FRED Entertainment

Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Cast: Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore, Ione Skye, Kadee Strickland
Release: April 8, 2005
Synopsis: A contemporary romantic comedy about a high school teacher who meets and falls in love with a successful businesswoman. Although their lives are vastly different, the relationship seems perfect until the baseball season begins and she has to compete with his first true love: the Boston Red Sox.

Prognosis: Not entirely negative. I had a buddy of mine, Troy, who recommended I see FEVER PITCH.

It wasn’t this one, but the one made about soccer years ago. He said it was a good movie even if you didn’t like football but since he’s an American version of an English hooligan, my trust in his instincts were blown after he tried to toss a Coca-Cola co2 canister into a bonfire, I never went out and picked it up; I mean, he was and is crazy about football. The boy left the state of Arizona on a near weekly basis just to go to California and watch a bunch of dudes kick around a ball. He was nuts and how good, really, could a soccer movie actually be?

So, you tell me, was this mild fan favorite flick in need of an American remake? Did Coupling need an American remake? Are we going to die of shock when the American version of The Office cripples and buckles under the weight of so much scrutiny from those who love the original? Can it even compare?

I don’t know the answers for most of those questions but for the first third of this trailer we get nothing but an average looking romantic comedy and I feel good knowing I’m right about this one. I do like the Rom Com as a genre, I do, and even though I thought Jimmy Fallon (along with that snobbish prat, Tina Fey) always seemed too self-congratulatory and smug whenever he laughed at his own jokes on Weekend Update I somehow started to like the look of this one.

I’m a newly born Boston Red Sox fan since last year’s season (A-Rod’s bitch slap trying to get to first in the playoffs sealed my opinion of the Yankees) and I can appreciate the idea of one person’s obsession getting in the way of a relationship. It is obsessive compulsive at its most clichéd but it still is a good spin on an old idea even if it is a ripped off one.

Also, the trailer does a good job with getting Drew all set up as the woman who doesn’t know if she’s young enough anymore to deal with someone like Jimmy, the uber superfan. Her friends, obviously, really don’t know if she’s getting involved with the right kind person and we get what are supposed to be humorous glimpses of how deep his fandom goes. I think it’s overplayed just a little bit but this is the alternate universe of the romantic comedy and, therefore, his overindulgence in Sox baseball is seen as cute and not depressingly sad like some of those people whose lives truly do revolve around the sport.

The air of this trailer is light and breezy. There’s nothing required of you other than knowing that Drew and Jimmy are at a supposed “crossroads” when I am sure the whole “it’s either them or me” speech will come out and, by the end, they’ll always be together because they’re really made for one another. Or, you’re thrown the Red Herring and they don’t end up with each other but, surprise, the false ending just sets up the real one where they come together in the end for real.

The trailer does something unique, too, in selling this movies to the ladies: it also sells itself pretty damn well to dudes. Guys can understand and relate to the compulsiveness some have with professional sports. Because Nick Hornby’s novel was about soccer it didn’t make a difference to this film, ultimately, what sport was chosen because the ethos of the novel translates really well to the zeitgeist of contemporary global fandom of any organized sporting activity.

Look, the music for this trailer sucks. The Goo Goo Dolls’ remake of “Give a Little Bit” rubs me the wrong way, the zaniness that the Farrelley’s are bringing to this film seem muted if nothing else, and I am not sure if I could really believe Barrymore and Fallon as romantic interlopers but, crap, if I had to choose between any other movie of this kind of pedigree at the local multiplex I wouldn’t hesitate to see this one for a second. I am sure, though, that others are going to refuse to see this film based on its remake status but one should never simply push away film if it was really because there was money to be made by remaking it for a different audience. It’s a crappy reason to make a film, but it’s fiscally understandable.

Director: David Duchovny
Cast: Robin Williams, Anton Yelchin, David Duchovny, Tea Leoni, Robin Williams, Erykah Badu, Frank Langella
Release: April 15, 2005
Synopsis: An American artist living a bohemian existence in Paris, Tom Warshaw (David Duchovny) is trying to make sense of his troubled adult life by reflecting upon his extraordinary childhood…The year is 1973, and thirteen-year-old Greenwich Village native Tommy Warshaw (Anton Yelchin) is on the brink of becoming a man. While his bereaved single mother (Téa Leoni) continues to mourn the death of his father, Tommy escapes his own grief by causing trouble at school and making afternoon meat deliveries with his best friend Pappas (Robin Williams), a mentally challenged janitor. Following the romantic advice offered by Lady (Erykah Badu) – incarcerated in the infamous Greenwich Village Women’s House of Detention for shadowy reasons – Tommy even experiences his first taste of love. Yet when an unexpected tragedy radically alters his world, Tommy must make a life-defining choice – one that will compel the adult Tom Warshaw, thirty years later, to confront his unfinished past.

Prognosis: Negative. “My name is Tom Warshaw. I’m an American artist”¦.”

This one was real hard to try and understand.

The difficulty I have with this trailer is not that I see David Duchovny riding his bicycle around the Eiffel Tower as he says he’s been hiding from a past that’s catching up to him; that much I can comprehend, however, it is the series of flashbacks that make me wonder, ultimately, what the hell am I supposed to understand about the plot that’s trying to be explained?

We start our travails in comprehension in New York, 1973, and we see David as a small lad in mid-adolescence. He lives with his mom, played by his real wife Tea Leoni (which I am sure there is some good debate material for someone who wants to talk about what kind of Freud issues this role raised for Duchovny), and has a mentally challenged man child for a friend which comes in the pliable skin of Robin Williams. I know it’s a small quibble but the kid’s hair, too, looks kind of fake funky. It looks like the movie version of that kind of haircut circa 1973.

After the moment Williams gets introduced I’m thinking this may again be a role where Williams isn’t really Williams, in much the way I loved his non-self in INSOMNIA, but I am unfortunately kicked in the brain sac when Williams starts his mugging and blatant comedic relief. I guess it really must be ingrained into his wiring.

Duchovny’s mother, wife, Nurse Ratchet look-alike, whatever the hell she’s supposed to be, starts to talk to her young son about the dangers of girls, and probably even mentions the venial sin of self-mutilation as well, I’m trying to piece together this narrative in a way that makes sense. But the long and short of it is that I can’t. The ensuing scenes of the young Duchovny sitting outside of a woman’s prison where I think Erykah Badu is being held for crimes that stem from severe follicle mistreatment only compound my consternation. I can’t make heads or tails out of a goddammed thing.

Here is where someone in their advertising department should really open their eyes and listen: I like Duchovny. I hated X-Files but loved the X-Files movie. I loved RETURN TO ME. Even EVOLUTION wasn’t a complete transgression against humanity and his stint in ZOOLANDER was good and laugh worthy. Point is, you’re trying to tell me why this very capable actor is running from a past but so far, and we’re already halfway through the trailer, I don’t see anything he should be running from. He has a slow-mo for a friend, a psychopath for a mother and he likes chicks. Seems like a normal childhood to me. Whatever’s coming around the bend is almost too late for me to care, even though I’m now sticking around to find out.

I get it, though. This is an “indie” kind of film, you really want to build up the “exposition” of the characters, you want to buck the standard of coming in hard and fast. I get that but give me a reason to see the film.

I finally find out that what he’s running from is an incident of either Duchovny’s younger self or Williams who steals a Schwinn out of a bicycle store window. Even though Williams is shown throwing a rock through the window we are led to believe Duchovny makes him take the fall for him. I don’t know who is lying but I think if the “past” is only limited to the first third of the film things will hopefully be better than they seem.

This looks like a really deep film for David but unless he gives me something more than confusion and frustration I think that’s where this movie will stay in my own estimation.

Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Kieran O’Brien, Margot Stilley
Release: March 11, 2005 (UK)
Synopsis: In between attending rock concerts, two lovers meet for intense sexual encounters.

Prognosis: Positive. Michael Winterbottom is a director who just understands how to develop a movie about the relationship people have with music in a way that is both honest, unique and engrossing at the same time.

This film looks to do just the same thing for modern rock as he did for past pop in 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE.

I really like the opening image of the rock show that starts off this trailer; the blinding white light, the throngs of people screaming, the anticipation of what’s about to come next. It gets you stirred up but that image is quickly countered with one of two very nude people. The soft piano melody plays well with the soft porno-ish depiction of our lovers who are wrapped up in themselves and each other. It’s sweet and endearing.

We hear from the male of the relationship and, instead of taking a prototypical man who cares for only the cooch and have him play his part emotionally distant, we hear him talk lovingly about his woman. He wants her body, true, but he seems more concerned with consuming his woman with everything he has in him; the scenes that go along with this are, again, graphic but that also depends on what your definition is of graphic. If that means any explicit imagery of two adults going at it like sex starved chimpanzees who’ve just discovered their nether regions then, yes, it would qualify but, I would assert, and feel free to disagree, the images are more than graphic. They aren’t meant so much to titillate, which they most certainly do as she’s pretty nice to look at and she’s not my girlfriend knowwhati’msayin’, but these images quickly and effectively establish our two characters. We know they’re in love and how deep it goes. We’ve lost the feeling of the genuine in modern love stories and I don’t really know if the whole movie is like the dalliance I see developing between these two people in the trailer but, to me, it’s there.

They play with one another, the woman making fun of her man, and they are shown spending lots of their time in clubs watching bands that comprise a veritable who’s who of modern rock today: The Von Bondies, The Dandy Warhols, Franz Ferdinand, just names a few who I am sure will be on full display throughout this movie.

What’s odd about all of this is that they could’ve gone, the people who made this film, could have played up the music angle and exploited the hell out of it. Kids would’ve gone “hey, I know that song” and immediacy identified with the vibe of the movie if nothing else. Instead, what we get is the same melodic piano and violin music that begins this trailer which nearly makes a brotha’ weep by trailer’s end. It’s sad in a way but our cute couple seems so happy with where they are and who they’re with that you almost wait for one of them to just pass on.

Near the end of the trailer the slow music is pitched in favor of a quicker number as the screen starts fluttering with performers, our couple, some cards letting us know this was an official selection at Sundance and Toronto, among others, and just as fast as you think we’re going in two different directions with how this trailer wants to go with itself, slow or fast, it’s all done and finished.

Director: Angela Robinson
Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Matt Dillon, Jeffrey Tambor, Carolina Garcia, Michael Keaton, Justin Long, Breckin Meyer
Release: June 24, 2005
Synopsis: Start your engines! Herbie, the most beloved car star of them all, is back and Lindsay Lohan’s got him in Disney’s all new revved-up comedy adventure, HERBIE: FULLY LOADED. Lohan stars as Maggie Peyton, the new owner of Number 53 – the free-wheelin’ Volkswagen bug with a mind of its own – who puts the car through its paces on the road to becoming a NASCAR competitor. Herbie’s got some new tricks under his hood as he takes audiences for an action-packed spin in this high-speed comedy. With an all-star cast along for a wild ride, this comedy puts Herbie to the test – on-road, off-road, on the track and into the record books.

Prognosis: Negative. I never really thought the premise of HERBIE THE LOVE BUG was something that ever necessitated my viewership as a kid.

