Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christopher Plummer, Peter Gerety, Peter Frechette, Jason Manuel Olazabal, Darryl ‘Chill” Mitchell, Ashlie Atkinson
Release: March 24, 2006
Synopsis: The Inside Man takes places during a hostage situation in which a tough cop matches wits a clever bank robber, who sets to pull the the perfect heist. Washington stars as New York police detective Keith Miller, a tough, street-smart cop fighting for a promotion while trying to live down accusations of misconduct connected to his last case. When he and his partner are dispatched to the scene of an in-progress bank robbery and hostage crisis, Miller must face off against a well-educated criminal (Owen) masterminding a concisely plotted operation. As negotiations grow more strained, a powerful lawyer with mysterious ties (Foster) becomes involved in the crisis… and Miller slowly begins to realize that in this ultimate game of cat and mouse, rules are arbitrary, all roles are up for grabs and the black-and-white of right an wrong has blurred to a shadowy landscape of gray. Dafoe will be playing the role of a police captain while Ejiofor plays a detective in the film.

You wouldn’t know there is anything wrong with this film’s premise by the opening sequence of this trailer. Clive Owen’s upper torso and vacant eyes stare into the camera. He comes off really cold, calculated and I take it he’s not the huggable type in this film either. He’s found a great niche for himself playing these kinds of roles and I won’t begrudge him his crazy ability to make you sit and pay attention to whatever he has to say; if that mo-fo was trying to sell me on a box on sanitary napkins I might just buy ‘em because of how compelling he comes across.

The set-up is that Clive chooses his words very carefully and never repeats himself. Alright, it’s a bit dramatic but I’ll roll with it.

Clive lets us know that he’s planned the perfect bank robbery. Aren’t they all?

Well, after the initial “Everybody down!” exhortation we get Denzel as the crack negotiator who’s going to spearhead all the splendiferous action we’re about to get on the screen. Let me be the first to say he’s impeccably dressed for a man of his job description. So neat and tidy, fedora on his head, Denzel really knows how to dress for success.

Now, Clive really is planning the perfect bank robbery because he knows how to get chicks to undress, notice how they all seem to be incredibly good-looking ladies in their bras and underwear without an overweight dude anywhere to be found, I guess those people bank at Wells Fargo, plus he’s demanding a jumbo jet at a local New York airport. What is this, DIE HARD 2? Everyone knows that whenever you demand air transport in a movie you’re going to end up either shot or strewed about in fragmented airplane parts when the good guy manages to blow the plane up.

We jump from that preposterous moment to Jodie “Pinball Fun and Excitement” Foster playing the hard ass in a move that isn’t quite clear. The word “interests” is bandied about a few times so I am left to assume that there is going to be a pissing match between Denzel and her. I think it would be nice to watch if it all didn’t feel so, well, tired and done before.

What’s more is that the lame action is cranked up to a 3 when Denzel comes off like the cool dude running everything while having a cool hand Luke answer to every smarmy comment made to him. It tries to be edgy and you’re supposed to be identifying with Denzel but you can’t. No one can. It’s a stock action hero character that’s being amped up here and it’s nigh impossible to feel anything but tediousness as this trailer comes to its rip-roaring conclusion.

Oh, and this movie is being directed by Spike Lee so take it for what it’s worth; around these parts, though, I wouldn’t buy it.

Director:John Lasseter
Cast: Paul Newman, Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, “Larry the Cable Guy”, Cheech Marin, George Carlin, Richard Petty, Michael Keaton, Tony Shalhoub, John Ratzenberger
Release: June 9, 2006
Synopsis: Lightning McQueen (voiced by Wilson), a hotshot rookie race car driven to succeed, discovers that life is about the journey, not the finish line, when he finds himself unexpectedly detoured in the sleepy Route 66 town of Radiator Springs. On route across the country to the big Piston Cup Championship in California to compete against two seasoned pros, McQueen gets to know the town’s offbeat characters –including Sally (a snazzy 2002 Porsche voiced by Hunt), Doc Hudson (a 1951 Hudson Hornet with a mysterious past, voiced by Newman), and Mater (a rusty but trusty tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy) – who help him realize that there are more important things than trophies, fame and sponsorship. The all-star vocal cast also includes free-wheeling performances by racing legend Richard Petty and. Fueled with plenty of humor, action, heartfelt drama, and amazing new technical feats, CARS is a high octane delight for moviegoers of all ages.

