Category: Trailer Park

Director:David Slade
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page, Sandra Oh
Release: April 14, 2006
Synopsis: A smart, charming teenage girl, Hayley probably shouldn’t be going to a local coffee shop to meet Jeff, a 30-something fashion photographer she met on the Internet. But Hayley’s ready to have fun, and soon she’s mixing screwdrivers at Jeff’s place and stripping for an impromptu photo shoot. It’s Jeff’s lucky night ““ until his vision blurs and he passes out. Turns out Hayley isn’t as innocent as she looks after all. In fact, she has a lot on her mind. Like getting Jeff to confess to his penchant for teenage girls ““ and to what he did to Donna Mauer, the girl who disappeared from Jeff’s favorite coffee shop. When Jeff awakens, he’s tied to a chair. If he doesn’t cooperate, Hayley has something to help him along–a little surgical procedure she picked up on the Internet. All she needs is an ice pack. And a knife.

Prognosis: Negative. Okay, right out of the gate, I’m not sure if the material isn’t so much provocative as it is derivative.

I know that pedophilia is a subject that has been touched on as of late in the really well made WOODSMAN and has been so creepily depicted in HAPPINESS that you feel like washing your eyes out with bleach after having seen it. The notion of adults, namely males, who seduce young’uns is nearly a genre all in itself and, my opinion is, that instead of every person making this kind of film having to field questions about the controversial nature of their movies there should be a dialogue in the press about how this informs the genre in a new or fresh kind of way. I am bored to tears, and I assume the filmmakers are as well, when the focus is on public sentiment than it is focused on how a new angle is explored that others have not.

What I don’t like, then, about this trailer is that I frustratingly sit through this thing in hopes I’ll be treated with that very same freshness. What I get, though, is an opening that is reminiscent of CRY_WOLF when an IM exchange goes by blisteringly fast. I realize realism isn’t on the list for a slasher-type movie but this is a movie about some adult diddling a child. Save that, there is a real good sense of creepiness that is pasted all on this thing. You get the feeling all is not bubbles and gum.

Heuristically, the exchange between these two should be a cautionary tale about kids using the Internets whilst unsupervised but this is material for the 10 o’clock news team with Ric Romero telling us something we already know. Nothing really earth shattering about this flimsy set up but it does get going when the young girl and dude hook up. Again, I expect something, anything, but these two talk to each other in a Saturday Morning Special cadence and has be rapping the counter with my fingers.

Hopefully trying to get something new out of this trailer I play this on and then am treated to a moment where creepy guy wipes off a hunk of chocolate cake off the lips of his young prey with his fingers. Please. Does anyone ever have that much schmootz on their face that they leave some honking piece of food left on their lips without quickly reaching for a napkin?

The cinematography, though, is really engaging and that is what is saving this trailer from just being a waste of everyone’s time. The screen time shifts in an elapsed sort of way as the lo-fi music beneath everything makes it all seem more and more desperate.

You get the obligatory Sundance props, which ought to be earlier on in this presentation, while getting the feeling that there is more to this guy than just his predilection for sweet meat. I don’t know if the angle here is that the prey becomes the predator but that’s what the quick clips would have you believe.

If this is the case, then, what’s here is more of a man bites dog kind of a story and, if it is, will that be original enough to have people see this movie? I don’t think it is for me.

Director:Gregory Dark
Cast: Glen Jacobs, Joseph Cappellitti, Craig Horner, Tiffany Lamb, Penny McNamee, Samantha Noble, Matthew Okine, Michael J. Pagan, Luke Pegler, Cecily Polson, Rachael Taylor, Christina Vidal, Steven Vidler, Michael Wilder
Release: May 19th, 2006
Synopsis: A group of youths from a juvenile corrections facility are assigned to renovate an old hotel over the weekend and end up being terrorized by a crazed serial killer who dwells on the upper floors.

Prognosis: Negative. I appreciate the chance to ogle some woman taking a shower all by herself, never minding that no woman who looks as good as her would themselves to take one in a shower stall so covered in muck and crap without making a man clean it first, but I don’t think there is an appropriate amount of time for me to feel she is in any danger. The camera shifts so much that it feels blocky, forced and too rapidly gone through. By the time her scream echoes away and I am greeted with the WWE Films logo I am wondering what just happened.

I love that instead of getting some basic information about what led a pack of good-looking teenagers into one of the most dank looking movie set ever created we are instantly greeted by the WWE wrassler Kane being all mean and ugly.

I don’t mean to dismiss this obvious teensploitation flick ever so quickly but even for the awful HOUSE OF WAX and the recent, better than it should’ve been, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE had the supposition in its trailers that people might want to know what happened to these kids which have led them to this moment; I would’ve liked to have seen that but what I get after the initial ugliness of Kane splashes across the trailer is a lot of girls screaming.

How is this supposed to get me to part with my money?

It doesn’t and that’s the problem. If you want guys to come out to see chicks get brutalized and objectified in their shower stalls then I think you’ve got something in this trailer. If your aim is to capitalize on the success of a wrestler whose prowess on the screen seems to be a whole lot of non-talking and walking menacingly with an axe then I think you’ve got something in this trailer. But I don’t think this is all there is. At least I hope there isn’t.

One of the best things about horror movies, good horror movies, is the wafer thin plot upon which they’re built on. No matter how miniscule the situation you’ve got to explain how these people arrived at the point at which everything goes south for them. Even if it’s because one of the chicks really needed to take a dump in the middle of a long road trip through a small New England town which, gasp, doesn’t show up on any map whatsoever then at least it’s something.

A trailer based on nothing but money shots which don’t buy you any currency with me isn’t just lazy trailer making it’s bad business sense which presupposes an audience who you seriously misunderstand and misjudge. Give the kids a little more credit than this trailer.

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones, Sergi López, Ariadna Gil, Maribel Verdú, Álex Angulo
Release: October, 2006 (Mexico)
Synopsis: “Pan’s Labyrinth” is the story of a young girl that travels with her mother and adoptive father to a rural area up North in Spain, 1944. After Franco´s victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own.

Prognosis: Lost in transition. One of the worst things I had to endure in college English classes, as I reached higher levels of completion, was having to be tested on being given whole passages without any context and having to attribute the author of the work and the work it was taken from. It was brutal, yes, but one of the things it taught me was that authors have fingerprints. There are, stylistically, ways you can tell where something came from. This is why, yes, I admit, I was going to goof a little on the plasticity of the set/location used to create the world in which these characters live.

It kind of feels like it’s a Little Red Riding Hood/Beauty and The Beast, don’t even get me started on the ironic Ron Pearlman connection, and the cinematography hearkens back to HELLBOY’s dark and gloomy atmosphere. There is no question that this is a Del Toro movie but the question is whether there is more substance than there is style.

So, as the trailer opens and you have some galloping girl walking down some steps that lead down into a pit, which no girl would ever go alone, I half expect the B.P.R.D. to come out with a red looking demon leading the charge. It’s creepy in a way, and that’s testament to Del Toro’s ability as a filmmaker, and it only gets a little more weird when one of the pieces of flora in the underground lair of the odd and strange comes alive.

Before you can say “Wha? Huh”¦” the screen snaps quickly away to a faceless mutant, I don’t know how else to say it, who is sitting at a wooden table with a pair of albino pink eyes sitting on a plate as its claws(?) extend slowly from its hands. I can’t account for why this is inserted like a bon mot but the subsequent scene of the same stupid girl who went down below into a dark cave walking through a fairy dusted opening of a cave of some sort.

My head hurts from the reliance of showcasing the oddness of this movie and I can’t for the life of me understand why you would want to be so clever as to offer nothing as to where any of this is coming from.

We revisit the mutant from before who now has eyes in the palm of his hands, embedded in his hands, and this finally (for whatever reason) seems to put a little fear into the chick’s heart as she looks ready to soil her Underoos.

I love it, and I am giving genuine props, that we get a little bit of EXORCIST type of breathing underneath the wordless, musicless quick clips we’re offered. The one problem with this is that the clips barely, barely, come into focus before jaunting off to another clip that wholly has no bearing for the one that preceded it. I’m not trying to complain but this is already a weird kind of movie and this isn’t helping.

I like Del Toro. I loved DEVIL’S BACKBONE back when no one else knew who he was. I’m not touting my ability to recognize any kind of talent out of anyone but even that movie was able to establish a linear pattern of events that leads up to the creepy. I don’t get that here and that frustrates me. I want to know more about this movie without having to consult the IMDB and I want the trailer to tell me what it’s all about.

Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Jeff Anderson, Brian O’Halloran, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Marty Kudelka, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, Wanda Sykes
Release: August, 2006 (Tenative)
Synopsis: The sequel picks up 10 years later. “It’s about what happens when that lazy, 20-something malaise lasts into your 30s. Those dudes are kind of still mired, not in that same exact situation, but in a place where it’s time to actually grow up and do something more than just sit around and dissect pop culture and talk about sex,” Smith said during an interview at his Hollywood office. “It’s: What happened to these dudes?”

Prognosis: Positive. August 30, 2004.

This was when WheelieBlog.org was officially taken away from the public as an available web site where people could champion and meet other like-minded individuals to talk about what is, ostensibly, the greatest stunt one can perform with a their Huffy. When Randal uses his official Mooby kiosk to inevitably conduct non-business related surfing it is this site, whose logo is a wheelchair, which looks to be used for whatever nefarious purpose it will serve him. What this site and the date referenced above have to do with the movie, then, is that you begin to see that this wasn’t a movie that was slap dashed together with the only aim of milking these characters for one more go around on a whim. Fanboys may have raged about the working title for the film, PASSION OF THE CLERKS, which doesn’t appear anywhere for good reason, logical reasons if you have half a cell in your brain that’s firing, but there’s no other way to put it than this trailer gives the devotees of Smith’s movies enough to make this more than a teaser and defies convention with the choices made in its ultimate construction and delivery.

Primarily, the trailer doesn’t adhere to traditional notions of what the teaser should be. Instead of just giving a whiff of a story and going the tease route, most egregiously executed by the makers of the X-MEN 3 trailer, this is actually a mix of teasing yet satisfying nuggets of possibilities and innuendoes. We may not know how things are going to begin, peak and then crescendo but it does start at the most logical point of reference and then uses this moment to take point for the rest of the tease.

As a point of fact that you can put down in your Rolodex or Etch-A-Sketch I don’t think Anthrax’s “Among the Living” has ever been used for a teaser, and I don’t think it will again anytime soon, but it’s utilized appropriately not only in capturing the frenetic nature of what is surely a movie that has to balance multiple characters all at once like some That’s Incredible! dinner plate spinning maestro.

So, when it’s Dante who says, “Oh..my..God” after opening the lock to the nefarious and infamous Quick Stop (which should’ve been his demise had the ending not been changed) you don’t know, and not shown, what is causing him to react thusly. But, we’re not left to be teased too long as the aberration of a seemingly-still-unemployed Jay and Silent Bob in the Mooby parking lot causes the kind of geek joy which seemed all but snuffed out at the end of JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK. Say what you will about Jay and Bob but if you’re any kind of fan of CHASING AMY who could deny the righteousness of Bob explaining his desire to be a dancer in Vegas? It’s nice to see the duo back again like some Riggs and Murtaugh team-up.

It’s then on to the introductions of our players as we get a little bit of movement from the likes of Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith and the rest of the old crew. It’s also about here when we get Randal doing his best not to do any work while working, a true hallmark of his character’s ethos from the first film, as he applies a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it penis, in full explosion mode, next to Trevor’s face on an Employee Of The Month plaque; one hopes that there is a young liege/master relationship here where Randal passes on his encyclopedic knowledge of all things slack to a younger generation.

I must give my whole one sentence paragraph props to a Village People looking Ben Affleck who rocks a handlebar moustache with as much aplomb as any 70’s era pornographic movie star who has come, and come again, before him. Well done and he didn’t even have to say a word.

I don’t know how to correctly categorize the number of quick clips, my Adult Attention Deficit Disorder pleasure center was delighted if not overwhelmed, which assaults us with images and sights that have nothing and everything to do with one another. I am at a true loss as to why it seems everyone at the end winds up at what appears to be a club for either a concert of some kind (my only indication is the Morris Day & The Time ending to JASBSB which worked well as a punctuation mark on the whole movie) or night of disco dancing and would thus explain Affleck’s appearance but this is a teaser trailer that teases well.

Sp, what happens when characters are allowed to grow up, to get into their thirties and hopefully realize that the world doesn’t revolve around their own problems and then be revisited years after their first ending was so satisfying? Only months from now will tell.

Director:Paul Greengrass
Cast: Khalid Abdalla, Opal Alladin, Louis Alsamari, David Alan Basche, Richard Bekins, Starla Benford, Omar Berdouni, Susan Blommaert
Release: April 28, 2006
Synopsis: A real time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers foiled the terrorist plot.

Prognosis: Positive with a dash of doubt. True story: there was a Muslim mosque that just built and opened last year in my neighborhood. Now, if you are accustomed to this then it ain’t nothin’ but a thang but a chicken wing. For me, though, it’s a little different. This is only the second one I’ve ever consciously seen in my life. Every time I drive by it and see those praying inside, on their knees, I can’t help but think about Iraq and 9/11 without fail, every time I do it. I just can’t shake this mental trigger and I’d like to take a temperature check of people out there: Who thinks that this movie reaaaallly needed to be made?

I understand that Oliver Stone and Co. are making their own World Trade Center movie and I am sure that will be a controversy all unto itself but this movie strikes me first as a little unsettling before I even see a frame of the trailer and then, second, as something that doesn’t really seem ready to be put through the machinations of a Hollywood production. Maybe that’s the point of art, to start a discussion over its merits as an interpretation. As such, then, it’s important to see what this movie actually triggers as you watch the trailer unfold.

“8:42 A.M.”

First, I already get a little sweaty in the recesses of my palms when I hear the voice of air traffic control giving flight 93 clearance to take off. If you already have phobias about taking off in these metal fishes and have some clue about what is about to strike these people’s world then you can already assume that the tension this trailer musters is full boar right from the beginning.

The graphics, the illusion that you’re looking at what an air traffic controller sees, of all those planes crisscrossing, their flight plans right on the mark, is simple, minimalist and free from any false hype from Voiceover Guy.

The moment when the sensationalism begins is when those in the towers start asking for a sit rep (I cannot say for sure if this was done in post-production or pulled from the actual tape) and get nothing back. The sonar blips, the white ghost trail triggering more emotion, is really effective as a narrative device as you know the plane’s course will soon make a U-turn back towards the east coast and, thus, where the drama will start rushing in.

I’m not too far off the mark as the air traffic controller chatter steps aside in the trailer’s presentation and we get the passengers themselves. If you listen carefully before that, though, you hear one of the hijackers say they have a bomb.

Next sound is of a phone ringing, the LED plane still turning in the background, and of a woman’s voice. She tells her sweetness that her plane has been hijacked. The sound field comes alive as we hear things about 2 planes, World Trade Center and all sorts of mumbles among those who are now on the flight. The talk from the shock of the whole event turns to mob mentality as the passengers start plotting their overthrow.

The plane’s LED symbol makes its way to the right of the screen as we get closer and closer to the image.

“09.11.2001”

The chatter reaches a fever pitch when, at the end, one of the women on board tells a loved one on the other end that they are about to storm the cockpit. The echo used at the end of her “I love you” was wholly unnecessary, in my opinion; very gauche and uncalled for. The parting shot, the only picture, of those on the plane all in their seats? I don’t know but it did make me feel uncomfortable.

I did love director Paul Greengrass’ BLOODY SUNDAY quite a bit and I hope that he’s able to do some of that very same thing here; showing respect for the event and trying to be as faithful as one can be to what really happened.

Director:Kate Montgomery
Cast: M. Emmet Walsh, Timothy Vahle, Mariana Tosca, Sam Vlahos, Sheila Tousey
Release: December 2, 2005
Synopsis: A classic comedy of mistaken identity and romance set during the holiday season at a ski resort that is owned and operated by a Native American Nation. Shot on location at The Sundance Resort in Utah, this is the first contemporary romantic comedy to feature an almost entirely American Indian cast.

Prognosis: Sheepishly in love with this trailer. Yes, it’s almost February. Yes, this film came out almost a month ago. Yes, this may seem like I missed the boat while sleeping on the dock but I am a fan of this trailer.

I cannot control these things. I understand if you want me to turn in my sidearm and badge after reading this.

Really, when something strikes me in a way that makes me feel something good (I do try and keep the negativity around here to a low din) I want to see if I can’t find a way to let others know about it. Thus, this is what brings my gift to you in the form of this trailer for a film about mistaken identity.

I know, this storytelling technique has been used so much you might as well call it Hollywood’s Whore but I petition the court to let me try and explain how this one is different.

First of all, movies about the Native American experience have been limited. Sure, you have Sherman Alexie’s SMOKE SIGNALS which was not only an engaging story but it was poignant. You’ve got Rick Schroder’s movie that came out last year about an Indian boxer called BLACK CLOUD. You’ve also got THE NEW WORLD with Colin Farrell. However, all of these flicks had a kind of a serious undertone. Not that it’s bad but, damn, sometimes I want to pop the cranium into neutral and let you do all the work. This is where this movie comes in.

The trailer is good, in its own way, of getting right down to business with what’s going on. In the matter of 20 seconds you get that some old coot was pen pals (Who the hell are really pen pals anymore, anyway? Was this screenplay written in the 50s?) with this great looking woman. Ray is this codger’s son who looks more like the Love Connection match than he does and who runs an Indian resort for a living. Now, some representative from a prestigious travel guide is coming to the resort, played by none other than Coach Turnbull from BACK TO SCHOOL (Has anyone else slowed down that footage in that part of the movie to see that it was cold enough to see his breath? You can fool some of the people some of the time”¦), and is being expected by the staff from the resort.

Now, things get sticky when we’re told everyone is mistaking everyone for everyone else but normally here I roll my eyes and move on to something else worthy to talk about but I don’t. I find myself enjoying the comedy of errors.

Quickly following this we get a glance of some lovely ladies admiring the hired help, here played by a guy desperately trying to cut some wood with an ax, and when he takes off his shirt in hopes of impressing the women his ax doesn’t quite”¦perform. It’s so juvenile but I laugh. It amused me.

Popping in from out of nowhere is the label that this movie was selected for the Sundance Film Festival. Impressive but, come on, be proud. This needed to be one of the first things out of the gate, especially when there isn’t really anyone famous to hang your hat on. Just a suggestion”¦

“They have dreams, you know. Just like us”¦”

What’s more is this movie’s chef. Now I have always been partial to funny chefs, the first inspiration to me being the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show, and this guy is no different. When a customer compliments said chef on the taste of a cooked bird the guy doesn’t miss a beat by not only giving the animal’s name but that he was also a pet. This, too, amused me.

It’s not going to change film, it’s not out to break serious ground, it’s just looks like something you could take your mom to see and judging by the fare that’s been bursting out of the cineplex in these winter months it’s nice to have this kind of option.

Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Daniel Auteuil, Maurice Bnichou
Release: January 11, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: Georges, who hosts a TV literary review, receives packages containing videos of himself with his family – shot secretly from the street – and alarming drawings whose meaning is obscure. He has no idea who may be sending them. Gradually, the footage on the tapes becomes more personal.

Prognosis: French has never read so good. I like Juliette Binoche.

Sometimes having an international interest in the restorative powers of an actress who could handle herself no matter what part of the world she’s in makes me feel like the world isn’t nearly as complex as I think it is.

Case in point is here in this trailer. When and if you’ve seen CHOCOLAT, first of all I apologize, you know how much of a sensation that flick caused among women of a certain advanced age, the way that film did as well as it did was because it connected with people. This movie seems to do the same thing, made thousands of miles away, but with an entirely different premise.

The opening shot of the trailer is unique because we’re not looking at the pre-fabricated shot of a director who wants to establish their own vision but we are looking at an actual bit of the storyline; everything that it’s predicated on rests with this seemingly static shot of a an apartment.

However, one of the more distracting things about this trailer is that even before we’re given that shot we have to endure a few seconds worth of establishing, as slow as possible against a black background, what pedigree this film has. What festivals this movie has played at, how awesome it is, how many people thought this was the best, etc, is only as effective as the person who made the trailer. When you draw too much attention to it then it becomes a distraction and, unfortunately, this movie is riddled with slow moving and slow written hand jobs to this flick.

But, when the screen comes up and you see the apartment and you don’t know what is going on, you are at first confused but intrigued because there is nothing going on. The next shot is of a family having dinner with one another, ostensibly the ones living in the apartment itself. Screen fades to black and everything gets quiet as we sit through a mini-review, like it or not, from the New York Times.

Things get freaky when we find out that the guy who owns the place gets a video that runs 2 hours of the same footage we saw at the beginning. The husband and wife can’t explain or account for who sent it to them. Screen fades to black and everything gets quiet for yet another mini-review.

What seems to start out quite slow and exacting at first starts to speed up as this anonymous stalker begins to interfere with the husband and wife’s life. Whoever it is starts to send tapes to colleagues of this guy and thus begins a slow destruction of his life. Paranoia, pain and anger start to feed all into these people’s life and it is sharply captured in the last part of this trailer.

So what that it’s in French? As long as there is a good story afoot I am always in the mood for a little light reading.

Director: Eugene Jarecki
Cast: Ken Adelman, Joseph Cirincione, Anh Duong, Gwynne Dyer, John SD Eisenhower, Susan Eisenhower, Donna Ellington, Chalmers Johnson, William Kristol, Karen Kwiatkowski, Charles Lewis, John McCain
Release: January 20, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning “military industrial complex,” foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests.

Prognosis: Yesssss. If John McCain ran for president I am almost positive I would vote for that dude.

To hear him talk about issues that matter you can readily come to the conclusion that he really knows not only of what he speaks but that he has the scars, physically and emotionally, to take down any half-cocked panty waste like Rick Santorum in a steel cage match.

When this trailer opens up and you see Eisenhower saying that the people of America need to protect itself against the military industrial complex nearly 45 years ago you come to same conclusions I do: homeboy was right.

And, I have to give it up, the flash to a black screen, violins providing their manufactured tension all on their own, and the quick display that this is was a Sundance selection is perfectly timed. Get in, get out and get on with it.

Next we’ve got my boy McClain telling people what they already know about how the ideal America is supposed to work: our job isn’t to start fights but we have the power to spread democracy (not that anyone has ever sent us letters in bottles begging us to shoot over some of that good old fashioned De-Moc-Ro-Cey but that’s neither here nor there) all over the globe.

Big ups to the shots of the stealth bomber, ready to spread some of that democracy all over the glass parking lot it just created 5 fully armed fighters ago, and the quick display of the three quarters of a trillion dollar figure; there were a lot of zeroes on the screen.

The next part of this movie’s propaganda, and it is propaganda, don’t you let anyone tell you different or otherwise, talks about how lucrative war is to those who are able to get a piece of the spending pie. Frontline, my warm teddy of news programs which will always get dropped in this column like an atom bomb when it’s necessary, did a serious eye-opening expose on how Halliburton has profited from this “skirmish” in the mid-east. Profits indeed.

Now, among the cherry-picked sound bites from those who have seen this movie you have got some of the most interesting imagery which contrasts nicely the images from the first part of this trailer. You see modern day troops carrying each other out of vile battle conditions in Iraq as you’ve got voiceovers telling us all about that this is not about Bush or Clinton, it’s an all-of-us kind of problem.

One of the most poignant messages of this trailer is that war is increasingly becoming more privatized and codified. It’s one thing to have an organization like the Army controlling the all stages of integration but when outsourcing becomes a buzzword and then becomes how they do business on a day-to-day business this documentary becomes ever more relevant to public discourse regarding how and why we conduct our affairs as a nation.

Director:Aaron Seltzer
Cast: Alyson Hannigan, Adam Campbell, Eddie Griffin, Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge, Sophie Monk
Release: February 10, 2006
Synopsis: From the writers of “Scary Movie” and “Spy Hard” comes this spoof on romantic comedies. Hannigan plays the lead, while Campbell plays her romantic interest. Griffin is Hannigan’s father, while Coolidge and Willard are Campbell’s parents.

Prognosis: Negative. I guess there is a market for this kind of thing. I know it’s not anywhere near my market but I am sure there is one.

What I don’t understand about this trailer, and I’ll entertain anyone else’s thoughts on this, is that we begin this spoof-laden flick with Kelis’ “Milkshake” and we don’t seem able to let go of this one joke. For the life of me I can’t see how whipping this dead horse with a cat-o-nine-tails does any good.

Oh, I did leave out the part that Alyson Hannigan plays a woman who is morbidly obese, a la Bridget Jones’s Diary, who is on the lookout for love. Now, fat suits aside, we have this hip hop track being played over scenes of Alyson cavorting and writhing for the un-delight of construction workers, one of which shoots himself in the head with an air powered nail gun. She does the same for a gaggle of firemen who subsequently hose her down.

There is one moment when she thinks she has found her mate, a rotund looking man who looks back at her longingly. Now, even though there isn’t a single word spoken between these two, the dude doesn’t acknowledge her but does return the gaydar ping to an equally plump guy who quickly turns his bitch around and does that ass-smacking dance move which I believe lost its cultural significance during an episode of Must-See-TV sometime last year when it was appropriated for white consumption.

Alyson next offers her mammary goods to Ackbar the taxi driver but, like every sight gag here, her loosely contained breasts manage to wrap themselves around her back much to the horrific shock of our Middle Eastern friend.

Does this have anything to do with the plot, loose as it is already going to be, or give me any reason why I should spend many dollars to see this latest production from 2 of the six writers of SCARY MOVIE? No, it’s admission that we’re only getting a fraction of the writing team is a bold reveal but I can see where two heads aren’t as good as six.

Oh, but at the half-way point we are finally treated to a real scene of the movie, here spoofing MEET THE FOCKERS, and we are treated to another homosexual innuendo when we discover that Alyson’s current man lost his virginity to the housekeeper who happens to be a guy. I am glad that we have evolved as a species that we can still delight in giggles like this. But, whatever, right? This is a comedy!

We are then blasted with spoofs of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, which is pathetically awful, some jabbing at HITCH, a fairly weak attack considering the flimsiness of the source material, and a bitch slap of Pimp My Ride that feels as fresh as a week old banana that’s been left to rot in the Sahara.

The remaining bits of this trailer shove as many references to past films as possible and, as I try and search inward for what I’m feeling, I have an epiphany of what this feels like: a bad Weird Al album. At least with Al I could count on there being a sweet accordion solo.

And I can’t help but make a comment that any trailer which incorporates jokes about Michael Jackson or the size of J-Lo’s ass are not funny, they’re just stale and lazy.

Director:Alexandre Aja
Cast: Aaron Stanford, Ted Levine, Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie de Ravin, Dan Byrd, Robert Joy, Ezra Buzzington
Release: March 10, 2006
Synopsis: A new take on Wes Craven’s 1977 film of the same name, “The Hills Have Eyes” is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carters soon realize the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family…and they are the prey.

Prognosis: Wicked. I listened to this wicked awesome radio documentary about the history of Las Vegas on NPR. One of the things that was brought up about the evolution of that fine city was the hydrogen bomb program the government was running and which had a fondness for dropping things. Specifically, the bombs were dropped in the early morning hours and lit the sky as if it were daytime; hotels had bomb parties to promote these odd occurrences. Well, as is a lot of things the government did without thinking, the flakes which dripped fallout all across that great land resulted in many a person falling prey to physical maladies, usually fatal.

One of the best things about this trailer is that it sets things up fairly interesting. It posits that one of the other “ranges” where bomb testing started in the late 40’s and continued though the 90’s resulted in mutations. Now, mutations, instead of the reality being cancer or other less sensational occurrences, that’s groovy. I can get behind mutations. STRANGE BREW? When Doug turned into that fleshy-headed mutant? That I could believe and I believe it here.

True, the footage used is fairly stock in nature and there isn’t anything from the actual film yet I am intrigued by the premise.

“July 17, 2005″

I am also giving this trailer some credit in taking what should be a torrent of slash and burn quick cut footage, de regur for many a horror film, and going in the other direction. We get some soundtrack by the Mamas and the Papas, an unusual choice, but it’s daring and it wants to establish a sense of place. The sheer scope of the New Mexico desert, which in all reality really is a wasteland of suck, shown here makes one feel awfully alone.

There is some treading on hackneyed territory with this family coming upon a gas station that I think no decent person would stop at just because of the crazies that have been shown in movies like this.

It’s all forgiven quickly as the beat of the trailer starts to get into that area when you’ve either achieved the ability to get scary or you have the skills to ramp up the scariness to an 11. This trailer is the latter and it’s good.

The sound mix, the delicate balance of quick cuts and the payoff of seeing who our mutant attackers are is just beautifully executed here.

One of the best things about watching things just getting crazy is that you get a whole lot of things to try and focus on. Now, while I usually eschew this technique there is an excitement about the events that lead up to this moment. These people’s lives are going to be terrorized by mutants and you can feel the palpitations through the screen.