Those live action Disney movies, for the most part, were just pale imitations of their animated features. Sure, CONDORMAN was really creepy in its own costume sort of way and, thus, sparked my interest in comic books, but it wasn’t until Peter Billingsley’s stint as a young boy with a lovable, emo-laden machine in THE DIRT BIKE KID until I really understood the power of these kinds of films. Knight Rider became an obsession after these epiphanies.

So, it is in this vein that we are brought this new “update” out of the Disney vaults.

The trailer starts with a new look at the old bug. As we 360 around its body we can see what was done to bring this movie into the 2000’s. Disney really wants to create the impression that it’s hip to what the kids like nowadays. The narrative, though, tries too hard as it imbues the Love Bug with personification so we all know that this machine just isn’t some stoner classic from the 60’s but a high performance automobile that, as you can see quickly on it’s speedometer, can go up to speeds of over 160 mph. Huh? Did Xzibit and his peeps from Pimp My Ride get a hold of it? Yes they did and we’re just expected to play along nicely.

Fine, it got a makeover.

So, what’s the plot? Well, in linear fashion we understand that Michael Keaton is the patriarch race man of a family who is all wrapped up in racing. Breckin Meyer plays an inept brother who, as wacky as he is, just isn’t right in the head. The kooky sound effects that go off when he walks into a wall after saying he’s fine, coming on the heels of a collision, just show how unreal we’re going to get with the film. And in unreal I mean how detached from reality this film’s gonna be and it seems to be playing for that real young demographic, the coveted 5-11 year-olds.

Now, I don’t normally take contention with the soundtrack music, ok I do, but when Lohan, and what a great ambassador for kids everywhere she is, Disney must be very proud, sits in Herbie the first time and turns the key, Jane’s Addiction starts playing. Damn. Another one of my favorite songs whored out to the highest bidder.

Well, it’s Lindsay at the wheel instead of the ineffable Dean Jones and from here we get to see just how “zany” things are going to get. At one point the trailer shows Herbie in the middle of a demolition derby, resplendent with a handlebar mustached crazy guy who swears he’s going to crush that bug. Of course, kids, Herbie’s going to be alright and, in fact, while tempting fate with reality, why not put him on a real racing track with NASCARs? And for those of you cynical folks out there who are thinking that he Mouse House is just making this film just for the easy money, Matt Dillion makes an appearance as the nemesis who, I can almost make sure, will try to do harm to our love bug; the black outfit really symbolizes, in a subliminal way because no one could possibly catch on, his character’s motives. I even say look at Dillon’s eyes and tell me that is not a classically trained actor who projects so much evil. It’s downright chilling.

Um yeah, also, when Herbie starts to get the idea of humping the back end of a yellow VW bug, to the sounds of Crazy Town’s “Butterfly,” a song very popular here, locally, in Phoenix to promote a totally nude cabaret, who exactly is this scene trying to appeal to? Autophiliacs? If anyone can convey what something like this is doing in a production that is part sex, part kids yet all the way terrible, let me know.

The rest of the trailer is just more of the same old thing when you’re dealing with a story about a down on their luck family who really needs something special to happen to them. I’m sure the Disney Channel will be campaigning hard to get the young’uns to see this direct-to-video fare but I’ll bet dollars to donuts there will be no mention whatsoever about Herbie wanting to tap that yellow VW ass in its promos on the cable network in-between a new episode of Rolie Polie Olie and Kim Possible.

Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden
Release: June 10, 2005
Synopsis: A fresh take on the irreverent 1976 comedy hit, “The Bad News Bears” follows a grizzled former minor league baseball player who is recruited to coach a woefully inept Little League team to a championship against their hated rivals, the Yankees.

Prognosis: Positive. I think Lupus really freaked me out as a kid.

That little punk really did need a good ass kicking but having one of his teammates try to get involved to defend him, only to get stuffed into a garbage can, predating that John Cusak in a dumpster in BETTER OFF DEAD by a good number of years, was just slightly queer when he had condiments dripped all over him. The sympathetic sensation I had of what it must have felt like to be covered in that goo, and to have it done while wearing a polyester blend uniform just skeeved me out. Tatum O’Neil, though, was definitely part of the hook that made that movie so easy to watch; that, and Engelberg with his candy fascination and bad attitude. That Engelberg sure made me laugh as a kid.

The original BAD NEWS BEARS was a good film because it really screwed with convention about how sports films were supposed to go. Having Walter Matthau as the team’s drunkenly alcoholic manager just adds to the great originality of the movie.

This trailer, for this big studio incarnation, starts things off just right.

With the slow din of trumpets playing in the background, the screen completely black, the words “If you were raised to believe in sportsmanship”¦” slowly make their way in front of you. I appreciate what’s coming next only because everyone should know by now how facetious this statement is when you get the clue this is the Bad News Bears.

And then we see him: Billy Bob Thorton.

He talks about baseball, the love of the game, how it doesn’t always love you back, and as he’s talking to his young baseball wards, he ties everything together by using an analogy of dating a German chick. The kids on the screen really don’t get it but I had great faith in where this film was going after that.

Fielding practice is first on the list. Billy knocks a ground ball, cigarette between his lips, towards a line of young boys who are gathered around second and third base. You see a kid in a wheelchair just sit there as the ball ricochets off his wheel with a ding.

“Good hustle,” Billy says. Comedy gold, my good man, I say.

Greg Kinnear looks great as the antagonizing coach, his team getting into fisticuffs with the Bears, and Billy Bob is right there to not only admonish them for fighting but for fighting disgracefully like “Helen Keller at a piñata party.”

Hooters, Hooters the restaurant, the skuzzy vibe that Billy Bob needs to have in order to pull this off, and some raucous behavior from all involved is in full boar. His delivery is almost too easy but this really does look like a film catered to Billy’s sensibilities.

This actually is a welcomed remake from what I can see and I hope Richard Linklater can do it in a way Walter would’ve approved of.

Director: Jaume Serra
Cast:Elisha Cuthbert, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams, Damon Herriman, Paris Hilton, Emma Lung, Chad Michael Murray, Robert Ri’chard, Brian Van Holt
Release: April 29, 2005
Synopsis: A group of friends on their way to a college football game falls prey to a pair of murderous brothers in an abandoned small town. They discover that the brothers have expanded upon the area’s main attraction ““ the House of Wax ““ and created an entire town filled with the wax-coated corpses of unlucky visitors. Now the group must find a way out before they too become permanent exhibits in the House of Wax. Produced by Joel Silver.

Prognosis: Weirdly Positive. Look, I’m no media critic, well maybe I am a little bit, but I do know I share the sentiment with many discriminating movie goers that any movie that has Paris “Queen of All Staged Reality”¦and Porn” Hilton just can’t be a good thing; and while we’re at it, and kind of off the subject, she’s a very distant lover although she does get fierce with the kielbasa when taunted like a starving puppy.

What I really mean is that the trailer starts off with a video camera recording the late night antics of a bunch of “young adults” on a late night session of camping, drinking, doping, and fornicating in the woods. Hilton is shown being recorded on tape, making out with a guy, and I actually start to think this may not be too bad. It’s topical, certainly plausible considering the history she has, and I believe it.

Even when a strange vehicle pulls up, a burly monster truck that blasts its mega wattage KC’s into the eyes of these expendable young adults, there is a moment of tension and I am actually digging the suspense factor that’s being created. One of the guys, who looks an awful lot like David Beckham’s younger brother, tosses a bottle at the car. Without saying a word or uttering a sound after it hits and shatters one of the lights, the truck leaves.

They decide to leave the area, taking some good hints about what happens when you toss glass at backwoods hillbillies who leave without saying a word, but end up stopping in a small town that, the trailer says, doesn’t even exist on a map.

Ok, life survival tip #70403: If some guy visits your campsite and then drives off after you’ve pelted his car with a beer bottle without so much as a “hey, what chew kids d’un out “˜tere without some sup’r vision” get yourself the hell home and do not look back. But hey, this is the movies, and we need our victims to be as ignorant and stupid as possible it’s a good thing that they all walk around this deserted town that’s not on any map.

Yeah, so this trailer goes on with these kids just jauntily moving about this deserted town and then they find themselves walking up to a literal house of wax. At one point Hilton’s scripted voice of concern should have been the red flag to all those present that for once she may have something other than “that’s hot” in the most disaffected way possible but it only eggs everyone else to go on in.

At this point I don’t have anything emotionally invested in any of these people. I hope they all die. I start hoping and praying this is a horror movie where the bad guy actually manages to kill each and every one of them. Slowly.

Sho’ “˜nuff, it seems like it is one of those kinds of films.

I have to give it up, though, for the people who made the wax figures look greasy and creeping looking. The effects work is really effective in evoking a sense of ominous danger and that little hint of absolute dread in what’s coming next.

Now, even though the “town” really only looks like a set that was built on a studio lot to look like a town, the use of all the businesses for places to hide from the “killers” in this movie makes this cat and mouse game a little more entertaining if nothing else.

Also, and I again have to give praise to the trailer makers, the last few moments of this trailer that start showing just unrelated clips of people running, of Hilton screaming, of guys who are trying to the hero but you know who will end up dead, the shot of Hilton’s boobs, of chicks trying to fake like they’re wax statues themselves to evade detection from the marauders, and the music that all brings it together, I have to say I am actually impressed that this clunker is able to make itself really appear something other than the cheap screamfest it is. I’m actually interested in seeing if it has anything to offer other than being a vehicle for Paris to show her flat nugs to the world once again.

Director:Richard Linklater
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, , Heather Kafka, Dameon Clarke, Rory Cochrane, Jack Cruz
Release: September 16, 2005
Synopsis: Set in a future world where America has lost the war on drugs, undercover cop Fred (Keanu Reeves) is one of many agents hooked on the popular drug Substance D, which causes its users to develop split personalities. Fred, for instance, is also Bob, a notorious drug dealer. Along with his superior officers, Fred sets up an elaborate scheme to catch Bob and tear down his operation.

Prognosis: Positive. “It may just be my imagination”¦”

Hey everybody, it’s Neo from THE MATRIX and he’s gone anime!

Alright, so it’s not as kinetic as anime but Keanu’s visage gone digitally watercolor is actually aesthetically affective. I’m warmed by the way the colors look on the screen. Now, it does appear like Linklater’s doing WAKING LIFE part 2, but, still, it’s a welcome change from what’s out there.

It has a kind of fluidity it but there seems to be some movement towards some action that actually pulls in my attention; it’s like A-Ha all over again, but more on that later.

Keanu goes on to explain that something is watching him and that whatever it is it isn’t human. As he has this conversation with an unnamed person someone else, from afar, looks down on him at a console that seems ripped from the set of Sealab 2021. But since this is a Phillip K. Dick movie-i-zation the sexed up looking lady (no, I never thought that any computer generated woman was ever hittable and I just feel sorry for the guys who do) who is trying to figure out Keanu just may be a cyborg. Who knows.

What I do know, though, is that the other scenes that follow are interesting if nothing else and they seem completely unrelated to each other. At one point some guy is wearing some kind of padded helmet that’s connected to a series of wires as a part of some experiment, some near nude woman is writhing on a bed which seems to be the result of a freaky dream or because she’s having services rendered off-screen (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

“Everything you do will be recorded”

So, from what I can tell of the plot Keanu is somehow being told by a scientist that the left hemisphere of his brain was damaged and that his right was compensating. What this means to the overall story I don’t know but it’s giving me a headache trying to piece it all together and I really shouldn’t have to be playing the part of the detective trying to Kojak the plot into a cohesive whole.