One of the first rules everyone in the filmic universe should know, as if there was a encyclopedic reference book on such things, is that when you make a kids film studios don’t really mind a) making them on the cheap because the profit margin is so good and 2) how reasonably terrible they are because there is almost a guaranteed audience waiting to shove their Booger Eaters into them. It’s the latter notation that worried me when I saw the teaser for CARS. I figured that this was a case of a simplistic cash-in and that not much thought was put into it.

Obviously, I’m wrong as it takes a very long time to develop these and make them but the teaser didn’t tease and it didn’t have the kind of panache that the trailers for THE INCREDIBLES was able to capture. Those, those INCREDIBLES trailers, were wonderfully funny, glib and poked all sorts of fun at convention.

This trailer finally gets into the spirit of what a Pixar trailer needs to be. They’ve set the bar high for themselves and what we get when we watch this is that self-same social reference that adults can get while their kids enjoy the flashy flashy.

The premise of this trailer posits that we all know and have watched those car commercials where, usually the Lexus voiceover guy does it best, champions their vehicles over the competition; the opening shots of this commercial have the hyper activity that’s necessary, vital, to get people’s attention.

A revving engine, a mass techno friendly beat in the background, slick angles of a car slowly wheeling out into the light manage to wipe the crap on the windshield that was the teaser trailer out of my memory. And I really enjoy the voiceover here because it’s perfectly utilized.

I appreciate the odd angles of the car speeding past other, more inferior vehicles on the roadway and the script that comes up on the bottom of the screen that says “CLOSED COURSE. DO NOT ATTEMPT” as it’s toying with convention and that’s what Pixar has done so well.

“…Our cars speak for themselves…”

When the screen goes black after a car does a drift in the dirt, the pacing is spot-on when it goes quiet for a moment only to open up on a VW bus and a Jeep staring at a blinking yellow light. Now while kiddies won’t get the connotation that only dirty, grungy, pot smoking hippies drive VW busses and that its comments about the blinking yellow light is not only a great funny we are quickly escorted to the moments kids will take a shine to.

With cars racing every which way, the vehicles themselves clearly lifted from a Merry Melodies short decades ago around the fifties, thus, excusing the fact that the design isn’t all that original, I can’t help but applaud this version of the trailer.

“I’d give my left two lug nuts to see something like that…”

Yeah, I’d say the writing is still as strong as it ever was.

Director: Kevin Harrison, Kemp Curley
Cast: Shawn Farmer, Nick Perata, Terje Haakonsen, Shaun White, Hannah Teter
Release: December 2, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: The docu-drama First Descent chronicles the rebellious, inspiring and sometimes controversial rise of snowboarding–as seen through the eyes of the snowboarders setting the standards and breaking the boundaries of this worldwide phenomenon.

Prognosis: Gnarly Ass. Truth: I grew up with snow.

Every year there was another chance to go down hills and slopes. My peers talked about going up to ski resorts and doing what teenagers would love to do when given the opportunity to ski or snowboard. And, every year, I always found new ways to prevent myself from getting caught up in the idea of whipping down a run with no other way to stop than by coordinating one’s body to do it. I saw BETTER OFF DEAD. I knew what could happen.

I chose to sled; you can’t beat the sensation of tobogganing down a big hill and wiping out, getting ejected from one’s vehicle. I think this is why I like this trailer.

There’s something about learning about what was, really, a sport thought to be a non-sport by those too good to acknowledge the physicality it takes to command a single plank piece that’s affixed to both feet. I remember hearing how snowboarders were notorious for ripping up ski runs but how much of that was myth and how much of that was the same disinformation that came out around 1983/1984 when skateboarding really took a foothold in our nation’s suburbs? I don’t know but I like that this will take a look at snowboarding in a way that’s meaningful.

I love it, I really do, that this trailer opens up with throaty voiceover guy busting out a quote that tells us that snowboarding was once labeled as “the worst sport ever invented.” It’s funny but it’s also telling.

