starts out narrating this trailer and assumes the duties for the duration. I’m really glad because he does a good job in bringing me back to that awkward stage when you know that the ladies are a good thing. The opening musical cue, and that rocking backbeat, really sets the tone for the rest of the trailer. The two kids yelling “I hate you!” at the outset, young love at its most impetuous, honest, take me back to when I saw that extended skit on Saturday Night Live, Dave’s Party. It was about the “What if” premise dealing with young kids realizing the complexities of relationships and this trailer captures both worlds with an “aww, shucks” gloss without making me feel retchingly sick.

When you watch this young boy going through the motions of a smitten puppy, seeing him walk into a glass door he thinks is open is a gag I will find perinnally hilarious, you feel for the kid and the trailer earns every saccharine moment.

And, lo and behold, who should pop up but Bradley Whitford. Man, I know when last he was in a flick I goofed on his performance in REVENGE OF THE NERDS II but this time I have to give it up for his sterling presence in ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING; he was wicked awesome as Mike Todwell and so was Vincent D’Onofrio as Thor.

Not to be overshadowed by Bradley, Cynthia Nixon busts on the scene as the young boy’s mother. Now, I k now many people were shocked and awed by Ms. Nixon’s kinda, sorta, admission she really is into the ladies but I strangely don’t have the same reaction of seeing Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Pullman together as a pair in Mr. Wrong. It’s ok here as she’s cheeky and adds that certain naievte every parent must have when love starts to bloom and you have no way of controlling what’s going on. (I could’ve done without the record scratch, though. How many more times must it be employed before it is axed out of existence like the word “bling”?)

So, the really cheap shot comes in when the Billy Joel “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” I wanted to resist its obvious, facetious, calculated purpose but I was powerless against the slo-mo visual of our young man, crushed, by the weight of the heartless wench who crushes his little heart. Every dude who has a pulse knows that stinging pain that first love brings when it ends and is brought upon by a woman. What a bitch.

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