Near the end of the trailer we get introduced to the other players in this thing: Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr., and Wynona Ryder, who all speak in a parlance that is part odd, and part confusing.

I know I can read what this movie’s about by reading the synopsis but if I were just trying to find out what it meant by watching the trailer I wouldn’t know what the hell is going on by the end of this thing and would put this on the long list of movies I may or may not look into later.

A lot of money can either be made or lost when you either obfuscate the message or make it understandable to those you’re trying to reach. I mean, look at A-Ha’s “Take on Me” video. That told an awesomely moving story about a man trapped in a real large, very crappy, comic book. It was all said and done in a couple of minutes. I’m not saying A-Ha’s foray into comic/live action animation is any better but that girl in the video was way hot and I nearly shed a tear when that guy threw himself into the wall time and time again. Makes me misty just thinking about it.

Director: John Stockwell
Cast: Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Scott Caan, Ashley Scott, Josh Brolin, James Frain
Release: July 15, 2005
Synopsis: INTO THE BLUE is a high stakes thriller set in the deep, shark-infested waters of the Bahamas. When young divers discover the wreckage of a cargo plane at the bottom of the sea, they believe their dream of buried treasure has come true. What they don’t realize is that millions of dollars of illegal goods are in that sunken plane and a group of dangerous criminals are already desperately searching for it. As tensions mount and the friends begin to fight about what to do with their find, others get closer to discovering their secret ““ and the treasure hunters quickly become the hunted.

Prognosis: Negative. I’m slightly torn in two very distinct directions.

I was a fan of both THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and its sequel with Paul Walker. On the flipside I could have cared less about Dark Angel when it was on the television. I mean Jessica Alba’s cute but primetime sci-fi just isn’t my thing. So, as this trailer begins I am wonder about how many teens will want to see this one as they will be the ones who will represent the largest demographic opening weekend and I realize that many probably will go to see the movie based on the fact these two are playing “lov-ahs.”

So, Paul is searching for buried shipwrecks with a metal detector that seems oddly nerdish but, ok, I can believe the premise. Then you have Jessica who seems to be all hot for her man and appreciates his way of life. Now, I’ve seen the Discovery channel and what some of these treasure guys actually look like; their salty hair, weathered expressions and crusty outlooks on life aren’t really the basis for films but I don’t know anything, right? In this universe treasure hunters are buff as I am sure comic book collectors have the pick of the litter; that’s right, Jason Lee was one in MALLRATS. See how movie life is so much better than reality?

However, the locales are perfect. Everyone looks great and I almost feel like it’s an ad for a Bahamas getaway with those you love for a low low price of $2149, based on double occupancy. Everyone appears tanned and so delighted to be alive on this island paradise. It is when Paul and his bud, Scott Caan, find a shipwreck that has lots of treasure that the mystery of it all begins. And yeah, one of the items, a mini gold sword, which I assume is a part of their great cache score, is taken into a hot tub party with Alba, Walker, Caan and his ol’ lady. I’m sure that’s real prudent and won’t harm a thing.

So, other people start getting involved with the ransacking. Josh Brolin, (holy kids of more old Hollywood, Batman!) is someone that tries his best to come off as the scurrilous scallywag out to steal Walker’s booty. Or he may be straight and be going after Alba’s but that’s neither here nor there, but wholly pertinent to the plot.

The rest of the trailer falls into a nu-rock video sort of montage of shirtless dudes, guns, scuba diving, more shirtless dudes, fighting, kicking, and there isn’t one bikinied nod as to why I should see this film as a dude who’s not into shirtless dudes. At one point a card comes up and it says that the treasure is worth 100 million dollars and I am curious to know how they know that when no one has brought anything to the surface other than a small sword that Paul’s already using in the hot tub.

I can see the potential in this film but it really seems like a limp entry into the action fray that will simply get lost after its first week. The kids will love Alba and Walker, and there seems to be some standard action sequences that will get the crowd in there for the initial weekend but will word of mouth, dare I say it, sink this average looking flick? And, to say this without being cute, the movie doesn’t look to either forward the genre or execute the tale in a new or exciting way.

Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Cast: Nick Cannon, Bow Wow, Mike Epps, Rick Gonzalez, Meagan Good, Brandon Jackson, Chi McBride, Kellita Smith, Jurnee Smollett, Khleo Thomas, Tai’ isha Davis
Release: July 1, 2005
Synopsis: In the late “˜70s when roller skating was a way of life, X (Bow Wow) and his pals ruled supreme. But when the doors of their local skating rink close, it marks the end of an era and the beginning of another that sees the boys venture into foreign territory – uptown’s Sweetwater Roller Rink, complete with its over-the-top skaters and beautiful girls. Through his preparation for the showdown of the season – the Roller Jam skate off with the Sweetwater crew – X manages to find himself and also help his dad (Chi McBride) get back on track.

Prognosis: Positive. I had no clue what the hell this movie was about but the opening ditty of his trailer had me groovin’ right along with the action. I was lost in admiring some big ass old-school headphones with the FM tuner built right into them, the antennae jutting out from this kid’s headphones. Our young man’s colored striped socks are pulled up to the knees and his be-bopping down the block on a pair of 4-wheeled roller skates make we wonder if people really dressed like that back in the day. This is your average block. There are nice houses with lush yards, thick trees on the side of the road, and the weather couldn’t be greater.

The kid just seems gliding on water as he’s shucking and jiving down the avenue, tossing newspapers left and right on his paper route, and I think back to my own days of roller skating. I can’t believe he’s able to stay upright in the middle of a city street because whenever my wheel would come in contact with a pebble I would inexorably launch forward. Every time. Anyhoo, our unnamed kid does his thang, the cards in-between shots mixing in very well with what’s going on during the set-up, and I get to the point in the trailer when I see this is all about competitive roller dancing. I think.

But I’m cool with that. In fact, I’m kind of really interested. I sucked at roller skating, even indoors, but I like what’s going on. Nick Cannon, in a movie now about bringin’ it to the rink instead of bringin’ it to a drumline, who looks pretty good in his satiny butterfly collared shirt, dashing smile, and big beautiful “˜fro.

We get just a hint about what this movie’s going to be about and that’s executed perfectly here with only the smallest pieces of information being doled out like precious stones that need to be .

The cards don’t overpower the action on the screen and vise-versa. The song that plays in the end as everyone gets introduced “It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day,” a great soul standard that I even liked when a new version of it was added to the BODYGUARD soundtrack (I swear to god I don’t know what I was thinking when I got it; I was heavily medicated.)

With the addition of Charlie Murphy and Mike Epps into this vehicle I hope there’s enough to carry this story along with punctuations of humor and some genuinely good storytelling. From what I can see there’ll be a good soundtrack and a real dedication to the period in which this movie takes place.

Director: Paul Haggis
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Ludacris, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate, Nona Gaye
Release: May 13, 2005
Synopsis: A provocative, unflinching look at the complexities of racial conflict in America, CRASH is that rare cinematic event – a film that challenges audiences to question their own prejudices. Diving headlong into the diverse melting pot of post-9/11 Los Angeles, this compelling urban drama tracks the volatile intersections of a multi-ethnic cast, examining fear and bigotry from multiple perspectives as characters careen in and out of one another’s lives. No one is safe in the battle zones of racial strife. And no one is immune to the simmering rage that sparks violence – and changes lives.

Prognosis: Positive. Don Cheadle’s opening monologue about how the streets of L.A. are superficially cold, emotionally, and how we’re all cut off from one another is fairly engrossing as we get right into the premise of this film. The music that languidly wraps itself around his words, emotionally perfect, really makes me sit and listen to both intently.

The quick shots of Dillon, Frasier, Daniel Dae Kim from Lost (that was one bitchin’ episode where he beats that one dude senseless in the koi pond.), Bullock (who actually seems like she’s acting and doing a splendid job at it), and even Phillipe get me involved into these lives very quickly. Things are rolling really fast.

Some great editing slowly walks you through the idea that this is a movie with multiple storylines that, perhaps, will converge in a way that feel more satisfying than it did in MAGNOLIA. I happen to be someone who likes the multi-dimensional approach to storytelling in movies; be it PULP FICTION, FOUR ROOMS, SHORT CUTS, or even the very ignored TWENTY BUCKS, there is a certain fascination I have for how you can make someone believe that there are so many tangential possibilities inherent in everyday life but yet there are connecting threads that sometimes make you think if it’s possible. This trailer does a good job with relaying that this is the way the movie will go. Now, whether it’s executed in a manner that will impress or repel me is a subject for a different column but here you see the possibilities.

Even Cheadle’s explanation of the movie’s title, how it’s representative of a person’s need to touch, something he says we’ve all lost the ability to do, is a nice dovetail to the trailer’s ending.

You really couldn’t do any more to make me want to see this film. There are so many things that this trailer does right it makes a real good case as to why someone would want to keep this movie in mind whenever it does open wide. It should help that the guy who wrote and directed this one, Paul Haggis, was also the scribe behind MILLION DOLLAR BABY. For some, that may be a good or bad thing but I would think having a movie nominated, and winning, an Academy Award is a nice thing to have on one’s filmic résumé.

Director: Darren Grant
Cast:Kimberly Elise, Steve Harris, Shemar Moore, Tamara Taylor, Lisa Marcos
Release: February 25th, 2005
Synopsis: The husband, Charles, is a powerful attorney while Helen has been a devoted housewife. They seem to have everything, money, a beautiful mansion — the American Dream. But just as Helen prepares to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary, her picture-perfect life is about to takes an unexpected twist: Charles wants to divorce her for her best friend.

Prognosis: Kinda Positive. Hmm”¦this is an interesting way to begin things. What we have here, initially, is a love story of a man and woman who have been married for many years.

He’s successful, they’re living well, and when, after a gala event, the wife wants to give her man a little present the husband comes walking into the family room with another woman at his side. Now, at first glance I think, alright, cool, they’re all gonna get freaky with one another. However, as luck or damnation would have it the husband really is just telling his wife that he’s leaving her for this hoochie mama lookin’ piece of street trash.

So, after the chub subsides, I see that this once affluent woman has to go back to her life as it was before she had anything. I’m cool with how things are going but when she ding-dongs on the doorbell of someone she used to know from the old neighborhood, I’m thinking maybe a mother, an aunt, a friend, out comes this cross-dresser of a man if ever there was one who ends up answering the door. Now, I know there must be some reason why a dude in drag is playing the part of an older woman but it initially, and subsequently, freaks me out. However, I just roll on and let this thing play out.

Our rich girl turned poor starts to mingle with the dregs of society she only recently just started to get into a pattern of eschewing and learns that she’s an angry woman. She’s angry for the way she’s been treated in life, although some would have little sympathy for once having it all and then losing it, but decides to keep a journal of her experiences to chronicle her thoughts.

She’s one woman against a world that she has to rebuild on her own.