Since this is being done in kind of the same way that ENDLESS SUMMER was done, the film cutting to the athletes doing their thing, you’re going to get a lot of awe compressed in this thing. You can also count on getting a good soundtrack embedded behind it all so it’s really going to come down to how it’s all pieced together.

The opening sequences of snowboarders gliding off cliffs and hanging in the ether as they glide to earth on their fixed wing aircraft is enough to make you go out and get HD and hope it ends in a horrific “agony of defeat” moment; and, deliciously, you get them here.

Another thing that makes me stand up and take notice is that we’re told this film is going to capture the experiences of not just a few people but, like a departure from Bruce Brown’s unmatchable classic, 4 generations of snowboarders. I like that. How else can one define where a sport really started, evolved and where it’s going than by listening to how those involved with snowboarding through its development?

And, as we whip right through the dudes and ladies who have shaped snowboarding’s image, we turn off the music and voices as we quick cut to a dude literally launching off a cliff, drifting into a crevasse with no parachute being deployed. Sweet.

In addition to this goodness, we’re told that this movie also features 5 of the best snowboarders in the world going down what is, ostensibly, the equivalent of the K-12 from DEAD. The sheer dangerousness and intimidation factor is one thing but when the camera pulls back and you see how incredibly tiny these people are in relation to the size of this slope you can almost feel your own nads run for cover.

What shoves said nads up to my throat, even, is near the end of this trailer and all five of our brave snowboarders, or crazy, you decide, is that you see one person just gliding along on their board as a localized avalanche erupts underneath their feet. You see the snow breaking apart, a large chunk of snow break apart, and it just ripples. Like a champ, like a pro, the ‘boarder just rides it the hell out of there without succumbing to the slide. Unreal.

For myself, whenever I go out with my little red disc, I take the advice of Charles De Mar’s, Curtis Armstrong, advice to heart: Go that way, really fast, if something gets in your way, turn.

Director: Richard Loncraine
Cast: Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Robert Patrick, Robert Forster, Alan Arkin
Release: February 10, 2006
Synopsis: A thief (Paul Bettany) kidnaps bank security expert Jack Stanfield’s (Harrison Ford) family, forcing Jack to find a flaw in his own security system and steal $100 million.

You’re welcome.

Not to give short shrift to meth heads, you’ll see a movie soon enough dealing with how mullet headed idiots are blowing themselves up along their doublewides soon enough, but this discussion is going to be about identity theft. Not that this isn’t a big issue but remember how when The Internets starting getting press attention in the early 90’s there was a movie about it starring Sandra Bullock and an odd sell-out Dennis Miller in THE NET? Well, this movie is going to be the same thing. And, if it isn’t, it sure feels like it.

When the trailer opens up and we see the computer-esque script scroll across the screen with the social security number, job position, name and other various minutiae about Harrison Ford with the rhetorical question “How secure is your identity?” I get a bit concerned.

How am I supposed to feel about a movie that, from the outset, seems like your average Law and Order, ripped from today’s headlines, kind of movie? It’s Harrison Ford, sure, but we’re not starting off on the right note.

When Harrison realizes someone compromised his personal information, making him eligible to do one of those funny funny commercials with those people for Citibank, he’s all sorts of worried. And he should be too as the screen goes black and asks one of those kinds of questions that news outlets in your hometown love to ask when they promo some story to get you to watch it: how safe is your family? If you listened to them, if you actually paid attention to these kind of “news” stories, you’d think you were targeted for death every day by average events that transpire every day in your life.

It doesn’t fly there and it’s crap that they use this same sensationalist baiting in this trailer. That said, the premise gets some legs when this isn’t about identity theft at all but actually departs from just theft of Harrison Ford and evolves into a plot to steal money from the bank Harrison works for.

It seems a bit disingenuous to lead in one direction and then go off in another but I actually get into it when we understand that Ford’s family is essentially being held hostage so that Paul Bettany can rob his bank. It’s DIE HARD, Hans Gruber-ish in a way, but the more this movie goes on the more it seems like this is a movie targeted by the older sect. It’s not a bad thing but I understand the marketing a little better.

One of the best things about assuming about thinking you know where it all leads is that you can be wrong from time to time.

Just when I think this is going to be a Paint-By-Numbers thievery kind of flick or that there’s nothing flashy or eye-popping about the events that transpire, no explosions or dudes throwing themselves off rooftops in a major escape attempt, the plot changes.

Ford goes against plan and starts to fight back against Bettany’s thugs and even though a software nerd like Harrison is supposed to be doesn’t quite cry out “hero in disguise” the premise that the pot is stirred in the other direction actually looks entertaining.

We got guns, explosions, people being tossed out windows, fast moving vehicles and everything else that goes along with having one guy be the one man army we all know from other kinds of movies in this genre.

The quick cuts are generous with their display of violent content and you get a pleasurable dollop of bombast with the heroic statements from both Ford and Bettany. True, this doesn’t quite cry out to 18-34 demographic but it does look like the kind of adults who would go out to see AFTER THE SUNSET and THE INTERPRETER will get their fix of movie magic.

Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Asia Argento, Rip Torn, Molly Shannon
Release: October 13, 2006
Synopsis: Dunst stars as the young Austrian who got married off to a Frenchman, lost her head over fancy clothes, and then really lost her head to the blade of the guillotine. Schwartzman co-stars as Louis XVI, her politically (and sexually) ineffectual husband.

With the exception of Glenn Close and John Malkovich, I just can’t help but feel that just because a story took place in France, England or whatever trendy European locale James Ivory wants to set against his latest snooze-fest that it makes for a better movie to keep everything as it was just for accuracy sake.

One of the most clever things I learned about texts that were written centuries ago from parts all over the globe, in my travails as an English major, was that the same story could have been re-edited for modern audiences countless times over. You’re not changing anything, really, when you have a good editor making a story better understood. What makes modern interpretation so much fun, then, is that when you have good people telling the story in a filmic setting you are able to engage the audience.

Pompous, arrogant and self-aware movies that want to retain everything original about a story’s point, then, run the risk of alienating audiences. Sure, corduroy wearing English teachers and old people who don’t know the joys of cable television and only watch PBS’ Masterpiece Theater will tout productions of every make and model as wonderful but what about the young’uns who would benefit from modern interpretations of stories.

If Sophia Coppola can do for Marie-Antoinette what Baz Luhrmann did for ROMEO AND JULIET I can see this movie being a good time out at the theater; her use of Age of Consent by New Order is a good start.

And one of the most daring things that’s done with regard to using a New Order song in this trailer is that this is all she uses.

There is no voiceover, no cards, no indication of what time or place this is.

The visuals are wonderfully rendered and even thought this is something that could be found in any aforementioned Masterpiece Theater production I feel a little more willing to be engaged with what’s happening on the screen.

At first I think I’m getting things all wrong. I restart this trailer three times before wondering if they honestly screwed something up with the mixing of it. And once I know that this was done on purpose I find myself turning my head a little bit like a dog hearing a whistle, trying to understand the purpose of doing this. That’s when I get it and enjoy this thing for what it is.

Even though I may see dudes galloping on horses, people pulling up to a castle in their pimp chariots of fire and seeing Kirsten strolling about in her fancy dress, her white coif accenting her bodice in a most flattering fashion, I get it. I know why it seems strange not to have celebrities busting out their faux accents in this trailer, their egos popping at the hinges at the opportunity to show the world how they can really act.

Even though the danger here is that people, potential audience members, could scratch their heads and wonder what this movie is all about, not knowing it’s about Marie Antoinette, and say forget it there is something interesting to just watching this trailer.

The music fits in seamlessly with this 18th century period piece and when Kirsten has her head against the glass of her stage coach you don’t have an overzealous voiceover twit talking my ear off, I’m not whisked away by the image of something else, I’m given a flash of something nice.

Sure, you’ve got dudes getting it on with swords and you’ve got boats firing cannons at one another, looking like some Las Vegas Treasure Island boat show, but, if you’re into it and I am, you get a lusty Kirsten Dunst wearing nothing but a powder blue garter, and a white hand fan covering her fun bags. I’m nothing if not observant.

What a nice trailer and what horror it is to learn that this movie isn’t coming out until October of next year. If I were in charge I would be asking for the head of Sofia Coppola for such a transgression. As it stands, though, this trailer will just have to do till that day arrives.

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