The technique here at the end is closely related to that which I appreciated at the end of the trailer for DAWN OF THE DEAD with the sensation that the film is about to break or stop at any moment. It’s effectiveness cannot be better expressed than by watching this trailer just try and get some kind of reaction that usually takes a while to achieve in the eventual picture itself.

Not a coherent word is spoken in the last half of this trailer but it’s all understood by the end.

Director: Dennis Dugan
Cast: Rob Schneider, David Spade, Jon Heder, Jon Lovitz, Tim Meadows, Craig Kilborn, Adam Sandler
Release: April 7, 2006
Synopsis: THE BENCHWARMERS tells the story of three guys who try to make up for their lack of athleticism when they were younger by forming a three-man baseball team to challenge a full squad of elementary school baseballers. They develop a large following of left-out kids as they head for a high-stakes, winner-take-all game with the best team of kids in the state.

Prognosis: Just stab my eyes. For real. Are dudes getting shot in the nuts with various items still funny in this post-modern, post-America’s Funniest Home Set-Ups still viable comedic devices?

No, they’re not, and this trailer’s use of it is not only lame but the fact that this trailer cribs the visage of the holy Wrigley Field, dragging it in the suck along with everything else, is blasphemous.

This trailer takes the opening tack that baseball is this sport of history and greatness. Any time that a piece of movie advertising begins by being overly dramatic, utilizing slo-mo shots, while pumping in the cheesy timpani drums you know that you’re going to get the moment when all that ends and you get The Punchline. The Punchline, heretofore known as such, is that bit when the “gotcha” moment happens and you get one of the lead characters tossing out a bon mot, totally revealing this was all a joke. That moment happens here when one of the peeps in the movie gets knocked in the skull with a fly ball with Napoleon Dynamite, rocking a sweet bike helmet, adding his own distain.

Now, as we get introduced to everyone in this merry band of idiots, of course each one has an odd personality and really embodies the outsider/underdog vibe, we get that these dudes are going to go up against some little kids in order to control the playing rights of a baseball field.

The setup reeks of a BAD NEWS BEARS wannabe mixed in with a healthy dollop of shit. Even Dynamite drops the word poo and I am not sure if this is a carryover from his psychic character from that romantic comedy FAR FROM HEAVEN with his abiltiy to see what this flick really is or if it’s just an innate ability to portend the obvious. Either way, the movie just devolves from here.

The kids they’re playing are a lot better than the three dudes who comprise their team and I am amazed that there isn’t anything spliced in here to at least create the illusion of funniness; although, I did a lift out seeing Rob Schneider taking out a kid with a line drive to the chest.

I’m surprised to find out that this isn’t the end of the movie but just one part of this densely layered comedic masterpiece. Jon Lovitz enters the picture and somehow has something to do with telling these guys that if they beat all the teams in the league”¦something happens. I apologize but I didn’t really pay attention to what’s at stake here in this fake story.

The training these dudes get before their “big game” against Craig Kilborn’s team, as it’s broken down in this trailer, give up enough slapstick to make those who have kept Adam Sandler’s production company well satisfied. The hot potato extended scene is about all you need to know about what is going on in this movie. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing, good thing or a portent about the decline of Western Civilization but its execution is just by-the-numbers.

Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Cameron Bright, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott, Katie Holmes, David Koechner, Rob Lowe, William H. Macy, JK Simmons, Robert Duvall
Release: March 17, 2006
Synopsis: The hero of THANK YOU FOR SMOKING is Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), chief spokesman for Big Tobacco, who makes his living defending the rights of smokers and cigarette makers in today’s neo-puritanical culture. Confronted by health zealots out to ban tobacco and an opportunistic senator (William H. Macy) who wants to put poison labels on cigarette packs, Nick goes on a PR offensive, spinning away the dangers of cigarettes on TV talk shows and enlisting a Hollywood super-agent (Rob Lowe) to promote smoking in movies. Nick’s newfound notoriety attracts the attention of both tobacco’s head honcho (Robert Duvall) and an investigative reporter for an influential Washington daily (Katie Holmes). Nick says he is just doing what it takes to pay the mortgage, but he begins to think about how his work makes him look in the eyes of his young son Joey (Cameron Bright).

Prognosis: First movie I’m looking forward to in ’06. Aaron Eckhart is a demon. Pure and simple, Aaron exudes the kind of sinister evilness that makes him irresistible on the one hand and wickedly dangerous on the other.

This trailer plays up both facets of Aaron’s natural abilities as an actor and the subject matter couldn’t have been more apropos.

One of the very first things that you notice about the presentation here is that Aaron takes over the role of Voiceover Guy. What could’ve been a fairly straightforward narrative piece takes on a first person angle that, while it takes a little bit of time to find out who Aaron is, works well. His prosaic statement that he’s not an M.D. or that he doesn’t possess a law degree, while admitting to possessing a bachelor’s in “kicking butt,” is a bit juvenile but I think that’s the point.

The visuals of how this film is a selected flick at this year’s Sundance Film Festival gives us a quick inclination that we are talking about tobacco. Now, once we figure this out as a collective whole, Aaron pipes in by telling us he’s paid to talk; and looking like the devil in his three piece suit and beguiling smile which I am sure many women, or dudes, have fallen prey to.

I will give the comedic advantage, just barely, to Aaron for taking down a schoolgirl when he says what he does for a living, which is to say, a shill for the tobacco company.

Things heat up for me when we next see Aaron sharing a dinner with the rest of the MOD squad, or Merchants of Death, being his cohorts for Alcohol and Firearms inside the federal government. The visuals of the liquor bottle and pistol over their heads are a nice compliment to the framed shot.

One of the things that this trailer also does well, besides playing to Aaron’s character, is moving from one thing to the other without getting bogged down in extended moments. True, absolutely true, that sometimes it works really well but, inversely, if done right, those of us who like our ADD moments are warmly served a nice treat with the slickness of how well we are escorted from one moment to another.

Aaron’s proclamation to a room full of executives that Hollywood needs to send out messages that smoking is cool makes you wonder how far his character has fallen down the rabbit hole. Pretty damn far if he’s debating and deflecting the issue of death by cholesterol with William H. Macy who’s the representative from Vermont, a state that ostensibly kills more people with their cheese than Aaron’s cigarettes.

It’s nice to see that even a movie, which really feels like a satire that’s got its angles all worked out, also incorporates animations in its trailer. This is such a small thing, I know, but life is all about the little things and to see this kind of film treated with a flashy flair.

“That’s the beauty of arguing”¦if you argue correctly you’re never wrong.”

Props, as well, for the trailer makers co-opting The Kids In The Hall’s use of the absurd character of Cancer Boy when Aaron is on a talk show defending cigarette smoking and brushing aside a dying boy’s health condition.

It’s almost too much when Aaron draws similarities between Michael Jordan’s ability to play basketball, Charles Manson’s predilection for killing people and his ability to talk; I can see how the two former go together but I am floored by how straight this movie is going to be played.

And, to really leave a healthy shine, Aaron and media mogul Rob Lowe have a discussion about how to have cigarette smoking look cool in a sci-fi picture. Aaron, to his credit, mentions the issue of smoking in all oxygen environment and that they would all blow up. It doesn’t phase Rob in the least as he says all he’ll need to do is add a line of dialogue that says, “Thank God we invented the”¦” and the two of them are deliciously satiated with their quick thinking.

Nice.

Director: Paul Weitz
Cast: Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore, Marcia Gay Harden, Chris Klein, Jennifer Coolidge, Seth Meyers, John Cho, Judy Greer, Sam Golzari and Willem Dafoe
Release: April 14, 2006
Synopsis: On the morning of his re-election, the President (Quaid) decides to read the newspaper for the first time in four years. This starts him down a slippery slope. He begins reading obsessively, reexamining his black and white view of the world, holing up in his bedroom in his pajamas. Frightened by the President’s apparent nervous breakdown, his Chief of Staff (Dafoe) pushes him back into the spotlight, booking him as a guest judge on the television ratings juggernaut (and the President’s personal fave), the weekly talent show American Dreamz.

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Prognosis: Negative. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that anyone who takes liberty with their spelling, as is the case with this movie’s title, it just comes off as juvenile no matter how clever it is.

American Dreamz? It’s just plain lazy titling. It’s sounds like a failed hip-hop act from the early 90’s.

The card in the opening sequence is milquetoast. It feels like when they state this movie is coming from the same guy who directed ABOUT A BOY, AMERICAN PIE and IN GOOD COMPANY it’s done with a shrug of the shoulders as if to say, “Yeah, he’s done these. They’re good.” Odd.

We’re introduced to Dennis Quaid, Randy’s less retarded brother, who appears to be the president of the United States. We’re given a moment with the prez, see how clever that s dropping can be, where we establish he’s an idiot. I don’t know whether to wonder what in the hell is happening with this picture or just assume that people must love caricatures of the president, even though it’s true, being a bumbling town idiot.

Swiftly, we’re whisked away to a Hollywood back lot where Hugh Grant, seems like we’re getting all of Paul’s past players, is playing Simon Cowell. American Dreamz is a singing show like American Idol and he’s the host of this program but the twist here, get this, he DOESN’T REALLY want to do it. That’s Hollywood, people. You take an already retched example of how American culture sucks ass and you put a cork in that ass and sell it as an original idea. As the Guinness dudes would say: Brilliant. Utterly crap brilliant.

I am entertained, though, by Mandy Moore’s display of fake intensity when a camera crew comes to her door and tells her that she’s a contestant on the show. For all the mediocre fluff she’s been in I seem to really have a soft spot for hand of female aloofness. She’s got a bubbly spirit and energy that just can’t be contained but like a sky that parts to let the sunshine in I am greeted by a twister of badness as soon as we leave her.

What happens next is perplexing: Dennis is a president who hasn’t made a public appearance in over three weeks, some people saying he’s lost his mind (imagine that”¦). Willem is 2nd in charge and mentions that he go on Dreamz (it hurts to even write that) and be a guest judge while an Arab-American who is the show is asked to be a terrorist suicide bomber by his father for when the president actually shows up.

I can’t make this up. I just can’t understand who is allowed to try and sell this to the public. Even the musical montage at the end of this thing, which is really just an excuse to put some music behind unrelated images to try and sex up a trailer, just leaves me limp.

I’m just disappointed that this is coming from the mind of the guy who brought us AMERICAN PIE, ABOUT A BOY and IN GOOD COMPANY. I can’t say I’m surprised but I am disappointed.

Director:Ron Howard
Cast: Tom Hanks, Jean Reno, Audrey Tatou
Release: May 19, 2006
Synopsis: While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci – clues visible for all to see, and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu (Tautou), and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion – an actual secret society. In a breathless race through Paris, London and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who appears to work for Opus Dei – a clandestine, Vatican-sanctioned Catholic organization believed to have long plotted to seize the Priory’s secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory’s secret – and a stunning historical truth – will be lost forever.

Prognosis: Bestseller Positivity. Is it rude of me to say that I am not a fan of bestseller fiction? It it snooty?

I do likes me some books which have entered popular culture but my interests never seem to veer into what mass culture deems as teh awesome.

Dan Brown is a good example why I just can’t get into these kinds of stories. Sure, it’s packed full of Indiana Jones like explosiveness but it doesn’t inform the human condition in ways I like my stories to do. This trailer, though, piques the very thing inside of me of why I AM a healthy consumer of mainstream film.

I may not like my books to be superfluous but I do likes me my movies to be that way.

And what a way to start things off than with a smoky woodwind instrument in the back as you’ve got some Latin chanting nabob who’s into self-mutilation. I don’t know what’s up with that but this religio who likes whipping his own backside is quickly replaced by a wandering, meandering display of some English gardens.

These gardens are populated with the academic speak of some dude who is trying to explain something about mankind, secrets and how everything will unravel if people catch wind of blah blah blah.

Who cares about any of that, right? We want our NATIONAL TREASURE of 2006. People loved the sight of balding older dudes with torches going on scavenger hunts but this trailer only teases us with the goods.

We get some long, rectangular box that seems mysterious and spooky, we get the Last Supper shown to us for reasons which the more learned of you (those who have read the book) can tell me but the show stopper here is the visage of a very pensive looking Tom Hanks with a hairdo that borders on MacGyver-esque. Color me intrigued, people.

I also really like the moment here when we see Old Man River running though a darkened art museum in the middle of the night. He’s hoofing it as hard as he can, his click-clacking feet on the hardwood floor building up the intensity of the faceless assailant, and then, as the screen goes black, a gunshot. What makes this moment even better, other than seeing all these European po-po’s in their cars with the singular blue lights, is taking in the greatness that is Jean Reno. I’m hoping he’s on the bad side of the law but one can only hope.

And, woah!, we get a dead naked guy on the floor who’s in the middle of what looks like a devil’s sacrifice. He’s all sorts of cut up and dripping with blood but before I squeal like a little girl there is the always filmicly delicious Audrey Tautou.

The final moments of this trailer are chock full of tidbits which only pique my interest in what could be one of the best adult oriented films to come out in a while. Yes, the book it was based on is not going to change the way American literature is going to evolve and Ron Howard’s name is not equitable to those of Scorsese, Coppola or Roger Corman but this does, honestly, look like another solid outing from little Opie.

Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum, Mike Vogel, Josh Lucas, Mia Maestro, Freddy Rodriguez, Kevin Dillon, Jacinda Barrett, Jimmy Bennett, Andre Braugher
Release: May 12, 2006
Synopsis: When a rogue wave capsizes a luxury cruise ship in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, a small group of survivors find themselves unlikely allies in a battle for their lives. As the unstable vessel rapidly floods with water, they face unimaginable odds and life-altering decisions in their desperate fight to the surface.

Prognosis: No. I know this is a remake.

I also know that this movie feels like TITANIC but without the obligatory tit shot of Kate Winslet. What we do get, though, is a shot of Fergie from Kids Incorporated, now the Black Eyed Peas, shaking her groove thing on the stage.

I don’t really have great expectations for a movie like this. I think it all stems from the need that many execs have of just rehashing old material and whatever you read with people who are in this production, who the hell hasn’t felt the power of the Poseidon Diaries and all their on-set glory from the Internet noobs who were allowed to talk to people from the film, that this was done because it was such an amazing script. Like Sick Boy from TRAINSPOTTING would say, “Shite.”

But, let’s take the ride knowing full well we’re riding over old territory. It’s a fun trailer. I’ll give it that. There’s a certain sense of tension when DUETS impresario Andre Braugher (Chicago’s own as well”¦wOOt”¦) starts talking about the history of Poseidon. The mood is good, the music choice is appropriate and even the sight of Richard Dreyfus is enough to rattle my notion that this is a wholesale raping of an old classic.

The countdown by everyone on board, ratcheting up the danger level of things, in a slo-mo display of all the major players of this thing is a little odd to me. I don’t know why I care but this seems to be a Love Boat of all things beautiful. I mean, really, there isn’t an ugly person on this ship. Even the dudes behind the scenes in the sonar room look like they were yanked from THE FIFTH ELEMENT (Quite possibly one of the worst and useless movies in history. It actually makes the case as to why originality might be seen as overrated).

So, all these pretty people are in danger; from what I haven’t a clue but I’m sure it’s going to be made out to be twice as big from the original. Oh, and I really love that there is a card that reads that this is coming to us from “the acclaimed director of TROY and THE PERFECT STORM.” Please. Who are you bullshit? That’s right, the brainless motards who you’re hoping didn’t see either movie.

Even though I couldn’t stop laughing after the “acclaimed” comment I stopped enough to admire the same computer program that creates the fake wave that’s capsizing the fake ship. It’s really impressive the way the tsunami sized CGI wave rocks the fake Poseidon. The moment is honestly done pretty well and the way people are tossed around as the ship goes down is rendered quite nicely.

The actual snippets of people getting all sorts of heroic as they’re trying to save one another is cute; they all have their dramatic personae faces on and ready to show the world what thousands of dollars spent at Earl Shatftsby House of Performance Arts can do. There’s a lot of screaming, a lot of posturing, a lot of “I’m not going to lose you!” happening and it’s all well and good. I even like the moment when the power goes out on the whole ship and everything fades to black, silence.

I don’t know if I’m going to allow myself to be duped into actually going but this is not a good way to start trying to convince me this isn’t just about cashing in.

Director: J. J. Abrams
Cast: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Keri Russell, Maggie Q
Release: May 5, 2006
Synopsis: Tom Cruise returns as Special Agent Ethan Hunt, who faces the mission of his life in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III. Director J. J. Abrams (“Lost,” “Alias”) brings his unique blend of action and drama to the billion-dollar franchise.

Prognosis: Hilarious. Bill Hicks.

What a guy.

I think he would take a look at Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of an evil antagonist, symbolically twisting his moustache in a “Mu-ha-ha” fashion, in this obvious empty, vapid and culturally insignificant movie after his ploy for critical recognition in CAPOTE and demand a debate about whether Phillip deserves to be on the artist roll-call list. For my money, I would consider this grounds for his membership to be revoked and sent to Xenu for immediate attitudinal destruction. No, I don’t think I’m so cool or deserving to be so critical but please, after looking at this trailer, you can’t tell me for one moment that all of Phillip’s choices are made on the quality of the screenplay based on this flick. And, if it is, and this happens to be the LOGAN’S RUN of the 2000’s then I will happily eat each and every word.

But, let’s take this one from the P.O.V. of your average action bumpkin who’s looking for a good time out at the talkies.

I’m not sure what it means that Phillip is handcuffed with Hefty twist-ties. His over-acting of his “dangerous” role here doesn’t really have the kind of spooky impact it was searching for. I think that he was more of a danger in a movie like SCENT OF A WOMAN when he was lording his social status over the here-today-gone-tomorrow-after-an-obnoxious-Robin-costume-outing Chris O’Donnell. But, whatever, he’s our nemesis and he’s trying to get it done.

Next, we’re entertained with this movie’s love interest as she slo-mos in and out of pretty person poses. I think at first she’s modeling for some feminine hygiene commercial, her smile unnaturally lingers on the screen for far too long, but then Tom comes in, rocking his super Timex timepiece, all smooth like he’s some player.

Somehow, and I don’t know how this happens, but we go from black night to an almost bawling Cruise as Hoffman escapes in the middle of the day. I’m sure this will be explained later but I’m all out of sorts with what’s happening.

We get a lot of Tom running around like a monkey on the loose, as a car blows up in a flourish of flames, Cruise taking the initiative to take a gun and point it at something. I don’t why it’s so hard to just slow things down a little, just a little bit, to give me bearing. Otherwise, what you have here is just an orgy of action. I love things like this, and I may be a little too harsh in my need for less of an ADD type of teaser and just a smidgen of context but that’s just me.

I do like Tom plunging upside down to his death, his bat-belt no doubt stocked for moments like this, and the pictures of him enjoying his speed boating in some undisclosed European locale. He’s having a good time, the orange Lamborghini which is no doubt being used to transport his female beard, er, girlfriend, but there is one image, in particular, I love so much.

If you slow things down, for a split second, you see Cruise decked out in a priest’s frock. It is no doubt a disguise but it makes me laugh on the inside as I know, for a fact, that Cruise is right; no one would believe he would have anything to do with an organized religion like Catholicism. Too right, my friend, and so subversive.

And in the end, after Tom is blasted into the side of a car after an explosion rocks him into a car (nice effect”¦) and Ving Rhames slaps Cruise’s hand saying, “Welcome back, bra”¦.”? Come on, we all know Tom is never coming back, ever.

Director:Brett Ratner
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Shawn Ashmore, Daniel Cudmore, Alan Cumming, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
Release: May 26, 2006
Synopsis: When a cure is found to treat mutations, lines are drawn amongst the X-Men, led by Professor Charles Xavier (Stewart), and the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants organized under Xavier’s former ally, Magneto (McKellen).

Prognosis: I can’t lie, this is just one funny trailer. Let’s see why this movie, and you can quote me on this, will not achieve the same kind of fiscal success and adoration that the first two films achieved.

One reason why this movie will not engender the same kind of proud geek ownership of mutants done right is all in Kelsey Grammer’s make-up job. He looks like a cross between a Blue Man Group stage production of Beauty and the Beast and, well, a Smurf version of the Thriller video.

Now, I’ll be nice with the music that opens things up. It’s really good, minimalist background noise that offers a different approach to the Taiko drumming which usually accompanies so many action flick trailers. It’s sparse but it’s quite effective in driving the mood of the action on the screen.

Further, even though, by its nature, this is a teaser trailer we linger for a while too long on the opening image of an X-Door. I don’t know why the pause so excruciatingly long to me but when you watch and re-watch this trailer you see that there isn’t a reason for it.

We then see our principal players walking with their superhero swagger on the screen. Now, I don’t know if anyone else will find this amusing but the shot of the full team walking in the underground lair of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters almost looks like the result of a game called, “Whose Agent Is Strongest?” You’ve got Halle Berry, an almost perfunctory character in both previous films that really should’ve been killed off, taking point. I don’t know why this is the case as she’s useless to the plot. You’ve got Hugh Jackman following up but, with better reason, should’ve been the main focus as I don’t see STORM: THE LIGHTNING STRIKES being made into a film anytime soon whereas Hugh’s got a nice payday coming because he knows how to shake it on the screen. And then you’ve got Anna Paquin and the rest of the funky bunch strolling behind them as if it’s a portent of who’s going to get playing time in this movie versus everyone else.

Speaking of playing time, I think that the next scene of people fighting in what looks like the borrowed, apocalyptic remnants from the set of TERMINATOR 1 and 2 is actually of the danger room. I could be wrong but Hugh’s noticeable indifference to it all could be that it is all fake or that he’s lost all hope that he has to shuck and jive alongside a furry travesty that looks like it was constructed with blue spray paint and pubes or that Halle whined so damned much about wanting more screen time.

Next we get our glimpse of Angel. I liked Six Feet Under. I liked the ending of that show so much that it may have very well been the greatest ending to a program in recent memory but Ben Foster was downright creepy as all hell. I know actors are paid to play parts but he freaked me out with his whole confused sexuality/stalker/suicidal persona that I just imagine Angel is going to have some intimacy issues or that he’s going to be caught giving a good rogering to the entire aviary population of the San Francisco Zoo.

Magneto’s presence is pretty nice while the car flipping trick he does with his powers is, well, unoriginal; I just wished there was something a little more “flashy” he could do. Now, and this is fucking hilarious, go to the part right after this when Magneto is addressing some of his tribe in the middle of the forest. Pause it. Okay, okay, off to the right yeah there’s Jean Grey. She’s alive, that’s great, whatever, but on the other side, way over to the left, you’ve got Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut. He’s standing there with his super duper helmet next to his side but he also seems to have super abs. I mean, holy hell, one ab stretches the length of his torso. Where the hell did the effects guys go for training, the Rob Liefeld School of Anatomy? I’m still laughing over that. I mean, it looks exactly like what it is: a rubber suit.

Whoa, now if you slow down again, you can see the first appearance of The Beast. Again, the laughs just don’t stop. I can understand why Singer didn’t include him in X2: because it looks ridiculous. It’s just shameful yet surprisingly funny.

I don’t know why the slo-mo of Cyclops’ glasses coming off is really needed, I did like the shot of him just losing it whilst standing on the edge where his hoochie decided to get all hari-kari on us but that’s quickly supplanted with the now alive, evil Jean Grey who will no doubt be shifting her loyalties as some kind of incarnation of the Phoenix.

We get more shots of The Beast, goddamn what it must have been like for Kelsey to have this make-up applied and questioning, on some level, what a fool you look like and then you get more snippets of Wolverine going his raised eyebrow thing as he lights stogie after stogie. Magneto applies the same damn paralyzing hold on Jackman as the originality surges through the screen and I am left wondering if all the action of this movie is going to take place in either the danger room, the forest and the school’s grounds. That’s all I am really seeing here.

I just don’t know what this movie will do when it comes out. I can’t see anything here that makes me think this will be anything less than a mild letdown of what we’ve all come to expect. I want to be wrong, I do, but what here gave me hope that I am? Nothing. Not a thing.

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.

Director: Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, Tony Leech
Cast:(Voices) James Belushi, Glen Close, Andy Dick, Anne Hathaway, David Ogden Stiers, Anthony Anderson, Xzibit, Chazz Palminteri, Sally Struthers, Patrick Warburton
Release: January 13, 2006
Synopsis: In the re-telling of this classic fable, the story begins at the end. Chief Grizzly (Xzibit) and Detective Bill Stork (Anthony Anderson) investigate a domestic disturbance at Granny’s (Glenn Close) cottage, involving a karate-kicking Red Riding Hood (Anne Hathaway), a sarcastic wolf (Patrick Warburton) and an oafish Woodsman (Jim Belushi). The charges are many: breaking and entering, intent to eat, wielding an axe without a license, but these unusual suspects have their story to tell first.

Prognosis: I’ll Read The Book. Has anyone seen that wholesome Anne Hathaway vehicle that showcases her, um, vehicles, HAVOC? Yeah, me neither, but I did hear about this movie around the same time when the hubbub about HAVOC was percolating to the surface.

There’s just something about that film’s controversy and this animated movie being the first from the Weinstein Company that raises some good questions about what HOODWINKED hopes to establish about the big dollar potential in their kid flicks. I know people remember what happened to Fox Animation after a couple of wretched movies destroyed that arm of their filmic portfolio. It’s not enough anymore to just make a kids movie and expect that if it’s done halfway well that the bucks are going to roll in.

You’ve got to come correct at the theater and it’s pretty much all Pixar’s, really Brad Bird, doing in the last decade or so that they’ve raised the bar in terms of what really makes good animated fun. Sure, you may have a suck ass movie and make many dollars at the box office or in the secondary home video market (that craptacular SHARK TALE and CHICKEN LITTLE proved that) but this is more about longevity, having a unique voice.

I can’t really say I hear echoes of greatness it in this trailer.

What I do like, though, from the outset is that this movie is being told in a Rashomon fashion, getting many perspectives from the same event, and for that it gets some kudos. What’s really not so great is that the first third of this trailer is burnt by just recounting the story of Little Red Riding Hood when Red starts to talk to who she thinks is grandma. Yeah, you can go this route and the glib funny-funny joke at the end of the usual exchange, when the wolf pitches a fit about being interrogated by the girl, will make some of the parents giggle but something odd happens. The granny who was replaced comes bounding from the hall closet, gagged and tied up with rope, while some strapping Swiss/Germanic lumberjack busts through the bedroom window. This should be a funny moment, there should be a bon mot or something said by either the goofy looking guy who’s donning some tight tight lederhosen or the wolf who’s just been had.

No, we don’t get any of that. We just get the modern angle of cops showing up to find out exactly what has happened. It’s not funny, it just seems, well, normal.

The moment takes our Japanese-inspired turn when the whole gang is being interrogated by the lead detective in the case, a frog who I guess is supposed to be funny, and we’re supposed to believe that’s there more to this story than just Red coming to visit her grandma.

The angle here is that Little Red might not be so innocent in the crime, that grandma might be some kind of secret agent (I still don’t know why we had to see her snowboarding down a mountain after she tossed two explosive charges (!) on top of it), the wolf might actually be a victim (aren’t we all?) and the lumberjack is a buffoon; say what you will, but when I started to read plays in college around the time of Shakespeare and beyond I’ve always had a soft spot for the idiots. I don’t suffer fools gladly but when they’re genuinely stupid I appreciate that kind of stock character.

And yeah, the music that runs underneath our character introductions, EMF’s “Unbelievable”? I think if this movie was going to come out circa 1992 it would be relevant but almost a decade and a half after its release? No, it’s not.

The last third of the trailer really wants to play up the angles of how this story is going to turn the traditional story on its head but the jokes, visual gags and assorted attempts to inject humor just don’t work. My kid may like it but I just can’t see myself placing this in the pantheon of great kids films.

Director:Wayne Wang
Cast: Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, Gerard Depardieu, Alicia Witt, Giancarlo Esposito
Release: January 13, 2006
Synopsis: A shy cookware clerk (Queen Latifah), believing her days are numbered, throws caution to the wind and embarks on a dream vacation to Europe. While staying at a grand hotel, she and her uninhibited attitude have a profound and humorous effect on the guests and staff.

Prognosis: Yeah, I’ll Suggest This To My Lady Friends. Honest question for the peanut gallery:

Does a movie that is anchored by Queen Latifah and LL Cool J warrant a label that it is necessarily an urban romantic comedy, and let’s be honest here when we say that urban means that it befits a certain segment of the black population, or are we beyond middle America’s box office punch when it comes to marketing a movie to everyone and not just narrowcasting to one race?

I would hope so because this flick, while not being marketed to dudes like me who would rather spend the afternoon trimming the hedges, actually tugs at the right places. For what it is supposed to be, a romantic comedy, it pops on all the right cylinders.

Now, for future reference, marketing rom-coms means that there are certain things you’ve got to execute in order to get the biggest, noticeable punch for your ad dollars:

1. Give away the movie. No matter what you’ve got to tell the entire story in the two minutes, thirty seconds you are given.

2. Make sure you showcase the ladies. Your story may involve a dude but, like in real life, dudes are irrelevant to your protagonist but make sure, when possible, to make them look like idiots.

3. Be sympathetic. Ply at chicks’ heartstrings by manipulating them with rusty, dusty oldies music. For examples of this look at trailers for RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS, THE FAMILY STONE, HANGING UP and nearly every single movie where chicks are all laughing for no good reason.

Now, our trailer here begins with showcasing Queen in all her simpleton glory. You root for her because she is immediately shown getting worked over by her insufferable boss and that she has a thing for LL; I mean, hell, who doesn’t have a thing for LL? I might have a thing for LL. Point is, she comes off sweetly. I didn’t have high hopes for the film when I initially saw the print advertising for the movie but any animosity I had gets slowly burned by a nice, easy build-up to what is, at it’s core, the point of the film.

She’s got three weeks to live, or so it says as these things have a way of magically being magically rectified by movie’s end, Queen takes a big dollar loan/withdrawl from the bank, I’m unsure of how this could happen so fast but fuck reality, man, this is the talkies after all, and goes off to some exotic locale and splurges on all the things that she’s dreamed of consuming.

It’s formulaic, yes, of the woman who had nothing, gets everything, and plays the country bumpkin/simpleton in a world populated by hoity-toidy tight wads. People like these kind of rags to riches variants and when I see Queen just doing one thing after another that shows how she’s really just a proverbial fish out of water, with the assumption that she’s going to find her way back to LL is all but assured. Oh, but it isn’t assured, it’s effing showed in all its lame glory.

The closing music to this trailer? “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” This couldn’t have been more textbook. Ladies are going to be dragging their dudes to this one in quick order. If the original version of this movie, which came out over half a century ago, is any indication I am sure we’ll see a new incarnation of this same story around 2050.

Director: Matt Mulhern
Cast: David Schwimmer, Janeane Garofalo, Judah Friedlander, Susan Lynch, Dick Cavett
Release: November 11, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: A down-on-his-luck, divorced father works the night shift at an Atlantic City casino. When his relationship with his young daughters and ex-wife is jeopardized by a run-in with the law, he struggles to get his life – and family – back together before it’s too late. A moving and humorous look at the limits of unconditional love and what defines a family.

Prognosis: Down and Out. First time I saw Janeane Garofalo was episode one on Fox when The Ben Stiller Show, one of the first real great Fox fuck-ups to come from that would eventually claim the life of Arrested Development, debuted over a decade ago. She was smart, witty, pretty, funny and all sorts of perfect for the show.

When the show dissolved it was rough trying to keep up with her comedic stylings, her talent just leeched away into the gutter by Saturday Night Live, but she’s made a voice for herself in a serious way in the past few years and it’s wonderful to see her here doing more than just being the foil for more important, read here: studio sap, stars.

David Schwimmer? Can’t say I like him that much. He’s got a one tone acting style, has a droopy eyed delivery that I can’t say is done on purpose or brought to me by the fine people from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and is not really compelling as a leading man.

Case in point? The first scene of this trailer is of him finishing a beer as a po-po sloshes up to his car right before he’s going to be arrested for drunken driving. I can’t understand if this was to be funny, amusing or pathetic but when he sloppily says he has a kid in the back seat I get that this is supposed to be straight.

The homesick country chords play in the background as we’re pimped with the sign that this movie was a 2005 Sundance entry; good, I always appreciate when advertisers see the importance of getting this information out early.

We next see David being harangued by the judge at his sentencing which, again, is odd because he makes a wisecrack and I’m not sure if he’s the fun kind of alcoholic which are always good to have a party or he’s the depressing kind that are always a drag. He’s confusing.

He kind of backslides when Janeane threatens to prevent David from seeing the kid he was busted with whilst on a drunken bender but, again, I don’t understand. If David’s a drunk who obviously doesn’t care of whether his kid is harmed or not then why does he have a sudden sober moment about his life’s future?

I blame the trailer for being unclear for cutting some understanding of where we’re going with this movie. Case in point, David ditches the sloshy lifestyle for one of three-piece suits at an Atlantic City casino. He presents well and actually looks good but how the hell did we get here? Again, lots were left out and I can’t see how I am supposed to be amped to see a movie where I’m not all that sure of if I would want to see what happens to this goober.

And then, the best part, he slides back into the boozing. Even though David is in essence twisting down a coil that is similar to that of Nic Cage in LEAVING LAS VEGAS the difference is that I am befuddled when David starts talking about how he loves his kids and his ex-wife but obviously still likes the liquor.

Are these kinds of guys sympathetic protagonists or pathetic machinations that we should pity? I can’t say and I think that’s the real problem of this trailer. I want to like this movie so much because it seems like a real departure for Janeane but what’s here in this piece of advertising has me so wrapped up in David that I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort to look and find out.

Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Diane Ladd, Paul Rodriguez Aaron Murphy, Annie Whittle
Release: February 3, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: In `60s New Zealand, at the bottom of the world, Burt Munro takes a 1920 Indian motorcycle and, delightfully without resources other than his own obsession and a Kiwi #8 wire mentality, spends his retirement rebuilding the bike and following his dream to go to Speed Week at Salt Lake in Utah. Under funded, without the support of a team and against all the odds he not only makes it to Bonneville, he sets a world land spend record, not once, but again and again.

Prognosis: Positive. Sometimes, things just hit me a certain way.

Be it just or unjust there are just triggers which prompt me to sit quietly and take notice; shiny objects going very fast is one of them.

I think if I was to compare this movie’s audience and range, in terms of who this movie could ultimately reach, I would place it in the same realm as the awful MADISON, that boat movie which is taking up pointless space next to the seven shelves worth of MY DATE WITH DREW at the local Blockbuster. But this movie feels a little different somehow. The protagonist here, Sir Anthony Hopkins, is just one guy and his quest seems more about his own quest than it is one of those hokey suppositions that are usually found in mainstream movies where it all comes down to one last”¦(fill in the blank).

At first glance you’d expect this to be a quiet kind of film. Hopkins, a motorcycle and his age all seem qualifiers that would put this movie on the docket for the 3 p.m. evening movie at the Frosty Acres Nursing Home. I was actually looking for a trailer I could kick around a bit, sharpen the old talons on a squirrelly piece of mice meat, but was floored by the intensity that builds up when Hopkins rolls his motorcycle out into the open. A couple of A chords, some steel toe shoes that look like they were ripped from a MATRIX or ALIENS vehicle, some sparks of electricity and some sweet-ass angles of said motorbike achieving a gnarly velocity are all that one needs to give Hopkins a boost.

What’s more is that before we go back into the grandeur that is Hopkins getting his quickness on he’s talking to some officials about why, as a Kiwi, he was in America. His response that he’s out to set the land speed record, not only reminds me of that delicious Tanya Donelly single that only I seem to know of or possess, but it provides a nice interlude between his solo runs and the quickness he displays against younger dudes and their fast bikes.

And what would a sport bike movie be without a few wipeouts? I like that we linger for a little bit on Anthony’s face when he eats it on a barren salt flat. The expression is worth the price of admission alone. Yes, it’s fake, I know that, but it’s nonetheless effective in evoking that this geezer set out to do something that not even I have the stones to do.

The rest of the trailer intersperses this bike of his going very fast while being entertained with Hopkins’ dry wit when he’s pulled over by a po-po doing around 150 mph; for those limeys in attendance, I think that equals something very swift in kilometers.

“Based on one hell of a true story”

I just have to give it up for the musical direction of this trailer. I can’t remember when the tunes created such a kinetic feeling and you’ve got that right here. I think my penchant for all things wipe out was psychically understood by the Trailer Gods as the final image we have of old Anthony is of his head scraping, once more, the bottom of a salt flat as he cries out in the only way that a senior citizen can.

Man, does this ever look facetiously manipulative but it hasn’t ever looked, or sounded, so good.

Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård, Bill Nighy, Jack Davenport, Kevin R. McNally, Jonathan Pryce
Release: July 7, 2006
Synopsis: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley reunite in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST, an all new epic tale chronicling the further mis-adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski from a screenplay written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, Captain Jack sets sail on an all new adventure ““ filled with more intrigue, more spectacular special effects and more comedy.

Prognosis: Positive. No, it wasn’t rocking anyone’s world with its ability to create something special on the screen, technically speaking, but I’ll be damned if the first PIRATES wasn’t all sorts of mindless fun.

Gore Verbinski was a lot of people’s whipping boy until he brought people out in droves and then got them to buy DVD’s in droves as well. PIRATES proved the power of making films that are just plain fun. There isn’t foul language to speak of, no one gets their nads blown off in a spectacular way and there was actually a coherent plot that not only entertained but showed the power of having three actors who could deal with sharing the spotlight with one another.

There is no doubt that the people with this could have taken the SUPERMAN IV approach and made a movie that would ensure money but no doubt tarnish the first flick’s reputation. What I can see here, though, looks like you have a director who saw what made the first movie great and wants to try it again.

You almost want to give Gore a pat on the tuchas for wanting to try and make a LORD OF THE RINGS for the Disney sect because the trailer really shines in that it just feels like safe, family fare. It’s not a bad thing, mind you, but you just know what you’re going to get with this movie. Sometimes that’s just a nice thing to know.

Big fan of the creepy “Yo ho, yo, ho, a pirate’s life for me”¦” I remember standing in line for this damned ride and listening to the endless soundtrack playing again and again, so it takes me back.

I don’t really get the opening shots of the chain gang walking along a darkened rock bridge, the skeletons of dead men in long iron cages. I don’t know if we’re revisiting the events of what made the first movie so fun, that Jack was a part of the rag tag bunch of pirates, but it’s nonetheless intriguing as is the shot of dozens of people wading though a sick lake that’s covered with a thin plume of fog.

Now, and this is really cool, and I mean “cool” in the most academic sense, we get a glimpse of what I believe is Davey Jones, the salty dog who’s covered with all sorts of danger. This is what young kids really want to see on the screen and who better to voice this character than Bill Nighy.

The one thing that scares me though is when the always dependable Johnny Depp, who would’ve thought this 21 Jump Street alum was going to go on to do great things as I had my money on Richard Grieco, is in all his glory until he gets hogtied and put on a spit. You flirt with danger when you add natives into a movie; to me, it feels like lazy filmmaking. With ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS you had natives playing an awful role in an already awful movie but, in THE RUNDOWN, they were perfectly used in what should’ve been an average movie. When Depp is forced to play off of them I am hopeful we end up with something from the latter and not the former.

The last third of this trailer gives us equal doses of Orlando and Kiera in all their splendiferous glory. If I had to compare it to anything it’s almost like if Lost, HELLBOY and THE GOONIES merged into this conflagration of traps, machinations and oddities following them all. It’s enough eye candy to keep the young’uns wired for days but I am just giddy, again, academic usage, to see that movies like this are being made.

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard
Release: July 21, 2006
Synopsis: The story of a superintendent of an apartment complex in Philadelphia who discovers a sea nymph living in the building’s swimming pool.

Prognosis: Positive. Okay, I realize that many of you were butt-hurt over the travesty that was THE VILLAGE.

I can’t qualify anyone’s remarks because it was said remarks that kept me from even renting the movie, quite unfortunate too as I am a big big fan of SIXTH and UNBREAKABLE and, yes, even SIGNS. Was THE VILLAGE all that bad? I think there is something to M. Night’s writing technique and his whole surprise ending angle but I am hoping he isn’t banking his entire career on it because what I see here is actually quite poignant.

I am a fan of the title, first of all, as the subtitle, A BEDTIME STORY, kind of puts things in the right frame of reference for everyone. There’s a kind of fairytale supposition, be this a true story, i.e. set in the real world, or not, and it kind of gives Night some latitude.

The opening is really original in ways I can’t quite put into words. It might have to do with the lilting music that plays behind the sequence or the framing that really is Night’s signature style, but when you see a group of apartment dwellers all gathered around the pool, an odd conflagration which never quite happens in real life, but we’ll accept it as fact here.

Also, does anyone have one of those symbolism dictionaries? I used to have one early on in my English education but probably sold it back to make 4 bucks on the 40 I spent on it. I ask because there is an odd lingering on the image of butterflies. There are lots of “˜em and even though we see them for a few seconds, I would love to know what they could mean in the context of this movie.

Next, we’re introduced to Cleveland, Paul Giamatti, who seems to be the silent, stoic, superintendent of this complex and we see him in all his lonely glory; and, man, does he ever look lonely. That’s why it kind of concerns me that when we see him after his day labors are done, chillin’ inside his little cottage on the outskirts of the apartment grounds, he pulls a notebook from the top shelf of one of his bookcases and starts writing in it.

Now, what concerns me is that the notebook is awfully tall and, when we get our birds-eye view of the writing in question, the script is thin and runs all the way from the left to the right and takes up the entire page; it’s like Kevin Spacey from SEVEN. I’m not sure if this means he’s psychotic or that he’s writing about how he likes to rub strawberry jelly on his nether regions while chanting “I hate Bush” and watching Judy Garland movies but, man, what I would give to have this movie take a horrific turn. As it is, though, we just get some script on the screen.

“Once upon a time there was a man named Cleveland Heep whose life would change forever”¦”

Although, in my own defense, the next scene that shows Paul shows him sleeping in his chair with his notebook open on the couch and he is facing the direction where his television should be; I’m still holding out for my idea to come to fruition.

There’s some splashing in the pool outside his window and it wakes Cleveland up. There is a lot of torpidity in that body of water and it’s enough to have Cleve go and investigate with his flashlight.

The last remaining image is Paul from underneath the surface looking up and, even though that angle is quite slimming, we aren’t left to see what happens from here.

This is actually all quite interesting and it does just enough to pique my interest in what’s happening in this film.

Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson, Barbara Nedeljakova
Release: January 6, 2006
Synopsis: HOSTEL tells the story of two American college buddies Paxton and Josh who backpack through Europe eager to make hazy travel memories with new friend Oli, an Icelander they’ve met along the way. Paxton, Josh, and Oli are eventually lured by a fellow traveler to what’s described as a nirvana for American backpackers ““ a particular hostel in an out-of-the-way Slovakian town stocked with Eastern European women as desperate as they are gorgeous. The two friends arrive and soon easily pair off with exotic beauties Natalya and Svetlana. In fact, too easily”¦

View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Positive. What is with Hollywood’s obsession with churning out horror movies as of late?

I don’t mean this is a bad thing but between flicks like HIGH TENSION and the SAW series (which has seen two movies appear like Irish twins) there is a delightfully healthy interest in a genre which had some real crap done to it thanks to the weak-ass SCREAM entries and nearly everything Ewe Boll put out.

This trailer, right here, screams out to the masses that this movie isn’t going to be put out by Dimension and their patsy “Let’s make some horror movies that can reach EVERY demographic” kind of attitude. This one is either for some people who like their horror really graphic or ones who want cameos with The Fonz in them.

We open up to what should be requisite set design for all horror movies, the dingy industrial complex that’s overrun by mold and rust, but it still works here; it just invokes the kind of despair and evilness that a movie like this needs to establish. Oh, and you need water. No matter that an abandoned place like this should’ve had their water shut off a long time ago because this is an abandoned industrial complex but there should be lots and lots of nasty looking water and that’s also what we get here.

“Where all your darkest”¦sickest fantasies”¦”

What usually bugs me, but what gets a pass here, are the graphics that scroll across the screen. When they manage to actually relate to the story, like they do here, it’s a helpful hint about what’s happening in the flick. The imagery here, though, really is nasty. You’ve got some dude who’s obviously being held against his will and, with the lettering that mentions that where you can indulge in your “sickest fantasies” I can only imagine what’s going to happen to him. The gnarly looking cutting tools, all rusted but completely original in design, amps up that whole “spooky” factor and lets you know someone’s about to get sliced, diced and filleted. The screaming pleas from said victim is a nice touch, too.

Special props go out to the trailer makers who use a real nice image: a wiggling toe underneath a decending bolt cutter; you hear the clip and then the scream. Awesome. Totally awesome.

We next get the Black and Decker toolset out with Dr. Death, in creppy looking apron and face mask, getting ready to apply a little wanton torture and sickness to whoever he’s walking toward. I don’t know his name, what his motivation is or what kind of place this is but when the words “Inspired by true events” pops up I am more engaged with the material.

Also, when we get the proclamation that this film is coming to us “From the brilliant minds who brought you CABIN FEVER, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and KILL BILL” I am finally at peace with people using this technique in a way that actually establishes some cred and doesn’t manage to give me three reasons why I WON’T see the film.

Director: Clark Johnson
Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Michael Douglas, Kim Basinger, Eva Longoria
Release: April 21, 2006
Synopsis: Special Agent Pete Garrison is convinced that a Neo-Nazi Aryan Disciple has managed to infiltrate the White House. When a White House Agent is murdered, Garrison is framed and blackmailed over an affair with the First Lady Sarah Ballentine. He is relieved of his duties, but Garrison won’t stop in trying to prove his innocence, and save the life of the President. While attempting to uncover the person behind it all, he comes into confrontation with his protege, Agent Breckinridge.

Prognosis: Negative. Man, it has been a long time since I’ve seen a movie with Michael Douglas in it.

I think some of his disappearance might have something to do with his wicked face stapling surgery from this year which has left me of an image of a face dripping with bodily fluid and scraggly facial hair; I’m not one to ever seek these kind of pictures out but, geez, the lengths some people go to retain their vanity.

Anyway, this flick looks like crap and I’ll tell you why, First of all, I say this because if the by-the-numbers filmmaking that’s going on here. I know there are reasons why these kinds of movies exist but, really, there’s nothing compelling going on in there here trailer.

The voiceover guy here, sounds like none other than Mr. Don LaFontaine, really tries to notch up the action by speaking very throatily about what the Secret Service is all about. Yeah, they’re teh cool and so powerful and protect the president and they’re all about but when Douglas says into his wrist microphone, “He’s on the move” you can’t help but laugh a little bit.

Do they really keep dudes his age on the payroll as part of the ground team? I thought that was explained quite succinctly in the better looking film IN THE LINE OF FIRE but what the hell do I know? Maybe they like to put chum out into the veritable ocean of possible lines of attack against the president, although a movie where Michael Douglas goes down like an undeserving Jim Brady, payback for the shit that was THE IN-LAWS would be a good time. As it stands, though, this movie is probably going to be playing it straight.

You get the montage of DC, the Capital Building, White House and then a cheesy looking computer nerve center of enforcement activity. We get it, though, that trying to penetrate the White House is harder than getting into Lindsay Lohan’s pants, okay, that would be easy, my bad, but you get the point.

What the point of this movie is, though, is that Michael Douglas has to look for a mole within the Secret Service and Keifer Sutherland, looking fresh and original in a premise that has him as a law enforcement representative, having to look after the president while looking for someone who could kill the world! Yeah, it’s really a stretch.

So, geezer gets accused of being the mole. He gets taken into custody and then breaks free like a wild animal. The chase is on.

When you watch this trailer the reason why you think you’ve seen this before is that you have. Before it had a sequel it was called THE FUGITIVE; guy gets pinched for doing something he really didn’t, you have people chasing him but you have one kindred spirit hoping to clear his name. That person in this movie is Eva Longoria, the reason why, superficially speaking, network television was created. I think her range goes from ONE LIFE TO LIVE to GUIDING LIGHT.

It’s about here when Keifer, playing the Tommy Lee Jones role, barks out to the people who are going to be hot on Michael’s tail that they are chasing their, “worst nightmare.” Please. You’re kidding? Michael Douglas is the Secret Service’s worst nightmare? Whatever, I guess if that’s how they want to roll…

Director: Nicholaus Goossen
Cast: Allen Covert, Peter Dante, Jonathan Loughran, Nick Swardson, Joel David Moore, Doris Roberts
Release: January 6, 2006
Synopsis: By day, 35-year-old Alex (Covert) is the world’s oldest video game tester, but by night. By night, he is privately developing the next big game for the X-Box generation. When one of his roommates(Loughran) spends all the rent money on Taiwanese hookers, Alex is kicked out of his apartment, and finds himself forced to live with his grandmother (Roberts) and her friends Grace (Jones) and Bea (Knight).

Prognosis: Negative. Even I can’t, in good conscience, recommend this film.

I understand that Adam Sandler’s world is appealing to a certain segment of the male population but I can’t see how a movie with as sinister of a premise as this has is going to appeal to anyone beyond that core. I think it may be just this fact which will make it the Second Coming to many nerds out there.

The real secret to this movie’s success, then, depends on getting that core to come out of their basements and see this movie. How then do you start a trailer that needs to do just that? How about piping in the sound of someone taking a hit off a bong? Good one. How about showing some dudes playing X-Box? Checkola. Ooo! How about sticking in a chimpanzee for good measure? Dude, you’re all over this marketing campaign.

I take it this movie is about some guys who like to play video games. It is, at the very least, consistently juvenile across the board. What’s really weird, though, is the lengths this trailer shows how odd these older guys really are. You’ve got one guy who wears pajamas that are all one piece (remember the ones with the booties and that zippered down front?) and sleeps in a car shaped bed, you’ve got the token “wasted” guy who will probably do nothing all movie but try to play up how cool and funny it is to have a friend who is baked all the time and you’ve got another friend who’s into hookers (I don’t know what I can say to that) but then, in all this weirdness, you’ve got the one relative “normal” guy who is like the Tommy of pinballing except he can hear and it’s video games, not flippers and tilts. Oddly, didn’t we all see this movie with Fred Savage in THE WIZARD? I guess there seems to be confidence in capitalizing on the life that still beats in the electronic gaming segment that still goes and sees films.

And, what’s more, is that he gets evicted from his pad and has to shack up with the Golden Girls; crazy concept, I know, and that’s what makes this film so very very original. And, like a crazed white cracker on crystal meth trying to outrun the po-po’s from last week’s Cops episode, they run with this gag as far as they can get. Our “normal” guy lets all of his other buddies know that he’s shacked up with a bunch of ladies who have really worked him over with all of his coworkers thinking that he’s now involved with a pack of college aged co-eds who we all know think of nothing but sex. This bubble is burst when the old ladies pay our friend a visit at the office and the ruse is revealed. Instead of disgust, our friends herald our Don Juan with praise.

Things just follow this absurd path as our protagonist starts to include these senior citizens in his nighttime activities. At one point the old bat from Everyone Loves A Crap Sitcom, after she drinks or eats some beverage that’s been spiked with something, that she can hear her hair growing. The laughs explode left and right, people, so do wear your protective clothing.

I usually find these kinds of comedies entertaining as they do fill a need in my mind for humor that’s not really challenging and doesn’t make me work for a laugh but I just can’t see myself even thinking of paying full price for a movie like this. I’m not really filled with vitriol over this movie’s existence but I would sooner see anything else playing at the theaters than having to watch Doris Roberts play the same character she’s made Emmy-licious for the past decade.

Director: Corey Yuen
Cast: Devon Aoki, Jamie Pressley, Derek Boyer, Sarah Carter, Collin Chou, Steve Howey
Release: August 25, 2006
Synopsis: The movie adaptation of the best selling video game series Dead or Alive.

Prognosis: (Hangs head low in shame)…Yeah…I like this one… Alright, to prove I am not all about teh art, this is one that I recommend to the all the people who make the Internet run: 14 year olds.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t state that I have tried to get into My Name Is Earl but just can’t get myself over the one-trick angle of Jason Lee having to set his karma straight by following his list. Who knows, though, maybe the character of Crab Man will grow on me a little more and maybe I’ll find a way to look through Jamie Pressley’s backward ass character but, as it is, I’ll just keep TiVoing it until I see what everyone else seems to be finding. I think, though, for my dollars, it doesn’t get any more exploitative than this. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, as any educated person should surmise, that if women are willing to be exploited for money then as long as their check clears the bank there isn’t any problem. The organization NOW may want to contend with the previous statement but any hot blooded American male should think that hot chicks with good sized juggs fightin’ with samurai swords and traipsing around in their undergoods is a good thing.

The opening, I admit, got me completely off guard. I was wondering why an opening shot of four good looking ladies talking about dudes was came from a movie entitled D.O.A. but when you stick with it just long enough you see that we’re not talking about some ladies in a bar or restaurant but ladies wielding swords and are talking about the horde of black uniformed baddies running up some stone stairs, possibly because they’re looking to break themselves off a piece but, possibly, to kill them. Either way, the conceit is cheeky and, hopefully, to the delight of most every straight dude in attendance, way hawt. I also commend the trailer makers for constructing the opening with music that’s indicative of shows like Sex and the City. It completely doesn’t let on that this is going to go the way it is.

Now, once we reveal that these are women who are about to get wicked with their weaponry, the music changes, this time music that’s indicative of some slutty strip joint, not that I would know, but it’s a great transition. The camera flashes fast between images but there’s a nice pacing between the advancing bad guys and the nice ladies. Again, hotness is the name of the game here so you get your sex and violence in equal parts here, children.

“They have looks that kill”¦”

Yes, it’s all groan worthy. All of it. From the shots of them in their bikinis, to the requisite, “Oh, I’ve broken a nail” comment to imply that their sultriness is their weapon while mixing in their unreal ability to go one-on-one with men who are trained in the martial arts as well but didn’t think to look as good on the battlefield as they do in the dining room it all makes you feel kind of dirty from watching it; although, you just can’t help but get pulled in by its absurdity.

The angles chosen to really showcase each one of these ladies’ abilities stray from the norm and I think that’s why it deserves some props for making a trailer that’s just fun to watch. The moves are indicative of the films that I miss from the 80’s, flicks like BLOODSPORT, AMERICAN NINJA and most everything with Steven Segal. It’s been a while since you’ve had films all about exploitation and wanton destruction. You’ve got hard rock music playing behind quicker than shit clips of these women getting wild with bo staffs, swords and other kinds of weapons. They are leaping and bounding all over the place with their legs and arms flailing around the screen. They, of course, like to play sand volleyball and catching some rays before traipsing around ancient oriental temples, killing people.

I am especially a fan of the unreal moment in this trailer where one of our women, topless and fresh from the shower, takes on a dude in hand-to-hand combat. She, ahem, tosses her bra in the air, does a little more ass kicking, slides it over her shoulders and makes the dude she’s fighting with clasp it before she finishes him off.

Director: Scott Coffey
Cast: Naomi Watts, David Baer, Chevy Chase, Robbi Chong
Release: November 11, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: ELLIE PARKER races around town from one audition to another, changing make-up, clothes and personality as she speeds along, barely attending to her whirlwind life as she strives to get cast in a movie. As Ellie considers giving up after losing faith in the craft, her manager DENNIS doesn’t exactly talk her out of it. One last insane audition for Ellie, and she’s back in the game? or is she?

Prognosis: Negative. I think there’s some cruel irony behind the litany of movies that focus on the young Hollywood hopefuls and their struggle to get noticed when they’re played by actors and actresses who are already, themselves, discovered.

This movie, I thought, would at least offer up some new reason why Naomi Watts could break through the old and tired setups of a young lady with gumption who just wants that one part to help her break through. What you’ve got here, though, doesn’t feel very real in the sense that since you’re trying to convey a sense of verisimilitude with the digital lens this thing was shot through you want something that people can connect with on the screen.

There isn’t any of that here.

The opening of the trailer is good, it’s solid. Watts is going through a series of vocal exercises, falling short of the Damon/Affleck vocalizations in JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK which were grandiosely goofy and gregarious, and I’m in. I’m right there with her. And then the crap music starts up; it seems purchased from a song bank which deals in nondescript, bland tunes which almost border on distracting. Great job there, people. Then we get our cards in-between the scenes. Usually I don’t care about these things but this, again, seems like it was subcontracted to an Apple store in Alhambra, California with the theme of the workshop being: How to insert graphics into your own home movies using nothing more than your Mac, camera and Firewire.

So, everyone speaks Ellie Parker’s name just so you at home who are as blind as Ray Charles or as stupid as a box of Kleenex and couldn’t read the previous card telling you that Watts’ character is named Ellie Parker. Thanks for that.

We are then treated to Ellie’s hysterics in the audition room. Of course she’s obnoxious and we can all see why she’s Hollywood’s most “UN”employed actress which is just an awesome joke, by the way, but I don’t see why I should like her. She seems emotionally high strung and deluded. I do like that we have an extended scene where she and her girlfriend have a contest to see who can cry first as that just solidifies my impression that I would have no use of this woman in my life if I were ever to meet her. In fact, if I had to draw a parallel to her I would have to peg Watts’ character to that of Beth Beth Stolarczyk of MTV’s Real World 15 minute fame.

It’s almost tragic to watch because the reality is that this crazy chick, and she is nuts as you watch the scenes between the more interesting bits, which consist of a frontal look of Naomi changing her pants in the car and you get a flash of some black underwear. And please. How many trailers has Watts been in where she flashes her undergoods? This makes two now.

Things really take a spin in the other direction when said pants changing ends up in a collision where she hooks up with a dude who likes to wear a feather boa around the house without a shirt. Yeah, classy. She’s a slut in this movie too as she’s hooks up with a couple of dudes along the way, one of which states after some coitus with Watts, that he’s certain he’s gay because he was thinking about Johnny Depp whilst in the throes of passion with her. Oh, and Chevy “The SNL Cast Member No One Seems To Like” Chase pops up as Watts’ agent, father, some patriarchal figure in her life but he almost seems inserted as an afterthought.

I don’t have any clue where to stick this movie but if I had one place where I would have to say in a container marked “Recyclables Only.”

Director: Danny Cannon
Cast: Kuno Becker, Alessandro Nivola, Marcel Iures Stephen Dillane, Anna Friel, Kieran O’Brien
Release: I have no idea but it just got released in Egypt last week if you want to go and catch it.
Synopsis: Like millions of kids around the world, Santiago harbors the dream of being a professional footballer. However, living in the Barrios section of Los Angeles, he thinks it is only that–a dream. Until, one day an extraordinary turn of events has him trying out for Premiership club Newcastle United.

Prognosis: Positive. My first foray off the continental shores landed me in Ireland.

It was during the World Cup of 2002 and since the Irish had placed well enough to be entered in competition the whole country was obsessed, really obsessed, with celebrating every game and every player. Radio was taken over with updates, there was a scandal involving one of their players that was treated with front page hysteria, radio played songs written exclusively for the event and it was during this time when I learned what bunting was; people dressed their homes in green, white and orange as if it was Christmas. It was insanity but I got caught up in it. Even bought a Playstation game to continue the action. I think that’s why I have to admit that I like the look of this contrived, clichéd, overwrought, movie.

But this movie is doomed here in the States and I will tell you why: 1) Who the hell here cares about soccer? Not many people. 2) How well has soccer broadened its audience since it really made a push a decade ago?

Yeah, it’s going to be an uphill struggle.

But, the trailer here opens well enough to be entertaining to me. You’ve got our protagonist Santiago who’s your prototypical dreamer character: always wishing for more than he has. This is evident in his El Rocketeer, Horatio Algier, type approach to his one job as a leaf blower-er and his other job working at a Chinese restaurant where, I swear, has Eddie from BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA working as the head manager.

It’s here that things take a really sappy turn to the left when we see our man using CARDBOARD for shin guards. I think before that moment we would’ve believed his gumption but it’s just ridiculous. The cheesy voiceover, almost Velveeta-like, doesn’t the movie any favors but I’m still on-board.

Of course, here we get the man who presents an opportunity. The opportunity, of course, means leaving everything behind at his old life, although how could you ever leave Eddie from BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA behind, yo?

So, he does, and goes to try out for this big soccer team. One of the largest. Only, and this is the way all sports movies go, our young hopeful doesn’t look he can match up against the professionals he’s trying to emulate. The rainstorm tryout, along with the muddy ground and subsequent face plant in said mud, all engender feelings of pity for this kid.

No matter, though, as our young hero is given his one last shot at being on the team, makes it, and then we see him walking onto the field for the first time. You hear his dad shout out ownership of the boy like the yentas from COOL RUNNINGS who were tending bar whilst the Jamaican bobsled team was competing. You see a lot of action shots of our man stepping up to the responsibilities of playing the game. I know, I know, I know, you’re rolling your eyes at this. Hell, I was too but I’ve never seen a soccer movie that I’ve ever wanted to see but this looks like a feel-good story that’ll end up just the way I think it will. Is that a bad thing? Yeah, depending on what kind of movie you’re trying to make but, in the case of this, a completely implausible flick shouldn’t be immediately discarded; I mean, c’mon, Eddie from BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA is in this.

Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Justin Long, Vincent D’Onofrio, Cole Hauser, John Michael
Release: February 17, 2006
Synopsis: After buing a condo together, a couple (Aniston, Vaughn) run into problems paying the mortgage, which ultimately leads to them deciding that they should break up. Because of their situation, they realize that they’re going to have to keep living together under the same roof until then.

Prognosis: Positive. I don’t know if anyone involved with this movie can read this but since I didn’t find ANY production photos on the Internets regarding this movie yet they found it suitable to release a full trailer AND because I didn’t feel like shagging ass to find SOME picture regarding this movie I give you Jennifer Aniston’s ass in its place. I apologize for any perverted, yet oh so delicioulsy neccessary, inconvenience this has caused.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn, are they?, aren’t they?, Brad Pitt, blah blah blah; this flick’s got Ralphie in it, dammit!

The OG, the main man, the Toucan Sam, THE effin’ DIRT BIKE KID is in this movie and I think that’s the best part of any advertising campaign that hopes to get people to come out and see this movie. Of course, that’s my opinion but it is a well-reasoned one after all. I mean, you’re going to get 24 hours of pure exposure, to say nothing of the people like me who play that CHRISTMAS STORY disc even before the marathon comes, of Billingsley and if you’re an ad exec you’ve got to somehow, someway, find some way to advertise the fact that Ralphie is in this latest addition to the Aniston Watch compendium.

Again, that’s just me, but since I couldn’t really care less if Aniston is doing “ok” since her divorce I say go for Peter all the way. Since this first incarnation of filmic advertising was done before my world exclusive idea of how best to market this movie I guess I have to see what we’re dealing with here.

First and foremost, one of the better endings in PG movie history to come out between 1985 and 1990 is the final piano suite of Chopsticks when BIG comes to a close; you’ve got a cavity-inducing ending that’s sweeter than an apple pie left to cool on a window ledge and it was a nice way to tie together the picture together as a whole. Here, though, the same sweet melody feels appropriate when juxtaposed against Vince Vaughn’s smirky face (Why does he always look like he was just woken from a nap five minutes before the scene was shot?) and equally biting comments to, der, his ex-wife. The exchange looks uncomfortable and the capitulation of everyone on the couples bowling team when asked by Vince of whether he should be the one to leave the bowling alley, permanently. It’s evident that this is going to real popular with the ladies as they’re the ones who force the vote against Vince, I bet all the ladies will be laughing with the kind of knowing that they could see themselves forcing their P-whipped men to go along with them, present company included, and it’s here that Ralphie, our golden child, gets his full frontal shot on the screen.

We switch songs, themes, getting a pretty stale Social Distortion “Ball and Chain” inserted against Jennifer ostentatiously tossing Vince’s stuff around the home that the two of them share. Jon Favreau and, who would’ve thought he was going to be a part of one of the best things to come and go on television, Jason Bateman look on and we get a little more of Vince, again, looking like he was rousted by a fire alarm in the middle of the night, nursing a bad injury which comes inflicted by comedic heavyweight John Michael Higgins.

“There’s a really big gap between getting your ass kicked and having a dancing, singing sprite fool you with trickery and then strike your throat…before you know you’re even in a fight.”

The above comment was wonderfully illustrated in the actual fight sequence in question and I have to admit it made me wee a little. Higgins needs to be in more movies, really. The man knows how to play a scene.

And the dovetail to this all? Ralphie asks for the bowling shirt back from the initial sequence to this trailer and, again, comedy gold erupts from the ground when Billingsly explains the reasons why.

This is a well-executed trailer.

Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Hugh Laurie, Kal Penn, Eva Saint Marie
Release: June 30, 2006
Synopsis: In this semi-sequel to the first two “Superman” films, the classic hero returns to Earth after having been missing for six long years. What he finds astounds him – the world he knew has changed for the worse. In his absence, the forces of evil have regrouped like never before. Even Lex Luthor, once an outcast, has risen to the heights of power in Metropolis. And when an old enemy from Krypton reappears, Superman must fight his neverending battle like never before, amidst a world that has forgotten what it’s like to have a hero.

Prognosis: Positive. I didn’t see any of the footage of the newest Superman movie at Comi-Con.

I heard it was really good; that Bryan Singer looked wiped out from being in the middle of production, being gracious enough to pay the geek squad a visit; and that what many saw gave them hope that Jon Cryer’s Spandau Ballet haircut didn’t permanently cripple a once great franchise. Did it ever get any better, really, than Terrence Stamp’s Zod? I think not.

What’s been done, here, though, has given me hope that what’s about to come to theaters next year could be an affirming moment in believing that as long as you have filmmakers on a project that want to tell a great story and want to treat the material with reverence without focusing on which fast food chain will claim the licensing rights to offer the Clark Kent “protein” shake, which I’ve heard consists of warm yogurt and an ounce of a secret identity ingredient, then you’ve got the power to resurrect the dead.

What I really like about this teaser trailer is that it really does what it should: excite, tantalize and amaze.

I remember the big hubbub about GODZILLA years ago was that the reptilian beast wasn’t going to be shown at all in any of the trailers. I remember that I was annoyed at this strategy. At that point in my life I was just a measly fan but I felt like I was on the outside, looking in at the film. The disaster that was GODZILLA at the box office proved that you can’t sit on things like this and this teaser doesn’t.

The tease starts out more like a annoying flirtation with that a third (!) of the length of this thing is just showing off who is responsible for resurrecting this property but that’s easily forgotten as Marlon Brando’s voiceover starts the theme of this movie: that Kal-El, even though he is going to be raised as human, not one of them. Those erudite enough to have read it Marlon’s sentiment echoes the crux of what Beowulf was all about and it’s perfectly apt here.

The money shot, one of many, starts right in with Clark falling through the roof of a rickety old barn. The way his body stops before he hits the ground, his arm covering his eyes, gives you a moment to linger.

And this is when the brass section of John Williams’ kicks in and you get a wonderfully composed shot of the early morning in rural Kansas. And that’s one thing you see a lot in this trailer: wonderfully composed shots. Singer’s eye knows how to frame a shot and nowhere is that more evident than in the shots of young Clark leaping through a cornfield and where dozens of people are staring up at the sky on a city street. The latter image lingers because of the way they’re placed. It’s done on purpose and it’s effective because it creates a sense of awe.

I think I do like seeing Supes walking stridently across a rooftop, on his way to connect with Lois, but I don’t think the actual presence of Superman’s being is better shown than when he’s pictured high above the land at night. He’s there, I can’t guess why he has his eyes closed but I guess it “looks cool,” but as he rockets back to Earth, that final crack of the sound barrier being broken is the best way possible to end this thing.

I cannot even guess what’s in store for audiences come next summer.

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn, Sean Gullette
Release: TBA (What a shocker.)
Synopsis: The Fountain is an odyssey about one man’s thousand-year struggle to save the woman he loves. As a 16th century Conquistador, a modern-day scientist, and a 26th century astronaut, he searches for the secret to eternal life.

Prognosis: My Lord still holds true… I can’t say, like other, higher level, Internets writers, that I’ve visited the set of THE FOUNTAIN; my invitation obviously got lost in the e-mail. I can’t claim to have had wonderful, introspective chats with Darren Aronofsky as he’s editing the movie, either. I can only lay claim to have been in the room with other Internets writers as we all vied for his fatherly attention at the Comic-Con. The simple fact is, I’m jealous of all those other people who have had close contact with the man over this movie because there is no way you could be gestating this kind of movie, for as long as he has, without getting some great insight into what he’s been doing with this movie; I haven’t seen any of that with the other people he’s talked to but maybe I’ll get the chance before all is said and done. If this trailer is any indication of what Herr Aronofsky has been doing for the past few centuries I am officially on the PR bandwagon.

Not knowing what to expect from this movie, just roughly having an idea of what it’s about, I heard that the footage that was screened at the Con this year was confusing; it didn’t give people a solid grasp on things. The trailer here opens with basics. That’s what’s, initially, so good about this.

“1 MAN”

Okay, what this trailer needs you to do is think and process things a little. Yes, the gasps can be heard all the way back to the cheap seats of the 10:30 pm showing of VENOM but it’s fairly intuitive that what when this graphic comes up the one man in question is Hugh Jackman. I’m not going to break too bad on the lettering but, even in the post-modern sense, it’s not really demonstrative in the way that the teaser poster is. It’s pretty much a New Times Roman font and while it doesn’t necessarily take away from the really, really engaging visuals it is fairly disappointing.

That said, the first few clips of Hugh are really insatiable. In the first clip, with his haggard old school beard, the second, his coif perfectly intact but looking equal parts despondent and angry, and the last, and most curious, Bald Hugh with golden twinkling somethings dripping behind him.

You get no words here but that’s fine.

“1 LOVE”

Rachel Weisz. You get her in all sorts of good-looking-ness. It should be enough to state that her part here is obviously to be Hugh’s love interest but even without seeing them together you just feel the attraction between the two of them. It pulsates through the screen.

“1 QUEST”

Hugh is on the move in all three scenes, I particularly like Monkey Hugh as he climbs a very bright, Waiting For Godot type tree. I haven’t a clue what any of these things mean but rather than being bothersome it’s evokes interest in me.

“1000 YEARS”

I love this bit of the trailer. The beats of the tribal drum, kind of reminds me of The Drummers of Burundi, a wicked African troupe, mixed in with old Hugh as he races on his old horse towards a bright city and, as the camera twists angles in a smooth circular motion, modern Hugh racing towards a city in his car is just compelling to look at. There is a real sense of immediacy which, if you’re in tune with it, you just feel something’s wrong.

The ending, where future Hugh gets stripped of his clothing in a blinding white light, and where he walks slowly though shallow water towards a spindly, leafless tree, evokes the most questions but I think it’s fairly obvious of what all this is supposed to mean. It’s almost enough to make one go mad that this movie isn’t here yet.

I do hope the movie is as good as this trailer. From what I see here the wait between pictures from Darren may well be worth all the centuries I’ve had to wait.

And I think, as I’ve meditated on the imagery, what little there is to soak in, is that there really seems to be something that’s really evoked in the presentation here.

More than it just being another Aronofsky movie there is a feeling of three, different stories that are going to be told across a wide timeline. Sure, we know that this movie deals with the same guy, same woman, there’s the promise of the kind of movie that is at once traditional yet completely different.

My feeling is that the trick here is not just the successful completion of one movie but of the successful envisioning of all three stories. You’ve got to remember that you, ultimately, in basic storytelling, want to work up to a point where everything that comes after is just resolution. Darren has to take all three threads and make them peak in a complimentary way while also taking care to resolve them all so that the end makes you feel that while there are three stories there is only room for one ending.

It’s a daunting task, and writers who have had to live with one story for a long time can attest to this, but one that is also fraught with the danger that you’re constantly trying to remember what made the story so good when you first began.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Ciar án Hinds
Release: December 23, 2005
Synopsis: MUNICH recounts the dramatic story of the secret Israeli squad assigned to track down and assassinate 11 Palestinians believed to have planned the 1972 Munich massacre — and the personal toll this mission of revenge takes on the team and the man who led it. Eric Bana stars as the Mossad agent charged with leading the band of specialists brought together for this operation. Inspired by actual events, the narrative is based on a number of sources, including the recollections of some who participated in the events themselves.

Prognosis: Border line positive. I think this is a weak way to open the movie.

One of the things which I took away from watching ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER, a beautifully shot documentary about the real events which transpired in Germany, was a real sense of understanding. Up until the documentary came out I was only casually knowledgeable of the terrorist action which took the lives of a select few athletes, chosen soley because of their nationality, and why these things happened.

To be sure, growing up, I don’t think I was really taught the real reasons these kinds of events happened in the world, systematic tit for tat, xenophobia masking the war between peoples who true aim is the extermination of the other, but I think ONE DAY distilled all these things in a way that was informative, poignant and riveting.

So why on God’s green earth was this movie necessary? Is it too much to have Hollywood leave their grubby hands off of properties like this, I am also referring to the uncontrollable urges by one studio to spooge all over the already-perfect DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, or historical testaments to the actual human condition which was represented just fine, thank you very much, in documentary form? No, it’s not too much at all.

I think that’s why I was a little torqued by the lazy construction of the trailer for this movie by setting things up with actual file footage. I get it, though, about why you’d want to do this, though. It adds immediacy to the movie, gives it a little movie-of-the-week, torn from the headlines, feel. People love that “Based on a True Story” jazz and it’s being played just as coolly, man.

The first hint of Speilberg’s flick comes in as some unnamed woman, an older woman of obvious and deep philosophical leanings as she quizzically states that every civilization feels the need to negotiate its own compromises”¦blah blah blah. I tell you what, the moment is drenched in falsity and I don’t believe the old bird for a moment.

And this is when Eric Banna comes in and I start to listen. Even though, for a first run through the trailer, you’re wondering exactly what side Banna is on, he’s some sort of assassin who’s gonna take out some of the instrumental planners of the Munich kidnapping, but the whole beginning of this trailer is about the moment when it happens, the kidnapping. Does Banna’s story happen after the kidnapping, during the kidnapping, before it’s supposed to take place? I shouldn’t be confused about these things as a viewer and I am shocked this trailer is bumpier than a Thai hooker with a”¦nevermind.

Adding to this mess is the inclusion of three other dudes who are there to, and I am not kidding, help Banna kill the bad dudes because these three other guys possess skillz Eric doesn’t have. You’ve got the crafty driver, the demolitions man, etc”¦ In case you want to visualize this I would have to say this is MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE meets Dateline NBC.

Now, there are some sweet explosions happening and the story looks pretty damn riveting if I just knew what the angle was. I think as we go along in this trailer I am just getting more and more lost with where my sympathies are allied. Is this movie trying to show one Jewish man’s quest to right the wrong like a latter day Hebrew Hammer, a Palestinian turncoat who is trying to right the wrongs in a Shaft kind of way? I dunno and as I try to figure this out as I watch this I can’t really be sure.

What I do know, though, is that Spielberg has a deadline steadily approaching, quickly approaching, and he may have to think quickly about what details need to be left in, what needs to be jettisioned, in order to create a movie that honors those involved at Munich and one that can resonate just as loudly as the documentary which this movie has to live up to.

Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis, Colin Hanks, Thomas Kretschmann, Kyle Chandler
Release: December 13, 2005
Synopsis: A remake of the 1933 classic in which an expedition exploring a remote island capture a gigantic ape and bring it back to New York for exhibition. A beautiful actress who accompanies them is menaced when the monster’s love for her causes him to break out.

Prognosis: Negative. I like this one so nice I had to review it twice. Now, I’m not as cum in my pants complimentary as some people have been when this trailer hit “KONG! CLICK HERE!”, “oMfg! This is teh haxxors!”, “THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL MY LIFE ON THE INTERNETS FOR!” but I will point some things out that were first evident in the teaser trailer.

I do want to state that I did like the first teaser trailer that was released. I did, and still do, have issues with the soundstage look of the opening sequence. I didn’t believe that Jack Black, Naomi Watts, and that guy from the Coke commercials, what’s his name, Brody, were at all getting on that ship. I had issues of Watts’ captivity when she is splayed out in a position that was reminiscent of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM when Willie is about to get roasted and I did take umbrage with the dinosaur sequence because it looked ripped from JURASSIC PARK.

These things said, though, I have to admit and be honest when I say that this trailer makes me feel all sorts of tingly.

The opening is pretty sweet looking. New York City, demolished by Kong’s rampaging, Naomi looking 18 kinds of hawt in that shimmering white dress and the moment these two creatures have with one another is quite believable. Jack Black’s ham-fisted voiceover is a little distracting but it really is about what’s happening here. There’s a connection and you can sense that. However, there is snow on the ground and Watts isn’t showing any indication that the turkey’s done; I’m calling shenanigans on that one.

The moments that follow just reiterate my earlier issues with the soundstage quality of the moment. Is it supposed to look like these people are all boarding a big ship that’s landlocked in the soundstage that’s right off the 405 in Hollywood? Because it does. Ignoring that, though, the approach to the “spooky” island which inhabits our primordial ancestor is quite good. There is some real LORD OF THE RINGS type infusion into making this mythical land actually seem hospitable and real.

I do, though, wish they would have had someone else fill in for the part of stoic-voice-which-is-supposed-to-draw-you-in besides Jack Black. It may be just me but his style just evokes this anticipation that he’s just going to cut loose into a Tenacious D ditty that I can’t quite believe his schtick.

The group of misfits who want to use this island as their movie location are taken hostage by a band of mud people who seem better suited to be playing parts in a new Cirque de Soliel production than they are scary natives who are protectors of the titular beast. It’s rather campy and while it’s supposed to be played straight there is just no way I could help but laugh a little as everyone seems to be freaked out by these humanoid aberrations.

Now, this gets good with the introduction of Kong. Kong is the centerpiece and when Watts finds herself wandering, wet and all out of sorts in the Savage Land that is this island I enjoy it when the music stops for a mo’ and we’re entertained with an extended moment with a T-Rex and Kong standing face-to-face. No doubt there will be some dweeb, geek, or dweeby geek who will actually start postulating the reasons why a T-Rex would have no problem with eating through a simian of Kong’s magnitude. What is important here, though, is that it’s a fascinating image to just let sit there for a moment. Note bene: When Kong thumps on his chest, right before he engages the “˜Rex, listen real close to the sound; I swear that it is the sound of two toilet plungers.

After this we’re treated to a real Land of the Lost, resplendent with larger than life mutant bugs, more dinosaurs (raptors included, natch) and a whole host of bright, manufactured jungle scenes.

If there was one really sweet moment, eye-candy wise, I would have to peg it at the moment when Kong, after storming through the streets of New York in a drunken rage, makes his way to the Empire State Building and then proceeds to knock the crap out of a machine gun blazing biplane. When he knocks that wing off with his one hand after a great vertical leap you can’t help but feel this might actually be a really good film.

All nitpicking aside I will definitely make this one to see this December.

Director: Gil Kenan
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Matthew Fahey, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jon Heder, Kevin James, Jason Lee, Catherine O’Hara, Kathleen Turner, Fred Willard
Release: July 21, 2006
Synopsis: Three teens discover that their neighbor’s house is really a living, breathing, scary monster.

Prognosis: Negative. I really didn’t like CHICKEN LITTLE.

I REALLY didn’t like CHICKEN LITTLE.

So what, a studio exec might say to this, because of the money it drew in but it was a crapily constructed, poorly executed, awfully told story which was confusing, incoherent and jumped from more storylines than your average Quentin Tarantino vehicle. Does Disney need Pixar? Yes, and it’s for the simple reason that I hope MONSTER HOUSE does a lot better than its poultry populated predecessor.

I think that what I like about this trailer is that this movie seems to only have one story to tell. Also, you have humans being the stars of this CGI adventure and you haven’t really seen that for films like this.

The opening is interesting when you understand that this comes to you executively produced by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. It just has “that” kind of tinge to it with the fall landscape blowing the almost bare trees clean. It evokes that kind of childhood enjoyment that fall brings.

The premise of the parents leaving for an extended period of time, having a hapless babysitter be in charge of things and a kid who seems genuinely dejected from life even before he sprouts pubes is just standard issue fare. The good stuff, though, comes when night falls.

Cheezy voiceover aside, and it is needlessly creepy, the standout here is the plot uses the premise of the strange house that every neighborhood seemed to have. The kids here skulking up to the darkened porch to ding-dong ditch, a pastime which I remember fondly, only to have the house come to life is interesting. The graphics may not be Pixar great but in a time when CARS, Pixar’s next flick, doesn’t blow up my skirt anything special, I am pleased with the vibe.

The kids might really be into this one because as soon as the house is established as the thing that is possessed and evil, everything else just pops and crackles with speed. The kids of this movie quickly establish themselves and even the speed with which the camera moves from one moment to another should be pleasantly accepted by our ADD addled youths watching this.

Also piquing my interest is the extended moment with the children who are going to be combating this monster house at the end of this trailer. Some po-po’s roll up to these kids, our girl of the group explaining that they have reason to believe the house inhabits a dangerous creature. I fully expect this to be a non-moment as the cops laugh at them and are about to drive off but, bickety-bam, the doors open, a rug juts out of the house, wraps around the squad car and quickly snaps the car whole into its lair before closing just as quick. The spinning hubcap is a nice touch.

Fan boy note: I should also mention that writing credits are going to Rob Schrab. Those who enjoyed fringe comic books in the early 90’s should know that name as the man who created Scud: The Disposable Assassin, one of THE best comic books in a time when foil-stamped, glossy variant covers for shit books was the norm.

Director: James Wong
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman
Release: February 10, 2006
Synopsis: The third film follows high school student Wendy Christensen who fails to stop the fated roller coaster ride that she predicted would cause the deaths of several of her friends. She teams with schoolmate Kevin Fischer in a race against time to prevent death from revisiting the survivors of the accident.

Prognosis: I’d buy it for a dollar. My uncle died on American Airlines Flight 191 which crashed on May 25, 1979 in a field just beyond O’Hare. Short of 9/11 it is still one of the worst crashes to date. Recently, anyone who knows me today knows that I am terrified to fly. I don’t like it. I don’t know why I can’t handle it after 30 years of successful, thoughtless flights, but I can’t shake the feeling that every time I cross the threshold of an airliner that, upon takeoff, my bird will disintegrate in a wall of orange flame. Shows like Lost or even innocuous pieces of advertising only remind me of this.

That said, this is a great trailer. It really evokes, out of the gate, the very thing I’m terrified of. I wonder had I not been suffering with this recent affliction if the intro here of a plane being torn to shit would hit me the same way. I don’t think it would. Really, though, what I’m really impressed with is the fact that this trailer knows what it is and doesn’t presuppose anything else. That’s really nice to see in an age when you could see three different trailers on different networks and each one of them play to a different segment of the audience.

My own predilection for teensplotation flicks aside, I’m still having to defend to my family why I like BRING IT ON so much as a testament to this genre, I really do appreciate the angle this trailer is coming in at. Where once I would chastise a trailer for being lazy by just using snippets from older films in the series I gladly proclaim that this trick is executed in the proper manner.

The biggest point in this advertisement is that it wants to tell you, quickly, what the other two movies in this series were all about. Now, I haven’t seen a one of them as I think these flicks represent nothing more than a slam-bam-thank you ma’am one two cock punch to America’s youth who want to see filmic representations of themselves on the screen. That’s fine with me because I’m not judgmental, the world needs ditch diggers, and I like that we open this puppy with a dangerous plane ride where, I assume, some of our young, nubile protagonists escape certain death. Ooo”¦spooky! There is no voiceover, no crazy music in the background and I do have to commend the trailer makers for utilizing a nice scroll on the words that are chosen to communicate only the barest essentials about this movie. I’m genuinely affected by the sight of a plane jutting down to the ground.

I am a big fan of the lumber falling off the truck for part 2’s introduction. That whole set piece, resplendent with the wet asphalt look even though the skies are blue (Can anyone write in and explain to me why this is done? Why are streets always wet even in the best of weather? Hmm”¦I feel like Mr. Owl in those Tootsie Pop commercials), is good at explaining that, well, there is stuff that is out to get them.

Part 3’s premise? That a roller coaster is coming unhinged and is out to get them. I also loves me my roller coasters when I am able to head on over to Six Flags in Gurnee, Illinois and I know that I am always thinking about coming off the rails whenever I am about to go over that first, steep hill as the clicka-clicka-clicka stops. Now, like I said, I am not really familiar with the series so I can’t say for sure but, one by one, people are eating it like crazy. Some chick gets Kentucky Fried Chicken-ed on a tanning bed as some water spills on the coils, some more killer moments come to us courtesy of some dope having wooden stakes, many of them, dumped on their heads, some bottle rockets go haywire (Please, hasn’t this happened to anyone when a pack of dozen or so Whistling Wizards get into the wrong hands of someone who has had too much to drink) and other creative contrivances.

Look, the film looks like oatmeal, no question about it. It looks awfully awful and I would never even consider renting this thing on home video but, for the audience this trailer is intended to reach, it does a wonderful job so I must give it some begrudging recognition.

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn, Sean Gullette
Release: TBA (What a shocker.)
Synopsis: The Fountain is an odyssey about one man’s thousand-year struggle to save the woman he loves. As a 16th century Conquistador, a modern-day scientist, and a 26th century astronaut, he searches for the secret to eternal life.

Prognosis: Dear Lord Yes… I can’t say, like other, higher level, Internets writers, that I’ve visited the set of THE FOUNTAIN; my invitation obviously got lost in the e-mail. I can’t claim to have had wonderful, introspective chats with Darren Aronofsky as he’s editing the movie, either. I can only lay claim to have been in the room with other Internets writers as we all vied for his fatherly attention at the Comic-Con. The simple fact is, I’m jealous of all those other people who have had close contact with the man over this movie because there is no way you could be gestating this kind of movie, for as long as he has, without getting some great insight into what he’s been doing with this movie; I haven’t seen any of that with the other people he’s talked to but maybe I’ll get the chance before all is said and done. If this trailer is any indication of what Herr Aronofsky has been doing for the past few centuries I am officially on the PR bandwagon.

Not knowing what to expect from this movie, just roughly having an idea of what it’s about, I heard that the footage that was screened at the Con this year was confusing; it didn’t give people a solid grasp on things. The trailer here opens with basics. That’s what’s, initially, so good about this.

“1 MAN”

Okay, what this trailer needs you to do is think and process things a little. Yes, the gasps can be heard all the way back to the cheap seats of the 10:30 pm showing of VENOM but it’s fairly intuitive that what when this graphic comes up the one man in question is Hugh Jackman. I’m not going to break too bad on the lettering but, even in the post-modern sense, it’s not really demonstrative in the way that the teaser poster is. It’s pretty much a New Times Roman font and while it doesn’t necessarily take away from the really, really engaging visuals it is fairly disappointing.

That said, the first few clips of Hugh are really insatiable. In the first clip, with his haggard old school beard, the second, his coif perfectly intact but looking equal parts despondent and angry, and the last, and most curious, Bald Hugh with golden twinkling somethings dripping behind him.

You get no words here but that’s fine.

“1 LOVE”

Rachel Weisz. You get her in all sorts of good-looking-ness. It should be enough to state that her part here is obviously to be Hugh’s love interest but even without seeing them together you just feel the attraction between the two of them. It pulsates through the screen.

“1 QUEST”

Hugh is on the move in all three scenes, I particularly like Monkey Hugh as he climbs a very bright, Waiting For Godot type tree. I haven’t a clue what any of these things mean but rather than being bothersome it’s evokes interest in me.

“1000 YEARS”

I love this bit of the trailer. The beats of the tribal drum, kind of reminds me of The Drummers of Burundi, a wicked African troupe, mixed in with old Hugh as he races on his old horse towards a bright city and, as the camera twists angles in a smooth circular motion, modern Hugh racing towards a city in his car is just compelling to look at. There is a real sense of immediacy which, if you’re in tune with it, you just feel something’s wrong.

The ending, where future Hugh gets stripped of his clothing in a blinding white light, and where he walks slowly though shallow water towards a spindly, leafless tree, evokes the most questions but I think it’s fairly obvious of what all this is supposed to mean. It’s almost enough to make one go mad that this movie isn’t here yet.

I do hope the movie is as good as this trailer. From what I see here the wait between pictures from Darren may well be worth all the centuries I’ve had to wait.

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.

Director: Matthew O’Callaghan
Cast: Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore, David Cross, Eugene Levy, Joan Plowright, Dick Van Dyke, Ed O’Ross
Release: February 10, 2006
Synopsis: The story follows George, the inquisitive little primate transplanted from the jungle to the big city by The Man in the Yellow Hat, where his spunky and fun-loving nature endear him to new friends he meets along the way and lands him in a series of adventures.

This trailer, therefore, delights me.

Now, I am not critiquing this one on its ability to sell me. In the dozens of trailers that I have deconstructed like I was the Caterpillar of the filmic universe I think I am always trying to see what it is that they’re trying to sell me. Here, though, the trailer is a vehicle not to so much sell as it is a prepping tool to the adults who will be forced to take their kids to it. Me? I’m happily going but many adults play the “Who’s-Gonna-Take-Johnny-To-This-One” like it’s a Rock/Paper/Scissors exercise. I say fear not, for the explosions of contrasting colors and vibrant hues of The Man In The Yellow Hat, voiced by Will Ferrell, not only attracts your eyes like a bug zapper to those blue fluorescent bulbs of death but Will really sells the character in the opening sequence.

The palate chosen to draw this feature against really does the books some justice insofar that the backgrounds are really a part of the George universe. That universe may not exist in reality, and as other animation studios have proven with their ability to render life-life environments, but it’s nice to have something close to traditional animation come into the market.

In terms of the scenes chosen to showcase the storyline of this picture it would be useless to describe them. Really, George gets loose in the city, George gets loose in the park, George gets loose in the zoo, George drinks a coffee drink and belches. The latter is important to explain, I think. More and more the public expulsion of gas, be that oral or anal, is put into kids trailers and I don’t think I have a problem with that. It is funny, it will always be funny, and I think that if anyone does have a problem with it I would wonder what that household must be like to live under the notion that bodily functions are reprehensible. I like it and it’s cheeky, all in good fun.

What’s more about this trailer is that even though this movie is dropping in February, a notorious dumping ground for flicks that didn’t quite make the grade for either the holiday season or for other advantageous times in the release calendar throughout the year, this movie doesn’t have to make a big splash. As Jon Favreau pointed out during his press for ZATHURA, kids movies are safe bets for studios because they aren’t really budget hogs and, if you make something fairly good, the odds are in your favor to make your money back. I think that having Will Ferrell is a plus, that Ron Howard is a producer on this thing is another and with a nice, laidback soundtrack by Jack Johnson makes this a movie many parents like me, in their 30’s won’t be so against seeing.

Nothing says love like taking in a movie, being able to sit in the dark, and having your kid shut their yap for 90 minutes in the middle of the day. As Men-On-Film would say, that would be “Fab-You-Lus.”

Director: Barry W. Blaustein
Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Katherine Heigl, Brian Cox
Release: December 23, 2005
Synopsis: When Steve Barker (Knoxville) finds himself running dead last in the corporate rat race, he sinks to an all time low…he attempts to rig the Special Olympics by pretending to be intellectually challenged. But, Barker is completely out-classed by his fellow Olympians, who are not only better athletes; they’re just plain better people. And they’re on to him. But rather than rat-out the rat, they join forces with him to once and for all beat Jimmy, the cocky reigning champion of the annual games. With a work-out regime uniquely their own, they train Barker to go for the gold and, in the process, show him what’s at the heart of a true winner.

The mere premise of this flick had me gnawing at my knuckles to see whether this could be the one movie of the year where I could go and feel absolutely guilty for watching (I saw JACKASS: THE MOVIE a few times just for the staged insanity of it all) and I even reviewed the teaser trailer WAAAY back a long time ago.

It seems I waited all that time for a half-baked film that overreaches with its idea of what could be funny and stoops to some of the most inane clichés to try and be something more than what it is: a shit looking flick.

We start out pretty bland as well with the voiceover that leads us into the actual film proper. I understand with the real Winter Olympics coming up in a few months that this should be pretty awe inspiring, the grandiose horns and the black and white footage of real athletes striding into an Olympic stadium, but I know what’s coming. The voiceover is an almost ancillary device to the real one where we go to Johnny being an idiot but this smoke and mirrors technique of starting out with something dignified before launching into the absurd, pulling the rug from unsuspecting people like it’s a funny frat joke, is just a lazy way to intro a movie. But, I will admit this: seeing the rube who can’t make it over the high jump, and falls straight down to the ground on his ass because, ostensibly, he’s “handi-capable” is funny, as is Brian Cox’s quick sound bite that he’s going to fix the Special Olympics.

That much is great but it slowly fizzles and it’s all because the premise can’t hold up with what we’re given to chew on, visually. Knoxville’s ruse, when he first opens his mouth and declares what he is, his ailment, is nigh embarrassing to watch. It’s fucking painful, actually.

What’s more is that we’re given lots of Knoxville’s mugging. We see that his initial blurting about how retarded his is just extends into other, more lame attempts to affect the mannerisms of those who are genuinely developmentally disabled. This isn’t to say, though, that I am against this kind of humor. I will readily admit that Damon Wayans’ Handyman was, perhaps, some of the best comedy to deal with this kind of subject matter. It was smart and funny. This is just pathetic.

Also, the extended clip of Brian and Johnny debating the parameters of who gets to park in the handicapped areas and who doesn’t is just, well, lame. It doesn’t so much make me feel one way or the other, giggles or jeers, but it just seems inserted for no reason at all. Its resolution just begs the question, “Why?” I have no idea.

I think that the only thing really insulting is the actual insertion of real people who do have genuine ailments. To use them to pimp your own poorly constructed flick almost seems like a grab at something genuine but all it does to me is instill a shame in even watching this trailer. There is a lot of Johnny falling on his ass, for no good reason, and I can’t figure out why any of this is happening. Is Johnny really mentally unstable? Is he really retarded in the pejorative sense? Again, I have no answers, I only have observations.

And what, ultimately, really incenses me is the way Johnny “comes around” at the end of this trailer by stating that some of the people he’s come to know could compete in the real Olympics and it feels like he’s unduly trying to curry favor with an audience who should see right through this feeble attempt to exonerate the whole idea that his initial actions excuse the rest of what he’s done.

I thought I wanted to see this film, I thought this would be done the way a film like this should be made, but I was wrong. Really wrong.

Director: Josh Stolberg
Cast: Crystal Celeste Grant, Alex Anfanger, Julie Bowen, Malik Yoba, Andrew Shaifer, Nicole Richie
Release: October 21, 2005
Synopsis: A diverse group of high school students band together to peacefully stick it to their overbearing principal.

I did, though, want to see what genre this cookie-cutter teen flick falls into. I’ll admit that I was surprised by the opening. There is some actual potential in a trailer that quietly opens up with a teacher, looking like art guru Bob Ross’ odd woodland cousin, sitting in front of a class, trying to make some kind connection between the movies GREASE, GREASE II and MARY POPPINS. I think I wanted something funny to come roaring at me but instead I get the word “Comedy” from that man’s lips and I’m whisked from that classroom and into the world of teensploitation.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing, per se, there’s the bitchy cheerleaders who, if you’re a fan of Lizzie Mcguire like me, are prevalent at all levels of school based programming, the hard core gym teacher (I did like the way the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series dealt with the overbearing gym coach in that really creepy way) and the tough as spit principal who’s not going to take any lip.

I fear that the happy-joy feelings I started to cultivate are getting destroyed by what seems to be the heinous direct-to-video offerings of the once great National Lampoon imprint; I mean, my God, have you seen the product literally clogging the shelves at your local video store? I don’t think, even if I was 13 again, would I rent those films, even if there was the possibility of some soft-core frontal action.

Alas, it is every worst-case scenario come to life as this trailer rolls on. Not even the inclusion of Rosanna Arquette, Elizabeth Perkins and Julie Bowen (who were all obviously late on their H3 payments and needed some quick flash money) can save this trailer. I don’t expect much out of my high school themed productions but when there isn’t any scene I can bring up here to even give props to there are major issues abounding everywhere.

You have the entire cadre of clichés, personalities, plot and there is even the hint of knowing how exactly this movie will end. Life is tough in high school, evil principal and uncaring teachers enforce rules with little regard to reality, a handful of kids stand up against establishment, kids liberate the hearts and minds of everyone.

Now, the only question left to answer is how long will it take before this movie is whisked away from major distribution and put alongside the latest offerings from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

For shame. Where’s Christian Slater when you need him?

Director: Saul Metzstein
Cast: Jason Biggs, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Northam Michael Ironside, Sean Tucker
Release: October 28th, 2005
Synopsis: A black comedy set in 1979, about a soldier mistakenly posted to an Arctic military base.

Trailer after trailer I was stopping a few seconds in, others were better as I waited an entire minute before shutting them off. However, when I stumbled on this one I couldn’t help myself but be amazed at the lunacy factor that this flick gives off like radioactive particles tickling an isotope identifier.

I’ve never been a huge Jason Biggs fan, and I do understand the concept of appreciating one’s work without having a shrine dedicated to their ability to fake being someone on the screen, but I like him. His presence has grown on me and I think it was only after I watched JERSEY GIRL last weekend, realizing it honestly is an unsung gem of a flick, that I let this trailer play itself out.

I’m glad I did because this is an odd bird of a trailer if there ever was one which deals with Jason’s accidental placement on a remote base as a soldier in Greenland. What I think I appreciate a great deal in this trailer is that it’s quick to set things up. That’s a good thing because without a real “name” in the film that someone can admire a few seconds you run the risk of someone tuning out. This trailer doesn’t afford you that possibility. Straight up, this is 1979 and it’s far from anywhere. Thanks, really, I appreciate that information. It’s just a little info but I appreciate the honesty.

Seeing Jason slush his way through the mess hall on his first day there, sitting across from Natascha McElhone, a delightful actress who really deserved a little more time in THE TRUMAN SHOW, and finding out that, no, it’s not Hawaii he’s at but at a place a little more chilly.

Now, because he’s in the wrong place, and is denied the opportunity to leave the base because of his “skillz,” he’s all out of sorts. This no doubt being an issue to Jason, and his less than positive attitude at being there, the soldiers themselves seem to be suffering a bit from what Inuit call Pibloktog or Windigo among the Cree, seeing chicks run around in Army olive colored bikinis, it’s nice to see the aggression of some who insist Jason get off his ass. Seeing some dude scream really loud that, “You got guard duty, you piece of shit,” while not really something readily translatable for television audiences it does, however, make the Internets a nice place to see this kind of material.

Also, the inclusion of Jeremy “THE NET” Northam and, holy crap, Michael Ironside as a man with virtually no name, and that sexy throaty speak which I bet the chicks dig, add a certain something to this film about a man who just wants to get away from this one base in the middle of nowhere. Jason really fits well into this movie and it honestly shows. No longer does he seem awkward but he commands the space he takes up in this trailer.

This has the sheen of CATCH-22, a movie which doesn’t seem like requisite watching for many folks, but like BUFFALO SOLDIERS I am almost willing to portend that this movie won’t find its audience. War movies are like kids movies with the kind of built-in audience it has but most any flick which deals with some of the blacker areas of enlisted life have a harder time with people in getting them to watch. I don’t know why because watching this trailer only engenders curiosity and eagerness in me.

Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Ruffalo, Mena Suvari
Release: December 25, 2005
Synopsis: Jennifer Aniston plays a woman who learns that her family was the inspiration for the book and film “The Graduate” — and that she just might be the offspring of the well-documented event.

I understand the nature of these films. Hell, I am even willing to put out there that these are a necessary evil in that they help get smaller projects the kind of fiscal help they wouldn’t have received in the first place thanks to the blue hairs and AARP discount tickets these last bastions of true milquetoast studio pictures are able to generate.

Thankfully, I’m not let down by the opening which looks like it was lit by a crew of German Nazis who are well versed in the power of klieg lighting. I mean, jeez, look at the faces of Ruffalo and Aniston as the Ms. asks Ruffalo if he’d like to do a little vertical taco noshing at 30,000 feet. His pores seemingly leap off the screen as does Aniston’s droopy lids which are starting to show signs of human normalcy which I like to call aging. The premise of these two coming together is fairly hot but in the context of this scene it all feels quite un-hot and embarrassingly lame. Hey, I would hit that like Farrah Faucet after a long night of binge drinking before having the cops called on me but I just felt a quick need to leave the scene. Thankfully, we do.

Cue lame yet hauntingly jaunty orchestral string movement.

Wow, now this is interesting, the set design used for the interiors is refreshingly original and hearkens to a time I can’t quite place. Oh, yes I can, MEET THE PARENTS. That’s right, oh, and FATHER OF THE BRIDE. You say this movie is about a girl who’s about to get married? Oh, surely you jest! What passes for a lifelike environment just appears to be leftovers from scads of different flicks set in an upper-middle class, white, WASPy to be sure, suburbia; a utopia that is far removed from normalcy, reality or anything resembling an actual weather system. And speaking of Old Man Winter, you get the pleasure of seeing Shirly MacLaine in all out-of-body glory. The woman looks positively bathed in some rejuvenating baby oil, slicker than a Slip N’ Slide if I could speak candidly, and I honestly don’t think she looks anything older than 65. The woman simply looks like she is going to beat Dick Clark at this Fountain of Youth competition. Darren Aronofsky could’ve saved himself shitloads of cash to make his vision of THE FOUNTAIN by casting the two of them to battle for supremacy of some Pond’s Youth Defining lotion.

When at first you think this is going to be flick starring Ruffalo and Aniston you are quickly schooled with a swift monkey punch to the gooch as the big reveal is that Shirley MacLaine is, once more, made out to be the sex kitten that she isn’t. Not to take anything away from her but aren’t there any more mature looking ladies who could’ve done this part? Anyone? Tossing Kevin Costner into the mix, playing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” is damn near blasphemy in my book but, you’re all right, I hear you, this movie was not genetically engineered with me in mind.

Oh, and I must share this, the coup de grace of it all? That Kevin and Jennifer have a fling? Besides the age difference which doesn’t affect me, it’s the weird goings on with Kevin’s hair that alarms me. It looks like graying peach fuzz and it just kills any hotness I could fervently muster to try and see past it all. I just can’t believe it.

There is a moment where Mark obviously learns about the affair and I think, honestly think, as he’s going to give Jennifer a nice doling out of Alabama Backhand justice but it’s all bark and no bite as I am once more reminded of Shirley’s propensity for liquor, odd as it is, in damn near every movie of hers that I’ve been harangued into seeing. She’s like a tart that won’t ever realize her limitations as an older lady; it’s no longer sexy, it’s saddening.

Director: George Clooney
Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet, Chris Cooper, William Hurt
Release: December 9, 2005
Synopsis: A political thriller that unfolds against the intrigue of the global oil industry. From the players brokering back-room deals in Washington to the men toiling in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, the film’s multiple storylines weave together to illuminate the human consequences of the fierce pursuit of wealth and power. Each plays their small part in the vast and complex system that powers the industry, unaware of the explosive impact their lives will have upon the world.

Prognosis: Positive. There are George Clooney haters out there.

There are some who think that the guy shouldn’t be messing around with properties like his remake of NETWORK, a film which portended the vile and tabloidish way “news” is reported to the masses, that his films at times can be overly indulgent and that he used to rock a mullet on that one show with that girl named Tootie and that stuck-up blonde chick who now puts hot sauce on her kids’ mouths to discipline them. I don’t see an issue with any of these things, as he atoned for his Kentucky Mud Flap by keeping it short for many of his films, but I honestly think that Clooney is mistakenly written off by many people for his work. The guy’s skills are wickedly sharp, his directing of flicks like CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND was commendable beyond comment, OCEAN’S ELEVEN is movie which you have to admit can be re-watched again and again and again by understanding that Clooney helps to bring it all together but it is flicks like this, trailers like this, which really challenge any critic to sit down and rethink their positions.

When we open up and get the woman’s voiceover which asks us to imagine a world where 30% of American households are unable to heat their homes or the idea of us having to pay $20 at the pump for a gallon of gasoline.

“It’s running out, and 90% of what’s left is in the Middle East”

Matt Damon provides a nice, subdued, yet tinged with bravado, moment as he talks at someone who appears to be of Middle Eastern descent as they look out a window. As Damon says about this being a fight to the death a much paunchier Clooney strolls down a narrow street as a car explodes behind him. He doesn’t look, he doesn’t flinch, he just keeps on walking.

The piss poor 5-grade Photoshop lettering which lets us know that the brain trust behind TRAFFIC are responsible for this vision is excused for what happens as this graphic goes away.

In much the same way that TRAFFIC had a kinesthetic feel to it, like the part when Michael Douglas is speaking to a lot of the real politicians like Barbara Boxer, Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley were talking to him, the same can be said when Clooney starts to mastermind a plot to kidnap the same Middle Easterner from the beginning of this trailer. The accompanying visuals which go along the play by play, which looks like they used the same SUV’s from TRAFFIC, is a real nice touch to this moment.

Damon has a nice speaking piece as he couches the entire issue of what oil production has meant to America and what we will do get what we want as he pinpoints what many people think of oil producing countries and their history. It’s sharp.

Jeffrey Wright, who is really one of the best working actors that I’ve seen in the last few years, gets introduced and it honestly feels like his is a character that is like Russell Crowe’s in THE INSIDER. He almost seems like he’s above it all, an innocent victim who is just trying to understand it all, but the whole time things are going on with him the context for what this film is all about, oil and its production and our willingness to do anything to get it, rings too loud for anyone to not notice its relevancy to events which are transpiring right now.

This almost doesn’t seem like a movie as it does a Hollywood embellishment of what we all think is happening behind oil magnates’ corporate boardroom doors.

This trailer takes an unexpected turn on a dime as Clooney, himself, becomes the kidnapped and he the prey. Now, why he’s being interrogated to give names, soaking wet like Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in LETHAL WEAPON right before Al Leong, Mr. Endo, gets all electrocutioner on their ass, I don’t have any clue why this is happening. Although, as the money shots, the real dramatic, meaty moments start unraveling at the end there is a moment when orders are given to take Clooney out from this bunker-type war room that can see him remotely; it’s the REAL GENIUS/popcorn scene all over again. Plus, George is trying to get the attention of a passing car, the one slated for mass destruction, and I think back to the Damon Wayans/Bruce Willis classic LAST BOY SCOUT. I’m not saying there was any cribbing going on here, ladies and gentlemen, but I do find the similarities in the execution a tad suspicious.

Now, even though this film has nothing to do with the Val Kilmer/Tony Scott opuses, opi, if you will, I can reccomend this flick, sight unseen, just based on the weighty performances I can read between the lines here. George Clooney haters? Let them try to be after this year is finished.

Director: James Gartner
Cast: Josh Lucas, Derek Luke, Austin Nichols, Jon Voight
Release: January 13, 2006
Synopsis: GLORY ROAD tells the inspiring true story of the underdog Texas Western basketball team, with history’s first all African American starting lineup of players, who took the country by storm, surprisingly winning the 1966 NCAA tournament title. Josh Lucas stars as Hall of Famer Don Haskins, the passionately dedicated college basketball coach that changed the history of basketball with his team’s victory in this time of innocence.

Prognosis: Sappy. May induce diabetic shock. I don’t know what it is about Disney and their need to make so many movies which are “Inspired by a True Story” but I do long for the days when they could go back to making flicks like CONDORMAN or THE APPLE DUMPLING GANG.

Things, obviously, they do a change and I guess this just represents a new avenue for them. What gets to me, however, is that this movie, much like REMEMBER THE TITANS (an awfully saccharine foray into the nature of race relations couched in the language of football) and MIRACLE (an awfully saccharine foray into the nature of the polemics which existed between nations who weren’t seeing eye-to-eye) is that this follows the same kind of filmmaking. It’s just like a blend of TITANS, MIRACLE and a dash of COACH CARTER. I’m not the one who goes out to buy a ticket so I am left to assume there is a market for movies which tell the same story. And I don’t mean to be hard on this flick, I’m not, and I am even impressed by Josh Lucas, an actor who is really evolving well in this profession. In fact, I really like the vibe of the trailer. It’s the kind of film I EASILY could see a family packing up the car to go see.

Texas, 1965.

Josh is playing b-ball with his young kid on his dusty driveway. He passes the ball to his mute little boy who is barely able to walk and gets him right in the head. I surprise myself when I laugh but I like the way we’re entering Josh’s world.

We waste no time in establishing that he has packed up his family to move to a school to coach basketball. It’s shown that he was a winning coach but, as the frame cuts, we see it was only in the women’s league. Quickly, we cut back to Josh walking down a men’s dormitory at said college, his wife gasping at the towel-clad dudes strolling down the hallway, as the voiceover saying his family has no other housing choices but to stay in the men’s dorm. Mental note: get wife to obtain employment at women’s college across town, preferably in gymnastics or volleyball. What I like about the whole “blown up” aspect of putting Josh’s family in this situation is that it feels fun. The cinematography has a golden hue to it and I can’t help but feel a certain playfulness with which the way this movie is being sold.

And then it happens. Josh has voiceover duties as he says he needs to change everything the team used to do before, including who they recruit. Of course here there is a change in visual hue, going from gold to a cobalt blue, as we see that Josh is talking about recruiting black talent. Now, it’s a pink elephant in the room and I understand that no one is coming out to say it but it’s true: a team of white dudes versus a team of black dudes shouldn’t make a difference but for the purposes of this movie it is the catalyst of all the events which will follow from here on out.

Of course Josh sees the talent in these guys who no one else wanted, making it seem like they were just ignorant schools who couldn’t spot talent in a line-up when in fact it was because they were racist pigs who needed to have a piece of broken wet hose slapped across their collective nuts, and, of course, the white kids see our black friends as oddities. The white crackers appear to never have seen a black person up close as a collective bunch of them literally squeeze themselves against a wall of glass, like they’re looking at an animal in a zoo, and awe at the splendor of dudes who will, no doubt, show who has the real skillz.

Now, we start rolling through the actual execution of these players “coming together” and we get Josh saying how hard his brand of basketball is; his intonation of this line kind of creeped me out. Oh, and the requisite, the absolute neccessary compent of any sports movie, the screaming coach, being all bombastic for the camera, gets a full-on showcase here as he flexes his lungs. Josh also thinks that having one of the college students’ mothers go along with him to his classes to make sure he brings up his grades is not only wise but amusing as all fuck.

Cue the inspirational music as we head to the end, the slow-mo of our dudes dunking and I am genuinely suprised that the Disney folks decided to put the pink elephant right in the trailer as we hear that this is a true story becuase this marks the first time five black players came out to represent in an NCAA tourney. Bravo, dudes, for having the minerals to speaketh thy name.

Yeah, it looks about as enlighting and informative as the IT’S A SMALL WORLD ride at Disney proper but these genre flicks serve an audience who like seeing padded tales of inspiration.

Director: Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, Chan-wook Park
Cast: Byung-hun Lee, Hye-jeong Kang, Jung-ah Yum
Release: October 28, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: An Asian cross-cultural trilogy of horror films from accomplished indie directors.

Prognosis: Oh my. You know whose singular vision of horror really skeeved me out as a kid? Tom Petty.

That blonde, David Spade-in-a-taffy-pulling-machine, dude just blew my mind up with his video for “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” Besides being a poor role model for my eventual foray into English education, his abuse of double negatives left something to be desired, his video for this song became the basis for every other visual which came after it if it used black and white floor tiling, to say nothing of the band’s gorging of Alice when she is turned into that really tasty looking cake. I know, it sounds completely bizarre and it’s like how dudes associate the smell of freshly cooked halibut to their glory days with their nympho girlfriends but this trailer for THREE EXTREMES triggered the same sympathetic response I get when I watched that video all those years ago.

Thankfully, it still jives with my viewing because this trailer is all about the weird.

When we begin we look out onto an icy plane. It looks cold, barren and quite minimalist. It’s creepy. FARGO creepy. When we tighten in on what’s happening we see someone filling in a shallow grave. I like that there is no sound other than the “ka-chunk” of someone scooping another shovelful of dirt back into the hole they created. There isn’t any context for what this all means but I like it.

A woman with a scarf wrapped around a 1/3 of her head walks slowly through a hallway. She dons a coat and, again, it just feels cold. The sounds of the wind whipping through the place is enough to couch everything in the right way.

We see a carnival. There isn’t anyone there but we see the big tent, dirt on the ground, wooden rider where a barker might try to get you to see the Chicken Lady or the Bearded Midget, and there is a colorful box on the ground where, possibly, the woman who was all muffled up before reels from what she sees when she opens the spooky container.

Some crazy looking Asian looks up at me as she slurps something red, like an oyster with a dollop of raspberry jam on it, and, instead of feeling, “Ooo, that’s spooky!” I am getting annoyed with the lack of information. It’s a crazy visual but there’s nothing grounding me to why I should feel one way or another. But then, just as quickly as we meet Staring Asian Woman, we switch to someone who looks all sorts of jacked up in a body cast. The person is positioned on a piano bench, sitting in front of one, as they’re attached to a series of strings. These strings, dozens of them, jut out in all sorts of directions. Is this person tethered to something? Don’t know, there isn’t any voiceover. When The Voice does decide to pop in, giving me nothing more than a, “”¦comes one singularly terrifying”¦” Blah blah blah. I’ve heard this jive before. In between seeing the black and white flooring from the Tom Petty video I see someone who might be the same strange Asian Slurping Woman supping on some dudes neck. The trailer makers get some thumbs up from me for adding in the sound effects of what that noshing might sound like if you had a vampire wired for audio.

We get more discordant images of Tom Petty tile, a guy holding up a Zippo for some available light, a woman and girl holding onto each other because something spooky might be happening (although it looks like the woman has the girl in a headlock position which would be advantageous to snapping her neck like a Wayne Brady on Chapelle’s Show) and a half-dozen more “What the fuck?” shots which don’t get you any closer to finding anything out about this film.

Now, I’d like to say that this is a slam dunk kind of film and, to me, it is but I can honestly see some people shying away from seeing this only because we don’t know what the hell is happening. Yes, Virginia, even in movies like this the target audience does deserve more than just spooky money shots if they think they’re going to get their money from them. I just happen to know from word of mouth that this is a really good flick and so it already has mine.

Director: Roger Kumble
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Amy Smart, Anna Faris
Release: November 23, 2005
Synopsis: The romantic comedy JUST FRIENDS stars Ryan Reynolds as a former high school geek turned trendy Los Angeles music executive. When he gets stranded in his New Jersey home town due to bad weather with a superstar singer he is trying to sign, he finds himself reunited with his high school crush and discovers she is his true love.

Prognosis: Negative. Hmm”¦Can’t say this was anything special.

I think I want this to be funny, I do. VAN WILDER was everything it should’ve been and everything else Ryan Reynolds has done since then follows the same approach. There is a certain cookie-cutter quality to his films, in much the same way Adam Sandler has a corner of the doofus with a heart of gold market, but that isn’t meant to take anything away from him. He’s good at what he does but I just don’t feel anything either way after watching this trailer.

We start off by seeing Ryan enjoying his wonderful life. He is a successful music producer and has the double-teaming chicks to prove it. It’s awfully superficial but I guess it’s important to have about as shallow of understanding of our protagonist as possible when we’re talking about shallow comedies. Oh, and he’s absolutely irresistible to the ladies. Even the ones who already have dudes are attracted to his thin manliness. And this is when we find out that he wasn’t always this way. He, gasp!, used to be fat. The “I Swear” lip-sync that Ryan does as we transition to his past is amusing as is Amy Smart’s protestation that even though Ryan looks about as fugly as you could possibly make him she really loves him, like a brother.

We transition back to thin Ryan as he heads to his old home with the “hottest” pop singer in teh whole wide world, this being an obnoxious as a plot twist as that could be, and eventually finds out, double gasp!, that Smart still lives there. He has a chance to make this right again with her but this whole pop star girlfriend thing puts a cramp in his style.

Anyway, somehow we have Ryan on the ice, battling some 12 year-olds in a game of hockey. This, of course, turns ugly as Ryan gets a beat down from a kiddie. I’m not sure how this all pertains to the plot but when AMERICAN PIE’s Chris Klein comes into the same situation as Ryan is I am just scrambling to keep all these plot threads together. Chris is after Amy as well and you can only imagine the things which will happen from here.

Like I said earlier I am just not sure what to make of this film. You’ve really got to rate this one on the Doug and Bob McKenzie Beer Scale of how many it will take to get a guffaw or chuckle (neither of which really exist but you get me) out of this turkey.

Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Cast: Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, Amer Hlehel, Hiam Abbass5
Release: October 28th, 2005
Synopsis: The story of two young Palestinian men as they embark upon what may be the last 48 hours of their lives. On a typical day in the West Bank city of Nablus, where daily life grinds on amidst crushing poverty and the occasional rocket blast, we meet two childhood best friends on their way to carrying out a strike in Tel Aviv.

Prognosis: Positive. I am absolutely tired, mentally, of hearing how Palestinians and Israelis find that tit for tatting with regards to coming to an end of the conflict that separates the two independent states is acceptable.

Just growing up in America you’d have to admit that if you really weren’t an informed, educated adult that you would see one side or the other as the obvious aggressor in this conflict. I wouldn’t even dream of taking sides on this, as I don’t live there and only know what my totally honest, forthright, un-biased government and news media have to tell me.

I do know, though, that I like this trailer a lot. It evokes something that I think is now relevant to all of us as we hear about IEDs in Iraq and the nature of suicide bombers as they make headlines on a near daily basis. What at first I thought was going to be a flick about two dudes, just look at the poster, and one I was going to roll right through, the mood is heavy right from the beginning.

“From the most unexpected place comes a bold new call for peace”

First of all, I have to disagree with the statement. Yeah, it’d be great to have these two states come together but it should be obvious to anyone with half their brain left that it’s going to take action, not a call. It’s all semantics but you can see where this coming from.

The opening shot is wonderful, though. You take a look at this tightly packed city, buildings upon buildings in a valley, like a desert-style Hong Kong in full golden glory. You get an idea of the space in which this movie takes place.

Geographically specific music coats the scenes we see: a couple of men meet on the street wearing suits; a beautiful woman passes a border soldier in full body armor; a line of people walk down a path off a hill only to grab cover when an explosion happens off camera.

The music grows in intensity when we see a freedom fighter getting his picture taken in a darkened room, his machine gun hoisted high, his face vacant of any emotion. We see our woman once more as she rides a bus looking forlorn. Machine gun guy and another dude have their beards shaved. Something very bad is about to go down and the application of plastic explosives to the chest of a willing suicide bomber really intensify what’s happening on the screen.

The two men don clothing which will help them submerge into the populace they are trying to strike against. They have haircuts, suits and nice looking demeanors. The two of them, we’re told, are longtime friends.

Things, though, take a sharp turn when we see one of the guys acting erratic; he’s running along a hillside; he’s almost getting into a car accident; he has some woman flipping out on him. The latter is probably due to the fact he’s told her about what he’s planning on doing.

One of the suicide bombers sits at a bus stop and waits for it to arrive. He has his hand at the ready on the trigger which will no doubt detonate his armament. You’re just waiting for him to go boom when you see a kid getting off the bus. He slows his hand down. We cut to Good Looking Woman just lost in her thoughts. We come back to our suicide man on the bus, this time looking like he’s ruminating on something important.

The screen throws us back in time. The two men, their hair clearly curly and mussed, share a smoke on a hill looking out at a sunset. There is peace in their sitting. The slow, acoustic music playing in the background is soothing.

The tail end of this trailer is just as powerful as its beginning and I have to think, having read so many other news stories or seen snippets on the nightly news, that this is one tale that I hope makes its way to this part of the world where it seems so distant yet poignant considering what’s going on in our lives today.

Director: Thomas Bezucha
Cast: Claire Danes, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Dermot Mulroney, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Luke Wilson
Release: November 4, 2005
Synopsis: The comedy revolves around the annual holiday gathering of a bohemian family that’s thrown into turmoil when the fair-haired son introduces his fiancée, a high strung New York businesswoman whom the family hates.

Prognosis: Gak! There are a lot of times when I compare a flick to something you’ve already seen so as to give you, the audience, an idea of where it’s coming from. I like to wait until I’m near finished with my review to break it down but there are cases, like this one, where I can’t allow things to begin without first writing down in which vein this one exists. From the top:

FATHER OF THE BRIDE
SEX AND THE CITY
MEET THE PARENTS
CHRISTMAS VACATION
GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (THE WHITE VERSION)
And…
Every movie could ever think of where you have someone who has to meet a family for the first time, is nervous about it and finds out that the family is filled with a bunch of eccentrics. Let the zany, wacky, unhinged-ness begin.

Oy.

I can see why the ladies like having movies of their own to look forward to and I don’t mean to disparage them here, as I do like a good one every now and then, but there’s something played out about the premise of this film.

When we start the scene is all beset with the trappings of a terrible cliché. You’ve got Jessica going to meet Dermot’s family for the first time, again a movie where you have two people dating for long enough to get engaged but not long enough to go meet mom and dad. I understand there are Shakespearian love throngs where some people find themselves overwhelmed with desire for another individual and there is simply no time for formalities but, God damn, if my girl was dating some dude I would think, if I wasn’t responsible for her leaving the house, she’d want me to meet the guy early on.

Oh well, such is Hollywood.

So, you have the crazy, eccentric family. You have some members of the fam already talking smack about Jessica, who is showing signs of a woman desperately trying to hold onto the CITY look which is either slipping away from her or was just badly put together by her make-up artist, and you can tell by the family’s daughter that she’s out to really make things difficult; this means you can expect some zany situations, if you haven’t already figured that out.

You already have the bitchy sister who verbally won’t relent in making it known that Jessica looks like she was imported from a Jackie-O fashion show, circa 1968, with the attitude to match, but there is also Luke Wilson who seems to be written as the guy who will try to/not to but inadvertently take her away from Dermot. The lingering stare at the bottom of the stairs that he has with Jessica standing at the top is at once obvious and sad. I know that women everywhere find these kinds of formulas the best things, evar, but I do have to say that the trailer does follow the formula for Crappy Shameless Christmas Grab For Your Cash quite nicely.

What’s really hard for me to understand is why the producer of SIDEWAYS would, first, think that since SIDEWAYS was obviously done for the love of the story that the story is not important as long as you get enough zeros at the end of that payday and why, after we get so many people talking in this thing, that Claire Danes gets first billing. It’s alphabetical, I know that, but she doesn’t say a damn word. At all. Who is she and why is she there? I dunno. Trailer Guy didn’t hip me to it. Frustrating. Oh, and the part where all the girls are laughing with one another, after Jessica and Rachel McAdams swore their unyielding hatred for one another, and giggling on the floor? Lame. Every woman who cries at Kodak commercials will find this ending irresistible and I can’t help but feel sorry for the guy who will get sucked into this film because of it.

Director: Julian Jarrold
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Linda Bassett, Josh Cole, Joel Edgerton, Sarah Jane Potts
Release: October 7, 2005 (UK)
Synopsis: A man finds an unlikely ally in Lola, a brassy cabaret singer, in his effort to save his father’s shoe factory.

Prognosis: Positive. “Sex shouldn’t be comfy!”

I agree.

It SHOULD provoke the kind of pain that is at once painful and deliriously enjoyable. But, that’s not what is at issue here. What is, however, is the premise of this film which posits that a new line of footwear is desperately needed in order to save the blue collar jobs of some loyal employees of a shoe manufacturer.

What seems, I know, on the surface as a boring, trite and all together lame kind of movie really does deserve a look-see by the viewers out there as this trailer gives us the newest performance by Nick Frost of SHAWN OF THE DEAD fame. Nick was the other 50% of the reason why SHAWN is so re-watch-able again and again. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The voiceover in this movie is tenderly tendered by our protagonist, a humble sounding Englishman who wants to tell us a story. Again, it almost seems enough to make a dude want to go see the trailer for DOOM again but stick with it. The words “Inspired by a true story” always manage to wrangle an extra quarter or two out of my stingy time pocket and I’m glad I did.

We quickly come to the crux of the film in that the premise is based on the fact that a very traditional shoe shop needs a new product and a woman in nice looking heels will be the inspiration which will allow them to do that all the while with Nick being the antagonizing force behind it all; he does that part extraordinarily well. While Nick drools over the prospect of getting him some of that sensual loving, the trailer leading you to believe he really would fancy a night of some of that, the tempo changes the moment our “lady” really turns out to be a dude; a dude who, prior to revealing that information, lovingly situated himself in Nick’s lap. The look on Nick’s face is at once to be expected and, as well, to be utterly amusing.

The rest of the trailer plays itself as a jaunty comedy, much like in the vein of THE FULL MONTY, without the man-ass. The man behind the movement to bring CALENDAR GIRLS the world to us is responsible for this and while that isn’t a smashing or ringing endorsement for anyone here to rush out and get tickets it is enough for me to categorically state that the whole point of the Trailer Park is to point out when the advertising gets it right or wrong.

It may not be gripping or exciting but the blokes who slapped this one together should be commended on getting the right bits together to send to an audience who are looking for an easy time at the cinema. If that means those people get a little more exposure to Nick Frost then I say they are better off for it.

Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Linda Cardellini, Anna Faris, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid, Michelle Williams
Release: December 9, 2005
Synopsis: The new film from Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee. An epic love story set against the sweeping vistas of Wyoming and Texas, Brokeback Mountain tells the story of two young men ““ a ranch-hand and a rodeo cowboy ““ who meet in the summer of 1963, and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection, one whose complications, joys and tragedies provide a testament to the endurance and power of love.

Prognosis: Positive. Rump wranglers.

There, it’s out there and it’s out of the way.

Before I had ever seen one frame of footage from this movie all I ever got to hear was how this was a movie based on some gay cowboys. Apart from imagining Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal playing The Bone Ranger and trying to think about what was going to be inserted into, or left out of, the final print was perhaps the one thing on my mind.

In the climate of people having to pull back on the kinds of “art” which is allowable by the true Scorpion Kings, the MPAA, before receiving a ratings lashing I was on the lookout for anything which may have been done with the final print. Since I didn’t hear a peep I am left to assume that this is the version which I’ll be seeing in a coupe of months.

I’m glad that the ads are just like this one.

It’s hard to be completely non-judgmental, mentally, about seeing this trailer for the first time because I honestly was thinking the whole time I was watching it that I wanted to see these dudes engage one another. Now, as to if that meant a peck on the cheek or something which I know would raise the temperature of those in the red states of America I don’t know. I just know that because the movie was talked about so much in that regard I was expecting it; hoping to see it right out of the gate. I didn’t get that and I am glad I didn’t.

The trailer takes a very exacting approach to its development. We start at the beginning and work our way into how these men drew closer to one another. The other caveat I offer is that I hate cowboy movies. I don’t hate them, that’s pretty strong, but I just can’t stand them for some reason. They just seem false to me. DANCES WITH WOLVES, LAST OF THE MOCHICANS, that one with Sharon Stone, I just didn’t like them. This, though, doesn’t seem so “western,” if I could use that designation, as it does a character profile, something which just happens to be set in this kind of environment and is not caught up in it.

Jake and Heath meet quite innocently enough, Ang’s visuals already at work in the opening sequence as we establish these men’s lives. They bond, homosocially, at first, the way all men label bonding when they think of how they dig hanging out with this or that guy. The friendship is there first and foremost and I think that was important to show here. It grounds the rest of the story and I hope people can see that’s what happening.

Then, out of nowhere, there is the moment which evokes that Del O’Griffith/hotel bed/between two pillows record scratch. It’s tastefully done, doing more than just hinting but doing less than showing you everything, but the morning after for these guys doesn’t seem very loving. It’s downright frigid and I can’t/can understand why they want to bury what happened between them.

The trailer does a wonderful job of pushing on that fast forward button ever so slightly. A nice musical interlude carries us through many years of Heath and Jake’s closeted heterosexual lives, Heath spawning two little kids in the process, but we come to the hard part, the moment we’re all too keen and hip about: they’re gonna do it again. And they do. Heath is like a little woman as he tries to put his arm around Jake’s neck, it would be downright hilarious if it wasn’t so serious, and when Michelle Williams, Heath’s “wife” accuses him of doing “more than fishing” with Jake, the man goes ballistic.

The last moments are perfectly constructed, carefully weaving so many different money shots that it feels more like the displays of a great director at work than it does shameless wool pulling by the trailer makers who would just as soon show you the best moments they’ve got and have nothing else.

There seems to be a lot more here and it shows.

Director: Katrina Holden Bronson
Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Laura Cayouette, Kick Gurry, Ken Jackson, Johnny Knoxville, David Koechner, Juliette Lewis
Release: September 25, 2005
Synopsis: From executive producer Quentin Tarantino comes Johnny Knoxville as Daltry Calhoun. Daltry is the go to guy, the man with a plan. A man who’s life, and failing grass seed empire, takes an unexpected turn with the arrival of a young daughter he never knew. With his life thrown into complete chaos, Daltry must try and figure out how to save his business while at the same time learning to be the father he never thought he could be.

Prognosis: Ah, no. I didn’t think that Miramax puts out films like these. Oh, and Quentin Tarantino is the executive producer on this but I don’t see anything coming close that would indicate this flick has his stamp of approval.

It’s not a knock, I don’t mean it to be, but this seems like a film more suited to MTV Films’ imprint than it does the studio which has brought so many artistic visions to the screen. This film is the simulacrum, if you will, of all that I assumed Miramax was. That’s okay, though, because we’re all here to broaden our filmic horizons and where better to start than with a Johnny Knoxville vehicle. And I’ll be honest about this as well: I loved Jackass. I loved the television show, I loved the movie, twice I liked the movie in theaters, and I genuinely think that Johnny is a great entertainer. This trailer, though, subdues that or hides it entirely behind this façade of an entertainer trying hard not to entertain while donning an actor’s mask. Does that make sense? Let me explain.

We start out with Johnny on television while watching him from the fake television set. It’s all very 4th wall-ish but I assume it is in play here as to show how his role is that of a man who sells grass, “the legal kind,” as the trailer so amusingly points out.

What’s a little strange is that his character’s rise from nothingness to greatness involves him being a great businessman in this small town where this story takes place. There’s nothing really remarkable about this po-dunk backwater but Knoxville is revered as the town’s success story. He’s rich and he has access to a bikini wearing Juliette Lewis straddling a motorcycle but he freaks out, refusing the tempestuous and tantalizing vittles which I am sure she wants to offer up to his consumption. Things get a little weird as we try and understand exactly what kind of person Knoxville is playing. Is it a straight-laced yuppie that we’re to assume has never had any kind of real thrill in his life? I don’t believe or buy it.

We don’t linger too long, unfortunately, on Juliette as we are whisked away to Johnny trying to create a golf course which will displace Augusta as the location where the Master’s are played every year. What’s disappointing is that before we can really simmer on the idea of what exactly it is we’re seeing we get Hollywood’s “IT” girl, Elizabeth Banks, interjecting out of nowhere that, as a former love interest of Johnny’s, he is now responsible for a girl he never knew he had. The girl in question is, of course, one of these good looking kids which are always the case for people who find out they have a kid years later after they skate out on the kids’ mothers.

What’s more, or less, depending on your view, is that this girl is talented and Banks wants to move in with Knoxville for a while, for some reason, I haven’t a clue as to why it’s kosher so many years after the deed’s been done. This girl is also imbued with the ability to rationalize and possesses great knowledge which serves the plot in ways I can’t even begin to try and explain.

The trailer goes from Johnny’s triumphant reign as small town hero to his hapless quest to have the kind of relationship with his girl every father would love to have. It gets sappy real quick and I am still not sure I buy any of it. The manipulative music in the background doesn’t make me change my mind and even as we barrel to the last moments of this trailer I can see that’s the direction we’re going.

Am I cynical or am I too consumed with the recurring image of Johnny getting kicked in the scrotum by kindergartners to let it all go? Either way I am just not convinced as to why I need to spend good money on this film.

Director: Mikael Håfström
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Clive Owen, Vincent Cassel, Melissa George, RZA, Xzibit
Release: November 11, 2005
Synopsis: DERAILED is a suspense thriller about ad exec and family man Charles Schine (Clive Owen) who meets business woman, Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston), on the commuter train to Chicago. Flirtation quickly escalates, but their fling turns dangerous when a violent criminal, LaRoche (Vincent Cassel), blackmails them, promising to reveal their indiscretion and threatening their families if they to not pay him. With their lives thrown terrifyingly off-course, they must figure out how to turn the tables on LaRoche and save their families.

Prognosis: Sure. True story:

I used to work for this health care place, I can’t really tell you where it was because I left there after they thought it was groovy to break some federal laws governing their business, but I worked there scheduling the help that went into one couple’s home; the guy was old but his woman was not. The both of them were in need of 24 hour assistance and I came to find out that they were in this care state because the woman who lived with this guy was not his wife and was, indeed, this dude’s girlfriend. Like a page ripped out of Edith Wharton’s “Ethan Frome” this dude was stepping out on his wife, rolling about town in his pimp luxury car with this woman, and was caught in an accident which has rendered him dependent on other people for the rest of his life. The wife left him, took most of the guy’s dough, and was far removed from this man’s personal hell long before I came along. If there ever was a more stark reason you shouldn’t cheat on your significant other I wouldn’t be able and tell you anything more gripping than that.

That said, though, the trailer leaves me feeling blasé. I’m not really sure this would be the one of the first films out of the newly polished Weinstein imprint gate but Jennifer Aniston’s Q rating at astronomical levels and Clive Owen’s smoky mystery, thanks to his crazy-ass role in CLOSER, this movie could bring out the older demographic.

We start out in Chicago (Give up for Al’s Italian Beef on Taylor St.! Reckless Records on Broadway! wOOt!) and we are fed the images that both Aniston and Owen are two hard-working, dedicated family people who have nothing on their minds but their careers and their families. I especially enjoy Owen’s fancy dance run to catch a leaving Metra train headed for the city; sorry, my English twit, but if you’re running to catch a train you’re not going to get anywhere near it by mincing towards a locomotive like you’re trying to evade the Girl Scouts.

I do like the whole commuter train ride vibe they capture. I remember, quite fondly, of my excursions into Chicago proper using Metra and I can attest to the rocking, horn blowing enjoyment of rocketing through some of the most congested areas of the Northwest Suburbs with great ease because of this mass transportation miracle. It can evoke some lustiness, I’ll grant it that, but I don’t think that people like Clive and Aniston would be so quick to pull out the family wallets to share pictures with one another. It feels forced, like they had to do it in order to make you feel that their quick hump later is destroying more than the two of their marriages.

I am a fan, I must admit, of Clive’s sneaky subversion to get a piece of some of that Jennifer ass. His dark and evil voice, which he uses to move in on Jennifer, is not only the same kind of voice he employs in near every role where he has to display some sense of cunning but it honestly never gets old. The man’s a pro.

Things get hot. I mean they are rolling on a hotel bed, don’t they know the hotel staff never wash that top sheet, the Cum Blanket as I so affectionately refer to it because of people exactly like Owen and Aniston, and their hair is all wet, so is their clothes. The music is only a step above a porno soundtrack but it’s still hot. When Johnny Gun forces his way into these people’s lives, clad in a trademark black bad guy toque and matching clothing, and for a moment I am left to assume that the gun shot I hear is the one shooting one of them. It’s a red herring I guess as the music changes and it’s a real fast paced sprint to the trailer’s finish. There’s money all around, guns, knifes, running, evading, crashing and almost every conceivable, dramatic action one can perform. It’s a bit tired but I have to admit that if I am at a loss for something to see on a Saturday afternoon that I may just put this on films not to avoid should everything else I want to see be sold-out or almost full.

Director: Liam Lynch
Cast: La’vin Kiyano, Bob Odenkirk, Brian Posehn, Laura Silverman, Sarah Silverman, Brody Stevens
Release: November 11, 2005
Synopsis: Narrative digressions on sex, race, politics, and more from comedienne Sarah Silverman.

Prognosis: Nothing but love… I loathe it, I personally dislike it in ways that are severe, when people use the word edgy. The word has lost its cache and meaningfulness yet people who possess a modicum of talent seem to think it connotes a real deep insight into a piece of work. It doesn’t because usually anything called “edgy” isn’t. This trailer is edgy.

I’m going to go ahead and say that if you are anywhere near someone who gets offended easily, moderately or even difficultly do not play this trailer within ear shot. This is perhaps one of the truest and bravest pieces of marketing I have ever seen. The fact that to put together this reel took balls and that the balls of the person who did it doesn’t have balls I think says a lot.

That said, there is no way in hell you’ll be seeing this in front of any movie in the theater or in commercials between Scrubs and ER on NBC should you find yourself at home watching Must See TV one Thursday night.

“I was licking jelly off of my boyfriend’s penis and all of a sudden I’m thinking “˜Oh my God, I’m turning into my mother,’ you know?”

I remember seeing snippets of Sarah Silverman perform the song which plays throughout this trailer a while ago. The fact that it is the base for this trailer is wonderful as there isn’t any outside influences diluting what the finished product of this movie is all about. It’s all about Sarah and it shows.

“I love you even if it’s not hip”¦I love you more than black people don’t tip”¦”

30 seconds are spent showcasing the variety of things going on inside the contents of this movie. What’s apparent is that Sarah isn’t going for the straight I’m-here-performing-and-this-is-all-about-my-comedy-act. She steps outside of the norms of what’s expected in a full-length feature and there is a nice blend of actual stage performance and sketch comedy.

When we break away from the musical montage there is a nice extended moment when Sarah explains that she wrote a show to a couple of friends of hers. It’s one that deals with the Holocaust and AIDS but, as Sarah hastens to add, it’s funny. The moment is quickly captured and as we roll on even further into the depths of what will, most likely, draw ire from those who feel her type of humor is crass, debased and devoid of anything coming close to comedy, depending on shock value for her share of giggles and guffaws, I can only say that my interest level only rises.

Sure, there could have been other ways one could have shaped this trailer to make it more consumer friendly but in an age when ribald humor is finally getting its due, thanks in part to the wonderful press THE ARISTOCRATS received as of late, I can’t say enough about a trailer that finishes with such aplomb.

There is not much you can put into words about what’s funny about this little piece of promotional material but even though what’s funny to one and what’s funny to another is debatable there is no way in hell anyone could go away from this without feeling something.

Director: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady
Cast: NA
Release: November 30, 2005 (New York)
Synopsis: On September 12, 2002 twenty “at risk” 12-year-old boys from the tough streets of inner-city Baltimore left home to attend the 7th and 8th grade at Baraka, an experimental boarding school located in Kenya, East Africa. Here, faced with a strict academic and disciplinary program as well as the freedom to be normal teenage boys, these brave kids began the daunting journey towards putting their lives on a fresh path.

“The Boys of Baraka” zeros in on kids that society has given up on – – boys with every disadvantage, but who refuse to be cast off as “throw-aways.”

View Trailer:
* Medium (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Positive. There’s something that changes you when you step foot off American soil and you find yourself many thousands of miles away from your comfort zone.

It’s a transformation which requires you to find new ways of communicating, understanding, interacting and it demands you either do as the Romans do or find yourself labeled as an Ugly American, one who wants to bend their will against the wills of those in a house which is not yours. I think that’s why I find this trailer oddly compelling.

We open up without a real indication of where the narrative is going. On the outside it feels like it’s just another episode of Undercover America on HBO, looking at the drug trade on American streets, this time in Baltimore, Maryland. We see some guys pushing each other in front of a house, prelude to a fight. A cop rolls down a street as music plays in the background. There is no voiceover.

We see a young man walk up a flight of steps alone. He sits on a windowsill and looks out onto the street. He says he stays inside the house most of the time. You look at him and he exudes a loneliness which is honestly heartbreaking. He understands that his peers are drug dealers who deal in the kinds of activities that explain why some young men don’t make it to their twenties.

The odd thing is that you don’t yet get the point of what’s happening in this film. You that it has something to do with looking at the effects of violence but you don’t know what it is going to be set against. That’s where I think the gradual take-off of this trailer comes when we see some of the very same lonely boys being gathered at the local airport. They’re literally leaving on a jet plane, one of them in tears, and leaving the country for a little while.

The destination ends up being Africa but I’m innately curious as to what the point is to shipping these boys off to another country and then I see it: they’re going to school. Although, since this is a documentary, this is going to be more than how well they learn the proper way to conjugate a verb.

“I have a feeling you’re going to find a whole lot of things different here than they were in Baltimore”¦”

Another part that’s intriguing about the trailer is that these boys have a moment in front of the “Confessional” video camera to send a postcard of sorts back home. Most of the boys express their desire to come back home. They’re not enamored with the possibilities that Africa has to offer. One boy lists the treats he wants sent to him but we get the point: no one wants to be here. The rhetorical statement which is asked of the audience, whether 10,000 miles can make a difference, is one that piques my desire to know if it has. I am sure that some aren’t, international travel isn’t a cure-all, but I am interested to know if it worked for those few who could’ve been another victim of inner-city neglect.

Director: Renee Chabria
Cast: John Leguizamo, Elizabeth Peña, Ana Claudia Talancon, Nestor Serrano
Release: September 30, 2005
Synopsis: A Mexian immigrant new to Los Angeles enters into a love triangle with two very different women.

Prognosis: I’d dip in corn meal, fry it and hit it two times while dancing to a meringue beat. I like it a lot. Sra. Ruiz will always go down as the woman who gave me one of the only C’s I ever received in college.

It was Spanish 202 and this class was representative of the 3 years of Spanish language classes I took in high school and the 2 years I had to take in college. I went through all of that and I still couldn’t get my shit together by the end. I homogenously sucked ass, this much I admit, but I just could not get a good grasp on the whole conjugation thing. And there is also the Latina I dated in high school (Veronica Arreola, represent! wOOt!), who will go down as one of two women that I use every once in a while to brag about my racial blindness; whether people just chalk it up to adolescent horniness is another matter entirely. What these two seemingly divergent interests should show, if nothing else, is that the Spanish/Mexican vida has always been an interest for me. I may not ultimately get it but trailers like this one that show me why my passion for it has never waned. This trailer lingers with you like a slow Spanish guitar, plucking strings at just the right, mellow, pace.

This picture crackles with ingenuity.

John Leguizamo thankfully takes the responsibilities of voicing the trailer’s narration as we get a peek into what brings us to his backwater home which is located south of the border. We don’t spend a lot of wasted time getting to know John’s character and we’re seemingly pushed into the middle of his exposition about how he landed in Los Angeles. This could be a bit jarring for some but not a moment is wasted and a trailer maker who understands the economy of time really cuts things to the quick. The film appears normal enough but things take an LSD induced turn to the right when John talks of his old village elders which, I guess, have cartoons jutting out of their chests like a fire hydrant of Technicolor on a pretty conistent basis. It’s weird, yes, but I appreciate the attempt to briefly contextualize John’s experiences and it only adds a certain flavor to the trailer when he see him in his new life, north of the border, in a crap job, Mickey Dee’ing it. The accompanying music in the background, the animations which move it along, just fit in nicely to the gritty, real vibe of this movie.

John wants to be a musician and the little moments we get of him practicing, slumming it wherever he can to get a little exposure, a little attention.

We get a little clichéd with the set-up of the snotty neighbor who doesn’t want John playing his guitarra till all hours of the night and, who we find out, secretly used to sing, gave it up for some “unknown reason” BUT who will regain her passion because of John and his trusty six string steed. It’s all well and good and touchy-feely but as soon as I think this is where it all begins and ends we get ourselves a love interest. I dunno what her name is, I don’t know what her role will be in John’s life but I do know John wants to hit that and I would have to heartily second that hitting. The romance is quickly established and run through and this is the reason why the trailer catches my attention. You have two seemingly diverse interests at play at the same time but we’re not very clear on how they will either miss each other or collide.

I like that kind of uncertainty in the trailers I watch.

The music and tempo change and even though we get another cliché with John saying how one needs to grab their dream when it comes along or else you’ll regret burning in a hell fire of your own making, blah blah blah, I still believe in the appeal of this movie. This honestly looks like a film where not only could it be one of those feel good pictures where something good comes out of a struggle for something important there also seems to be an element of meticulous filmmaking. The direction and the visual flair could make it worth the price of admission alone. And how the hell can you go wrong with Nestor Serrano, the man who completely dominated the MONEY PIT with Tom Hanks in his portrayal of Julio?

Director: Liev Schreiber
Cast: Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, Boris Leskin
Release: September 16, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, “Everything is Illuminated” tells the story of a young man’s quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather in a small Ukrainian town that was wiped off the map by the Nazi invasion. What starts out as a journey to piece together one family’s story under the most absurd circumstances turns into a surprisingly meaningful journey with a powerful series of revelations — the importance of remembrance, the perilous nature of secrets, the legacy of the Holocaust, the meaning of friendship and, most importantly, love.

Prognosis: Erring on the side of negativity. I can’t be sure if I like this trailer.

I am a fan of odd things but I am thoroughly confounded at the weirdness this trailer stirs in me.

Let me see if I can’t break this thing down in a meaningful way: Elijah Wood is a collector. The strange thing about his collecting is that he seems completely indiscriminate about the things he obtains. We see a shot of this massive wall with items all tacked on the wall, a lot of things, but there’s nothing really defining what these little baggies of odd things means to anyone.

Cut to Elijah sitting next to his dying grandmother who gives him a black and white photograph of his grandfather standing next to a strange woman. Without so much as thanking the old bag the kid asks who the woman is in the picture; too late to get an answer, though, as the grandma dies right there.

What’s a boy to do? Road trip.

The plane flight arrival, the oompa-loompa Germanic beer band music welcome wagon is a bit absurd, as is the quirky local translator, but the point of going to find the woman who saved this young man’s grandfather in World War II is an interesting premise if not foolhardy.

Right when we get going a little further into the narrative we get our quirky translator to explain that the Yugo mode of transportation is being driven by a man who thinks he’s blind, but isn’t, and has a psychotic seeing-eye dog which tags along with him. It’s a bit much for a film that I am thinking is trying to be meaningful but its quirks are beginning to overshadow its aims. I am especially reminded of this when, after a long day of travel, Frodo looks at his singular bed in a very wide, very long room. His translator friend asks him to secure his door as there are people who like to steal things from Americans, as well as kidnap them.

What’s the thrust here? Is this a comedy or is Elija’s straight man routine a juxtaposition against an insane reality which doesn’t really exist in real life? None of these questions get satisfactorily answered as the strangeness continues. The not-funny exchange between the translator and Elijah about what it means to be a vegetarian drags me even further into a state of malaise about something which should really be interesting.

This is not to say there isn’t any hope, however. When we finally get to an honest exchange of ideas between these two guys, the translator and Elijah, the trailer does elevate itself to a place where I feel like I connect with it. When asked why Elijah does the things he does he says it’s because he doesn’t want to forget. The ensuing musical interlude gets even more poignant when we see a line of five Jewish men lined up against a wall. They all wear yellow stars, indicative of the Nazi regime’s agenda of ethic cleansing, and, as the camera pulls back, we see that they’re about to get shot. It’s eye-popping and it sobers one up to where we’re going with this story.

There are a few more plot points which are revealed in the span of the remaining moments of this trailer but it really does pull up on the controls for what could have been a straight drop to the earth from earlier indications.

I can’t say for sure who this movie best appeals to but I think that’s one of the worst things a trailer can leave a person thinking. I’m not sure I would spend money to see this in the theater but I can see myself splurging on a rental to see what this quirky comedy/drama/oddity is all about.

Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, Koji Yakusho, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Tsai Chin
Release: December 9th, 2005
Synopsis: This is the story of Nitta Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), sold to a geisha house at the age of 9, the training she goes through to become a geisha, and the life she leads as one. Based on the popular novel written by Arthur Golden.

Prognosis: Positive. This movie seems to star a veritable who’s who of Asian cinema. This is quite delightful when you realize that Ziyi Zhang takes the role of the voiceover duties when we open on a steep and chilly looking mountain, talking about how this is a story that needs to be told. Of course it does, otherwise why would Hollywood wait so many years to adapt a bestseller that millions of people already have read? Never minding the grandiose hyperbole which overstates the importance of this flick we are treated to the obviously manipulative tactic of showing how our Ziyi was wrenched away from her family in order to be sold into child slavery. We, as an audience, have to immedietly ally our sympathies to the girl, of course, and so every moment here on in is tinged with the feeling that we have to pity Ziyi. I don’t think it’s really right or wrong to go for the easy buy-in but for the adult audience this flick is aimed at it’s probably the best method to use.

“I certainly wasn’t born into the life of a geisha”¦”

So, the montage continues with a lovely classical music suite as we show how young Ziyi is taken from her home, taken in by a Carol Burnette clone a la ANNIE and is put through her paces as a young indentured laborer, probably in more ways than one, before a smiling Ken Wantanabe takes a shine to the girl. Now, I have never read GEISHA but I can’t for the life of me determine whether his sinister grin means “I think you’re a delightful sprite” or “Have you ever heard the saying “˜If there’s grass on the infield”¦’?” Now I think it means the former but you’re never quite sure in this age of books where the shocking is just taken as the norm but here’s to hoping that Ken keeps it wrapped in his pants.

Ziyi, though, is selected to become a Geisha. There is a sub-montage of the training she has to go through in order to become a sexualized object of patriarchical desire. It’s way hot.

I freak, though, when Ziyi puts on a whole lotta white face. Her black eyeballs make her look like a Great White ready to devour any approaching life force. Yeah, it’s scary until we see our young protégé and Yeoh without shirts, having a giggle. I’m energized and riveted by the prospect at some full-on Asian loving. I know only too well that the PG rating will shoot down that prospect and I will have to defer to the plethora of Internets which will satisfy that curiosity.

What happens next is an oddity to me. I know it may not be for some who find history of the geisha movement interesting reading but I never knew that geishas were, themselves, showgirls of sorts.

The tempo changes, we get a little more speed built up in the quick cuts used to show Ziyi’s quick ascension as a top billed act. All is not well in paradise, however, as there is some jealousy between our lady and some jealous ho who wishes she was all that and a bag of Kashi . The covetous bitch even tries to pull out a mini knife, much like the one used by the dude/chick, I still don’t know, honestly I don’t, in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM when he/she tried to dispense of Short Round after using he/she’s voodoo knife on a scarecrow looking Dr. Jones. A catfight ensues, much to my delight, again making a mental note to defer to the Internets for a more “comprehensive” compendium of full-on chick combat, and we eventually get it that Ziyi is whisked away from this brutish life by Wantanabe.

He seems to treat her right, there aren’t any signs he’s using her in any manner unbecoming of a gentleman but there is trouble in paradise as Ziyi wants to exert control over the situation she’s in. I’m not sure where this tale of female empowerment eventually leads us but the pandering moment of bombastic protestations of how Ziyi wants her own life and how she’s her own woman is a bit much. I realize this is important but it’s used to sell me on the idea of the movie and I don’t think it’s needed here.

The resulting montage of clips that really don’t have anything to do with the cohesion of the narrative, and it’s frankly disorienting, seems a bit lazy and unfocused. I’m not sure if this adult approved will even be worth to see but the three things that make me think I may venture forth is that I liked CHICAGO and I like Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang even more.

Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: 50 Cent, Terrence Howard, Bill Duke
Release: November 9, 2005
Synopsis: A tale of an inner city drug dealer who turns away from crime to pursue his passion, rap music. Loosely based on the life of 50 Cent. Used to be titled “Locked and Loaded”.

Prognosis: Negative. Ok players, 100 people were interviewed and the top 5 answers are up on the board. Give me one good reason why the man who directed IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, MY LEFT FOOT and IN AMERICA would make a movie that glorifies an asshat rap stylist who has been shot 9 times and wants you to party like it’s your “birf-day” with some Bacardi in a movie about a good for nothing thug who has a yearning to become an entertainer on the stage?

BUZZ! “How about “˜I’ve got nuthin’?”

Damn, seriously, how do we go from IN AMERICA to this piece of 8 MILE/HUSTLE AND FLOW melodrama tripe?

I don’t think a trailer has set me off in such a rage than this one right here. I honestly believe this is a joke because there is no way I could imagine matching up the guy who is a walking billboard for misogyny, violence and mindless excess (much like if Whitesnake or Winger got their own films in the late 80’s) and who does nothing but want to reflect on letting us know how bad he had it in the streets but wants nothing to do with the obvious implications of what it means to be a spokesperson for this kind of lifestyle. But, whatever, right? Give the people their circuses and bread!

So, we start off with a view of a city at night. It doesn’t matter what city in America it is because we all know that in every small urban hamlet there are people racing down the streets with guns in their hands and firing up into the sky at rooftops like they’re effing Jack Ryan in CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, trying to evade the Cali Cartel.

And then, before I have a chance to really goof on how the producers of this film, as throughout this trailer the marketing angle here is to try and imply that 50 or should I say Fiddy, as is the parlance, is somehow the protagonist when, by implication and his own admission, he is clearly and simply the antagonist of his own making. But, who gives a crap as long as he’s rocking his do-rag like a bad ass.

Bill Duke comes in and, for a moment, I am actually impressed. Duke plays the lord of all that is street crime for wherever part of New York this is taking place in and I admire his throaty voiceover about how these mean streets work; it’s all very blown up but I have to give it up for his pimp bowler hat. Plus, I liked him enough in PREDATOR and so he, at the very least, gets a pass just for his delivery of the phrase “Turn around”¦” to Carl Weathers. Bill Duke fan club member #608 right here, peeps.

We go from the initial set-up to Marcus, or Fiddy, chatting up some young lady when she asks what he does for a living. He says he’s a gangsta. Now, at this point, the boys Fiddy has around him all start to laugh nervously at this admission and even Fiddy has a little drunken giggle happening. I don’t know what this is supposed to imply but it’s almost as if no one is really should to know he’s a gangsta; I thought that’s what builds cred on the street but living on the mean streets of Downtown Chicago don’t compare I guess to New York.

Now, we go from the admission and subsequent protestation of his gangsta past to the actual act of an old-fashioned stick-up with guns. Apart from Fiddy’s bravado in not wearing any disguise and that he initially planned on not shooting anyone I am confused at how we move from his actions as a thief to one of the sympathetic victim who feels the need to leave his criminal life behind. It’s almost as if we’re going to treat his past actions like bankruptcy court and just forgive the debt. And what kind of dumb-ass holds a place up and doesn’t wear a disguise? Haven’t any of these dudes seen HEAT?

So, we move from the thuggery to the fact we discover he has an innate ability to rap over some beats. Now, like I said before, this smacks an awful lot of HUSTLE AND FLOW yet I am conflicted about why I feel these two stories are divergent. Oh, that’s right, one story is about a pimp trying to make it by following his passion and the other is about an assclown who loved to terrorize people. My mistake.

I get excited, again and for the last time, when Bill Duke, in all his scary glory, lets Fiddy know there is no escaping the thug life when he all of a sudden thinks that rapping is so much better than the life of shooting and robbing people. The resulting drive-by where Fiddy gets himself shot trying to leave this lifestyle is depicted as a very sad time where everyone wants him to rise above his nadir, both personally and physically. I was hoping for a dramatic death right there on the operating table but like everything else about this guy we’re not lucky enough for that to happen. And that’s when I see Terrence “HUSTLE AND FLOW” Howard.

Sigh.

I don’t know what role he’s playing in this film but I guess he figures that the story he was in was too good to only do it once. The resulting montage of Fiddy’s evasions of the thugs who come after him for rapping despairingly about them is a bit much. When he’s walking around in a bulletproof vest because there is so much lead being pointed at him I am reminded of Lloyd from DUMB AND DUMBER who asks Harry about what would’ve happened if the guy who shot him had done so in his face. It’s all very dramatic, I get it. His white do-rag around his head, his shirtless body only covered by a bulletproof vest, some dopey ass gloves which he feels the need to wear I guess to make his fingers kissably smooth to the ladies, I get where we’re going. I’m just not sure of how we got here.

This thing ends and I am feeling like Fran Drescher when Weird Al says he’s the new station manager. He slaps her desk and rumbles with an annoyed fury that she has to go through this process. I am just annoyed with this trailer.

Director: Niki Caro
Cast: Charlize Theron, Sean Bean, Woody Harrelson, Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, Sissy Spacek
Release: October 21, 2005
Synopsis: A fictionalized account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States — Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines, where a woman who endured a range of abuse while working as a miner filed and won the landmark 1984 lawsuit. Formerly the “Untitled Niki Caro Project”.

Prognosis: I’ll be at home washing my hair that night. Question for the group: Is there need for more movies where a woman’s plight to be equal with her male equals is the center of the film’s ethos?

I would argue there is, to a point, but that this one looks a little more interesting than the Lifetime Original movie of the week. Plus, above all else, Sean Bean is in this one so all definitely has to be right with the universe.

I wasn’t expecting much from the trailer, I’ll say that from the outset. When you see that this movie is rated R for “sequences involving sexual harassment” it seems unnecessarily inappropriate. I would think scenes involving sexual harassment is closer to the reason why you would want to have this movie play to audiences and not restrict people from seeing the crazy crap women have to put up with.

“Minnesota 1989, Inspired by a true story”

Anyway, the trailer opens up fairly innocuously. There is a delicate xylophone tinkering in the background doesn’t really give an idea of what this movie is about based on the first few seconds. Usually we, as an audience, get an idea a little quicker but the thrust of the trailer keeps pace with what’s expected for a flick that’s dealing with themes like this. Charlize does the voiceover work and that’s fab because we get the fact that she’s fresh of a divorce and she needs a job.

Like an angel from the sky who bequeaths the well-deserving some sort of earthy prize, Frances McDormand reprises that Minnesota FARGO-ian accent/role which makes it a pleasure to watch that movie over and over again. She plays the best friend part to Charleze and we understand that she is about to head into some rough work. When we see a whole lot of ground being blown up, a la ERNEST GOES TO CAMP, mining seems to be the name of the proverbial game.

I don’t know exactly what her job will be but we are all introduced to her new boss who says she must look, “Darn good under those clothes.” There is a moment where my nads crawl up my scrot, waiting for Charlize to twist this man’s nuts off but he laughs and says that all the women need to have a sense of humor.

Next you get the Charlize scene with her kids as she’s nearly crying, saying she’s going to make it work and that they should stick together and that family is what’s important, something to this effect, and you begin to ally your sympathies with her. It’s natural, manipulative but it’s effective. That’s why, in the next scene, when one of the male scrubs says he needs a body to help the other dudes, doing dude things, he winks and says that body shouldn’t be a fatty. Cue nad crawl.

I see where things are going.

The devolution of the working conditions only get worse as you see the men depicted as sexualized pigs in need of power to flex over the helpless ladies. You get Charlize depicted in a port-o-john as she’s being rocked back and forth before being, um, expelled out the front door when the other dudes tip it over. Charlize, of course, wants to rally against the institutionalized harassment. She wants to go tell the honchos at the corporation’s HQ. Of course some of the uglier ladies aren’t happy with her doing it as it means she’s going to be rocking the boat of complacency.

The response from the whiteys is obvious: they don’t care.

Charlize wants to do something and we get her emotional response to the events with a whole lot of crying. A whole lot. A lot. It’s a lot.

Somehow we get Woody “Hemp King” Harrelson involved as the lawyer who is going to go against these men, he obviously tells her that she doesn’t have a good chance of winning and that no woman will testify with her, etc”¦

The accompanying voiceover about how big the company is and the implications of a win are nationwide are to be expected as is more tears from Charlize when she says all she wants to do is to go to work.

Director: James Mangold
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick
Release: November 18, 2005
Synopsis: He picked cotton, sold door to door, and served in the Air Force. He was a voice of rebellion that changed the face of rock and roll. An outlaw before today’s rebels were born ““ and an icon they would never forget. He did all this before turning 30. And his name was Johnny Cash. WALK THE LINE explores the early years of the music legend, an artist who transcended musical boundaries to touch people around the globe. As his music changed the world, Cash’s own world was rocked by the woman who became the love of his life: June Carter.

Prognosis: Positive. I’ll be honest, I was taken in by the visual splendor of this trailer.

Not that I think the cinematography is anything special, because it’s honestly nothing to write home about, but the trailer opens with no voice over, no people and it glides you into this world like two hands cupped beneath you.

“Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame”¦”

The quiet din of an audience thirsty for something can be heard over the sound of a guitar. A prison in all its grey glory stands erect, cold, silent.

The guitar continues to play its singular note as the other notable achievements in Johnny Cash’s life dissolve by images of the insides for what is the place where Cash really brought down the house. The imagery of hands slapping down on the backs of chairs, the pogoing of them, reminiscent of THE BLUES BROTHERS all bring back that momentous time in history.

Then, we have a long piece of film. It’s odd to have a single take moment in a trailer, as I’m sure there are people that want to see more of the man himself, but the man who is talking to Johnny clearly defines what it is that Cash’s music was all about. The moment is perfectly captured and it’s at that point where the gates open and Phoenix lets loose.

There’s such a muted wickedness about Phoenix that it seems so right that a dude who I couldn’t have cared less for as a dramatic actor, sure I dug the crap out of him in SIGNS but that ostentatious performance in GLADIATOR was uncalled for, really strikes a chord deep inside me, no pun intended.

I do have to say, though, that the one thing that is steering this rolling train down the tracks is none other than Reese Witherspoon herself. Yeah, I know directors love her because she is so cool and teh awesome and there’s a female contingent that will see her come and crap on a phone book if that’s what her next performance is but I didn’t appreciate her distractions. She is and everyone here knows it so feel safe in echoing that when you see this trailer unfold.

I do like everything about the weight that Phoenix gives this performance. If I was a betting man, and I am but I just don’t have the means, I would have to say this trailer is right on par with the one crafted for RAY last year. There are thematic elements which pop up in both of them but what I really like about this trailer is that, just like in the RAY trailer, the music that plays in the background jingles at just the right rate.

Every angle and facet shown of Cash, in this trailer, just sings with emotion. Phoenix is undeniably slick in the black that made Johnny an original but I just hope he can channel the spirit of what made him the most dangerous man to hold a guitar who ever walked a line.

Director: Scott McGahee, David Siegel
Cast: Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche, Kate Bosworth, Flora Cross, Max Minghella
Release: November 11, 2005 (limited)
Synopsis: Eliza Naumann (Flora Cross) has no reason to believe she is anything but ordinary. Her father Saul (Richard Gere), a beloved university professor, dotes on her talented elder brother Aaron (Max Minghella). Her scientist mother, Miriam (Juliette Binoche), seems consumed by her career. When a spelling bee threatens to reaffirm her mediocrity, Eliza amazes everyone: she wins. Her newfound gift garners an invitation not only to the national competition, but an entrée into the world of words and Jewish mysticism that have so long captivated her father’s imagination. But Eliza’s unexpected success hurls the Naumann family dynamic into a tailspin, long-held secrets emerge and she is forced to depend upon her own divination to hold the family together. BEE SEASON is based on the nationally best selling Myla Goldberg novel of the same name.

Prognosis: Artificially Sweetened. Can anyone tell me if I am wrong if said that for every spelling bee that the newspapers print the entire list of possible words before the competition ever happens and that it’s really a matter of memorization than it is a kid’s inspired knowledge of Latin roots and meanings?

We’ll just assume for the benefit of this trailer that this little girl who’s teh cool speller is really a progeny, ‘kay?

So, Richard Gere seems to be taking the pole position in the family as the one who is really taking this whole spelling thing as a talent that needs intense nurturing. If I could point out one glaring fact about this family, though, is that they’re all great-looking people. I figure you would want to work the whole commonality angle but I’m not the one footing the bill so forget what I think about anything.

All photogenics aside, although their beauty wattage is hard to look away from, it’s like a beacon of hawtness which demands your attention, this family seems really effed up.

You’ve got the one son in the family doing a voiceover, and they’re really trying to make it dramatic here, folks, with the suicidal/emo guitar plucker in the background sounding all ready to blow his head clean off his shoulders, as the kid tries to define a word for the young spelling prodigy. It’s all very innocuous before Juliette gets involved and tells Richard, after he slights his man child for being a dumbass, essentially, he’s a bully.

This is not Family Ties I guess.

Even though I knew it was coming, I get it sooner than expected: The man child pulls a bombast on us and berates his green corduroy jacket wearing father inside the house. There are some tears being held back and there is most defiantly the promise of a physical altercation. All we get to see, though, is Richard turning in a dramatic twist of his Oh-I-Am-An-Ass-Aren’t-I neck.

There is a sweet visual, though, that I am going to give credit for which follows soon after. The spelling prodigy of the house does her own voiceover and explains her talent for being able to spell out words. There is a real HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS close-up of a pencil scrawling over a piece of lined paper, I have real crappy handwriting myself, and the camera gets closer and closer. All of a sudden you see the graphite shifting like it was being shook in an Etch-A-Sketch and you can eventually make out that it is a big alphabet soup with letters sliding and diving everywhere. The child still talks about how she does what she does when we see a close up of her at a spelling function. Letters dance and bob around her head. It really is deserving of a golf clap.

Here’s where things get a little manipulative.

The emo man’s voice goes away as Richard has his own Voiceover. He talks about making the world a better place, blah, blah, blech. And as he talks about peace, love and Free Tibet beads we get the montage of a whole slew of images which are only designed to make your chick who cries at that one Maxwell House Christmas commercial when Peter comes home, you all know which one I’m talking about, to grab you by the nads and say, “We are so going to see that show.” You get Juiliette bawling her nuts off, Richard is obviously the Earl Woods of the family with regard to his little girl, the girl herself is being hoisted up for winning something or another and you even get Richard crying like a little bitch too. Geez, people, there is way too much bawling going on in the movies.

Oh, and I downloaded the song that plays in the trailer. It’s called “I’ll Be With You” by a band called Matter. I absolutely hate myself for it but I figure when I need to let loose for a good weep I’ll know help is as close as my iPod. It’s wicked good for a quick pop fix but it’s like slamming 8 lime Pixie Stix: it’s good for the first minute or so but then you regret for having done it like last Saturday night’s slump buster or maybe that’s just me.

Director: D.J. Caruso
Cast: Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey, Rene Russo, Jeremy Piven, Armand Assante
Release: October 7, 2005
Synopsis: TWO FOR THE MONEY is a drama of high stakes set in the adrenalized world of wheeler-dealers whose fortunes are won and lost betting on sports. Matthew McConaughey stars as Brandon Lane, a former college football star whose uncanny ability to predict the outcome of a game introduces him to an unexpected new career when his gridiron glory is sidelined by a crushing injury.

View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Hilarious. You almost got me. Almost. I was inches away from really being excited about this movie and then, as I watched the trailer roll on, I saw that not even Matthew McConaughey’s electric whiteness, nee His Teeth, could save this one.

Yeah, I liked BOILER ROOM. I still go back to it as one of those character profiles which really captured one of those kinds of professions whose legitimacy borders on illegal. This seems to be the same kind of flick but without the Vin Diesel or Ben Affleck edginess.

The trailer starts like a shot of electrolytes to a thirsty man’s belly. It really gets you going. You’ve got a drum beat just thrusting your pulse forward, think of the into to Disturbed’s “Down With The Sickness,” and you’ve also got the same kind of grey, washed-out cinematography which really gives you a sense of place. Matthew’s one of those guys you see on Saturday mornings, usually on USA or one of your local channels who promise you the best line on sports bets, usually college or pro football, for one $25 call.

Matt does it and he’s good at it.

The trailer is great at capturing the thrill of the bet, the reality of how this profession still exists without being under the purview of government officials. Matt looks all dingy and dirty, the obvious set-up is that he’ll be transformed by the malevolent force being embodied by Al Pacino, but he’s good at what he does and the “Inspired by a True Story” even gets a greater buy-in from me.

It downturns, though, when the inevitable occurs, he moves on up to the East Side to a penthouse apartment in the sky. Pacino chimes in, turns our ruffian into a slick snake, takes over the voice-over duties, making it sound like he’s taking Matthew under his wing to make him a big star in a business that doesn’t have starts but annoying loud-mouths, and I and further frustrated when Renee Russo butts in for no good reason at all.

I am delighted, though, by the appearance of Jeremy Piven, his role, it seems, like a rehash of his Ari character from Entourage, as he scoffs at Matt’s new place as one of “them.”

What’s curious to state about this trailer is that we’re shown this man’s downfall. We’re actually privy to his meltdown as a sports speculator and, for the life of me, can’t understand why I should even care about this dude’s rise and fall. Just like in BOIILER ROOM we get the call from the one guy who put all his speculatatory eggs in one basket, loses it all, and then calls to whine about it and we even get Matt’s eventual Nietzschian, philosophical questioning of the direction in which his life is headed.

Good. You know what? That’s why they call it gambling, ‘Tard.

Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Lucas Black, Chris Cooper
Release: November 4th, 2005
Synopsis: When a young man joins the Marines and trains to be a sniper, he finds himself plunged into the chaotic swirl of sand, oil, fire and death that was the Gulf War. View Trailer:
* Medium (Windows Media)

However, I can look past all this luggage and baggage because any time you have a kid who is narrating his inner feelings about serving his country, and there’s an uneasiness that’s pasting and gelling it all together, you’ve got some good juxtaposition going. I appreciate that.

Even before we get the handle on what Jake Gyllenhaal is doing, preparing for, we get the ubiquitous Directed By card, glossing over his efforts on ROAD TO PERDITION, and going straight for that Oscar card with AMERICAN BEAUTY. Understandable considering the nebulous handle most people either had or didn’t have on PERDITION.

What gets me about this trailer, and how it slowly sucks you in, is that after they flash Jamie “Don’t Call Me Stealth” Foxx it’s Jake’s blind vacancy behind his eyes that gets me. He’s not quite Private Gomer Pile from FULL METAL JACKET but there’s uneasiness behind the anticipation in his face.

Chris Cooper, with his microphone tilted toward his face, the way he’s proselytizing and addressing a choir of hungry soldiers who are all willing to do thy bidding, shows us a flicker of greatness once more as he lays down the aims for the attack that’s about to happen. Cooper isn’t screwing around.

The soundtrack changes. It’s lyrical with a minimalist hip-hop beat pulsating underneath it as the images we’re getting, Jake popping a gum bubble as he mans a sniper rifle, a dude sleeping in a foxhole, a platoon marching with their gas masks on and the sweetest looking line of fighters, a good dozen of them, flying side-by-side with their exhaust lines trailing behind them, trigger curiosity but we don’t get much in the way of narration.

That’s fine, though.

We get more of the same as the trailer goes beyond its halfway mark. Jake dons a Santa hat sans shirt, guys are playing football in their gas masks, oil field flames shoot into the air like geysers and a humvee flips over from an explosion underneath it.

The trailer doesn’t see a need, the precious seconds bleeding away as more discordant images conflagrate to the point of confusion, to fill us in on what the hell this is all about. If we’re going by style alone, that’s fine, A+, but if I had to take any umbrage at all is that we’re not really “in on” what Jake’s role is. Is he an eager boy who turns into a man and then realizes he was eager for all the wrong reasons? Does he turn into a sadist who gives in to his animalistic rage and need for violence? The point is never resolved and I would hope we get a little more insight than this.

James Dean’s adolescent brooding and “dangerous” air went out when he did. I’ve got to identify with who I’m seeing but I got none of that here. The imagery, though, is worth the price of viewing.

Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Cliffton Collins Jr., Bruce Greenwood, Chris Cooper, Bob Balaban, Mark Pellegrino
Release: September 30, 2005 (limited)
Synopsis: On November 15, 1959, the brutal murder of a family in a small Kansas town sent shockwaves through the nation ““ and captured the attention of one of the most distinctive minds of our time. One-of-a-kind author Truman Capote was sent to Kansas to pen an article about the crimes for The New Yorker magazine. He ended up writing one of the most celebrated books of the century. CAPOTE follows Truman Capote (Hoffman) on his odyssey to create the landmark bestseller In Cold Blood. With signature style and mordant wit ““ and his friend Harper Lee (Keener) in tow ““ Capote attempts to charm the locals and work his way into the story behind the murders. He’s soon shocked, however, to find himself forming a friendship with one of the killers, Perry Smith (Collins). As the book nears completion and execution day approaches, Capote finds himself torn in directions he never anticipated and is forever changed by his experiences.

Prognosis: Confused. Alright, peeps, this is your medicine for the week.

Yeah, it would be Hella Cool if I would’ve looked at the new DOOM trailer this week but you all can’t be living your life under a Technicolor, Dolby Digital, Hi-Fi surround sound rock. Broaden your horizons, as it were.

This has all the horizon you’ll need for a while.

What I like about the opening about this trailer is that even though there is something very quiet about a rural home in Kansas (I lived there for years and I can vouch that there ain’t jack crap going on within its suburbs) it’s very loud when you punctuate that scene, a very cold and blustery scene, with a flash of light and a gun blast. That gets your attention.

Cut to Seymour Hoffman. Tortured with a voice that would’ve made David Sedaris recognize there was probably someone else in this world who got their ass kicked more than he did, Seymour talks about wanting to write about the murders. There’s something that interests him about it. Before we know what really interests him about the story we are shoved into Seymour’s backstory. It’s wickedly brief and you can use the melodic cues to take you through it all.

On the one hand you have this jaunty beat which shows Seymour as the insider for New York’s affluent and aristocratic buffoons in a time when the notion of a social insider meant more than being a Page 6 leech but after the giggles and patronizing accolades are heaped upon Capote’s persona the music gets morose. Seymour is in Kansas, wearing a deliciously well woven scarf, in the middle of winter. We’re not really sure what he hopes to uncover and his laissez faire attitude regarding the crime doesn’t help establish his motives.

At one point in this trailer, after we’re on the hunt for some Midwestern kind of killers, we get Capote reflecting on how people have misjudged him for his entire life just because of the way he talked. True, he does have that kind of whiny, tinny voice that has never really before been harnessed by heterosexual male but that’s no excuse to be so down on yourself. Really, if I want to go to a pity party I would sooner go over to humanitarian Richard Simmons’ house so he can explain to me why he thinks he’s so misunderstood by a society because of his “eccentricities.” After getting this out of the man we’re graciously allowed back into the trailer’s action.

What follows seems pretty conventional just based on what I see in this trailer’s presentation. We have a dude who may or may not be guilty of the crime of murder and you have Capote who is like John Grisham’s wet dream, a man who will defy the odds to prove the man’s innocence, just by investigating the man’s life. It’s all very true to Hollywood form except here you have some black and white pictures of Capote and the would-be killer in some poses you would think they’re shooting for the J. Crew Fall 2005 calendar. It’s very strange.

Chris Cooper, bless his heart, looks like the beleaguered cop who has been on the case for years and has to endure the eccentricities of this fruit loop of a writer. It just looks like it’s taking everything Cooper has to not pistol whip the poor bastard into leaving town on the next Amtrak leaving Wichita, Kansas.

The end of this trailer has Cooper and Hoffman sharing a table, Cooper’s body language subtly showing us the phrase “Get me the hell away from this bastard before I dish out a little small town justice” in all its resplendent glory, and when Hoffman nearly whispers the title of his book the look on Cooper’s face is all but worth a 1,000 hand-typed words.

Director: Mark Waters
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Jon Heder, Dina Spybey, Ben Shenkman
Release: September 16th, 2005
Synopsis: When David (Mark Ruffalo) sublet his quaint San Francisco apartment, the last thing he expected – or wanted – was a roommate. He had only begun to make a complete mess of the place when a pretty young woman named Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon) suddenly shows up, adamantly insisting the apartment is hers. David assumes there’s been a giant misunderstanding”¦until Elizabeth disappears as mysteriously as she appeared. Changing the locks does nothing to deter Elizabeth, who begins to appear and disappear at will – mostly to rebuke David for his personal living habits in her apartment. Convinced that she is a ghost, David tries to help Elizabeth cross over to the “other side.” But while Elizabeth has discovered she does have a distinctly ethereal quality – she can walk through walls – she is equally convinced that she is somehow still alive and isn’t crossing over anywhere. As Elizabeth and David search for the truth about who Elizabeth is and how she came to be in her present state, their relationship deepens into love. Unfortunately, they have very little time before their prospects for a future together permanently fade away.

Prognosis: Awful. Hi, I’m Mark Ruffalo and I was pretty good in that indie tear fest movie YOU CAN COUNT ON ME. Lucky for you I was also in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND which I got to get my swerve on with Kirsten Dunst in my Fruit Of The Loom’s. You’re lucky because those movies don’t pay enough for me to pay the rent so I have little option but to star in movies like 13 GOING ON 30 and this new one JUST LIKE HEAVEN, big Hollywood marketing darlings which you middle America ladies seem to gobble up like chocolate pudding. I wish things could be different but I can’t see any other way to make sure my career keeps going.

Someone needs to give Mark a check just so he’ll stop appearing in these pre-packaged titter-fests which women love to drag their men to. If there was something redeeming about the filmic history of Reese Whitherspoon I’d love to share it here but since it’s nonexistent I can’t possibly be expected to do that. So far, and this is for those keeping score at home, I have been pulled into every movie that chick has done in the last 7 years because I have a wife who think she’s the bee’s knees and, by default, I’ve been to most every opening weekend of this chick’s flicks.

That’s why, in this movie, I am happy to report, with much glee, Reese is hit, head-on, by a truck and killed.

Let me repeat, she is hit, head-on, by a truck. If this scene could have been filmed at different angles I could actually see the point of watching 90 minutes of just this one moment.

Suffice to say, though, she doesn’t stay dead and that’s a big disappointment. She apparently is a hard working doctor, one commenting that she’s worked for 26 hours and needs to go home to rest her pretty blonde head, to which she keeps on keeping on. And that’s when she’s hit by a truck, head-on.

Cut to Mark Ruffalo who needs a place to live. He, apparently, chooses Reese’s old space and actually sees her after one of his showers. Again, things could be interesting if he was rubbing one out right before their meeting because that would honestly put a new twist in this dead person/live person/no one else can see them genre.

And what’s more about what is so crappy about this picture is that while the two of them are trying to coexist with one another, Reese not believing she’s dead, Mark trying to make sense of what he’s seeing and it all being very zany, who should appear but Jon “Napoleon Dynamite” Heder. He plays a supporting role in this crapfest and I can’t, for the life of me, begrudge the guy who obviously isn’t doing this movie for its great artistic merits but becuase he needs some face time with the American public and would also appreciate some spending money for the weekend.

Oh yeah, the tagline which says that this movie is from the same director of FREAKY FRIDAY and MEAN GIRLS? That should be like one of those Nazi P.O.W. prison camp sirens from Hogan’s Heroes, blaring into your subconscious that you should avoid this at all costs. But, here’s the twist, and this is really complex so I’ll break it down slow: when Mark decides to revisit all Reese’s old friends and colleagues and they all say how she was a workaholic, cold old maid, Reese ends up feeling really bad.

And, stab my eyes, the two of them start to like each other in a most intimate way. Now, even though there are some GHOST, ALL OF ME and DEFENDING YOUR LIFE elements going on in this movie it does not deter from the fact that the further you, your old lady or your quote-un-quote “roommate,” who is wacked out of their skull and thinks Reese is just like one of us from what they’ve seen in US Weekly, get into this trailer the more manipulative it gets.

In much the same way Quint rolled in his rod n’ reel with a crazed look in his eye when he snagged Jaws so too does this trailer play the sappy ass music, interjecting the sappy looks our two players give each other and the false emotion behind Reese’s hope that she wishes she wasn’t so dead, this trailer plays its Mysterio mindfuck trick on those sympathetic to these fake characters’ plight and this will only result in your significant, or insignificant, other drag you against your will into the theater.

This trailer, though, if I am going to be honest with all of you, is a great example of how you make a piece of advertising which does nothing more than try and snowball someone into seeing it. There isn’t one redeeming piece of story hidden behind the fluff but it does a great job in trying to persuade you that there is.

Director: Karyn Kusama
Cast: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Jonnie Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo
Release: December 12, 2005
Synopsis: The film, based on the futuristic MTV animated series created by Peter Chung, is set 1,000 years in the future, when disease has wiped out the population save for one city. The acrobatic title character (Theron) is the top operative in an underground rebellion, but when sent on a mission to kill the government’s leader, she uncovers a secret making her question if she’s on the right side. McDormand will play the Handler, the leader of the rebellion.

Prognosis: Negative. Raven haired. Can we get that out of the way first? It’s a very becoming look on any lady who wants to put on the affectation of Wednesday Addams. Now, we open onto a scene must like that of the WAR OF THE WORLDS. There are these towers which look like the bulbous heads of the alien invaders in Spielberg’s finale/brake fest and Charlize stands on the precipice of an adjoining structure. It’s up way high and I have no idea why she has a look of fear on her face if she was the one who went up there in the first place.

She rears back and runs off the ledge, looking like Trinity from the original MATRIX: RELOADED, the one that didn’t suck as bad as the other sequel, and she even gives us a wholly unnecessary somersault as she makes it to the other side of a very long space between buildings.

Soon after we are regaled with Charlize’s voiceover about this “last society” on Earth, of course, and how it’s supposed to be this utopia, of course, and how it’s anything but, of course. There are even rebels, who form an underground movement, who are trying to reassert control over the mentally asleep citizens. The imagery and the way she moves seems awfully like Denis Leary’s character in a similarly plotted movie: DEMOLITION MAN.

Now, the government seems to be stealing its citizens on the sly for reasons unknown. That’s why Charlize is on the case, right? We get a flash of skulls, almost too fast, to really throw it home that this is serious shit. They’re not kidding around with this kidnapping stuff.

Transpose onto that, if you will, the next set of visuals: Charlize walking around in some low-cut bikini briefs. What would you be more concerned with? Human life or trying like a Kit-Kat to break you piece off of that? I know where my concern is.

There’s a weird moment when we’re told that there are people who fight for the disappeared. We get some GQ looking dude, all in spandex black, who embraces some chick, also in spandex black, but she’s wearing an eye-less cowl, the exact same lame-ass outfit that Rex Smith, aka The Daredevil, wore in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk. It’s alarming to see it revisited here as is the French kiss which takes between them. The dude passes along some silver pill via his tongue, like this is some high school kegger, and we get up-close to look at the exchange. Why? I don’t know and really don’t care.

Charlize then lets us know that she too is a fighter for those persons who are snatched by the government and we are regaled with a display of her physical prowess. She beautifully kicks some well choreographed butt as we’re told she’s expertly trained and ruthlessly efficient. It’s a little tiresome as the set pieces seem a bit worn and played out.

What does interest me, though, even after recoiling in horror at the sight of Frances McDormand donning some of the most wicked bed head, crow’s nest hair I have ever laid eyes on, is that when Aeon is given the assignment of killing some person or something she stands on the top of this overly green hill. This hill looks straight at the lush grounds which lead to the spooky base of operations of whomever and Charlize takes off running toward the place only to see that the green grass is alive and it’s sharp. Little green needles bend towards Theron’s face as she quickly discovers this. The effects here are pretty nice but that’s about it.

We get NBC Daredevil circa 1989 again, one of those quick drum beats behind the visuals which is supposed to indicate extreme action of some sort and one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen in an action movie: Charlieze whistles like she’s calling Lassie, except here she’s calling a series of iron marbles, and they somehow, someway, assist her in the quest for goodness. It’s awful.

The ending quick shots are just as bad. The low quality execution of what should be pretty intense effects, the bad guy looking just like any conventional bad guy should, the zingers that Charlize throws out which should sound like bon-mots but end up sounding like pathetic one-liners and the way she tries to come off as this tougher than leather warrior just comes across as a pretty girl who is trying to play the part of the bad-ass.

Director: Mike Mills
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D’Onofrio, Keanu Reeves, Benjamin Bratt
Release: September 16, 2005
Synopsis: Justin throws himself and everyone around him into chaos when he attempts to break free from his addiction to his thumb.

Prognosis: Positive. Big fan of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE.

Huge.

When I saw it I wasn’t quite sure what the hell I was viewing but after getting to the five minute mark, I got it.

That flick makes haters or lovers out of people and, judging by the numbers of people who are wearing Vote for Pedro shirts that they bought at Hot Topic, don’t worry if you’re one of them this is a place for healing, I’d say a lot of people got the vibe of the movie and that’s a good thing.

However, but not so much a “however” as it is an Exhibit A kind of lead-in, a movie that apes the handcraftiness of Napoleon’s artistic scribblings was bound to make its way here and I am happy to say that after one year of being out there, we have our movie and I feel accepting of the angle this marketing is going in.

I wasn’t expecting much but hot damn if I didn’t like this trailer. There’s some independent flavor that’s desperately being sought after and I’ll give the filmmakers that much. The cinematography creeps up on you as what sounds like the opening piano suite from Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue starts to play. It’s not but it just seems so close and apropos. We see our normal suburban stronghold of a house; static, no camera movement. Next we get to infer our protagonist has been living in said tenement with the pencil markings on the wall demarcating how he’s grown as a young child. Next, a crapload of trash falls from the top of the screen, its source nowhere to be found, and you’re left with the “Huh?” feeling as you’re yanked to Keanu’s voiceover. He’s talking to our young man who’s laid out on Dr. Reeve’s dental chair. They’re talking about the effects of thumb sucking and what it’s doing to our adolescent. Keanau gets all New Age with him. It’s amusing in quiet way.

Flash to a hand-drawn card telling us the name of the movie. I want to see a Liger pop out at me but I don’t get it.

What I do get, though, is a rocket ship ride which passes by lots of good information like:

A) Tilda Swinton is the kid’s mom.

B) Benjamin Bratt is a sensitive listener.

C) Vincent D’Onofrio is the kid’s dad.

D) Vince Vaughn plays a creepy teacher.

Solid cast and their parts are well fleshed-out for as little time as we’re given with them.

Our kid hero likes the ladies and if you’re one of those kind of dudes who like seeing young women in their skivvies head on over to this trailer and wait until the 50 second mark. Big payoff.

The music changes to some indie-emo rock, sounds like we moved from the Crue to Foo, Fighters that is, and over the beat of the tune that’s playing we see that little Johnny has ADD, hyperactivity disorder and a couple more behavioral maladies which are easily remedied with some medication. He’s shown taking the pills and, two seconds later, which in movie time really equates to two months, it’s like comic book continuity, he’s better.

“You see those girls out there?”

“Yeah.”

“Go round them up, bring them in here.”

“In the men’s room?”

“It’s okay, I’m a teacher, I’m a teacher.”

Vince Vaughn, while not your typical, amusing wisecrack ace of a guy, does have his part as a creepy educator down pat. I even laugh at the above exchange that Vince has with our once withdrawn teen that’s slowly coming out of his social skin.

There are some weird words between Keanu and our man shortly after the bathroom scene and things take a weird turn when the kid starts to discover things about himself which weren’t previously expressed before his indoctrination into the world of pharmaceuticals. He’s smart, intelligent and he is all about getting his swerve on with many a lady. Again, for those who like teenage girls in their skivvies, go to the 1 minute 50 second mark. I have no idea what its purpose is in the grand context besides giving those playing the home game a little thrill but I’m honestly more interested in the story and I don’t get that.

If there’s anything that leaves me cold is that I don’t really get to know why I should care about the protagonist here besides cheering for the fact that he looks well on his way to scoring some high school tail before the last reel of this movie has come to an end.

Director: James McTeigue
Cast: Natalie Portman, James Purefoy, Stephen Rea
Release: March 17, 2006
Synopsis: Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered young woman named Evey (Portman) who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked vigilante (Purefoy) known only as “V.” Incomparably charismatic and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception, V ignites a revolution when he detonates two London landmarks and takes over the government-controlled airwaves, urging his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression. As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself ““ and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plot to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.

With a full head of hair in the beginning, as she’s shaking and quivering from the uncertainty of being interrogated in the old school, Starsky and Hutch ways, with a bright GE 100-Watt, “Gentle enough to read by, bright enough to live with”¦”, being shoved in her face, she’s harkening back to an older time. It was during HEAT, when she’s lost her hair thingy and she’s flippin’ out to her ice queen of a mother and she’s shaking her poodle perm back and forth as she says she can’t be late. I somehow felt this urge to shave that melon right then, but here, when they show they do it, it’s wonderful. Her reaction isn’t like that of a Pauly Shore in IN THE ARMY NOW, but what really could top that, really?

The trailer, though, is masterfully rendered.

While there really isn’t anything that’s done, cinematography wise, to make me feel that the environment is anything less than a soundstage I am still engaged fully with it.

What’s odd is that when she’s asked if she’s going to cooperate with The Man, in finding our dude, V, and when you know she’s going to give the requisite “No” in complete defiance, as she’s wearing some potato sack and looking like a raccoon who’s been tucked away in a barrel for a few months with the rings around her eyes, she gives that “No” and the spirit of Keanu-speak slithers ever so quietly through the speakers.

Things then kick up with the Hitler Youth rally that seems to indicate that the world’s turned into a police state where everyone snitches on each other and that terrorism here is another way to see how the George W. Bush administration has turned the whole world”¦blah blah blah. The idea of the police state and how Natalie is caught up in this web of government control is a good one that’s executed with some good visual aplomb; even though, again, the cinematography and direction is a bit limp, I am still groovin’ on what’s happening.

“From the creators of the Matrix trilogy”

So, we get our V for Vendetta guy. He twirls his little daggers around like he’s part of a new faction of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that’s crashed into the style of Zorro Gone Wayward. The little wisps of hair that flow like air around his head as he’s delivering a little outsider justice, that mask staying in perfect place as he twirls around, is nice to look at. The guy looks like quite the bad ass. Although, after Natalie listens to how the government made V into the man he is, the line “Then they’ve created a monster” throws my eyeballs back into my skull as I thought that Moore was a better writer than to write something so hokey. I am quickly reminded, though, that he is more than perturbed with the way things went on this production so I feel 90% that wasn’t his doing.

The scenes leading up to the final money shot galore fest help, if nothing else, define what this movie is really about. It juxtaposes the theme of the story, that totalitarian rule over a populace that is so paralyzed by their own complacency is just accepted as fact, with the notion that this guy, V, isn’t a terrorist so much as he is a galvanizing force that tries to help, while harming, those who would just take it in the balloon knots and not so much as say boo about it.

The explosions that trigger our descent into London, circa whenever, are fairly sweet. Our knife wielding protagonist rails against our bad guys, his full-on mop whipping around his head like a showgirl’s wig, and stuff is just blowing up left and right. The bomb strapped to V’s body with his thumb on the slivery trigger is a nice touch.

Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Amie Huguenard, Timothy Treadwell
Release: August 12, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: A devastating and heart-wrenching take on grizzly bear activists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who were killed in October of 2003 while living among grizzlies in Alaska.

I have never been one to romanticize the wonderful things that are hidden in our nation’s forest system but the sweeping views of the tree cobbled mountains that open this trailer are really nice to look at.

And, this is nice, even though you’re enjoying the view and listening to the man who tended to grizzly bears for over a decade Voiceover Guy just barrels right into the obvious when he states that one of the grizzlies he “swore to protect” killed him. That’s funny, though, in a macabre way. Yeah, a grizzly killed him, but they’re grizzlies. They’re carnivores. It doesn’t take anything away from the pacing, though. I was just adding my own reaction to the semantics of the line.

Boom, we’re right into it with some grizzlies, on their hind legs wrestling with each other. It’s a sight to see these beasts of nature so close but then we’re introduced to the bear man himself, Timothy Treadwell. It’s, seriously, a really nice gesture that they put his D.O.B. and date of death on the screen and I think it really helps, in a nuanced way, add a little something human to the moment. Now, Timothy is oblivious to the natural instinct to flee like your ass is in flames and even calls one of his grizzlies “Mr. Chocolate.”

Tim’s voice is so calm and delicate that it’s hard not to just wonder what is racing through the guy’s mind.

Interject a newspaper clip from Ebert, giving this docu a solid thumbs-up.

Tim is given some time to talk about the process of getting in close with the bears and you begin to see where his pathos starts to fragment away from what any other person with a need for self-preservation would likely do if they were in his place. Tim talks about being confronted by these bears and, instead of talking about cutting and running, he uses the metaphor of the samurai.

Interject a newspaper clip from the Times, Variety.

There is interview footage from what appears to be a helicopter pilot, rocking a Wilfred Brimley “˜stache, who essentially says Tim got what he deserved.

And that’s when things take a dark turn.

Instead of this being a celebration of what Tim did there are a good half dozen or so references that Tim makes into the camera which speak to the lethality of one thing or another about being with these bears. It’s haunting.

That’s how this trailer slowly burns out. We get some interview footage, probably post bear attack, which explains that Tim’s death among the bears was something he was willing to go through because it was something that he loved. He was crazy as all hell but I would actually like to see how Werner Herzog pieces it all together.

Director: Rob McKittrick
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris, Justin Long
Release: October 7, 2005
Synopsis: Young employees at Shenanigan’s restaurant collectively stave off boredom and adulthood with their antics.

Reason #2: Dane Cook. Did you read what I wrote about homeboy last week? Have you any clue what I am talking about? If you’re still clueless then clue in on to how he handles his comedic bad self in this trailer. Feel free to write in to disagree but you’re wrong even before you put your fingers onto your greasy keyboard.

The trailer opens up, oddly, with the same kind of jaunty music that opened OFFICE SPACE. I’m not sure if this is intentional but the coincidence of that movie being about jobs we all hate and this movie, which also seems to be about a job any teen who has had to get a job can relate to, is really odd.

No matter, though, as Ryan Reynolds comes bounding onto the screen, seducing the camera like a lover needing a quick hump. He’s just good that way.

The introductions to the other people who Ryan works with are a little funny. It’s nothing I would call hilarious but it’s when we come to the kitchen where the giggles, titters and the chuckles start flowing like a boxed wine with a hole in it.

A steak falls off the grill and onto the ground. Guzman, looking like the head chef, yells out to Cook. You’d expect some sort of lambasting or even a reprimand for dropping the food but he screams out, “The 5 second rule! The 5 second rule!” He starts counting off one, two, three as Cook wrangles it off the brown tile floor and laughs as he gets it onto the plate before five. That’s comedy.

We get that, after we see the kind of “hijinks” that are going on behind the doors of the restaurant and are entertained to see Guzman and Cook going at it again and we even get the idea that this R rating could be for a little sauciness with regard to the ladies. And that’s fine, you know? The world needs more movies in the vein of HOT DOG, MEATBALLS or any other brainless comedy that just plays it for laughs.

When we pick up with some of the storytelling we have Ryan being yelled at by a customer who would like their steak cooked more than it was served. In a quiet voice, Ryan turns around to the kitchen, plate in hand and we get “Ride of the Valkyries.” Dane is there to explain how he’s going to add extra gravy to the mashed potatoes (cue assistant to Dane who generates some nasal phlegm), will put a little garlic salt on her bread (cue another assistant who Ally Sheedy BREAKFAST CLUB’s their scalp to make it rain down dandruff) and they watch as the customer begins once more to eat her meal.

If you found the fortitude to enjoy VAN WILDER I am sure you’ll appreciate the approach to comedy here.

Director: Anand Tucker
Cast: Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman, Sam Bottoms, Frances Conroy, Rebecca Pidgeon, Joshua Snyder, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Gina Doctor, Anne Marie Howard
Release: October 21, 2005
Synopsis: Based on Steve Martin’s bestselling novella, SHOPGIRL is a funny and poignant story of love in the modern age. The film catches a glimpse inside the lives of three very different people on diverse paths, but all in search of the same thing. Mirabelle (Claire Danes) is a “plain Jane” overseeing the rarely frequented glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. An artist struggling to keep up with even the minimum payment on her credit card and student loans, she keeps to herself until a rich, handsome fifty something named Ray Porter (Steve Martin) sweeps her off her feet. Simultaneously, Mirabelle is being pursued by Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a basic bachelor who’s not quite as cultured and successful as Ray. When fate steps in, the outcome may not always be a storybook ending, because in the end”¦it was life.

It was called “The Pleasure of My Company” and it was alright. It was good, a little quirky in a way that some would call weird, but its resolution was a little less than I would’ve liked. If I had to really make a go at critiquing his novella writing style I would call it “needlessly ambitious.” He just tries too hard.

With this trailer, as well, I think there’s something there that makes me feel like the pretension almost excludes me as a viewer. Let me explain.

We open up in a glove parlor. I’m not sure where one goes to get long gloves or who actually stands behind a counter selling them but when Steve says that the black will do and goes about his merry way I am left thinking what I just witnessed. A guy buying gloves for his wife? Who does that? Obviously, literary people do. Ok, I’ll give him that. A little haughty, but ok.

Now, we focus on Claire. She does her washing at a Laundromat. Jason Schwartzman, who really hasn’t found lightning again since RUSHMORE, almost in I HEART HUCKABEES, insinuates himself into Claire’s life as an oddball love interest. It feels unnatural, and Claire’s understanding of Jason’s oddness which she hopes goes away, is spinning me in all sorts of confused directions.

Then, Steve pops up again. The gloves are waiting for Claire at her humble apartment as Steve wants to hit that. They even go to dinner where Steve looks rather natural as he tries to feel out the skeevy factor of his advances on a girl who is sharply younger than he is.

Click back to Jason. The two of them start dating, for reasons I don’t understand, and, watching Jason, you can’t really empathize with her because he is such an oddball loser.

Steve pops up, asks her if she’d like to dine on his private jet and she acquiesces.

Is this a story where it’s like, “Do I choose the guy who is so obviously wrong or do I chose the guy who has lots of money and privilege but could be my dad?”

Whatever the answer is, and the question actually gets asked in this trailer, I’m not sure I’d want to spend the time to find out. There’s nothing really compelling about the trailer and the story doesn’t seem that novel. What I do know, though, is that the music chosen is top notch, there are no voiceovers that get in the way, and there doesn’t seem to be an obvious answer to any questions that are posed. In that respect I give it some respect but that’s about it.

And P.S. ““ Have any of you seen the movie poster for this flick? Check out the trailer site and see what I’m talking about. Claire Danes looks like a dude. In real life she’s a rather pretty woman but the poster makes her look like a bad transvestite who just discovered wigs and make-up.

Director: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Ethan Hawke, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan, Jeffrey Wright, Ian Holm
Release: September 16, 2005
Synopsis: An arms dealer (Cage) who schemes his way to the top of his profession only to face an enemy he never expected: his conscience. But it’s not easy to leave behind a life of girls, guns and glamour, when no-one wants you to stop, not even your enemies.

Who else but Clarence would sit across the desk from a guy who manufactures cocaine, packages them in small glass I Love Jeanie bottles, and then proceeds to dip his fingers in said manufacturers’ red wine and snorts the drippings? That’s not foul, that’s just the making of a better than clichéd envisioning of a crazy mofo. I especially like the part, in the same scene, when Clarence has a half-dozen or so automatic weapons drawn on him to which he quips with a giddy glee, “Guns, guns, guns”¦” That’s what I am reminded here as Nicholas Cage, who is really earning value like a good stock with me with this picture, disregarding his downslide whoring of himself for NATIONAL TREASURE, does the voiceover for this trailer.

As the camera glides over the perfectly placed display of yards and yards of ammunition, Cage explains what he does with not even a tinge of either remorse or some manufactured sense of bravado. It’s a sales job, he explains, with all the responsibilities that go along with it. The fact that’s tossed out, that there’s one firearm for every 12 people in the world, and his calm intonation about wondering about how to arm the other 11 is a sales quandary but one he supposes with steely honesty. It’s darkly amusing and, yet, makes complete sense.

The shot of the man, well, shooting at someone and the accompanying sounds of the ka-ching with every recoil of the man’s AK-47, the shell casing arcing away from the gun, as it exists is wicked sharp.

Then, we get the Flying Lizards’ “Money (That’s What I Want),” a song I’ve never really been too keen on, appropriately slides in as this movie unfolds. Cage in his suit and tie, talking to warlords of countries barely anyone would be able to find on a map, doesn’t look like someone who should be castigated so much as he someone who has seen a niche market and is serving it.

Jared Leto, a man I really did swear a blood oath to revile like a pretty boy in need of a good flogging across the face with a cat-o-nine-tails for all that prissy preening as the hopelessly understood yet incredibly well kempt “bad boy” of My So Called Life, really flickers here and there as he seems to be Cage’s right hand man.

Ethan Hawke is a bit of a distraction as he appears to be requisite Man Who is Trying to Bring Him Down as is the hot dollop of a doll who is Cage’s arm candy. She has no idea what he does and he wants to keep it that way, as he says that there are plenty of sales people who don’t talk about their work, but whatever works, right?

I can’t complain too much as even when Cage is approached by an agent of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms unit he cracks a little wise to say he assumes he isn’t being talked to about alcohol or tobacco. It’s a one-liner, sure, but in the moment, in the context of this trailer, it works just fine.

Clarence would be proud of a guy like this.

P.S.S. ““ Have you seen the poster for this flick? I hope next year at the Key Art Awards, where they celebrate movie advertising and trailer work, the graphic artist gets some props for a sweet ass design.