What I learn is that she takes a chance on a guy who she never before would have thought to do otherwise but it feels kind of formulaic. The subsequent moments she has with her mother who tells her, essentially, she needs to be her own woman is, I think, something that can draw the feminine crowd to the theater but, sadly, marginalizes the other 50% of the audience who have no real impetus to see the movie.

I like romantic comedies. I like dramas. When they’re sort of slap dashed together in this kind of mix, though, I’m not so sure that I would want to go.

The trailer sets it up as a womanly empowerment kind of film but I just can’t see any motivational reasons why a guy like me would want to get the kind of feeling to see the movie. It’s not a knock against the film itself but if the message of this movie is really one for females and how they need to be strong and independent I think I’d rather see something blow up or explode in flames for no apparent reason than take a chance on this.

That said, though, I can almost see the genuineness in the message of the film. It may be nothing more than STELLA GETTING HER GROOVE ON but movies where someone needs to lose everything in order to gain a better understanding of who they are as people are good ones to have in a pool of pictures that could care less about how people evolve as humans.

That woman, though, who our protagonist is living with? Creeps me out in ways I can only begin to describe as scary, frightening, strange and many other words that call to mind an overall sense of uneasiness.

Director: Huck Botko, Robert Capelli Jr.
Cast: Andrew Gurland, Eugenia Yuan, Adrian Martinez, Deborah Teng
Release: March 11, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: A documentarian funds a NYC doorman’s Asian mail order bride in exchange for the right to film the experience. But when Lichi arrives in America, she finds herself married to a recluse with a penchant for sadistic sexual role-playing. Objectivity flies out the window when she and the filmmaker become involved. Twists and turns are plentiful in this tragi-comic love triangle where all is not what it seems.

Prognosis: Positive. Now here’s an independent movie with a premise better than just the examination of the human condition: a movie about mail order brides.

A guy off-screen says he’s tried everything: bars, setups and hook-ups. We get a look at the schlub and see why he really hasn’t had any “luck”: he’s a bit of a slob. A guy in a cab, who could make a living at being John Tuturo’s little brother, who tries to say something nice, says he’s worked with scummier people than him. I think that’s a compliment.

This mocumentary is all about how this one Jabba looking behemoth, and who has the persistent facial expression of someone who just woke up, goes through the process of getting a wife. It’s a premise that’s not too unoriginal, although an ugly guy getting a wife using a catalog is an old plot device that’s as old as that one Night Court episode (that crazy Bull”¦), but this trailer moves fast and has moments of real hilarity.

Also, one of the things that works extremely well here is the use of the animated cards in-between the clips. The cards breakdown everything “Wanted” in a perfect wife if it could be ordered up in a misogynist culture like ours. The guy’s wife, Lichi, is very attractive and shows to be quite everything that he ordered. The interview style of the movie shows Lichi as a happy and content wife as she picks up after this guy, learns how to stir his favorite concoction on the stove, is told how to feed her husband’s snake and who then hooks up with the guy’s friend who we saw in the beginning.

The best friend, although I guess that could be debated, macks on the dude’s wife and then takes her for himself after he convinces her that she doesn’t want that pile of chubby goo. Although he thinks he has done a service to the lady, because being a servant isn’t any way to be married, the per diem her new husband bestows on her she blows on all things pig. This is where the fun begins.

The chick gets crazy.

She starts screaming and unleashes her true self. The result turns this whole premise on its ear and I think that’s what gives this thing a new twist. For a film to be a made like this, for it to be an independent picture at that, takes a lot of mettle. The genre of the independent film is littered with the most self-serving crap at times and it’s nice to see someone go outside of the mold to offer something new, something funny.

Now, whether this film has anything to offer beyond the setup, ultimately, is yet to be seen but the trailer is enough for me, and convinces me, that this looks like an interesting way to spend an hour and a half.

Director: Garth Jennings
Cast: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy, Warwick Davis, Stephen Fry
Release: April 29, 2005
Synopsis: Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, journeyman Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher penning a new edition of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Prognosis: Positive. Martin Freemen, right after Ricky Gervais, really made The Office for me.

The guy has this Everyman look to him, to say nothing of the comedic talent he possesses, and his style is simply enthralling to watch as he worked every scene in that all too short-lived series; he’s absolutely wonderful in the episode when the trainer comes for a visit to Wernham Hogg. Here, though, in this trailer, we get a glimpse into why nerds everywhere are clutching their Douglas Adams books and pinning their hopes on this small little adaptation.

I’ve never read the series. I had a friend who loved it, and I think you know you’re a part of this grand legion known as Nerddom if you can say that you have at least one degree of separation from someone who has, but I couldn’t be bothered with it. I still would never read it even by chance. Doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Give me Crane, give me Dubus, give me the back of a cereal box of Wheaties, but I simply can not stomach science fiction; not because it’s beneath me, mind you, but because I sucked at all things science. I just couldn’t comprehend that world. But that’s ok. This trailer really gets me going.

We get Freemen as he rousts himself out of bed. After he stirs himself awake and bangs his head on a low ceiling as he walks down his stairs the idea is already in motion that something is going to go terribly wrong in this man’s life today.

I am completely appreciative of this trailer for cutting through so many years of haze for me as to why this book was so popular with the guys who I knew. And it does it quickly.

We immediately get the point that Freeman’s friend turns out to really be an alien, played by the more that adept Mos Def, and that Earth is about to get demolished so that a “hyperspace express route” can be constructed. I laughed. I found that premise amusing.

The big, boxy spaceship that hovers over Freeman’s head, who is really unaware of what’s happening, fits in perfectly with me because I, as an outsider, am still unsure of what this all means; there’s some verisimilitude in what’s going on in context with the film and how we are all experiencing it. When Mos puts up his thumb to hitch a ride, and the camera pulls back to see the armada of those long, rectangular ships, I believe in this film’s ability to draw me into the theater, into this world.

After this we get Voiceover Guy to tell us all those little superlatives to get us all pumped to see the flick but I am seriously unaffected by anything he has to say because I am enthralled by the visual effects. Some, like those from inside the ship, seem a little cheesy, but the exteriors with the battles and that one dude who looks like a cross between Elton John in the 70’s and Kenneth Branagh’s character in WILD, WILD WEST are really stunning.

Overall, you get a nice package here. It starts from the beginning and sets up an honest depiction of what someone can expect going into this movie. I am sure there’ll be enough Adams loyalists who will push this movie to some big box office numbers for the very first weekend, if nothing else. I hope I don’t feel excluded from the experience that has, for so long, lingered on the perimeter of my perception of the friends around me.

Director: Rob Cohen
Cast: Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx
Release: July 29, 2005
Synopsis: In the near future, the Navy develops a fighter jet piloted by an artificial intelligence computer. The jet is placed on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific to learn combat manuevers from the human pilots aboard. But when the computer develops a mind of its own, it’s the humans who are charged with stopping it before it incites a war.

Prognosis: A guy who won an Academy Award is starring in this???. “You are pilots of the US Navy. I expect nothing less than perfection.”

Yeah, if that’s the case then why does this movie look like a bad mix between FIREFOX and the more ostentatious moments of obnoxiousness in TOP GUN?

At first I believe I’m looking at the sequel to that one movie with the Eastwood classic but then I realize this doesn’t look as good.

I mean, I like explosions, I like fast moving aircraft but there is something in the way that they sell Jessica Biel’s bikinied body in the first 15 seconds of this trailer that have me wondering what it is, exactly, this is all about. I don’t mind that they’re hawking it this way, it probably compensates for the lack of believability I have in Ray Charles and “that chick from 7th Heaven” being these ultra-cool Navy fighter pilots. You know how sometimes you think it’s just actors just pretending and you, in good conscience, can’t even give yourself over to the suspension of disbelief?

This is one of those times.

Oh boy, and let’s talk about the hardware these guys are flying. It looks really sweet in design which looks like a mutated SR-71 but it just has the overall appearance of something that I played G.I. Joe with back in the day. I do know, though, that Jessica handles it with as much grace as she probably does her Porsche on the Los Angeles 405 freeway but the importance here, obviously, is suspension of disbelief.

“They have no equal”

At one point in this trailer, and I have to give the music department credit on this one, the techno beat sounds just like one that played under one of the first trailers for the X-MEN movie, Foxx cracks wise about the number 4 and its inherent unluckiness. I like Foxx. He’s actually a funny guy and I am reminded of his In Living Color days. But then, as they’re flying in their fake aircraft, their 4th wingman appears.

The plane is completely automated and, it too, is completely fake.

Foxx, looking like a 21st century extra on Battlestar Galactica with that helmet of his, makes another joke about something or another but this is where the tension starts building for this flick. Obviously, something is going to go terribly wrong with this AI-driven piece of machinery and I am not disappointed when, after a lighting strike hits the plane, “rewires” its thinking.

Now, this is a small tangent but it seems awfully convenient, the use of lightning. It always has a curative effect of doing something that couldn’t be done before. Like in BACK TO THE FUTURE, a lighting bolt was needed to send a car back to 1985; in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES, a lightning strike wakes him up; and, in this one, a lighting strike “turns on” a computers mind and lets it start thinking for itself. Some say it’s creative but I think it’s just plain lazy writing but that’s just me.

Even though Rob Cohn, who is a very serviceable action movie director, is helming this one from behind the lens and I think it’s important to at least see that some of the effects, while neat, will not be able to save this one from getting clipped at the box office knees if people can’t believe the preposterous reasons why these people are up in the air fighting this plane with a brain.

Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Richard Masur, Debra Monk, Ellen Barkin, Chris Penn, Christopher Penn
Release: April 13, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Thirteen-year-old Aviva Victor wants to be a mom. She does all she can to make this happen and comes very close to succeeding, but in the end, her plan is thwarted by her sensible parents (Ellen Barkin and Richard Masur). So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world, a less sensible one, perhaps, but one pregnant itself with all sorts of strange possibilities. Like so many trips, this one is round-trip, and it’s hard to say in the end if she can ever quite be the same again, or if she can ever be anything BUT the same again.

Prognosis: Positive. A slut nixes sex in Tulsa.

I learned that palindrome from Sarah Zabrenski in high school. I really was a dope back then, I didn’t know any better, but the thought of a phrase that could mean the same going forward as it did going backward always stayed with me. Compound this feeling with how a Todd Solondz film lingers with you like a wafting perfume stench that doesn’t ever go away and this is an interesting way to start what, I am sure, people will raise a few eyebrows at: A 13 year-old wants a kid and will do anything to get one.

Never the one to shy away from stories that no doubt make studio heads ask the question “Are you sure you don’t have anything else you’d like to sink a lot of money into?” Todd starts this trailer right away with the premise as our protagonist echoes her need to love something forever as Ellen Barkin looks on.

The music that plays behind the action on the screen is melodically haunting (give it up for the largely ignored but fabulously talented, and my vote for one of the best ladies in music today, Nina Persson of The Cardigans”¦woot woot!…) as the disconnected universe that Solondz’s characters move around in swirls around everyone. We get Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Smykowski from OFFICE SPACE, and a cast of other dysfunctionals who will, no doubt, be wrestling with issues that many people would otherwise not even entertain as a thought.

The words child whore, slut and other epithets get uttered quite clearly as we try to piece together the plot of what is happening before us. I can see that the environment all of these people live in isn’t what you would call progressive but I can understand quite quickly how it is being used in order to tell this story.

Ellen Barkin is playing the part of a woman who seems slightly maladjusted when justifying why her only child is exactly that and it makes me wonder why she’s been gone for so long from the screen. The backgrounds and foregrounds really give this world a weight that you can almost touch.

What’s more is that I appreciate the names it drops in terms of telling what festivals this film has played at, and it’s really all the big ones, Telluride, Venice, Toronto, et al., and even plugs in some of the positive press this film has received. This is good for a number of reasons but the biggest one that I can think of is that it shows, while the subject matter is a little tough to wrap your heads around, the payoff was good enough for at least a few people in the know to make mention of in good reviews.

Yeah, I don’t think this will hit America big but what I can say is that one who can appreciate the kind of work Solondz does in movies today will appreciate this effort as well. He gets knocked around, sometimes unfairly, but he definitely has his own vision of life and how he translates that to the screen and I am every bit impressed with every interpretation so far.

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Cast: Bruno Ganz, Juliane Koehler, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Noethen, Alexandra Maria Lara
Release: February 18th, 2005 (limited)
Synopsis: It’s the last days of Adolf Hitler, April 1945, and Hitler’s personal secretary Traudl Junge finds herself in the Der Fuhrer’s bunker. Facing inevitable defeat, Hilter’s moods range from defiance to fight or flee, remain loyal or opt for self-preservation. Eva Braun parties while Magda Goebbels kills her children.

Prognosis: Positive. When someone from the Hollywood Reporter says it’s one of the best war movies ever made I find it simply interesting to investigate that remark and see if there’s some validity hidden between the lines.

One thing I notice right away is that this is an Adolf Hitler centered film that was done in Germany. I realize the kind of sensitivity, shall we say, the German people have about the man so it shows a lot of gumption that they’ve made this kind of flick. Even because principal photography was done in both Germany and Russia it speaks well of the reality of the project and I think it really gives the movie a certain weight it would otherwise not of had.

The date that’s thrown up on the screen before you see any footage is April 20, 1945. I wasn’t a history major, in fact I sucked at it, but for those like me who don’t know which way is up the date is explained that it is 12 days before Berlin falls. What I also appreciate about the date is that it gives me context. Many times with period pieces we don’t really have a handle on what time it’s supposed to be and I really do like that I have something concrete that sets the date, place and time for me; I’m a simpleton I guess.

The streets of Berlin are shown in chaos. People are running for their lives along a burnt out city that looks almost apocryphal.

There is only the hint of a musical score as a card comes up and says that Hitler spent his final days hidden in an underground bunker. We get a look at Der Fuhrer, in all his pasty haired ingloriousness, as someone mentions off screen how he’s starting to lose his mind. The bunker shots are nice as they put context to how these last days were; there’s carpeting; a mini bar to mix some drinks; nice paintings on the wall; and enough Nazi’s present to make even a blue eyed Aryan racist claustrophobic.

More Nazis walk the city streets, carrying away leather chairs and priceless works of art, and it’s all very surreal to see these two discordant images.

Hitler goes on a tirade after he’s told the American’s are on their way. The tension that’s building is genuinely effective.

At this point we get the war scenes. Bombs start falling, guns start popping, and the sights, along with the sounds, of planes dropping their arsenals within the city limits are sense-grabbing.

Hitler says that the 3 million civilian people inside Berlin proper will pay with their blood as the world closes in on his regime. Not satisfied with just saying that, the trailer gloriously shows the chaos that ensues when people come between armies. People try to run away, only to catch the after-effects of a bomb, some Nazis are having a fun time dancing only to have their dancehall turned into smoky rubble after a bomb goes off and, again, Hitler is shown going insane with anger.

This trailer is for a foreign language movie, yes, but I can’t think of a trailer in recent memory that so superbly not made me aware of it.

Director: Russell Mulcahy
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis, Jesse Spencer
Release: February 4th, 2005(Limited)
Synopsis: The inspirational life story of Australian swimmer, Tony Fingleton.

Prognosis: Negative. This one is for all the artsy people in the house.

As soon as it starts, with a languid musical score in the back, the slo-mo of a time long since past between a pair of brothers jumping into a swimming pool, you can just feel the drippings of a saccharine melodrama. It’s like the smell of strong fromage, really. You don’t even need to see it to know when it’s sitting right in front of you.

“When I was a kid I was always a little afraid of my father.”

Ooo boy, that statement already tells me where the first 45 minutes of this film is going to take me. Yeah, to paraphrase gently from Denis Leary, every one of our fathers was a little intimidating but how does this guy’s experience supposed to be different? I’m not so sure it is, the “so what” factor ringing loudly in my ears with no reply, and Geoffrey Rush’s prototypical spit and nails embodiment of an uncaring father isn’t doing much to make me think otherwise.

In a span of fifteen seconds we get this father character saying all those things that Mark Metcalf did to that hard rocking son of his at the beginning of the “We’re Not Gonna Take It” video. “˜Course, Mark did a better job of really playing it up with his red face and frothy spittle drizzling from his wide mouth whereas here it feels Saturday Morning Special worthy.

So, this father likes to yell at the son who he thinks is the less talented one of the two he has until he finds out the kid can swim really well. He then ditches his sarcasm and verbal abuse and channels it into being this kid’s coach. At one point the son mentions how he needs to stop swimming at the natatorium because he has a piano lesson. Oh boy, the response of, “not anymore you don’t,” makes me crawl inside my own mind and scream a little unoriginal scream.

And things just don’t seem like they’re going to buck the image of the father being the cruel taskmaster, either. The dad gets belligerent, violent, puts down his son again for not working out enough, and the snowball just keeps getting bigger. The guy turns out to be an alcoholic, big surprise, but we are finally given some reprieve by Judy Davis who gives the appearance of a mother who wants her son to succeed. What little it does, it does well enough, and almost sells me on actually going to see the film. Not all the way, but almost.

The rest of the trailer is a lot of bombast, yelling, screaming, crap flying against walls in the most dramatic fashion, and the uplifting hope that this film will be an inspiration to anyone who sees it. I won’t be one of those to feel this film’s curative effects, but that’s not to denigrate the power of adversarial-relationships-that-are-based-on-true-events kind of films that some people gravitate toward. The guy will either win or be the big hero or he’ll lose and find he never needed to win in order for him to feel like a champion. (Enter weeping and hugging here and slowly dissolve”¦)

Director: Dan Ollman, Sarah Price, Chris Smith
Cast: Phil Bayly, Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer, Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno
Release: On DVD Now
Synopsis: A comedic documentary which follows The Yes Men, a small group of prankster activists, as they gain world-wide notoriety for impersonating the World Trade Organization on television and at business conferences around the world. The film begins when two members of The Yes Men, Andy and Mike, set up a website that mimics the World Trade Organization’s–and it’s mistaken for the real thing. They play along with the ruse and soon find themselves invited to important functions as WTO representatives. Delighted to represent the organization they politically oppose, Andy and Mike don thrift-store suits and set out to shock unwitting audiences with darkly comic satire that highlights the worst aspects of global free trade.

Prognosis: Negative. I actually saw this trailer last year but I never thought to give it a whirl because, frankly, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. It was hard for me to try and describe, if not only to myself, exactly what the hell was happening and why I would want to see it but now I understand.

A fairly plain voiceover introduces us to the Yes Men, “the new generation of activists.” The jaunty way in which the guy says it, I think, gives this documentary a kind of silliness that I don’t think should really be conveyed when you see what exactly these dudes do. I have no doubt that there is humor in this here activism but, to me, this trailer doesn’t need the same guy who did the voiceover for THE PACIFIER or ICE AGE, get me?

These guys look very presentable as business guys in suits. There is an element of subversion here and you can already see how they’re working their angle. This was what was missing from the first trailer.

A card lets us know this documentary was an official selection into Sundance, Berlin and Toronto, and that another thing from its previous trailer incarnation that was missing. Here, it gives the film a little more credibility and it makes, I think, one pay attention a little more closely to what this film is slowly trying to say it is about.

These guys fight corporate greed by infiltrating the organizations global power brokers hang out in, they get into places no one would ever get access to by doctoring up business cards and ID’s. What they are doing, they say, is fighting back against those who they feel are destroying humanity with their greed and they are going about this by stealing powerful people’s identity in the hopes of, “making them honest.”

Now, I like the premise but I am already confused as to how they’re doing this. They’re shown printing up these fake business cards, so how are they planning on making their “marks” more honest? They impersonate these very high level people in the world economy market and are looking to fix things from the inside out. Helsinki, London, Australia, these guys fly all over the world to do their thing in front of the most influential talking heads of the global economy. Still, though, there is the lack of an explanation, for people like me, who need to know what it is, essentially, they are doing. Are they like the guys at the end of SNEAKERS who give out money in the names of organizations who wouldn’t normally do it? Are they putting in orders for extra food to go to poor 3rd world countries? Are they boosting these guys’ bank accounts?

I haven’t a clue.

I do know, however, that Michael Moore makes an appearance in this documentary so that has to count for something, right? Alright, that’s not much but still you can see what left-leaning political jive this movie will be dealing with as you watch these guys talk.

In the end I felt that I wanted to like this film more than anything, but all I saw were guys who impersonate other people and do wacky things. I guess the music at the beginning was appropriate for what I was shown, which wasn’t much. I’m sure there’s an explanation inside the film but there needed to be more of that to get me interested.

Director: Nigel Cole
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Amanda Peet, Herschel Bleefeld, Kathryn Hahn, Moon Bloodgood
Release: April 22nd, 2005
Synopsis: It takes some people years to fall in love at first sight. A LOT LIKE LOVE is a romantic comedy about destiny, connection and the frequently fuzzy line between chance friendships and happily ever after. A LOT LIKE LOVE traces the relationship of Oliver (Ashton Kutcher) and Emily (Amanda Peet) who met on a flight from Los Angeles to New York seven years ago – each of them declaring that they couldn’t be more wrong for each other.

Prognosis: Negative in ways I can only hope to describe. I include this only to show how Ashton Kutcher can make me so excited when he does his thing in a movie like THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT but when he makes formulaic rom com crap like this it just makes me question the intent. I mean I realize the easy money he gets for it must quell any cries inside to do something with integrity but, damn, I guess credibility isn’t too much of an issue for the man who was allegedly hittin’ some MILF tail.

The opening shot of this little trailer (which is put together in the most serviceable way possible considering the material) is our man Kutcher and our woman Peet meeting in an airport. The black hair that Peet has and the shaggy mop top that Ashton displays are only to show you how far they’ve come later on when it’s the present time; I realize some ladies read this column and might be alarmed at seeing our heartthrob dollied up like he was trying out to be the new front man for Alice In Chains but I guarantee he cleans up when it goes to the present day.

As they play cutsie with one another on their first verbal encounter on a subway ride (I’m not sure how it moved from the airport to the underground, either, but who cares) a woman who sits between them asks if they’d like to sit next to each other. Now, I know no one else cares about this but me, however, having a photographic memory and a penchant for all things useless, I know that the woman sitting in-between Ashton and Amanda is the same woman from the subway scene in COMING TO AMERICA. I mean just look at it and tell me I’m wrong. I was so pleased with myself that I caught that I was fine with missing where we are with the plot of this movie.

When I do come back into it Ashton is talking about having a job, a house and a car but we get images of his life in the future (all straight and businesslike, no less) while he’s talking in the past. Huh? Yeah, I’m confused too but before I can think about the logistical implications of his Yoda-speak Amanda Peet is playing gross-out with Ashton in the car by playing “see food.” Now, some guys are attracted that sort of thing. I’m not. I’m just not of the variety that thinks good-looking chicks acting like dudes (read here: Jenny McCarthy when she picks her nose, farts or tries really hard to put on the affectations of a dude and get obnoxious) is a good thing. Obviously, Amanda wants to be queen of that ball so, to those guys who dig it, enjoy it in all its splendor.

From here we have a moment where Ashton is completely naked, standing on a rock, at night, underneath a moon, getting his picture taken. The two of them do it in the backseat of a station wagon but are awoken up in the morning by a park ranger to tell them they’re in a national park. Oh, the hilarity that is going to ensue!

Now, we come to a point where Ashton is successful and has some money. He lets his girlfriend/wife/play thing, whatever Amanda is supposed to be, know he is moving to San Francisco. Most ladies, if they’re right in the head, see this as a good thing. If you’re successful enough to be able and live in Frisco you’re doing well. It boggles the mind that Amanda just lets him go off without her but I’m sure this will all be resolved with bows by the end.

The kudos I will give the trailer exposition is that when Ashton does go back to get his lady she ends up being engaged to someone else. Oh, you mean to tell me they’re not going to be together? Oh, the humanity. When this plot point is dropped you get Avril Lavigne’s song where Amanda, again, goes for the ugly/cute chick thing by having a couple of straws shooting out of her nose and laughing like a crazed hyena. Seriously, isn’t there a number I can call to have to her put down?

Added to this equation a little impromptu daytime serenade that Ashton does to Amanda, singing a ditty by Bon Jovi, the eventual embrace between our two clichéd star-crossed lovers, a wedding that neither wants to go through, and another pratfall by Peet that makes me want to scream in ways that tell me this: I already know they’ll end up together in the end.

That said, however, there are ladies all over the land who will want to see this and because you now know how it will start, how it gets troublesome and resolves itself, it’ll be like seeing things for a second time. My condolences.

Director: Prachya Pinkaew
Cast: Panom Yeerum, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Xing Jing, Nathan Jones, Johnny Nguyen
Release: Sometime in 2005
Synopsis: A young fighter named Kham must go to Australia to retrieve his stolen elephant. With the help of a Thai-born Australian detective, Kham must take on all comers, including a gang led by an evil woman and her two deadly bodyguards.

Prognosis: Positive. Jeez, if the video was any more grainy I would have just assumed to just wait on it until a better version comes along but hot damn if I wasn’t all stoked to see this after seeing the trailer. As a fan of all things hyphenated ending in ““Fu I see the next inclusion into the filmic pantheon of Jony Jaa as a good thing to hype.

“This is the first glimpse of a whole new version of on-screen action!”

Ha, the Asians and their acute sense of hyperbole. They’ve already given us “the glimpse” of this new on-screen action with ONG BAK but, alright, I’ll go along with the statement.

This thing starts out with a wise old man talking over some ancient pictures that he has unfolded in front of Tony. The man speaks of royal elephants and how those who would protect the animals themselves were great warriors in their own right. They were crazy in battle, he says, essentially, doing whatever it took to fight even if they were physically disarmed of their weapons. They would stomp on their opponents, he continues. It’s all very mystical and it feels that way, too. I don’t get the sense this is hokey in a KICKBOXER 3 sort of way, either. I really do feel inspired for whatever is about to come next.

An elephant’s trunk moves its way forward on the screen as a man prays in front of the large pachyderm.

Some more written superlatives make their way on a card and it’s about this time when Tony Jaa starts to do his thing and explodes on the screen.

He jump kicks, no less than 10 feet in the air, getting ridiculous hang time, as he knocks down a handful of dudes with one leg. Fists are flying against guys in suits (nicely dressed guys are always the bad ones), he crouches down to sweep legs, men are being tossed around like windmills, and the Eurotrash techno beat behind it all is pitch perfect for the cheesiness that pops and crackles with every cut scene.

Tony flees something in a very fast moving boat that is really fuel injected, followed by five or so similarly equipped men who are shooting to kill (and wearing suits). And then it breaks away to show Tony, and here’s a nice move, taking a small jump up, planting on a guy’s chest and uses his other to kick a guy in the face. Sweet.

Some hot chicks are put into the mix but you already know they will be wholly irrelevant to the plot. Another guy gets a kick in the chest that sends him into a glass door and, for a nice send off, Tony leaps in the air as a baddie is going backward and, as the two of them are falling from a considerable height, kicks him too.

Man, how I have missed these kinds of movies.

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Cast: Yûya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura, Momoko Shimizu, Hanae Kan
Release: February 4, 2005 (New York)
Synopsis: Four children are forced to rely on one another after they are abandoned by their mother.

Prognosis: Positive. This trailer can be compared to that moment in FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF when the dad is coming home at the end of the day and that one old bag that’s driving in front of him keeps getting in his way. The Voiceover Guy in this trailer is that old lady.

He’s like an annoying gnat that won’t go away or shut the hell up. I actually had a conversation about this very same situation with the guy who makes these mini-movies, and he defended the man’s place in the scheme of it all, but, as a tool, it can be effective or it can be like a monkey who’s just been given a sauce pan and a wooden spoon; overkill.

It’s equally annoying that this trailer suffers a bit from a piss poor job of organization and placement of its most important facts: 1. The kid who stars in this film won best actor at Cannes last year; obviously, that’s an important fact, right? 2. This film is based on a true story. This story is so crazy when it begins that you can’t believe the mind that thought it up and you’re well on your way to finishing this damn trailer before you find out, “Oh, so it’s not just a very unbelievable premise, it actually happened?” It’s one thing to miss some things here or there but omissions like this are just glaringly ignorant.

This trailer just has me all riled up.

Everything else about the opening, though, is deliciously noteworthy. I am a big fan of a good xylophone medley and this one doesn’t disappoint. Also, dropping the fact that it did well in Cannes and Toronto, if nothing else, was a good saving move as well.

So, the opening is that Voiceover Guy gets into the fact that what we have here is a family run by a mother who seems be her kids’ friends than she is their parent. That’s fine, That’s good verbal exposition. And so far it’s all peaches and cream, thank you for letting me know that, Guy.

Now, here’s where it throws me a bit. Guy goes on to explain that one of her kids, her son, becomes an adult, “overnight.” Since this a foreign language film and you can’t possibly have anyone read anything in a trailer like this, God forbid you put up some subtitles in a trailer, you have to infer that something major has happened because there is a shot of an airplane and the oldest son has a fistful of cash. Then, as if to confuse me greatly, Guy lets us know that three of his other siblings are abandoned in Tokyo.

Huh? What happened to his mother? She get popped by the Yakuza, stuffed in a dumpster, smoke some bad Jamaican Red? Who the hell knows. Guy just plods on through the narrative as if nothing is really wrong with that admission, ignoring that steaming pile in the family room, trudging forth with the home tour.

So, these kids are all alone in Tokyo, literally living out of a suitcase, and Guy informs us that they survive by themselves in the street with their humor, love, determination, etc”¦ Now, had I not told you this was based on a true story there would be reality bells going off in your head saying what kind of messed up story is this? It’s like Annie but without the Tim Curry and dance numbers. By the time that the “based on” admission happens, Guy then drops the fact that the kid in this was voted best actor at Cannes which is something that should’ve been mentioned way before this point. He keeps droning on and on about how all the kids stick together and how awesome it is that they love each other and how cool it is that they aren’t incestuous”¦ I really just wanted Guy to shut up so I could watch why this kid was voted best actor in the first place.

The music is wonderful, the shots selected are really grabbing and you definitely get the sense that there is something there that sets this film apart from the others in the realm of foreign language offerings. The thing is, though, when you get to the part of the trailer when it seems that Guy is literally reading the whole review that the New York Times and the L.A. Times did on this movie you can’t help but to feel audibly invaded by that man’s voice.

This whole trailer is like charades but here you have someone yelling over your shoulder.

Director: Greg McLean
Cast: John Jarratt, Cassandra Magrath, Andy McPhee, Kestie Morassi, Guy Petersen
Release: January 2005 (Sundance)
Synopsis: Three backpackers go exploring the outback in an old clunker of a minivan. They are adventurous, carefree, and up for just about any adventure. But when their ride breaks down, help comes in the form of a gun-toting maniac, who hates backpackers with a vengeance.

Prognosis: Positive. You’ve gotta like a film that stars “Based on actual events.”

The screen is gritty and has a real sort of damaged film look to it. Not even five seconds into this trailer and I’m already an eager beaver.

We get a shot of a gorgeous beach at the foot of a real wooded mountain. It looks like a great day, the surf is slightly glassy, and there are nubile, young people scattered everywhere. Some chicks are looking at photos, are chatting with each other, as day turns to night. Shots are slammed and there isn’t one voiceover, line of dialogue or card to explain what’s going on but then the first card appears.

“30,000 Australians are reported missing every year.”

Huh? WTF, Aussies? That’s a real small island to misplace that many people on an annual basis.

We get a great looking view of an approaching car through a bullet hole in a road sign. These are young adults in their prime and they look good enough to be in one of those jeans commercials where everyone is way too happy but still nothing audible can be heard.

“Most are found within a month.”

Whew. I’m glad that you can eventually find each other. Again, it’s a small island.

These people stop at Wolf Creek Crater and it’s a rather expansive crater at that. They put on their rucksacks and start travailing on foot to the lip of the thing. The haunting score in the background is telling me everything I need to know about these fools’ fate. It’s daytime when all this happens but, as all things go, it does eventually get dark.

It then turns to night for these kids. They are holed up in their car (problems with the engine, imagine that) and a pair of headlights appears. They all get out, stupid movie move #1, and wait for this one guy to come walking towards them. There isn’t any lunging, no knifes unsheathed, and there isn’t so much as a scream from anyone but it is suspenseful. What’s odd, as well, is that the next shot is at daybreak as one of the girls runs down an empty highway. Is she running from someone? Something?

A fishtailing car appears from the background, appearing to go right at her. She has blood on her face, and there is a guy who holds up a rifle with a scope that I am sure, if it is to be believed, is aimed right at her melon.

It almost has a THE HILLS HAVE EYES sort of feel to it and I like that.

We eventually see more of our stranded young adults, also properly bloodied, with one of them being one hot looking lady, almost like Keira Knightley, who I hope doesn’t get popped by this hillbilly looking guy. It looks like campy fun plus you get to listen to good looking ladies talking Australian if nothing else.

Director: Saul Dibb
Cast: Leon Black, Louise Delamere, Luke Fraser, Claire Perkins
Release: April 25, 2005 (UK Only)
Synopsis: Ricky (Walters), age 20, is just out of prison and determined to straighten up. But back home his old pal Wisdom (Black) is still in the community’s violent subculture, sparking an escalating feud with another thug (Lawson) over a broken wing mirror. Meanwhile, Ricky is trying to revive his relationship with his girlfriend (Samuels), convince his mother (Perkins) that he’s putting violence behind him, and help his 12-year-old brother Curtis (Fraser) stay straight. But it’s all much easier said than done.

Prognosis: Positive. “There are thousands of guns on the streets”¦this is the story of one”

You’ve gotta like a trailer that begins with a police home invasion. There’s chaos, multiple P.O.V’s and by the end you know something is going down.

The people on the screen are talking really funny accents (those crazy EU’ers), but the premise is an interesting one. Our protagonist, a wee lad, gets out of jail for committing some crime and is picked up by his mother. He returns home, jaded by his experience, and you can already see that this is a film about a young guy who has a lot of anger to work through. It’s kind of like an old school Kurtis Blow anthem come to cinematic life. He’s hardboiled but there are slivers of hope in his words.

The melodic music chosen stands in stark contrast to our guy’s troubling life out of the poke. His younger brother reminds him that it’s difficult to get a job when one has a criminal record. There’s friction to be found everywhere and the cards in-between the scenes selected drop quotes from major publications about how groovy this film is with critics. This is good because it not only sets this movie up to be one where one man struggles with his past, a not too original concept, but the critics’ words help to elevate it.

There is also contrast going on with images of kids with guns, gang violence and the really quiet moments that this guy has with a woman who doesn’t care about his past and looks forward to her future with him. He mentions some things about being dragged back into his former lifestyle and it’s believable. I find myself being drawn in by how quick I can feel sympathy for a dude I’ve known all of a minute.

The clips after this one show a guy who is trying to rage against the people around him who he knows are no good but still trying to be the man he used to be. Again, more images of violence against people, again with the same kid holding a Dirty Harry pistol, and we are left, wonderfully, to wonder what will happen to not only this guy but to those around him.

The film doesn’t look flashy or sexy or appear to have great production values beyond just good directing but it does look like a movie that could engross an individual for a good couple hours and have some pointed things to say.

Director: Christopher Long
Cast: Colton Ford, Blake Harper
Release:February 18, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Former Colt model and porn star Colton Ford left the skin flick business at 40 to return to a musical career along with his partner Blake Harper. This is is their story.

Prognosis: Positive. This film is gay.

This film has a lot of gay people in it, just so you know.

That being said, I just couldn’t stop watching this trailer. Sometimes I come across a trailer that doesn’t automatically make me want to skip to something else; it makes me want to stay a while. It’s like television, really: I have the attention span of a coked up whore looking for a pack of Skittles in an Atkins-friendly health food store. If it’s not entertaining me then it’s off to something else but I was just riveted with every moment that slowly sped by with NAKED FAME.

One of the more ironic, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t, things that start this trailer out is the production company name that comes up before the clips: Hardsell Productions. Yes, it is, actually. This will probably never see a wide distribution on the scale of a SIDEWAYS but hopefully I can explain why it deserves a decent outing in a few, um, selected cities.

“I don’t know what it is that’s in my son’s heart about being a superstar”¦”

Anytime you get someone’s mom to lead off a documentary you’re just going for that emotional buy-in and it’s what hooked me, initially. This man we’re going to be seeing a lot of, Colton Ford, smiles in a black and white photo. The picture itself is old and is no doubt in direct inverse proportion to the modern incarnation of this woman’s son. Also, and I think this is telling, throughout the trailer we get snippets from publications extolling the reasons why you need to see this film but the quotes provided don’t have anything near a cache of a New York Times or L.A. Weekly. That’s fine, though, as this really is a genre specific film but the mention from Billboard is a nice name drop.

We then hear from our man, Colton, off-camera, about his thoughts on working for corporate America. He echoes the same sentiments that I think any of us who are cube dwellers share with him. We are treated to nice shots of New York streets as he talks and we get the feeling that here’s a man who had to either take his lumps to get what he wanted working 9 to 5 or he was going to go after his dream of being a performer. It is interesting to note, as well, the card that briefly shows how many gay and lesbian film festivals it has been in; it’s a selling point and because it was included early it actually does help this film when other films that stick these points at the end usually make me wonder what their marketing department was thinking.

We then get the gayness in all its glory.

A nice club beat starts pumping, our man Colton is doing his groove thang inside of clubs, singing, we get him working out, and then we finally have him sitting, talking about what it’s like being 39 and trying to get somewhere with a musical career. I immediately feel for the guy, as there are shots of him in the studio, more of him performing, because there is a need in this guy’s voice that is far more sublime than that of your average American Idol flunky.

Then, things take a more serious tone as there are overt hints that our man is so headstrong about becoming famous that he may have stepped over to one of the avenues few people are willing to go in order to be famous, or infamous: porn. It’s only hinted at but seeing Bruce Vilanch talking about it, notwithstanding that I can’t even begin to describe my feelings on that caricature of a man and the way he talks, hint at it as well makes me think this is where the downward spiral happens.

Sho “˜nuff, it is.

Crystal meth is discussed as with the porn thing again and here is where the tail spinning starts. He seems to be holding onto something but we’re treated to a much different person than who we were shown at the beginning.

The music changes, it’s a nice melodic choice, and we are to understand that somehow everything is going to go well for the man. It’s hard to stay what makes me want to see how his story goes from beginning to end but I do and anything that pulls me into someone else’s life and to hear about their own set of problems gets my vote.

Director: Kirk Jones
Cast: Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Angela Lansbury, Kelly Macdonald
Release: August 2, 2005 (UK)
Synopsis:Emma Thompson stars as a governess who uses magic to reign in the behavior of seven ne’er-do-well children in her charge. The kids will love this.

Prognosis: Positive. Colin Firth is a talent. The guy can definitely act and his published writing is also a delight as well; the man’s humor is wicked and his prose style makes you wish more people could be as genuinely versatile.

Emma Thompson is someone who first took prominence in my own cinematic world when she starred in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, she was such a pip, but she is one of the most versatile British actresses out there today and I have no problem handling out that superlative.

This teaser, no doubt to get interest stirred, is all about getting people acquainted with these two people but it doesn’t tell me anything about what exactly the premise of the film is supposed to be. This isn’t to say that some people across the pond, meaning you over there in London or Shaftsbury or Liverpool or wherever the hell the rest of you limeys dwell (yeah, that’s a joke), won’t say this film is based on one of the best children’s authors of all time, but that’s ok. I like the teaser regardless.

The information I need in order to know what’s going on in this trailer, though, is all secondhand but I understand everything.

“When children are wicked”¦”

The sounds of children’s giggles mesh with the sounds of thunder. We get a shot of a very lonely looking home from the outside. It’s foreboding and dreary.

“Devious”¦and quite frankly unacceptable”¦”

Our next shot is one from inside the Victorian manse. It feels like a really Seussian envisioning of a home that would hold seven children but it does give us a chance to see Firth and Kelly Macdonald looking awfully afraid of the perfectly profiled silhouette of a woman standing on their porch, ringing the bell in an ominous way.

Colin looks cautious as he slowly walks to the door, thunder clapping, music all tense and scary, opening it with a loud creak. It is here that the most hideous looking woman I’ve ever seen come out of make-up pops up to my eyes. Okay, so it’s not that bad but Emma is a nice looking woman and they’ve really made her look dumpy, frumpy and real awful. It’s splendid.

Because Emma had a hand in actually writing the script I think there’s a little bit more hope on my part that this will be a more intelligent envisioning of a children’s classic than its American counterparts, which seems to me more predicated on marketing than it is on story. I could be wrong about this, but I hope not. Kids need a genuinely well-made book made into a fine film in much the same way I think comic book nerds like to see their own fictional heroes treated with the same amount of care and respect.

Director:Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha
Cast:Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Drew Carey, Jim Broadbent, Amanda Bynes, Jennifer Coolidge, Robin Williams
Release: March 11, 2005
Synopsis: Even in a world populated entirely by mechanical beings Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor) is considered a genius inventor. Rodney dreams of two things, making the world a better place and meeting his idol, the master inventor Bigweld (Brooks). On his journey he encounters Cappy (Halle Berry), a beautiful executive `bot with whom Rodney is instantly smitten, the nefarious corporate tyrant Ratchet (Kinnear) who locks horns with Rodney, and a group of misfit `bots known as the Rusties, led by Fender (Williams) and Piper Pinwheeler (Bynes).

Prognosis: Positive. This one is a rather curious trailer.

There is a lot going on that is wonderful to look at in the background with its intricate widgets and cogs and spokes and industrial machinery that seems to be clicking or whirring but in the foreground my attention turns to annoyance as I get the animated voice of Robin Williams. It wouldn’t be so bad if this was his first time but Williams sounds just like every other character he’s ever done that requires him to be slightly “nutty.” Call this one ALADDIN, part however many times you think he’s done this shtick before.

But, there are great things going on here.

The trailer on the whole, though, makes me think that kids are really going to enjoy the spectacle of it all and, judging by the box office that SHARK TALE did, kids could care less about whether something looks like it was manufactured in an animation studio where neon is considered a primary color or where story is just an inconsequential part of the movie. The animation and yarn here, though, seems rather good.

We first get a look at our protagonist, voiced by Ewan McGregor, as someone who tries to be inventive. In much the same way that the dad in GREMLINS liked to invent wacky gadgets that didn’t seem to work right, this kid seems to get punted from the house after a few don’t do so well. I’m not sure the folks at Fox are actually going to show the kid actually tossed on his ass or whether he’s going to leave on his own but I think the former would be a better move as it’ll teach kids early on in life that you just can’t mooch off your parents forever; let this movie serve as a warning tale to those little Lunchable swilling, fruit punch chugging, scheming little ankle biters.

The kid gets out of the house and leaves for the big city. Like I’ve said before, the backgrounds are busy with animation. It really is fun to watch. Ewan tries to make his way through the city, a task that somehow gets him hooked up with Robin Williams, and that’s where there are hints that Robin is channeling the stock comedic character that is just inherent in any of these “crazy” people he plays. How many times can one person do the same character without someone decrying “Bullshiat!”? Limitless I guess is the number I would say since no one else cares. I do have to say, though, it is something that the kids will like and eat up like mud pies and boogers without even questioning it; they just enjoy that voice and, if it were up to them, Robin’s crazy character would be in every single movie out there. The kids will even howl at the “back of my hand” joke that will no doubt play to their sense of irony.

As we progress further we see that Robin needs to upgrade his body or be fed to the chop shop as his current state of physical being has him dropping parts every which way off his body. The chop shop, I should mention, looks about as foreboding as anything I could think of for a villainous counterbalance to the happy characters we’ve seen so far. Amanda Bynes makes an appearance as someone who is fighting a wave of upgrade fever as it seems that old robots are being sent to be smelted and, without a new body, one loses the ability to live any longer. So really as we get further into this movie there really is a villainous side to it, which I like, but there’s also some genuine sense of urgency with regard to the story being told. Robots are being killed off at a quick clip if the trailer is to be believed and any story that can hint that mass murder is happening on a grandiose scale the better off those little tykes will be when we have to explain what happens in the real world like Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda, and behind the dumpster at 7-11.

What I appreciate, though, about this trailer compared to the old one that ran is that this trailer doesn’t accentuate the whole film’s running time with Robin Williams. This is really an ensemble piece, I mean just look at the names associated with this film, but there really seems to be a balance of Williams’ kookiness with the actual story of this film which seems to be about one group of proletariats’ fight against big, fat, corporate interests. The kids will like it because it just looks cool and it’ll do millions at the box office. If the film is able to work in a fart joke or two you can probably be assured of at least 10 million more dollars can be added to the bottom line. Kids are easy creatures to figure out.

Director: John Schultz
Cast: Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Epps, Gabrielle Union, Regina Hall, Eric Stoltz, John Leguizamo, Jon Polito
Release: July 15, 2005
Synopsis: Working class New York bus driver Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) is always coming up with get-rich-quick schemes for him and his best friend, Ed Norton (Epps), who’s always around to help him get in (and out of) trouble.

Prognosis: Positive. This movie is perfectly pitched for its demographic.

Young people are into Cedric the Entertainer (and I henceforth am not going to use the last part of his “name” from this point forward) but, obviously, there are going to be more than a few people who have no idea who or what The Honeymooners were all about when this movie drops.

Cedric, quite honestly, makes a great Ralph Kramden. He is inept in his own way and the trailer is good at showing how this translates into a warped sense of his own abilities as a person and I seriously believe his portrayal as bus driver; in this day and age, and especially when I lived in downtown Chicago, I’ve seen guys like this. As the trailer opens and he’s jamming out as if he’s in his own car and forgetting the fact that he’s behind the wheel of a city bus is visually amusing. Then, we get to hear him talk. To listen to him rant about the man who invented the thong you get the idea rather quickly that the man’s mind runs on a one way track and this is just who he’s going to be. This kind of writing could smell dangerously pungent for the average moviegoer but the trailer movies quickly from scene to scene and I appreciate its speed with which it does it. Comedies have to be based on something amusing and dimwittedness is not an entirely lame premise.

We next get a look at his equally inept, if not to a greater degree, buddy Norton. There is something about Mike Epps that I find more amusing in his style of comedy than I do in Cedric. I am not sure if it is in Mike’s cadence or his physicality as he moves but to hear him talk about how he’s a sanitation engineer, comparing his position to a specialist like a brain surgeon or even “Spider-Man,” is funny because he seems so serious about it.

Now, Gabrielle Union, his wife, seems like an unlikely choice. I am not sure where in the screenwriter’s playbook it stipulates that if you’re chunky or husky that you’re automatically entitled to a hot looking chick as a girlfriend/wife, but it is the movies so what the hell do I know. I am sure, however, that the mother-in-law character seems to be the one in the right as she makes her distain for Cedric more than abundantly clear. I believe that more than I do that Gabrielle would end up with a dude like Ralph. Again, it is the movies after all.

So, Norton and Ralph are trying to get rich quick. A majority of the trailer is spent showing how these guys plot and scheme to get to financial freedom and a couple of the bits that are shown how they do it (trying to race the family pet at the dog track, calling up an old date and asking her to pay part of her bill back, just to name a couple) are funny enough that I can see how some would actually see this as a greater indication for how good the rest of the film is going to be. This seems to be a comedy of small set pieces.

To assume that the film is going to be homogenously funny based on a couple of laughs might be a wrong assumption to make, a movie based on a single motivation of the principal characters like this one hardly ever makes for a pleasurable 90 minutes of comedy, but I do have to commend the makers of this trailer for making a breezy enough advertisement for a film based on an old television show.

Also, and I have to make mention of this, in the last moment of this trailer as Ralph and Norton hang precariously on the side of a building, holding onto life by their fingers, Norton makes a confession to Ralph that really sets the tone for the camaraderie these two guys have. Too often you get trailer makers trying to be witty or glib as they end a trailer but the punch line here is actually enough that it’s slightly ribald and has a certain edge to it.

I wasn’t expecting much, believe me, going into this trailer but after I dote upon its strengths versus its weaknesses I actually feel good in asserting it had more of the former than it did the latter.

Director: Lawrence Guterman
Cast: Jamie Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Bob Hoskins, Traylor Howard
Release: February 18, 2005
Synopsis: A decade after the legendary Mask of Loki wreaked havoc on the life of an unsuspecting adult, the magical mask finds its way into the possession of a child in the family comedy Son of the Mask. When cartoonist Tim Avery’s (Jamie Kennedy) new son is born with the Mask’s spectacular powers – to the dismay of the family’s jealous dog – it turns the household upside down and launches a kid versus canine battle for control of the Mask. But unbeknownst to them all, Loki has come looking for his mask and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it back.

Prognosis: Negative. Ok, people, informal poll: Who here enjoyed THE MASK? No, not the one with Sam Elliot and Cher about the kid with the peanut head but that other one that exposed, but really not enough wink wink nudge nudge, the talent of Cameron Diaz and that of Jim Carrey? Yeah, me too. It was one of those you just remember and dote on every now and then, especially if you were one of those a-holes who went around endlessly sound-biting every catchphrase from the film.

That’s why it makes me wince with every moment that this trailer goes on and on. I’ve really only seen a handful of really bad trailers since my start here in the Park and this, I think, qualifies as the very worst one.

So, since that’s been said, I’m not going to trounce every little thing and misstep this trailer takes. I will a little, but it’s better if we can’t learn why no one will want to see this hunk of cinematic crap.

The trailer opens up with that little aqua treasure chest from the first film. That’s actually good to start off with because it visually reminds people of the original.

Next, the little dog from the first film somehow gets a hold of the mask as it beaches itself in a small creek. Again, visual recognition seems to the key order of the day.

We now see the little pooch running back to a house that seems like it was done over by Dr. Seuss and LeRoy Neiman. It’s not until later that night when the dog sticks his head in the mask, turning him into the Tex Avery version of the little guy we saw years ago. Ok, it’s cute, kids will like that. So far, really, this isn’t too terrible.

Then, we get Alan Cumming, dressed to the 9’s as Loki but looking like an extra from the MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE production in the 80’s (I think he’s playing Transvestitor) and I start to worry.

Next shot is of a mother and baby inside the baby’s room but that’s no baby. It’s a freak. A CGI freak and it looks like a freshman year Computer Design Basics 101 mid-term. Then, as if you didn’t know the baby wasn’t real and couldn’t inflate its own head like it does, the next shot is of a real baby and we are somehow supposed to”¦believe”¦they’re”¦the”¦same”¦kid. The fun doesn’t stop as Jamie Kennedy talks to the real baby, trying to get it to say daddy, but it looks at him and says “Mother” in what is perhaps the most masculine voice I’ve ever heard in animation or in life.

From there, friends, this rollercoaster is on its way down with nowhere to go after that.

The kid morphs, again, into weird CGI mode literally bouncing off walls and looking like one of those creepy kids from POLAR EXPRESS.

Alan Cumming gets back into his part as Loki, demanding the mask back, looking like something Janet Jackson was wearing last year at the Super Bowl, and it just doesn’t make any sense. Much like how in the next scene the dog is shown trying to get the baby for some nefarious reason; it’s all green faced because it’s wearing the mask but the baby is able to do weird things as well and I’m just confused.

Kennedy gets the mask at one point, as you could’ve already guessed, he apes and cribs from Carrey’s mannerisms in a way that’s not flattering but really more like flattening. This whole trailer, especially at the end with another look at the freak child, has a sheen of awfulness about it and it pains me to know that this will be released into the world, like a viral infection.

Director: Dave McKean
Cast: Stephanie Leonidas, Gina McKee, Rob Brydon, Jason Barry, Dora Bryan
Release:January 25, 2005 (Sundance)
Synopsis: MirrorMask centers on Helena, a 15 year old girl in a family of circus entertainers, who often wishes she could run off and join real life. After a fight with her parents about her future plans, her mother falls quite ill and Helena is convinced that it is all her fault. On the eve of her mother’s major surgery, she dreams that she is in a strange world with two opposing queens, bizarre creatures, and masked inhabitants. All is not well in this new world – the white queen has fallen ill and can only be restored by the MirrorMask, and it’s up to Helena to find it. But as her adventures continue, she begins to wonder whether she’s in a dream, or something far more sinister.

Prognosis: Positive. I’m a Jim Henson fan.

Years of appreciation for the Muppet Show and Sesame Street will do that for a kid. Also, and this fact, THE MUPPET MOVIE was actually the first theatrical film I ever went to. I was a little enough scamp that I remember actually feeling panicked when the lights went out. Were they supposed to do that? I hadn’t a clue but it freaked me out. So, it’s as Gaiman’s MIRRORMASK opens that I’m feeling hopeful if nothing else that this may be something the kids may enjoy. Well, maybe, if you’re the kind of parent who lets their kids smoke a fat spliff after a rough day at kindergarten.

The opening scene is dark, foreboding, oozing trepidation and has some rather trippy imagery. Nonsensical would be the word I would choose. It looks like a Tim Burton amusement park and I’m not disappointed with that estimation either.

A big giant eyeball sits on a spider’s body as a woman, who is only heard and not seen, says she doesn’t know where she is. As far as I can gather it appears to be an Alice in Wonderland kind of situation. There are freakish animals and an equally freakish vibe running rampant all over this place. There is an odd catlike animal that has a humanoid face, the sets appear to have been used in SKY CAPTAIN (yes, I know everything was CGI in that movie which is the point), and the action that seems to be happening in this thing is fluid in ways that make you stare, wondering what acid was dropped to think this stuff up. It really is amazing.

The one gripe I have, a reservation really, as this trailer unfolds is the girl who finally appears on camera. She looks a little too out-of-place. The creatures around her appear to be more appropriate to the setting than she does. Her movements are a little wooden, her expressions slightly unbelievable. Though, to her credit, she does show flickers of wonderment in a few cut-scenes. What’s more is not only does the music fit precisely to the kinetic visual style, but there seems to be a mixed media approach to the presentation. Sets seem to be art projects, like a David Mack comic book, with splashes of precise detail and blatant absurdity all meshed together in one moving picture.

From animation to live action to CGI to print work there seems a lot to keep the eyes occupied. I’ve never been one to get into what Neal Gaiman was ever doing in comic books. Death seemed to be for fans of Tori Amos and for girls who wanted to dress up in white pancake with black lip liner and 1602 seemed like a series that was really supposed to be good but instead kind of felt like a forced reality where the Marvel universe was just transposed over this fake kind of time. I was not pleased.

Here, though, there is something I really want to see and I hope it can deliver on its tease.

Director: Mike Bigelow
Cast: Rob Schneider, Eddie Griffin
Release: August 12, 2005
Synopsis: In Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Rob Schneider is seduced back to his unlikely pleasure-for-pay profession, when his former pimp T.J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin) is implicated in the murders of Europe’s Greatest Gigolos. Deuce must go back to work in order to clear his good friend’s name. Along the way, Deuce must compete against the powerful European Union of Prosti-dudes and court another bevy of abnormal female clients including the beautiful Eva, who suffers from acute obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Prognosis: Positive. It pains me to a great extent to admit I liked the first film.

It was one I really went in with bad feelings for and left thinking it wasn’t as painful as it should have been. