FRED Entertainment

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.

Darren: Oh really? That’s what they told me you’re supposed to do.

Was it cool?

Yes, yes it was”¦

Darren: Is it good?

It was good”¦

Darren: I don’t think it will stop people from coming to see the movie. I think it will probably make them want to see more. Unless it sucked.

Was it confusing?

A little bit”¦

How was it confusing?

Ummmm”¦..What the hell is the tree?

Darren: That’s what the film is about is finding out what it is. It’s a mystery.

[To Rachel] Were you confused, while you were making it?

Rachel: No, I obviously read the script many times. I figured it out.

Is it non-linear?

Darren: Well, emotionally it’s linear. It’s non-linear in time. You’re basically following one character, Hugh Jackman’s character, through the course of the film and it adds up and it makes sense but it’s told in a very PULP FICTION sort of way.

How many drafts, how many revisions has this movie gone through?

Darren: There were probably about 50 official drafts around. Official. Which means when I was just tweaking away there were a lot of drafts. Well”¦50 drafts and 30 official drafts.

Did you ever feel that you were getting to the point where you felt like you were at the point of overworking the material?

Darren: I think that we did over think it at times. That’s part of the process is that you go too far and you have to come back. And you go too far and you have to come back. So, it’s a slow balancing act to get to the place.

Was it significantly rewritten?

Darren: Yeah, when it went from a 95 million dollar film to a 35 million dollar film it changed a lot. And that was my move because I realized they wouldn’t have made it at that level so I had to come up with the cheapest version they could make it with.

Did that help you creatively?

Darren: I think what kicked in was some kind of independent, guerilla filmmaker. So it was probably something more of who I was versus what I was becoming.

So, would either of you characterize this filmic experience as a guerilla”¦ I think I would say it. It’s a 35 million dollar guerilla movie. Absolutely.

[To Rachel] How was that experience for you?

Darren: You’ve done a lot of those big movies, so how did it seem?

Rachel: The thing about that is that you’re talking about money in a way. So, the green’s green is the green’s green. So, for however much money is spent in post is irrelevant to me as an actor. The guerilla aspect of it is just the style in which Darren directs. He’s very passionate and very (laughs) guerilla.

The budget thing doesn’t affect me as an actor.

Darren: Well, were we crappy to you? You had a trailer, though. You were all set.

Did you have to work fast?

Darren: Yeah.

Rachel: We worked long hours.

Darren: We didn’t work that long, did we? Did I go over time a lot? It really should be a 90 million dollar movie so hopefully it looks a lot bigger than 35 million. When you think that an average Hollywood film is, how much, 60 million without P&A, 60-70 million for your average Hollywood movie, this film looks big. I think that’s because we spent 6 years, 5 years, in pre-production and we figured out how we could do everything smart and cheap. Every single dime is on that screen.

Me: How close was it to never being made?

Darren: Yeah, in October 2002, an actor quit and the movie fell apart and it was basically dead and that’s when the graphic novel began because I just wanted to get the story out there somehow. So, we worked on the graphic novel and during that time period I was like, “There’s got to be a way to make this that I can do, that’s make able.” And that’s when I wrote the most guerilla version of it and what came out I showed to Eric, the producer, and he’s like, “Let’s go make it.”

Me: What happened with Hugh where you all of sudden thought, “I gotta get that guy”?

Darren: What happened with Hugh is that, to be frank, he wasn’t really on my radar because he had done X-MEN and he was great but hadn’t done much else.

Then, I went to his Broadway show. Even though that performance, “The Boy From Oz,” is so different than THE FOUNTAIN but there was so much passion and energy and charisma”¦he’s such an untapped talent. I mean, in this film, we really show every side of Hugh Jackman and he just really went for it.

So, I went backstage afterwards and he was really nice and I asked him what he was doing next and he said, “I want to do an Aronofsky film.” “Yeah? Prove it.”

(Laughs)

Then, I showed him the script and, what time do Broadway shows end, 10:30, he read it that night, called me at 10 am the next morning”¦he really got it. As you can tell that this is not your average film to get. So we talked about it and it meant that we had to wait another 8 months, we were ready to go at that point, but he had so much passion and I decided that outweighed the other stuff.

Why was this film right for the Comi-Con audience?

Darren: Well, there’s also the graphic novel.

So, not only is it this movie, it’s also this graphic novel. I mean, I am a comic fan and this just fits right into, you know, what we like. I’ll use the word “we” sparingly but it’s sci-fi, it’s got sword and sandal, and it’s got a love story.

Rachel: Is that a term? Sword and sandal?

(Laughs)

Darren: Isn’t it? It’s a genre.

Rachel: (Surprised) Really?

Thinking of the space portion of the movie? What were some of the challenges in making that part of the movie?

The challenges were, from a production point of view, is that you had to spend a lot of money for a third of the film. So that’s where it was a difficult film to make. It was kind of fun. The only challenge was that if you fuck up when you shave”¦when you make Hugh Jackman go bald, if you fuck up you’re screwed. Are there any kids here?

Rachel: No”¦

(Laughs)

Darren: If you don’t do anything with the Conquistador thing, then you messed up. We had to make sure we had everything before we changed his hairstyle.

For Rachel, what was the most challenging thing for you?

Rachel: I guess the most challenging thing was that it was very emotional, very raw, very exposed part. And it’s a good challenge because it’s a real acting job even though it’s housed inside a real science-fiction movie. I’m not playing an action babe, or whatever, I’m playing a very emotional character so that’s what drew me to it and that’s what was a challenge about it.

Me (Seconds before feeling like a dumb-ass for asking a dumb-ass question): Rachel, how close were you to not being in this movie? It has gone through so many changes, co-stars, etc”¦, did you ever say to yourself, “You know, I don’t think I want to put any more time into this picture”?

Rachel: I hadn’t been attached to it in its initial incarnation. Darren just recounted the story of how he cast Hugh and after he cast Hugh he only then went through the process of casting a female lead. And that’s when he came to me. I hadn’t been attached to it for a long time.

Can you tell us about your character?

Rachel: She’s a woman living in contemporary America who’s married to Hugh, they’re deeply in love and she finds out that she’s terminally ill. It’s about how she comes to terms with dying and leaving her partner. So, that’s why it’s a very emotional role. It’s about love”¦and death.

Darren: And it starts with the fountain of youth.

Rachel: Yep.

Darren: It will all make sense when you see it.

What’s been the reaction of people you’ve met here at the Con?

Darren: (Affecting the sound of a fan boy uncontrollably moistening his Jockey’s at the sight of Rachel) AAAuuuaaahhh!!!

(Laughs)

Rachel: Really passionate and really enthusiastic, everyone I’ve met. Very polite.

Darren: Everyone’s polite.

Rachel: “¦Being asked if there is going to be a MUMMY 3, which I don’t know the answer to. I really enjoyed it. I’m going to hit the floor later, I got a Catwoman mask.

(Laughs)

Darren: Shhh!!!

Rachel: There’s gonna be so many Catwoman’s out there”¦

Darren: Catwoman may NOT be popular. It was a big bomb.

Rachel: It was a big bomb?

Darren: It was a big bomb. I’m not sure it would be popular.

Me: Lessons learned from this whole project?

Darren: I think persistence and patience are two virtues of this film. I mean, the film is about rebirth. It’s about coming to terms with life and death. And the film died and was reborn again. So, that was a great process to witness because I think we had to go through that to make it. It was just too out there of a project to have it happen right away. It had to struggle. I think the only films that happen right away are if you do your comedy, do your action film, that’s what happens right away.

Director: Philip Zlotorynski
Writer:Chris Gore (screenplay), Adam Schwartz
Cast: Paget Brewster, Neil Barton, Eric Hoffman, Darren Reiher, Ashley Head, Brian Krow, Neil Hopkins, Rob Schrab
Release: Fall 2005
Synopsis: “My Big Fat Independent Movie” is a spoof along the lines of “Scary Movie” and “Not Another Teen Movie.” It includes parodies of some of the indie film world’s most renowned movies such as “Memento,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Magnolia,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” “Amelie,” “Run Lola Run,” “El Mariachi,” “The Good Girl,” “Pi,” “Swingers” and many others.

Prognosis: Positive. Of all the “First off” and “Before I begin” statements I could make, none could make me happier than saying that I love seeing the red banner trailer notice. There’s always an air of dangerousness about it because someone made the conscious choice to say, “You know, we could do it the way these people want us to make it”¦” but then go about how they want it done. Be it good, bad, sleazy or dirty, with regard to how well it turns out, you just have to respect the decision, you know?

With that said, the trailer’s damn sweet.

The slippery thing about starting a film with scads of WINNER/OFFICIAL SELECTION wreaths is that since this is a comedy and the voiceover is this jaunty man who begins his spiel with the words “Once in a great while” you’re almost inclined to disregard the display as the first of many jokes. This is perhaps the only point that needs clarification: this part of the trailer is the serious bit. A little research finds out that this flick HAS garnered all that attention and adulation legitimately. This is the one and the only time when the trailer takes anything seriously and so we now return you to the regularly scheduled R-Banner trailer.

You know I wish I wouldn’t say this and if I was really trying to be cool I wouldn’t but I love that things start off with Pauly Shore. I am a drunken fan of IN THE ARMY NOW and that bazooka scene at the end of the flick just ties together the simpleton narrative of the movie so nicely. That’s why I appreciate when we see Pauly getting annihilated by the very same extender bazooka. I may have lost all cred in the world with this paragraph but I can’t deny what’s funny to me.

Some of the confusion I felt at the first incarnation of this trailer when I reviewed it last year (!) was that I really didn’t have an idea of where this story was going. Sure, I understood that we had all these parodies but a parody does not a movie make. That’s why I was so pleased to see the goofing on SWINGERS which takes place. Not only does it profane the hip Daddy-O linguistics which the original flick embraced but I am finally getting somewhere with the story.

What’s more is that convention is being spoofed here and not so much just the emblems of the independent era. To put it another way, what movies like NAKED GUN did was just to be absurd for absurd’s sake. What this trailer is doing, with every subsequent goof, be that PULP FICTION or THE GOOD GIRL, is to make light of the story mechanics that pervaded all these movies.

That’s not to say, though, that there isn’t a good laugh to have here. There are lots to point an index finger at while laughing. I particularly enjoyed the meeting between AIMILE and our hero from DESPERADO. The quick exchange between our two protagonists, before one is dispensed with in a most marvelous fashion, is worth watching just for this.

The special effects that are employed throughout this trailer, though, are understandably low budget. The explosions and gun fire which punctuate a lot of this trailer look independent in nature but that its charm.

What you have here is a movie, which is understandably independent, and, instead of going the route of most every first-year film student, the movie looks to capitalize on the more eye-rolling conventions of the independent landscape.

Also, and I don’t want to go too far without noting this, you can never go wrong with lesbians in lingerie. Hell, I enjoyed it and even though those two women on the screen couldn’t be more hetro you throw a snippet like that in a trailer because you know what kind of reaction it will get, from the one segment of audience who you know will gobble that up like a bowl full of kibble.

And Clint Howard. How can you go wrong with a character actor like Slinky whose performance in TANGO AND CASH was so egregiously overlooked by the Academy.

In all, this trailer fires on the right notes and does what it is supposed to do. With subjectivity looming large over the heads of anyone trying to thumb what will play with the greatest amounts of people I can reasonably say that an orgy scene with more chicks in their underwear and depicts a midget getting all up in it with someone trying to ascribe the proper PC designation for him is perhaps the best way to end things.

I just wish this flick finally would come out before its material gets too old for its own good. Weird Al Yankovik understood the timeliness of a good parody and I hope this one does as well.

Director: Rupert Wainwright
Cast: Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, Rade Sherbedgia, Selma Blair
Release: October 14, 2005
Synopsis: Exactly one hundred years ago, off the rocky shore of an isolated Northern California town, a ship of lepers was horribly wrecked in an eerie fog when the founders of the town purposefully misguided the ship, dooming everyone aboard. Now, tonight, the ghosts of the long-dead mariners have returned from their watery graves to exact revenge. Shrouded within a supernatural fog, the ghosts trap the residents of the remote community, intent on seeking out the descendents of those who founded the town…and killing anyone who stands in their murderous path.

Prognosis: Positive. Alright, everyone get it out of your system.

Scream out loudly about how it’s such in poor taste and how it’s so lazy that someone’s decided to remake John Carpenter’s classic in a shameless attempt at cashing in on a property like this. How it’s such a bad idea to tinker with something that should’ve been left alone. Now, I understand where the initial defiance comes from but the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake of last year should’ve been a good sign to a lot of purists out there that there can be solid reinventions of movies that many cultists revere.

After seeing this trailer, though, I have to admit that the rest of you can scream all you like but I think I may have to miss the protest in favor of seeing Maggie Grace walk around in her Victoria Secrets. Honestly, this really looks like a grand day out.

From the moment the trailer opens, and I am thankful, thankful, there isn’t a voiceover involved, the trailer takes its time. We get established early on with the place we’re talking about and the threat of what’s about to come.

The little man who is stationed at his radar, and you’ve got to give it up to all those bit actors who are the ones who sit at the radar screens, the one who tells everyone else about the impending doom (Consult for further reference: the guy from INDEPENDENCE DAY, the guy from TOP GUN, the dudes from THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and CRIMSON TIDE, all sweaty from their time at the controls), informs who is probably going to be the first victim: Selma Blair. She looks like a late night disc jockey who questions why the fog bank that’s coming towards their sleepy little hollow of an island is doing just that. I mean, she’s a disc jockey. Hell, I wouldn’t know that fog doesn’t roll in. You could tell me that fog spontaneously appears wherever it wants and I’m pretty sure I’d believe you. But, whatever, she’s voicing the reason that causes us all to stir in our collective Underroos.

We get a little late night wind chime action to show how the wind’s picking up (Ooo”¦how spooky! Wind chimes!) and some fog outside a four pane window; I have to admit that the later is creepier than all shit as I get flashbacks from SALEM’S LOT. That scratching on the window from those two brothers who turn into vampires still scares the hell out of me.

From here Superboy and Maggie Grace, the two of them looking indelibly lost from an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog shoot, stir from their late night sleep. Maggie has a vision in her sleep; it looks like sunny pond water and algae but it wakes her up, scares her.

Flash to Selma driving home, still at night, and the fog forces her to stop her car. She can’t understand the fog’s appearance. As she’s wondering and hoping to her God to get out of it, her beater is slammed into by a semi (isn’t that always the way?) and it’s really sweet. The effect is nicely done as she’s jettisoned into a deep body of water and her panicky cries for help are just faded to black as Superboy, Maggie and a little kid, one you know won’t be killed (and what gives little kids the right in movies to stay alive? I was, and still am, pissed that Jason didn’t get to whack at least one in Part 6: Jason Lives.), wander the empty streets, Superboy knowing full well that the fog has already killed some people. How does he know that? Dunno, but we’re quickly hurried to our requisite crazy priest who asks that Maggie get herself off the island quickly. He looks like he, himself, has been hitting the blood of Jesus a little too much but when Maggie seems unconvinced I would have to agree.

And after we see a brother get it (Is that always the way in horror movies? Robert Townsend got that right a long time ago.) and even a kid seems in danger, we get it.

Maggie Walking around in her skivvies. Yes, while I have to admit it’s wholeheartedly needless and out of place and sexist and only proves that we live in a world where physicality and objectification of women’s bodies is still alive and well, I do also say it works. Shame on me, yes, but damn, that’s hot.

The doling out of the money shots work well, too, as there really does seem like a lot of work went into creating an experience that is at the same time enjoyable and a bit on the spooky side. Now, using the remake of Kevin Dillion’s THE BLOB as a point of reference, the genre of making films that all take place in the nighttime is a small but complex genre. You have to find ways of using the dark to your advantage as there is really only so many ways your DP can help light “dark” but when remaking something like this you not only have to execute the retelling really well you have to also come correct with a new way of envisioning a single tone.

The parting shot of a victim to the spooky fog, all frozen-like and mummified, is a good one and I hope it’s only prelude to some genuine thrills. The remake to THE BLOB wasn’t very entertaining but I hope Superboy and Maggie can add something that Drama couldn’t.

Director: Lexi Alexander
Cast: Elijah Wood, Charlie Hunnam, Claire Forlani, Marc Warren , Leo Gregory
Release: September 9, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: A wrongfully expelled Harvard undergrad moves to London, where he is introduced to the violent undeworld of soccer hooliganism.

Prognosis: Positive. Favorite deranged character from a modestly budgeted film which launched the career of a virtual unknown into the stratosphere of big films and even bigger flops? That’s tough but I would have to go with Begbie from TRAINSPOTTING.

One of the things I liked about Robert Carlyle’s performance as the kind of sod who should have been tossed on his ass by his mates was that he was crazy insane and no one seemed to mind. The part where he tosses his pint glass over his shoulder and nonchalantly couldn’t have cared less about its trajectory? Pure class. I still find that moment one of the best ever captured on film. Ok, not the best but it sure is funny.

That brings us to this little film with Elijah “Homoerotic or Homosocial, You Figure It Out College Boy” Wood. You can tell immediately that the production value isn’t LORD OF THE RINGS but it’s nice to see him again after his very solid, very awesomely executed role in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. Elijah thankfully takes the voiceover reigns on this one as he explains who he is and why he’s in the UK; he was kicked out of Harvard, for reasons we’re not given, but he’s there and he’s looking to go to a proper football match.

Now, his host, who is sharply dressed, bribes a member (maybe?) of the family to take Elijah to a game but the near skinhead objects about bringing a Yank to a match. Here’s where things get interesting. The reluctant tour guide has a little go at our diminutive envoy from the US. They’re play fighting, again for reasons which we’re not given, and Elijah is even kicked to which he responds that was the 1st fight he’s ever been in. He seems amused by this admission and our surly chaperone obviously points out that was no fight.

It’s game day and pints of beer, hopefully Guinness, are clinked together in a celebratory fashion. Everything about this scene in the pub denotes certain edginess. You’re not quite on even ground with the way things are going but you can see that things are going to get rough.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long for the thugs in this football pep squad to devolve into a horde of ass kicking troglodytes. It’s awesome. Elijah protests ever so subtly that the dozen or so dudes who are swaggering in their general direction are probably going to start some shit. His minder doesn’t care and even yells at him to stand his ground.

Elijah comes correct as he swings his fists and just lets loose into the crowd. Here we were, thinking our boy was the innocent one, as the skullduggery just proves us wrong. He just melts into the fabric of his new crew and he takes part in their wanton, destructive acts and even tattoos his allegiance to these people into his chest.

The rest of the trailer drops some notable notables from a few publications, giving this movie some unneeded pimping as the product here sells itself to the right consumer. You’ve got a nice electronic beat behind everything, some violence mixed in for piquant of shock value and the lure that Elijah may take these things way too far by the end of the film.

Director: Paul Provenza
Cast: Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, Steven Banks, Shelley Berman, Lewis Black, David Brenner and a veritable ton of others”¦
Release: August 12, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: One hundred superstar comedians tell the same very, VERY dirty, filthy joke–one shared privately by comics since Vaudeville.

Prognosis: Positive. Note to self: Sarah Silverman is in this trailer and I imagine I could watch an entire movie of her lounging around, like she’s doing here, on her couch in a snug fitting tank top.

However, this is an awkward trailer but it still works.

In David Mamet’s wicked awesome movie, THE SPANISH PRISONER, Scott Campbell creates something that’s worth a lot of money. The thing is, you’re never really told what it is or how much it’s worth even though he writes the figure down. See, the amount is shown to everyone else in the movie except the viewer. That’s brilliant. That’s good filmmaking.

Essentially, that’s the same thing going on here and so it’ll either be frustrating to some people or lure some people into what the hell everyone’s talking around, but never stating.

I could do a Google search and yield something but I don’t want to because the idea of deliberately not being told something is playful. I like that.

Drew Carey leads off what must be an in-joke with every comedian known to man. He starts off with the premise.

“A guy goes into a talent agent’s office and says, “˜I’ve got the greatest act in the world”¦”

Bill Mahr continues:

“‘It’s a family act”¦'”

Bob “Blue” Saget follows:

“And the agent goes, “˜Well, what do you people do?'”

The whole time this joke is being set up, countless names of performers in this movie flash and dissolves by on the screen. Whoopi Goldberg chimes in with aside about how it’s tough to shock people nowadays.

Quotes from established press are pimped out to show how darn hilarious this movie is.

George Carlin states his modus operandi for comedy.

What seems to be materializing, though, with everyone who is appearing on the screen is how comedy seems to function from those who have been doing it for so long. Andy Dick’s comments not withstanding, it’s good stuff; seriously, Dick was great when he was part of Newsradio’s ensemble but, on his own, he seems like a man desperate to hold onto just the premise of his own funniness.

Jake Johansson, another great comedian, comes back into the original topic of discussion and states that people could be put to death for some of the variations of this hardly told joke. I admit, I want to know what in G-d’s name they’re all talking about but it’s working me into a crescendo.

“I actually was an aristocrat.”

Sarah Silverman comes to tell us how she embodied the aristocrat persona but what is it?

I don’t know what’s so funny about this joke but to see that Rolling Stone say that I’ll laugh till it hurts is quite the kind of hyperbole that’s usually reserved for Stephen Segal movies. The classical music delicately playing in the background as Jon Stewart, Billy Connolly, Eric Idle, Paul Riser and Gilbert Gottfried all continue the joke’s narrative is just aggravating because I’m simply tempted to go to Google to find out what could be so uproarious.

I haven’t read what it could be but in the time that I’ve written this critique and have endured the onslaught of publicity this film has received I am already knowledgeable about the whole thing but I can’t figure out, for the life of me, what could be so damn funny about one joke.

Director: Jonathan Jakubowicz
Cast: Mia Maestro, Ruben Blades, Carlos Julio Molina, Pedro Perez
Release: August 5, 2005
Synopsis: Every sixty minutes a person in Latin America is abducted, and 70% of them do not return. This is the story of a young couple who fall victim to some ruthless Venezuelan kidnappers, and the traumas they endure in captivity.

Prognosis: Negativo. I really did give SIN CITY a chance. I gave it a few chances. I sat there and I tried to find something good that could’ve stayed with me.

Ultimately, though, it fell prey to what happens when you cross written pulp with the conventions of humanistic speech and the oddity of people actually talking in a way that’s queer to the ear.

I’m glad Robert Rodriquez is so active in making films even though it would’ve taken me a few squares of pot brownies to induce me to see THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL in 3-D. He’s prolific and even here in this film, where he plays the part of producer, that nebulous nether region of being able to take all of the credit or none of the blame, there is flashes of that sweaty headiness that made his low-budget foray into film so exciting.

What I think this trailer lacks, though, is confidence.

What I mean by this is when I watched the whole thing from start to finish there is definitely a need by someone to amp up the action to the point of making me believe this is going to be a “non-stop thrill ride.” Usually one likes to save the quick cuts feature, where you essentially blow your load and cobble together unrelated scenes to punch up the idea to people about what the movie is going to be.

This whole trailer is a quick cut. I damn near get motion sickness from the sweeping camera moves and ostentatious aping at trying to be this slick, cool movie. It doesn’t work.

“In the most dangerous city on earth”¦”

I am thankful, thankful, that Voiceover Guy is here narrating the whole trailer. I would’ve goofed on the guy for having to state such an untrue fact about this being the most dangerous city on earth, as I not only think his tune would change if we stuck him in the middle of Baghdad in the middle of the night with a strobe light attached to his forehead and an “I (heart) U.S.A.” patch stuck to his back, but he is the only stabilizing force in this trailer. You’ve got to watch your superlatives, kids, remember that.

We are quickly flashed moments of people under duress. I think we’re supposed to get that many folks are kidnapped and that crime is out of control and there is nothing the po-po’s can do and it’s a bad place to live. I get it. Flashes of money, masked perpetrators and scared citizens help me to complete the picture he’s trying to paint. It’s a Paint-by-Numbers but it’s still painted just fine.

Rodriguez’ name, well, his likeness anyway as “The producer of”¦”, established big credibility and, like it or hate it, the reason why big names get on to small projects like this isn’t so much because they were so actively involved in the production per se but that the famous cache helps to get a small picture like this noticed a little easier.

From here we meet the people who will be the prey in this film, a hot looking lady and her equally cool looking male model fiancée, a real Barbie and Ken power couple of South America, and the cards on the screen that tell us this flash quicker than a pervert in New York. You are not allowed to stabilize on anything.

So, these hot young’uns are kidnapped and are held for ransom. I wait to see what really makes this film different from any other show on A&E where they reenact kidnapping footage to tell how a cop really saved the day but the funny thing is that I think that’s it.

This is a movie about where, and I quote Voiceover Guy, “outlaws call all the shots.” Oy vey. For reals? Is this all there is? You’re telling me this is a movie about a kidnapping and you don’t have like a Denzel Washington type character getting all sorts of pissed, blowing people up in a rage?

Nope.

What’s redeeming about the trailer, though, is after we’re given a better introduction to the thugs of this film, I still don’t understand why, I think I am able to see that what really adds something else to the film is that the fiancée escapes but his girlfriend is left to fend for herself and he has to find her before they slash her face and give her a Columbian necktie or so I think.

It also appears this film was shot in DV but I can’t really say for sure. I see that they do one of those camera tricks where the camera is mounted in front of the person and they stay stable no matter what they do, kind of like that wisenheimer who terrorized that convenience store in the Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979” video. But, just based on this footage here, I can’t in good conscience recommend anyone see this film.

Director: Marcos Siega
Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, James Woods, Ron Livingston, Adi Schnall
Release: August 12, 2005
Synopsis: The film centers on a sexual harassment scandal that engulfs an exclusive Beverly Hills private school. Wood plays a teen who frames her teacher for sexual harassment. The teacher has yet to be cast, but Woods plays the girl’s father, Applegate is a reporter for a local news station and Livingston plays a fellow teacher who also is a lawyer representing his colleague.

Prognosis: Positive. Hmm, social satire?

I always appreciate when movies want to try and explore the more ambiguous lines that are drawn between the high school experience, bitchy teen girls, racism and the ever present fear that teachers could be sued for doing nothing more doing than their jobs; I love that genre. Now, in ELECTION, you had a lot of things going on and Alexander Payne did a glorious job with infusing a story like that with some seedy elements and making it all worth watching. It is, perhaps, one of the only movies with Reese Witherspoon that doesn’t make me too angry with incredulity as I question what the hell I’m watching.

That said, then, the trailer for this flick, though, has a lot to prove if it plans on making a statement while being entertaining.

This thing starts off rather odd. We have a reporter who’s doing a remote from the grounds of a prestigious prep school. It’s all very leafy green with trees and grass but I don’t know what she’s doing out there. The strange thing is we’re not left to linger on the reason.

We’re introduced, however, to our white protagonist girl who tells her obviously ethic and dark friend that she’s glad she was born white. Stack this image on top of the visage of Johnny Cracka, a boyfriend possibly, who stands next to his Aryan goddess while pointing a finger at said ethic friend and laughing. Well, ok, if that’s the way things are going to go. The shock and awe campaign of being as offensive as possible is in full blitzkrieg. It doesn’t let up.

Our pasty pale girlfriend now sits in the dean’s office sitting next to a male student who just happens to wear a yarmulke and is being told by the dean that her racial remarks won’t be tolerated. I believe her comments, as they’re shown, to the boy are, and I quote, “Well, at least my father isn’t a money grubbing Jew shyster.”

Yeah, we’re really swinging for the blatant and patently derogatory fences here.

James “The Donger” Woods pops up as the girl’s father and scolds her for being so obviously hateful against the world and the multiple ethnicities that are contained within it. An R. Kelly joke is made that falls flatter than Julianne Moore’s chest and even I’m ashamed at having mentally constructed an obvious offense of my own.

We’re shown this was an official selection at Sundance which is nicely placed and well-executed. And, you know, while I’m thinking of it, how many fucking movies are shown there anyway? Seems every movie I’ve seen has been an Official Selection in some way or form. Voted Best in its Class to Self-Flagellate To, Sundance Film Festival.

After this, my man Ron Livingston pops up as the ubiquitous teacher who not only wants to tap that girl’s cooch, and I haven’t a clue why as her forehead alone is wide enough to comfortably serve Thanksgiving dinner, but who is in danger of being in the cross-hairs of the young minx as someone who she decides deserves to be taken to court for no good reason. We’ve been here before in movie territory, haven’t we? Teacher accused of something they didn’t do seems more like fodder for a Law and Order episode than a full fledged movie but, whatever.

Seems our harlot is doing all this because she wants to become an actress. She’s a whore who wants to lay the country with her ability to cry on command.

This all eventually escalates into a lawsuit being filed against Ron for sexual assault and, what’s really weird, our racist high school girl has a lusty dalliance with the reporter from the beginning: Jane Krakowski. At first they almost kiss but a few scenes later they are both shown, on a bed, recovering from a passionate, well, I don’t need to explain as you can go to Penthouse Forum to fill in any blanks I’m leaving. I’m thinking there’s some lesbianism goin’ on. Not that it’s a bad thing, I’m just here to point it out and say I hope there’s an explicit examination into this most natural of acts.

We get jerked back into the court where Ron is trying to defend himself against a fake description of the events leading to his appearance in said court but when one of Cook’s friends says that he did something to her as well, using the word “boob” to describe what Ron said to her, Ron gets indignant. He stands up and yells he would never use “boob,” he’s an English teacher. I would have to agree; there are far more graphic and fun words to describe a chick’s mammaries.

The whole trailer feels like this John Waters movie that wants to add some introspective issues into its fabric. It’s an odd mixture of impossible people and the possibilities for what might be said through situations that are more emblematic than what they appear to be. I just know I felt a little dirty after watching this.

Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Orlando Bloom, Susan Sarandon, Judy Greer, Jessica Biel
Release: October 14, 2005
Synopsis: A rich ensemble comedy with two central leads. The project is intended to be a love letter to the resilience of the life force and is a story of an unexpected romance that develops against the backdrop of a Southern patriarch’s hilariously elaborate memorial.

Prognosis: Negative. I never met a hot chick on an airplane.

I never get seated to anyone that even remotely comes close to the definition of “hot.” In fact, case in point, I was on a plane from Milwaukee to Phoenix and was seated next to who would’ve been classically defined as a woman under species laws and regulations, but was closer in fact to the crazy French woman from Lost. I was sitting in the middle seat, she was the window, her ass pressed right up to the arm rest. She even had her own saliva stained bed pillow pushed up to the side of the plane but it was all just indicative of the kinds of ladies I meet on flights.

Orlando Bloom, however, gets Kirsten Dunst. Figures.

I do like the way this trailer eases you in. It drops you gingerly into the middle of a 972 million dollar dissolution of a company that Orlando either owns, works for or has a part in. Either way, Alec Baldwin does a knock up job of quietly voicing the severity of the situation. Add on to this a card that says his day is about to get worse and you can already see how this will get worse. A snotty call from Bloom’s sister doesn’t betray any secrets that couldn’t have already been guessed by watching multiple episodes of Eight is Enough, Charles in Charge or a very special Small Wonder.

So, Kirsten is a flight attendant and gives Orlando, who’s sporting a quite smooth American accent, a lesson in grammaticism when it comes to pronouncing words like “Louisville.” There’s some of that coffee, tea or me stewardess sexiness sparking between the two of them but nothing really comes to fruition immediately.

Now, the difficult part of this trailer seems to be that there is a dense back-story to this film but it is way too cumbersome to deal with here so the feeling I’m getting is that the trailer seems to say “Why not just give the funny before getting to the serious?”

Orlando, it seems, is stepping into an extended family situation not unlike the McCallister’s the night before they all left for Paris in HOME ALONE. Compare Crowe to Hughes? Sure did, but it’s all played for the same effect in both the films. We get these obnoxiously created familial characters where everyone’s related and everyone has that certain quirkiness you only find in movies. Oh, but Orlando isn’t quirky like any of them and that’s what separates our protagonist apart from these bumpkins. It almost feels condescending, the way Orlando moves in-between these people, but the movie needs a brooding, deep thinking guy and he’ll just have to do.

This deep thinking, and gravely postulating, individual uses his James Dean-like indifference for all things human to interact with the stewardess he met on the plane and who he decides will do just fine for a phone friend. You don’t get really any sense of whether Orlando is feeling anything as it all feels kind of wooden. I guess we’re supposed to swoon at the idea that he decides to tell this woman he just met all these really deep and personal things about himself, about the relationship he’s had with his dead father and how this is the moment when he’s really going to “come of age.”

It just feels very hollow to me and Orlando especially looks indifferent and stiff as he moves through this thing. If you’re trying to create a protagonist who’s really cut off, emotionally, from everyone else then you have to show some hope he’ll snap out of it but there’s nothing here that would prove that’ll happen. That’s the real bummer of a film, let me just state that up close. Did I like ABOUT SCHMIDT? Not really, because Jack just bummed me the hell out. How am I supposed to be engrossed in a story when you have such a miserable misanthrope at its center?

I especially don’t appreciate Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly” chiming in the background as it’s a rather false and manipulative ploy for me to subconsciously think, “Ooo”¦Tom Petty. I wonder if Orlando is learning to fly, too, after the moving loss of his father?” Probably, but the sight of Kirsten in a bubble bath makes me forget any of the pent up frustration I feel, like I’m wearing wool pants in South Carolina on a salty summer’s day and I just decide to let it go.

Does Cameron deserve a pass for a trailer like this? Hell no.

Director: John P. Whitesell
Cast: Martin Lawrence
Release: December 16, 2005
Synopsis: Martin Lawrence returns as FBI agent Malcolm Turner, a master of disguise who again goes deep, deep undercover as the corpulent septuagenarian “Big Momma.” To avert a national security disaster, Big Momma becomes a nanny housekeeper in the suspect’s household ““ only to find him/herself becoming attached to the three children of the dysfunctional clan.

Prognosis: Radioactively Negative. I can’t imagine why anyone would offer to greenlight this movie.

I know I’ve wondered aloud this very same thought on a few projects but for all that’s holy and unholy in this world, Lord Jebus, why was Martin Lawrence allowed to make another BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE?

And so it was said from on high: “Because, my child, it only cost Fox 30 million to make and it quadrupled that amount at the box office. And if that’s not enough to give you solace then you don’t want to hear the amount that turd’s made in the secondary market on DVD and VHS.”

And so it was written. This is the word of the Lord.

Okay, so the first one made a lot of cash. That led to this movie’s sequel but that doesn’t mean I have to sit idly by and let this trailer run free without calling it out on the carpet for its sheer awfulness.

“Orange County, California. Home of privilege”¦”

Alright, so we open up on snippets of all the beautiful things in the OC like we’re watching one of those “Come to California” ads by the tourism bureau, except you don’t get Clint Eastwood slicing one into the clubhouse from the 3rd tee because he’s, like, 90 and swinging a golf club and you don’t get Governor Arnold twisting the English language as he tried to annunciate “California.” No, here you get lush looking real estate, a Rolls Royce dealership, and chicks lined up on their beach towels in their bikinis catching some sun. Here’s a fact about the latter: you never see a dozen chicks lined up on their beach towels in their bikinis. No, you get maybe one good looking one with some meathead who’s sitting up next to her, scanning everyone’s eyes to see if their looking at his “girl” and hoping to start some shit and even then it’s not really worth the peek unless you have mirrored shades.

What I do like about the next scene is that Voiceover Guy talks about all the really opulent things in Orange County and then it ends with a remark about some criminal plot that threatens national security. The two things just don’t jive, you know? It’s a piss poor setup on top of the fact that these threats to “national security” are all meeting in the open, late at night, in the parking lot of some well-lit office building. I love it when criminal masterminds meet and congregate together, standing up while dealing in secrets that are threats to national security with a laptop. It’s kind of like when Bill Sadler caught Steven Segal peeping in on his criminal activities, down at the wharf no less, in HARD TO KILL. I somehow believe the reality of Steven Segal but have a real hard time with this.

In both instances the premise is fairly stupid. No one meets out in the open but there seems to be this romanticized idea that criminals love to do this sort of thing on a regular basis.

Anyway, the FBI’s top agent is going undercover and that person is Lawrence in a fat suit. I’ll give props to the effects people for making such a convincing looking suit but how is this disguise related to going undercover? I don’t know and I imagine the explanation would hurt my brain if I dwelled too long on the plausibility of it all.

So, you get Martin prancing around the beach, in full corpulence, wearing a yellow one-piece swimsuit, jogging on the ocean’s edge in slo-mo so you all can have a laugh at the funniness that is a fat person trying to run.

Then, we hear Lawrence make a comment to a guy who’s stretched out on his own towel who’s also wearing a Speedo about putting on some pants. Oh yeah, and Big Momma then makes a comment to the dozen chicks lined up on their beach towels about wanting to put some lotion on them.

I hope it’s obvious why I could never make it as a screenwriter. I just don’t have the comedic “edge” when coming up with thinking of really old and tired situations that I could put on screen that would make people lose a spleen or two from laughing so hard. Ass.

Director: Tim Story
Cast:Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Ioan Gruffudd, Julian McMahon
Release: In Theaters
Synopsis: Marvel’s first family of comic superheroes takes the world by storm as the longest running comic book series in history comes to the big screen. Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic, who can elongate his body; Susan Storm / Invisible Woman, who not only can become invisible at will but can render other objects invisible; Johnny Storm / Human Torch, who can shoot fire from his finger tips and bend flame; and Ben Grimm / The Thing, a hideously misshapen monster with superhuman strength, together battle the evil Doctor Doom.

Prognosis: In Another Dimension This Would’ve Been Positive. You could have got me at hello but you’re too goddamn late.

This is what frustrates me at times about all the writing and ranting I do. I watch something and have it completely pegged. I got it. I know I got it. But then something like this comes out and it’s like if the WIZARD OF OZ started with everyone seeing the midget working the controls but then trying, for the rest of the movie, to make you forget what you just saw.

I watched the first trailer for the FOUR and loathed it. I was ashamed to have even come near its presence or even avowed its existence. The production values looked laughable at best and hideously scary at the worst. It was like if the trailer for CHARLIE’S ANGELS and the original FANTASTIC FOUR movie starring that man-child from NOT QUITE HUMAN were mashed up to create something that even little kids would snicker at. Not that I know what a snicker, or even a chuckle for that matter, sounds like but I am guessing it comes pretty close to what happens when one watches that trailer. I almost feel apologetic for that first one because of all my purchases of the Brian Michael Bendis envisioning of this new geek squad at my local comic book store.

Way too long story, short, is that this is the trailer everyone should have been locked, stocked, baited and caught with.

Without a doubt, this is a wonderfully produced trailer and my golf clap goes out to the magician who was behind the transformative effects that good editing can do. Let me share in the glory that is this trailer.

The beginning. It sets up the conflict between Reed Richards and Dr. Doom. You know what, fanboys? Yes, it’s shitty that Doom is now relegated to corporate baron status but there’s a little bit of somethin’ that you always have to compromise on if you want blockbuster values on your film. And it’s not too big of a compromise as you can see that any suit with money to burn can quickly be placed into bad guy territory by any hard working stiff who sees what Corporate America likes to do to the downtrodden.

The relationship is established and our fantastic four are launched into outer space. This is where the glossing by the editorial crew really starts shining. My original beef with the trailer was that the “space station” moments really looked bad. I mean, it was the kind of bad that the nearly bald guy uses when complaining about Elwood Blues in THE BLUES BROTHERS at Chez Louis, harping on about the stench rolling off of him, that I compare it to. Here, though, none of that. It’s quickly, with a capital q, run through in favor of showing the blast that makes our team so fantastic. The hits each one of them takes feel weighty. You can sense that “Ahh” moment when you can understand how they went from geeks to Gods. The guy from Nip/Tuck (is that show really any good?) is a bit into his whole bad guy thing but, whatever, he’s the bad guy, right? Right.

Then we get how everyone finds out that they’re a little different. Here, though, we start to feel the nice foundation we’ve worked so hard to pour start to sway a little. The Thing, though, still looks about as believable as the Marvel Superheroes they have pimping the Capital One card in those ridiculous commercials but it’s, again, quickly gone through.

Things click up a notch with the absence of voiceover when we’re given a set piece, Dr. Doom’s arrival onto the scene as an evil superhero set to wriggidy-wreck havoc unto the poor innocent bystanders of this busy metropolis. The effects, again, are a delight to look at. Even Jessica Alba’s “moment” is visually appealing.

I really like the quiet pause of this trailer as well. Doom shoots something out of his corporate penthouse through his window, a projectile of some kind, and both Johnny and Sue see something way off in the distance. Johnny runs and leaps off the building and it’s eerily silent. You see him descend without saying a word and out of nowhere you hear him scream out, “Flame on!” Right on. That’s the money shot.

Johnny also seems to be the centerpiece for the latter half of the trailer but it’s easy to see why. He exudes the kind of ADD energy that’s needed in a role like this and he does it well here in the trailer. The editors got it right and it’s really a wonder where the hell it has been.

This could’ve been the trailer that got my money but, instead, it got everyone else’s this past weekend at the box office.

Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis, Colin Hanks, Thomas Kretschmann, Kyle Chandler
Release: December 14, 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: Positive. My sister actually cried at the end when we watched the original KING KONG as kids. I admit that I was emotionally caught by the elements that made the classic just that but let’s not confuse my sister’s hysteria with what I see developing here. I happen to be smitten by the possibility that this could be a rather entertaining night at the talkies.

One of the things that you notice, though, as you watch this thing is that everyone’s clothes are impeccably pressed and are looking particularly sharp. It only really detracts your eye if you concentrate on it but I do take contention with the film for so obviously taking the Hollywood approach to rendering an environment as sterile as possible. Now, I could be talking out of my ass but did every single person really have that straight from the cleaners look back then?

But, never mind that.

Another thing you notice about the roles, though, is that Jack Black is perfectly cast as the hook or by crook movie director who is trying to get another of his films made. He’s fast talking and fast walking and he honestly just exudes the right elements. Naomi Watts, as well, is just the right person to channel made so famous by Fay Wray. I do apologize for bringing that name up as I know that Harry Knowles is probably grabbing a tissue at the mere cosmic mention of that screen siren that recently passed away but it’s good to see such a dashingly beautiful woman placed right back into Kong’s palms.

So, Jack and Naomi get in a boat and head out onto the open seas to film Jack’s latest opus. The dock where Jack’s boat awaits everyone’s presence, where you see how fake looking the shop is and the fake sea they’re going to be traveling on, looks all sorts of, well, fake. It’s a bit disarming but, I too, soon forget the plastic-ness of it all.

Hey, there’s the guy from those bouncy Coke ads, Adrian Brody! He comes and goes out of frame with saying nothing and it’s just as well for what he did to the world with THE JACKET.

Jack then takes over the voice overing duties by cluing us all in on the idea that he found an old map, possibly the one One-Eyed Willie from the GOONIES used (Yar!), that’s going to take him to an island no one knows about. Now, here’s where things get good.

The island is fortified. It’s like a WATERWORLD dry dock without the people drinking their own pee. Quick flashes of half skulls and the ominous feeling of trepidation comes across subtly but firmly.

The ship eventually stops at the island’s rocky harbor. The flash of an island native, with long, stringy white hair and a bad attitude, comes and goes. An extra from Darryl Hannah’s CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, a kid who’s still waiting for their cut of the VHS royalties perhaps, flashes on the screen with their muddy body serving to inform us of the island’s inhabitants.

Jack starts filming on the beach. He asks Naomi to scream for her life. The response of the scream is reciprocated with one of Kong’s. No one knows what or where that came from. It’s played out beautifully. No one says anything and there isn’t a soundtrack to disrupt the silence. Nice.

This is when things get exciting. The same natives from When Mud People Attack! start to close in on our film crew and abduct Naomi. What you can see, in the sets used for the mud people, is that Jackson seems to be borrowing a lot from the community construction of the Orcs of the RINGS trilogy and must’ve figured that if it looked creepy there it’ll look just as good here. It does. Scaffoldings made of wood just litters the visual landscape. It’s like Bob Villa came in and just rebuilt the same damn thing. Naomi is put into a X formation as a hostage not unlike Willie was in TEMPLE OF DOOM; they’re both just as hot and in need of some male rescuing as it is written in the playbook for all patriarchal tales of misogyny and male needs to feel virile and powerful. Seriously, someone write a paper on it before I get bored and do it myself. Kong appears and it makes me forget Sociology 303: The Male Dominion and Their Obsession About Their Small Penises. (See?) Kong looks rough and bad ass, just the way it should be.

This island playground all of a sudden turns into JURASSIC PARK. Seriously, I know that Universal has a stranglehold on the PARK films but their hunt for Naomi results in some acid flashbacks of 1993. Kong knows Kung-Fu, though, as he goes toe to toe with a T-Rex. This is the kind of cage match I’ve needed since Hulk Hogan went against Rowdy Roddy Piper at Wrestlemania.

Director: Brad McGann
Cast: Emily Barclay, Matthew MacFadyen, Miranda Otto, Colin Moy, Jimmy Keen
Release: June 10, 2005 (Seattle Int’l Film Festival)
Synopsis: Paul (Macfadyen), a prize-winning war journalist, returns to his remote New Zealand hometown due to the death of his father, battle-scarred and world-weary. For the discontented sixteen-year-old Celia (Barclay) he opens up a world she has only dreamed of. She actively pursues a friendship with him, fascinated by his cynicism and experience of the world beyond her small-town existence. But many, including the members of both their families (Otto, Moy), frown upon the friendship and when Celia goes missing, Paul becomes the increasingly loathed and persecuted prime suspect in her disappearance. As the violent and urgent truth gradually emerges, Paul is forced to confront the family tragedy and betrayal that he ran from as a youth, and to face the grievous consequences of silence and secrecy that has surrounded his entire adult life.

Prognosis: Positive. Why aren’t there more imports like this?

You know, once in a while, man yearns for a good, old-fashioned mystery done right without the trappings of red herrings, obvious clues and poor resolutions. This seems like such an easy thing to bring to the marketplace but in the age of Bigger, Better, Louder these kinds of films are now relegated to the fringes of the cinematic radar for most people.

And that’s fine, really, because when you see a trailer like this you get interested in what it’s all about and this will, hopefully, be the second best movie to come from the land down under. (I tell you what, I can’t write that line without thinking of the dude with the lazy eye from Men at Work. Creeped me out completely as a kid. Still does. Sheesh. I can’t even watch that episode of Scrubs without wondering which way he’s looking”¦) The first real good mystery to come out of AU, and one I implore you to check out, is THE INTERVIEW with Hugo Weaving. Top notch. I still like going back to that movie and watching the way the storytelling drove that film more than anything else.

This movie, though, looks to do the same thing but it’s not quite apparent when things open up.

“17 years ago he went away”¦”

We launch into a tale of a boy who moves out of his house; this being New Zealand I guess he decided to just mosey on down the island road to another ostrich farm but I guess he’s done something a little more rewarding. We don’t know the how, when, where or why but we just accept that this boy vanishes as are quickly thrown into a classroom where he’s introduced, years later, as someone important who’s about to speak to a gaggle of students.

The only bump in the quick way we’re getting a lot of information is two-fold. One, he’s in front of a class full of kids and we really can’t infer that it’s because he’s taken some pictures judging by the quick shot of some woman with blood on her hands. It’s too quick. Slow down. It’s ok to take some time to explicate. Two, we start in with the quotes from all those fabulously famous of New Zealand’s newspapers. It’s great and all but they come awfully quick, too. Slow down.

Now, apart from all this, we get the point that the guy who’s talking to the students has been away from his family. The first blood relative we meet is this guy’s brother who is shocked as shit to see the man. The music and direction and pacing are perfect. I love it.

There is friction there between the boys and I can only assume that this would’ve been the case if he left the family and never bothered to ringy-ding once in a while.

Next, after some real quick cuts of the family farm and pastures, we meet up with a young, teenage girl. She’s pretty and she stands sheepishly in front of our wayward brother. She tells him that she found this small space, ostensibly the family farm that’s possibly been abandoned for some time, and she explains what she’s been doing there.

There is some real intimacy, social intimacy between two people you pervs, between the two and she goes on to talk about her life’s dreams with this guy. He listens and she tells him about where she wants to be someday. It’s affective and presented well because it takes its time to explain.

And then the mood changes. The teenage girl goes missing.

Whups.

You can see where things are going from here. He’s the only person to have seen her last, he’s implicated in her disappearance and there’s more than enough suspicion to go around.

The clips at the end are too confusing to put into a coherent order but it’s enough that I feel like I want to know what happened to her. Did the drifter brother kill her, did he help her leave the country, did his brother do it or was it Shakey, the town drunk, who let a pack of rabid ostriches peck her to death?

I don’t know but what I do know is that I am going to have to wait an extraordinarily long time to find out as there’s no way in hell this will be playing in this part of cactus country and that’s the real shame.

Director: Bob Gosse
Cast: Lili Taylor, Courtney Love, Mischa Barton, Noah Emmerich
Release: July 1, 2005
Synopsis: A woman attempts to realize the dreams she never knew she had.

Prognosis: Negative. Man, would I wouldn’t give to hit Courtney Love in the head with a large red brick.

I wouldn’t want to hurt her, per se, but if there was anyone who desecrates the memory of their dead rock n’ roll husband more than anyone else in this world Courtney would be at the top of that list. At least Yoko Ono had the business savvy to realize that John Lennon’s music should live on, has been more than a tad generous with the musical library John had left behind and has managed to not make public spectacles of herself on a near constant basis. Courtney just needs to relegate herself to Attention Whore status and stop with the tucks, lifts and augmentations.

Do you see what’s happened here? She’s the first thing I saw in this trailer and I am already riled up with things that don’t have anything to do with the flick itself.

However, beyond that, Lily “I Know it Looks Like I’ve Just Woken Up All The Time” Taylor seems to play a put-upon wife who has aspirations. Judging by her make-out session with Courtney in the beginning I am assuming lesbianism is the first thing on that to-do list. Higher education seems be relegated to number two as she eye-spies a form that talks about getting one’s GED.

Lily’s home life seems to be consumed with taking care of a couple of rug rats who are old enough to know what it means when daddy says “Hell no” to Lily’s request to go back to school. I’m not sure if it’s just my hippy sense of openness and realizing the value of getting educated but her husband’s passionate response to Lily’s request to obtain her diploma seems a bit played out. Are there still dudes out there that feel threatened by a woman getting smart? Are there Neanderthals who are so insecure that they would vehemently deny their ladies the chance to do something with their lives? I guess there are as when Lily’s husband leaves her in a rage of disappointment that he does so because he can’t keep his wife barefoot and stupid.

I almost hear the sounds of “Gloria” in the background and I start thinking that this will be a movie about female empowerment but the ding-dong at her apartment door when she has to start all over on her own reveals Courtney Love in all her trashy, exploitative glory hole-ness.

It looks like the two of them will be a modern day Laverne and Shirley with the exception that this duo seems to be inspired by the Isle of Lesbos and the poetics of Sappho and Catullus and the other seemed to be inspired by Milwaukee and Bratwurst. Seriously, there is a lot of female on female kissing going on in this thing and I wish to hereby proclaim a pox on Love for making it the most asexual experience I’ve ever been privy to. It really is gross in a $2 hooker kind of way. Made me ill, it did.

What’s neat, though, is that Lily goes on to get her education and we get a pre-suicidal, pre-freak-out Spaulding Grey who is no doubt going to be the impetus for the catalyzing change in Lily. He will fill the “Wise old man” role that will show Lily that there is more to life than just taking care of kids who will no doubt break your heart by stealing money out of your wallet, doing drugs, sleeping with the opposite sex under your roof as you’re out working and who will pretty much run roughshod over everything you hold dear.

This does seem like a “Gloria” kind of film, though, but I am unsure how the mix of her sexual awakening with a dirty ho, her yearning to better her intellectual life and how this all fits into a paradigm of the modern family will come off.

For all the shots I am taking it I can say that it looks like a pretty good movie with a lot to say. I just don’t know, though, what to make of Courtney. I weep for the future.

Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Jamie Foreman, Harry Eden, Leanne Rowe
Release: September 30, 2005
Synopsis: An adaptation of the classic Dickens tale, where an orphan meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. From there, he joins a household of boys who are trained to steal for their master.

Prognosis: Bi-Polar. Just so we all agree: Roman Polanski is still wanted in this country for the drugging and raping of a 13- year-old girl in 1977 at Jack Nicholson’s pad, right? He hasn’t ever stepped foot in this country because he knows that he would more than likely be sent to a federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison where they take care of pedophiles like him with some prison justice? Raped a girl? Right?

Right.

So, what I see here, in this teaser is really good.

I like that instead of a lot of quick clips that pretty much confound the hell out of everyone there is a drawn out scene that not only establishes the time and place but gives us an idea of what this story is about.

As an English major I know this probably should’ve been part of my literary canon but it wasn’t as I’ve concerned myself with other literary fare so it’s nice to see I can do a little “catch-up” with this flick.

It opens up on a wonderfully painted scene of old-time England. It looks like it’s at the dawn of the industrial age where soot, black-lung and child labor were the Holy Trinity’s. You can see just in the first few seconds that it’s a gloriously painted palette of dinginess, bustle and commerce. The cobbled streets, the horse drawn carriages and the costumes are absolutely engaging. The time is captured on the screen and you believe you’re looking into the way things were.

We get a scene with a young boy standing in the middle of the street who obviously doesn’t care about possibly getting struck by a thoroughbred that might come tearing from around a stone corner or a fruit cart that could possibly be driven by someone who’s busy talking on their megaphone.

The wayward lad looks on as a couple of kids pick the pocket of a well-to-do gentleman who is patronizing the storefront of some bookseller. It looks like all the thieves get is a yellow snot rag but I guess those things might get you a lot on the black lung market.

Anyway, the shop owner comes tearing out of his store, yelling at the boys that they’ve been had. They go off running and the young boy who watched it all go down just stands there, dumbfounded. He didn’t do anything yet he feels the need to scamper like the cur he’s being labeled as by Old Man Winter who runs the shop. The kid almost gets taken out by a Mercedes Mustang carriage, with a black exterior and velvety red goodness inside for open-air seating up to 2 passengers, and takes off through an obvious back lot that stands in for this British city.

It seems like the whole town is after the young kid as dozens are shown running after him and he’s about to get away too but, out of nowhere, a really old guy, I am talking Old Man Winter’s brother, Old Man River, cold cocks the kid on the chin. Just flattens the fucker right on the cobble road. It’s hilarious.

This trailer is worth watching just for the technique the dude employs. Comedy at its best. Needless to say, I’m interested. I really would like to see how this thing is executed.

And speaking of execution, what is the penalty for drugging and raping 13 year-olds anyway? Just curious.

Director: Michael Showalter
Cast: Michael Showalter, Elizabeth Banks, Michelle Williams, Justin Theroux, Peter Dinklage
Release: August 12, 2005
Synopsis: The film chronicles the anxiety-ridden two weeks leading to the marriage of Elliot Sherman who is the quintessential “Baxter” ““ the nice guy who never gets the girl.

Prognosis: Negative. I was a fan of The State.

I know that at the time when it was getting some decent numbers, audience wise, I knew I was seeing something fairly different when compared to its SNL and Mad TV counterparts. It was funny in some places, strange in many others, but it was good for a laugh. And before it really had a chance to develop, it went away.

Enter, stage left, WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER. That movie really secured me as a fan of their work if, for no other reason, than Christopher Meloni’s crazy ass chef. The members went their separate ways after this and, for the most part, have been very successful at keeping themselves in front of the American public. From I Love The 80’s, 90’s, 70’s and whatever the hell they feel like lovin’ on VH1, Michael Ian Black has made a dime or two playing the deadpan commentator. Ben Garant, Kerri Kenney and Thomas Lennon have done splendid work as members on Reno 911, a solid comedy that’s flown gently under the comedic radar for many people out there.

That’s why I’m confused at this really odd, weirdly formulaic and not very amusing trailer for THE BAXTER.

What’s nice, though, is the set-up. It comes right out of the gate in letting me know that Michael Showalter is this Louis Winthorpe III type with an obnoxiously flimsy sense of character. It starts to grate on my nerves 20 seconds in. Elizabeth Banks, the starlet who just seems to be everywhere nowadays, plays his obnoxiously hot fiancé and who, I might add, I can’t really get a handle on because what kind of a lady like her would be seen with an obvious social and personal retard like Showalter? I’m not sure myself. Michelle Williams plays the obviously shabby temp who works with both Showalter and Banks and who, as most of you can guess within the first 10 seconds, will have something to do in catalyzing a change in Showalter later on. Also, Justin Theroux, a guy who, when he gets older, will probably be the go to guy for all villains, pops in as Banks’ old high school boyfriend and makes some trouble for the couple.

The problem I have, though, is that the further we get into establishing all these quirky people the trailer is essentially not doing its job. I want to be lied to, I want to work hard in finding reasons why I think I’m being manipulated but, at halfway through the trailer, I already know that Showalter’s obvious hack at making a character that’s obviously prim and proper and completely the opposite of everyone else is just annoying and false.

The rest of the trailer just confirms this as Justin moves in closer to Banks and Showalter, in retaliation, as is most movie and television guys are want to do in cases like this, try to eschew their old selves in favor of new ones; more hipper selves; more selves that are the simulacrum of what they believe “cool” should be. And it’s just sad to see the wheels burning off of this bike.

There’s nearly an additional twenty seconds that’s wasted on showing us how “cool” Justin is. Banks and him did the ubiquitous sex weekend during a snowstorm which, as a dude pushing 30, has never happened to me but seems to have happened with every other person in film and TV who has ever had to go through inclement weather for longer than two days.

I guess I expected something a little more funny and not so awful.

Director: Dean Parisot
Cast: Jim Carrey, Tea Leoni
Release: December 21, 2005
Synopsis: An update of the 1977 comedy, where a married couple turn to robbery to pay the bills.

Prognosis: Middle-America Approved. My parents would love this kind of film.

It looks wacky, zany, a little “edgy,” and even, dare I say, slapsticky?

Yes, it looks like all these things and I certainly can’t fault the filmmakers or Jim Carrey who did great work last year in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. It’s just obvious that Jim needs this kind of picture that lets him revert to some of his more profitable talents. And, you know, it’s not such a bad thing when an A-lister like him sees his house payments going up and has to do a little somethin’ somethin’ to offset some of his living expenses.

Not that I think the trailer does anything special for me, per se, but for those who like their comedy in a milquetoast offering I say, here’s your movie and you will love it.

The opening is almost straight out of THE TRUMAN SHOW. Jim lives on the back lot of a Hollywood studio where everyone, even though they have garages, still park their car in the driveway and have exactly the same schedules so they can have some witty repartee with one another; garages must be where they keep their opium drug dens in these parts of Southern California.

So, after Jim walks out of his house he kicks a stray rubber kickball that’s strategically sitting in his yard through someone’s window off-screen. Judging by the trajectory it should’ve been the same neighbor he ends up talking to but it’s not and who gives a crap anyway, right? All that matters is that he talks to his neighbor and mixes it up with him a little; it establishes that Jim is Jim in this movie and that’s a good thing for Middle America.

The physical humor continues when we cut to Jim and his nuclear family, or for all you red states I should say “Nook-u-ler,” as he straps on a device to keep his dog from barking. The electric shock collar is always good for some laughs. I liked it in Jackass and I like it here. It’s goofy and it’s the kind of giggles that are done at the expense of animal cruelty.

Then it happens.

At one of those fun backyard parties that most suburbanites like to have with each other, a neighbor asks Jim how he’s been so successful.

Cut to a black screen and play “Free Ride.”

Jim and his wife are thieves. They even have a comedic verbal exchange before robbing a coffee house. He yells out, instead of “This is a robbery,” he wants, “Two iced mochas.” He feverously waves his gun around as Tea leaps over a counter, Dukes of Hazzard style, only to take out a coffeepot and various pieces of detritus littering the serving counter. He even thanks the barista for making the mochas. The humor just keeps coming and coming.

The trailer ends with Jim mistakenly trying to hold up a friend of his. The funny comes in when they all just sort of play it off as one big goof and they all just laugh about it like it’s so darn funny he “got” his friend.

Sigh, it takes all kinds.

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Bill Murray, Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone, Julie Delpy, Chloe Sevigny
Release: August 5, 2005
Synopsis: Bill Murray stars as the resolutely single Don Johnston. Dumped by his latest lover, he again resigns himself to being alone. Instead, he is compelled to reflect on his past when he receives a mysterious pink letter from an anonymous former lover that informs him that he has a 19-year-old son. Hesitant to travel, Don nonetheless embarks on a cross-country trek in search of clues from four former flames. Unannounced visits to each of these unique women hold new surprises. Won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival.

Prognosis: Positive. Required reading for the summer? “Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.” It’s a quick read so don’t let the double-bible thickness of it scare you off. While it’s comprehensive in ways that other look-behind-the-scenes tell-alls could never hope to match, there is a feeling of expediency when it recounts some of the more catty moments of the show’s long history. One of those things that I wish was lingered on for a tad longer, I think, is the general dislike many SNL players had for Chevy Chase. In a recent interview, around the time of Chevy’s roasting, Chase actually came close to implying that he hadn’t a clue why many of his ex-cast mates found him an incredibly unlikable asshole. What’s even better, in my opinion, that in a real school-like compare and contrast moment you see that guys like Bill Murray were and still are successful because of their ability to get the job done, consistently, without ever having to give-in to the idea that their gravy train will be chugging forever. This trailer shows why Murray is simply on the top of his game.

Sure, can you forgive him for QUICK CHANGE or that really dank elephant movie that doesn’t even get love from late night broadcast line-ups he made years ago? I think all of that can be easily erased as you see how nimble this man can be when the trailer opens up and you see him applying that same wry and deadpan style that’s made him so endearing in these last few years on screen.

The trailer is exquisitely crafted in that the whole plot is easily laid out within the first 10 seconds. He reads a letter from a woman with whom he’s had sex many years ago, bore a son he never knew about, ends up not knowing who the woman was and recites it all to the gravedigger from HAMLET: YET ANOTHER SCREEN EDITION. The uppity beat of the music keeps things light and it eases us into the issue at hand: Should be go find his son or should he sit back and let life pass him by? But of course he should find his son, say Mr. Rhetorical’s audience.

His buddy hatches a plan to find out what woman wrote the letter by matching a list of ex-girlfriends he’s been with and finding the exact typewriter it was written from as there’s some old bag out there that has yet to come into the 21st century; and what the hell is what those pompous writer types out there who are so down on the computer? I mean, I don’t see those same people down at the river and slapping their unitard long underwear on a big wet rock but, crap, oh no, don’t you be comin’ “˜round here no more with your alien technology that seeks to sink the purity that is typewriter writing. I hate those people. Now, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah, the plot. Well, it’s a bit strange but I’ll bite. Murray spends a little time with his buddy’s little girl at a tea party on a beautifully green front lawn and we’re left to linger there just long enough to see Murray just doing what he’s always done best: finding the perfect angle to amuse in whatever situation he’s in.

And that’s when I see Sharon Stone. My nads recoil at the sight of that blonde vacuum of talent and ability. It takes my will to live to not feel disappointed at the casting. He has a moment with her before moving on thankfully and quickly.

The stop on this magical trip is no better when the other maternal possibility is brought into full focus: Frances Conroy. You can interject the same nad recoil here. We move along, as well, from her and onto the next woman.

The whole time this is going on there isn’t so much as a peep from Murray’s need to seem lively or star worthy. The guy is so sure of what he needs to do there is a near unbearable relaxedness in his acting. It’s wonderful to watch as he tries to get through woman after woman, his look of despondency framed perfectly on his face, and even when he gets a fist in the face near the end of the trailer, and he has to act behind some sunglasses, it doesn’t matter.

The mood that Jim Jarmusch’s direction evokes pops right through this trailer and even as we head into the final moments of this thing I am actually surprised at the way the whole movie sort of seeps into my skin as I feel drawn in by the premise and its execution.

Director: Don Roos
Cast: Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Ritter, Tom Arnold
Release: July 15, 2005
Synopsis: An ensemble cast telling 10 stories with intertwining characters. One story is about a father and son who are dating the same woman. Another features a woman who long ago gave her baby up for adoption but is now being blackmailed by a documentary filmmaker who claims to know the now-grown child’s whereabouts.

Prognosis: Negative. Too much information. Seriously.

If you have to spend the entire trailer yammering on and on about what the movie’s about don’t you think that there might be too much for the average person to synthesize properly? Maybe it’s just me but when I try and follow the directions each one of these characters are going, based on Voiceover Guy’s verbal assistance, I am left feeling confused and ambiguous about everything and that’s just box office death.

At first I think something’s amiss when I hear Lisa Kudrow’s voice asking whether she should be face up or face down on the massage table and all I hear is some garbled mess that seems coming from the mouth of Tony Shalub’s foreign cab driver character from Wings. I’m not thinking about the current plot, I’m actually thinking, “That’s nice that Antonio Scarpacci has found a new line of work.”

After breezing through what I know is a masseuse applying a “happy ending” on a female client, I am yanked to Maggie Gyllenhaal trying to seduce a guy who doesn’t seem that into what she’s doing. Something weird is happening but before I have a chance to even assess who the hell these people were and what they mean to the flick I am hurried into a restaurant where some guy talks about how something wasn’t meant to be and there’s this strange person that’s present and said person would’ve been a great dad. Who? What?

Then, Tom Arnold pops up as the dad of a gay son who was shown “getting his swerve on,” I guess you could say, with Maggie Gyllenhaal a few scenes prior. I guess the dad doesn’t know or something but before we can get comfortable again we’re taken to Laura Dern’s place where Steve Coogan, who I am thinking is also gay, is really distressed about sperm and its viability in a frozen container. He even, at one point, helps himself to Dern’s freezer to see if she keeps any on reserve. By this time I am confused out of my skull. What the hell is happening to any of these people and is it worth it to me to stick around? Sure it is. I like to see a trailer completely down itself like some deranged psychopath in a little pond skipper airplane who suddenly decides to plunge himself downward into an open field. This trailer is doing a wonderful job sustaining that kind of vibe.

So, Voiceover Guy tries to chime in but is way too late on this pick-up game. He tries to start tying some threads together and all I see is Maggie and Tom Arnold hooking up, which is really sinister in ways that transcend some kind of cosmic boundaries, Lisa talks to the guy who gives pleasure to old women with his massage technique, and I am just floored as we hustle our asses to the ending only to have it end up falling apart at the seams.

I just don’t get the trailer at all. I don’t. I know there is something happening but I can’t tell you what it is because I couldn’t even begin to tell you who the protagonist of this story.

Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Jason Statham, Amber Valletta, Keith David, Matthew Modine, Hunter Clary, Jeff Chase
Release: September 2, 2005
Synopsis: Jason Statham returns in his signature role: ex-Special Forces operative Frank Martin, aka “The Transporter.” Now retired in Miami, Martin makes a living driving for a wealthy family, including twin brothers with whom he has unexpectedly bonded. But when the boys are abducted, Martin must use all his skills to bring them to safety and discover the kidnapper’s master plan.

Prognosis: Decent. Not quite sure what top make of this sequel but it jumps off the blocks even before the pistol’s gone off.

One of the things that made the first TRANSPORTER so much fun was Jason Strathmore’s dedication to a chatacter that could’ve easily been made goofy and plastic if put into the wrong hands. Do I think it’s a great movie? No. Do I think the plot’s any good? No. But what a movie like that does, apart from the “unplug” factor that the movie invokes upon each viewing, is show you how well a few bucks and a few shaky cameras can get you when you really try and craft an action movie.

This trailer pops with every cut scene offered in the first five seconds. Too fast to even catch with every blink of an eye is Jason in all his car driving, stunt doubles’, glory.

I am pleased they’ve gone with the same black import car to keep with the continuity. What shakes me to my core, though, is the inclusion of a child.

It seems that the big baddie in this movie is threatening to do kill the kid that he’s been chauffeuring around for a rich family. Our man has gone straight and got himself a respectable job. Pimping himself out to be used like a Mr. Belvedere isn’t what I want out of my European heroes and to add a kid in there seems like a very Jump-The-Shark kind of thing to do. Oh, and I forgot to mention the hideously dressed but oddly attractive woman who is accompanying Jason on a very odd mission to do whatever it takes to not get this little boy killed; the woman just looks like a model who is a character in a movie that’s SUPPOSED to look dangerous. Instead, she just looks derivative. Now, I know and you know that the kid isn’t in any real danger, if he were this may the best movie ever (has there been a quality kill of young boys under the age of 10 in cinema? I think that’s a no), but the movie is moving too fast for its own good, I think.

It’s hard to keep track of a plot that’s not very well explained, even when it has Jason in it just being a bad ass, but when I see some shirtless dude, who also looks like a model (probably underwear, judging by the physique, not that I am paying that close attention, not that there’s anything wrong with making a statement, and am only making a professional opinion based on my impression of seeing a shirtless dude with sweaty hair and pecs). This guy, as well, is a “bad guy” but at the center of the discussion between everyone is a virus that looks exactly like that green shit from one of the best 80’s movies evar, THE MANHATTEN PROJECT. It’s lime green and I guess it’s pretty toxic. Come to think of it, I’ve also seen that green crap in THE ROCK, a not too awful Michael Bay film.

And just when I have this thing figured out, Matthew Modine pops up. Hell, that guy hasn’t made a good film since VISION QUEST. I’m kidding but I had to bring that up for two reasons: 1) No matter where that guy goes there will always be video of him sniffing a girl’s panties. 2) I seriously can’t look at one of those plastic workout outfits without imagining Louden Swain working out to the point of getting freak nosebleeds. Anyway. Mr. Thong Sniffer arrives, providing even less context to the film, but we get some really odd snippets to the film.

We get Jason taking his shirt off, that was for the ladies, Jason scowling as hard as he can because he wants that boy back and, dammit, he’ll get him back, Jason about to get into a street fight with ten different dudes at once but asking everyone to hold on because it’s a nice jacket he’s wearing, Jason impaling a part of a gun into a bad guys throat (Cooooollll”¦), the crazy blonde comes back into the scene as she invokes the acting spirit of Brigitte Nielsen, and Jason gets wicked with a fire hose before turning it on (you’ve got to see what happens). You even get a bit of bad language and a sweet kill with actual squibs; you’d never get that by the MPAA in the States.

And by time you get through more of the car crashes, car chases, improbable stunts that could never ever happen, more naughty language, some T&A shots and every angle worth getting of a speeding Lamborghini, you realize that you have to see this film. It may not be until it comes out on DVD but there are some gnarly set pieces that may be worth the price of the rental.

A little bit of BEVERLY HILLS COP II, a bit of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III, some MAN ON FIRE and more of the same from THE TRANSPORTER. In all, it’s about as good as one can ask for in a bland European action movie that’s trying to play to as many audiences and conventions as possible.

Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Monica Bellucci, Jonathan Pryce, Lena Headey, Peter Stormare, Mackenzie Crook, Richard Ridings
Release: July 29, 2005
Synopsis: A fictional action-adventure tale about folklore collectors and brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, called Jake (Ledger) and Will (Damon). While traveling from village to village pretending to protect townsfolk from enchanted creatures, they encounter a real sorceress with terrifying powers and are put to the test.

Prognosis: Negative. Man, you know you’re in for some crap when you not only have Voiceover Guy’s first words being “In a world”¦” and that one of the characters in the film saying “I’m getting to old for this”¦”

Not a good sign.

Also, and this is something that’s rather perplexing, the opening of this trailer is rather odd. At first I’m not even sure what I’m looking at. It seems like it’s a commercial for something but I don’t know what it is. I damn near think it’s an ad for some Summer’s Eve product. Seriously, go with me on this.

You’ve got a girl prancing around the forest in a big red cloak; Little Red Riding Hood, to be exact. She’s prancing around in a forest, all alone, and she stops for a moment. She bends down to smell a rose of womanhood and she ends up pricking herself on the thorn of puberty, blood seeps from her finger. All of a sudden, the wafting of her broken innocence is enough to drive the wolf, representative of each and every lecherous man out there, into hemoglobin frenzy. The wolf gives away his presence and silence from the periphery and lunges at the now christened woman. She drops her basket of childhood and tears off out of the forest and tries to run free into the open space of adulthood where there is nothing to hide behind. She almost makes it to the sanctuary of a castle which no doubt represents every woman that puts up walls higher than a castle to defend herself against the evil that is manhood.

This new woman, though, looks like she’ll be a causality as she stumbles mere yards from the castle and the camera closes in and will, no doubt, be one of those girls who ends up on the cheerleading squad in high school only to give it up her maidenhead to the entire wrestling team at a Schlitz party, celebrating their victory over the high school from down the street.

Fairy tales always have a subversive meaning and I’ve always believed that.

Here, though, it’s pretty bad because there isn’t that same wonderment. After “˜Hood no doubt gets “eaten” by the Wolf, we’re whisked to the dreariest looking town this side of London. Matt Damon, who looks like a deformed elf, and his buddy Heath Ledger are con artists. They defeat wicked looking specters, which I have to say look pretty damn sweet, for people who think they’re being haunted by them and they receive muchos ducats for doing so. Only what happens is that the scam is that their buddy is all dressed up as the freaky looking ghost and they prey on stupid townsfolk. His make-up, though, is odd considering the time period. I had no idea they invented spirit gum before developing the tooth brush.

Thing is, and it’s nearly laughable if it weren’t such a grand production, there really is ghosts out there in the Enchanted Forest and the Brothers Grimm are suddenly asked to do what they’ve been doing all along. The exposition and dialogue and all the events that lead into the forest are nearly too much to take. The only thing that provides some unintended levity is that the set pieces to make this look like an Enchanted Forest only really look like a back lot that was built to make it look like an Enchanted Forest. It’s piss poor, really, and it’s rather distracting.

But, lo and behold, all is not lost, friends. The last 20 seconds of the trailer are indeed something to take delight in. Monica Belluci shows up in full Technicolor and my worldview changes. The set pieces begin to shift from dreary to exciting. All in a matter of moments the money shots are unloaded and, yay, it was good. Action abounds and there is actually something for me to look at.

Director: Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Pernilla August, Danny Huston, Hubert Kounde
Release: August 26, 2005
Synopsis: Based on the best-selling John le Carré novel and from the Academy Award-nominated director of “City of God.” In a remote area of Northern Kenya, activist Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz) is found brutally murdered. Tessa’s companion, a doctor, appears to have fled the scene, and the evidence points to a crime of passion. Members of the British High Commission in Nairobi assume that Tessa’s widower, their mild-mannered and unambitious colleague Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), will leave the matter to them. They could not be more wrong. Haunted by remorse and jarred by rumors of his late wife’s infidelities, Quayle surprises everyone by embarking on a personal odyssey that will take him across three continents. Using his privileged access to diplomatic secrets, he will risk his own life, stopping at nothing to uncover and expose the truth – a conspiracy more far-reaching and deadly than Quayle could ever have imagined.

Prognosis: Positive. Ralph Fiennes will always be that fat gutted Nazi minion in SCHINDLER’S LIST to me. Always will. He was just that good at inhabiting that character.

I am glad to see the guy more often on the screen as I think he’s really a silent star that has so much to offer to parts but just isn’t used as much as he could be.

In this movie, though, he gets to play a tender, sweet loving man and he virtually pops off the screen with his charisma. The opening of this trailer, which at first I think is some soft-core, Vaseline-on-the-lens, kind of porno is actually just him and what I assume is his wife making some of that sweet sweet baby-making kind of love.

The music in the background sounds worldly which is perfect because the plot is meted out slowly enough for people to understand that his wife is asking to tag along with him to Africa. The Dark Continent. The place where every Amazing Race contestant believes that God forsake on his way to creating the Mall of America.

Well, Rachel Weisz, who could easily be the bumper Oreo cookie in my Kate Beckinsale sandwich, is all smiles and giggles until she tells her man something of great importance. Ralph appears to be acting in a doctorial capacity and Rachel, in a voiceover, whispers to him that she thinks one of the women being cared for by a band of doctors is being slowly murdered.

Interesting, as is the music. Tension is perfect, the pacing is right on and my interest is sustained.

What’s more is that Rachel’s bump indicates that she’s preggers, due in a week when last we see her talking to her husband’s video camera, and it just crushes me when the gig is up and the screen goes black. One of Ralph’s friends tells him and catches him completely unaware that Rachel has been killed. What a waste.

But, that’s a good thing because that’s usually the emotional buy-in a screenwriter has to get from you to make it that much more personal. Not only is the direction just nice to watch along with the cinematography, the direction coming from the same guy who gave the world the stupendous CITY OF GOD, but the screenplay is based on a book by John le Carre. Now, while I am a book snob, no question about it, I do have to concede that guys like that make great, superficial movies. Who here liked PATRIOT GAMES, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, THE FIRM, and all those other flicks that you can either take or leave but somehow rise above average fare? I did and I am really into the trailer.

The music picks up, the percussion leading the charge in what seems to be Ralph’s battle cry, and we see Ralph just trudging through the mess that led to the murder of his wife. He doesn’t know what or who exactly to go after but there’s enough cloak and dagger mysteriousness, with everything from fisticuffs to anonymous motorcycles of death, to show you that this isn’t going to be a boring romp.

The percussion kicks up, Wes Studi pops his head in, the “conspiracy” is labeled as global, there are the ubiquitous corporate trolls who are simply hated universally the world over and are a convenient stand-in, we hear how the pharmaceutical companies are just like illegal drug cartels and that there’s a contract on Ralph’s head for digging “too deep.”

All the superlatives aside, I would have to say, based on this trailer, I would immediately see this movie just based on what I saw.

Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Steve Carrell, Catherine Keener
Release: August 19, 2005
Synopsis: 40-year-old Andy Stitzer (Steve Carrell) has done quite a few things in his life. He’s got a cushy job stamping invoices at an electronics superstore, a nice apartment with a proud collection of action figures and comic books, good friends, a nice attitude. But there’s just one little thing he hasn’t quite gotten around to doing yet–something most people have done by his age. Done a lot. Andy’s never, ever, ever had sex–not even by accident. So is that such a big deal?

View Trailer:
* Small (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Negative. Not a fan of Steve Carrell.

My feelings aren’t really out of dislike for his brand of comedy as it is just an overall feeling of disinterest whenever I see him laying down his schtick. That’s ok, though, as this movie actually piques something in me that I think all his other forays into the comedic genre have failed to do.

The Spandau Ballet song “True,” which is really the best go-to song ever laid down on cassette that lets everyone in the house know we’re talking about the 80’s, its greatest power displayed in SIXTEEN CANDLES, is superbly played here as we are no doubt going to be shown the failed attempts Steve has made on his way to ever getting some from the ladies. The gag of him trying to undo his date’s bra and turning it into a weapon against his lady, I admit, is funny. It made me laugh. The next woman, who is inexpiably, but understandably from a marketing perspective, even hotter than the last one, tries to lick his toe in a sensual manner only to have the Monkey Foot of Pain applied to her face as Steve recoils his leg and juts it forward because he’s ticklish. Again, this visual gag is good because what you’re going to have happen is all the dudes who grew up to appreciate Three Stooges humor will no doubt respond to the physicality of how this trailer opens; it’s slapstick and it’s still alive.

Fast forward 20 some-odd years and Steve is still a virgin and is trapped, in his clothing and appearance, in an era when Members-Only was just laying its larva as the required outerwear for dweebs everywhere in years to come, and helmet hair wasn’t an option, it was a requirement. What’s odd is that Carrell, who, if he was a real dude, would probably be one of the most scary humanoids walking the earth.

The movie plays this with Steve being a sympathetic character but I see some pretty rote story construction as I see his buddies are all out to help him get a woman and all are pretty colorful characters themselves. His one friend, Romany Malco, seems to be That Guy in films who purports to know everything there is about sex and gets Steve to go along with the more extreme and bizarre methods to getting a date. This includes: using the Suzanne Summer’s Thigh-Master, a joke that’s already been used in a few other comedies years ago when it was funny; waxing Steve’s really hairy body, which starts out promisingly enough but ends flat; having him start a conversation with a woman using the technique of asking a question when asked a question, never minding the woman is really good looking and would no way in real life find this conversational technique as hot as it’s shown; and then it’s off to something called Date-A-Palooza which, for it’s name sake, I can’t really think of anything else that uses that suffix anymore other than old white people who want to seem really “with it.”

Well, he meets a woman at the Date-A-Palooza, the same blonde from CABLE GUY, and ends up being a complete freak. Psycho. She flips out on Steve as they’re driving back to her place hoping, at the very least, to seal the deal. This part of the trailer actually makes me laugh. There’s something about hot crazy chicks that always strikes me as being honest and funny at the same time.

Now, after these “failed” attempts to find the one, Catherine Keener pops up into Steve’s life and what I fear the most about this movie starts to happen: he’s shown blossoming into a man who cares more for her package than for her, well, package. There’s the requisite laughing over a fun and jaunty soundtrack, the way he seems to beam with her as he’s being himself but the whole thing makes me ill. This movie seems to be straying too close to the romantic comedy and I just can’t appreciate that.

I was hoping this trailer would’ve at least lied to me somehow by making the trailer end on a wild note but this thing just peters out, shooting its funny load way too early and leaving me feel limp, dejected and ashamed.

Director: Sebastian Cordero
Cast: John Leguizamo, Leonor Watling, Jose Maria Yazpik, Alfred Molina, Damian Alcazar
Release: July 8, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: A Miami reporter (John Leguizamo) travels to a small Ecuadorian village to cover a series of brutal murders and get the biggest story of his career, tracking a possible serial killer dubbed the Monster of Babahoyo.

Prognosis: Positivo. Hot damn.

I would say on a one to ten, this trailer deserves a 9 for its construction. Everything about how foreign films can be sold to Americans should be found all in this trailer. What, initially, I like about this trailer is the air of immediacy that’s given to the subject matter. Everything pops quickly and we don’t have a lot of lingering back story to get caught up in to drag us down.

The screen starts black and you can hear a throng of people in the background. It’s muffled but you just notice the “From the producers of Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN” glide across the screen. John Leguizamo’s face is shown briefly, in slow motion, before it fades away.

The Official Selection card where it was shown at Cannes, Toronto, and Sundance all help to quietly lend the legitimacy that’s perfectly placed. It’s quick enough to keep your attention and, I feel, stay with the trailer.

The action begins with a news report saying that John, a reporter for a news agency in some Latin country, saves a guy from instant flammable death by gasoline. He gets involved in a bad situation. The screen fades out.

A lilting guitar plays in the background as John explains his role as a reporter. He mentions words about truth and his job as one who reports on it. It’s a little grandiose and it’s slightly aggrandizing as I think that most reporters feel in some way that they’re out there doing God’s work but it is just a job, after all. John takes the long way around saying he’s an investigative journalist. Small quibble, no worries.

“On the trail of a serial killer”¦”

Throaty Voiceover Guy drops into the action and cranks this already interesting movie up a few notches with even more exposition. John’s on the path to finding out something about a killer on the loose. He’s running, dodging the popo’s for reasons unknown, and there’s even some mass grave action going on. The camera work is palatable and its cinematography feels like it’s dirtying my computer screen. It’s wonderful.

What’s more is the interesting way subtitles are used. I would explain it but it’s so much more fun to see it for yourself. It’s one of the more engaging ways to get gringos into the mix with Spanish speaking peoples and it makes you pay attention to the words.

The screen jumps to black as we get snippets of glowing reviews, which is helpful 90% of the time as long as it’s done right, along with some real interesting quick clips of what’s going on in the movie.

The direction seems to meld wonderfully with the story and as long as there hasn’t been too much manipulation with the direction of the movie to the trailer I think this could be a really good movie.

Director: Roger Allers, Jill Culton, Anthony Stacchi
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Martin Lawrence, Debra Messing, Paul Westerberg
Release: September 9, 2006
Synopsis: A deer buddies up with a domesticated grizzly bear when the two animals are alone in the woods during hunting season. Meanwhile, Beth, a forest ranger who raised the bear, embarks on a desperate search to find her friend.

Prognosis: Positive. I love it.

I absolutely love this trailer which, by all intents and purposes, ought to be labeled a teaser. I don’t know why you’d want to generate interest nearly one year and three months plus put but I don’t run my own marketing department so who the hell am I to make a peep?

However, and first off, I was slightly skittish from the opening. What has Sony Animation ever put out into the fray? I wasn’t sure either and I can’t think of a single CGI, animated movie that they’ve done. This being the first time and all I thought it might look a little rough, getting one’s footing in the genre and all. Turns out, though, things just explode in a good way. You’ve got a rabbit that’s running for his life through a thicket of grass, obviously very upset that there’s something chasing him. This certainly ain’t BROTHER BEAR.

“Since before the beginning of the beginning of time”¦”

You get Roscoe McHiggins and his hillbilly mode of transport tearing through the forest trying to get this little rabbit. The camera is pulled back and you see the two of them plunging into a plume of trees. Our hunter churns some dirt as he pulls over and runs on foot after the little mammal; he’s carrying a shotgun. The animation draws me in. As an aside, movies like SHARK TALE should have understood that even though you have fish and sharks and different animals you don’t need to attack the color palate with every ROYGBIV combination you could think of. Use some sense is all I’m saying and this one looks like it has.

Right before the plaid hunter caps the rabbit in the face with serious amounts of buckshot, the requisite fingers in the bunny’s mouth to whistle, the universal help signal that transcends every culture and age group, blares out and it produces a small squirrel. The squirrel, who ends up being Scottish, and, while I’m talking about it, what is up with Scottish accented beasts ruling the animated market anyway? He yells out to his European counterparts, dozens of other squirrels who all heed the command by giving a rousting “Oy!” along with bagpipe music blurting over it all. Annoying as it is, with beating a cultural convention into the proverbial ground, it still made me laugh.

And, from out of nowhere, no longer is it just squirrels but the whole damn forest comes alive with bloodlust as other creatures essentially show off their homemade weaponry. I, myself, appreciated the large buck with a bra spread between his antlers, ostensibly to create a makeshift catapult I assume, and the one woodchuck who, like a deranged serial killer, wields a speeding chainsaw. It’s great. It’s cheeky and draws me in to its odd little world.

The promo does everything that it should with the only downside being that the movie doesn’t come out until next fall and it seems that Ashton Kutcher is voicing one of the leads.

Question: Is it really that necessary that Hollywood turn to actors to voice these things instead of using someone who may actually be useful in the part? I mean if I am going to work on a movie for YEARS would I want a voice that will really do something for the character or am I happy with whatever star has the highest Q score rating that month? Obviously, the answer is popularity wins out every time but whatever. Of what I saw I would definitely see this movie. And, it looks like the kids would enjoy it as well.

Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Rosario Dawson, Taye Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal
Release: November 11, 2005
Synopsis: This is the film version of the Pulitzer and Tony Award winning musical about Bohemians in the East Village of New York City struggling with life, love and AIDS, and the impacts they have on America.

Prognosis: Negative. Look, I am going to say something and I don’t want the wrong part of the audience to not get where I am coming from, and I am usually more erudite in my explanations when I don’t appreciate something, but this movie looks pretty shitty.

Now, to give you some idea of where my blind scale of justice sways, Broadway-wise, let me state that I was enamored with CHICAGO, thought that Hugh Jackman’s performance in both OKLAHOMA! and THE BOY FROM OZ was spectacular when compared to other Hollywood actors who try and fail wonderfully when they make a run at it, enjoy the spectacle shows like LION KING and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST but have an affectionate bone in my body that gravitates towards classics like MISS SAIGON and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA whenever I need something to reestablish my baseline for fruitiness in the eyes of my peers.

That said, though, I can’t even look this trailer in the eye without feeling all sorts of effeminate. I almost can’t even bear to recount the actions in this trailer without sensing my nads creeping into my sac but I will go on with the show and try to do what’s best for this column.

The trailer opens. I AM interested. I have never seen Rent live or heard it on CD but, from what I know, there are people who swear by its power as a musical. I know of individuals who see this show again and again, trying to get in with last minute, student or cheap seating.

The skyline for what I think is New York comes into daylight. It’s a bit passé and clichéd to start something with the beginning of the day but who the hell cares, right? The stage is all about keeping with convention and most people just want conventional so it’s ok.

A piano starts. I think for a moment this is the opening for Taxi or Cheers or any number of other television shows that used a piano to kick things off but I know we’re in for a song.

“Five-hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes”¦”

I am being serenaded by a gaggle of people and all I see on the screen are good looking urbanites trudging though the streets and subways of this city. The music grows in intensity as our choir booms into life. The action on the screen shows a powerless Rosario Dawson who is having a burned out candle lit by some strange dude who no doubt has something other than passionate romance on his mind; after all, she wore leather and chains, she wants to party.

We get snowy street corners, we see some dude riding a beater old ten-speed, a relic that even the dudes from BREAKING AWAY would eschew, and we get a sickening display of those slow-mo shots of people smiling, having a good time, and living a life you and I won’t ever know because we just aren’t that pretty enough. What’s more, and what I think, is that the slow-mo shot of people laughing like they’ve never laughed before is because someone just cut one and they’re trying to pin it on someone, you get the affective hardship slow-mo shot which is what drama queens do when they put their hand on their forehead as if to say “I just can’t go on living anymore,” and then you get the slo-mo shot of a happy couple dancing in the streets which, if were to be sped up to normal time, you would quickly see other people shouting offensive epithets in protest against such egregious PDA.

I will admit that the music is good. I was jiving in my chair as I heard it but this all feels, seriously, like the intro to the Rent television show on the Lifetime network where it’s lead-in is probably Thirtysomething and, right after it, Hill Street Blues.

It’s about here that we get the Spotlight Choir.

Each person wants to add their own special somethin’ somethin’ to this little song and I say God bless “˜em. They want to show the world that they’re able, someday, to be Ricky Martin’s backup singers or David Cassidy’s chorus when he’s singing at the Flamingo Hilton every Tuesday through Sunday, Monday’s always being black; singers need rest too.

It’s all very dramatic in a way that rubs me the wrong way. I guess you can put me in the category that thinks it all feels false. It shouldn’t, I know that, but it does. I am manly enough to admit that I like a good musical but I just can’t condone this trailer. You are effectively alienating a significant portion of your audience by having a trailer like this. Look at CHICAGO’s filmic campaign, with the trailer, and tell me what’s different about the two of them. I’ll tell you this: there isn’t a call-attention-to-yourself musical number that’s dragged out for 2+ minutes.

Director: Miranda July
Cast: Ellen Geer, John Hawkes, Brad William Henke, Miranda July, Jordan Potter, Brandon Ratcliff, Jason Rice, Natasha Slayton, Miles Thompson, Najarra Townsend, Carlie Westerman
Release: June 17, 2005
Synopsis: Me and You and Everyone We Know is a poetic and penetrating observation of how people struggle to connect with one another in an isolating and contemporary world. Christine Jesperson is a lonely artist and eEldercab driver who uses her fantastical artistic visions to draw her aspirations and objects of desire closer to her. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes), a newly single shoe salesman and father of two boys, is prepared for amazing things to happen. But when he meets the captivating Christine, he panics. Life is not so oblique for Richard’s seven-year-old Robby, who is having a risqué internet romance with a stranger, and his fourteen- year-old brother Peter who becomes the guinea pig for neighborhood girls – practicing for their future of romance and marriage.

View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Positive. I had to throw my artistic bad self a bone here and indulge in some really deep moviemaking. Well, it may not be deep but there is something brewing in this trailer and it’s not Sanka.

What I think is most admirable about this trailer is that it really isn’t trying to be something that it isn’t. For examples of things that try too hard, just flip through any number of movie magazines to see how certain movies are played up for their “romanticism” or “action” or how a certain demographic is aimed for with its use of money shots or what kind of narrative is being pimped.

This one definitely has its own voice, for better or worse.

What’s odd about the way this thing starts is that you have some woman who looks like Maggie Gyllenhall’s middle aged sister who is caressing a microphone in a way that makes my nards quiver. She’s talking to herself, modulating her voice as she has a pseudo conversation with no one else but she, and the camera captures this woman’s singularity in a way that makes me curious yet completely wierded out by the whole scenario. Luckily, we don’t linger long in this universe.

Our next obviously broken and shredded human being comes in the form of what looks like 1/3 of the super alterna/electronica group, Le Tigre; “˜Cept this is a dude who is a dude and not some woman who looks like a dude. Anyway, this guy is an Al Bundy who works in women’s shows and our two anti-heroes meet whilst he helps to slip on a pump to our maiden. She has a laceration on her ankle to which our man lets slide, as if it doesn’t slightly smack of pretentiousness, “You think you deserve that pain but you don’t.”

Groan.

Ok, I understand. It’s a deep movie. Thankfully, this is just tossed out casually and we never hear another word like this again. We’re thrust, swiftly, into this man’s universe as he regales us with what he hopes for his kids and for his life. He honestly comes off as a guy who’s trying to support a family and who dances not only to a different drummer but to a whole variant style of rhythm.

And this is also relevant to the discussion but the kids in question are showcased a little more here and you see that they’re not idealized Hollywood brood. They seem like kids who are also living a life that’s askew from the normalcy of what’s expected of today’s youth.

We meet up with our fumbling duo once more in the shoe department as our shoe guy tells the weird chick that he severely damaged his hand while trying, unsuccessfully, to save his own life. Huh? Yeah, I don’t get it either.

The quotes from Entertainment Weekly and Roger Ebert and the small seals of approval from Sundance, and it’s inclusion in it, all help to shore up the credibility of this odd, little, quirky film.

There’s some parts GHOST WORLD, some elements of THIRTEEN, a little PUNCH DRUNK LOVE and some shimmers of Todd Solondz in the editing that’s going on. I can’t say for sure if I’m going to rush out quickly to see this movie but I can say that the trailer kept me hooked.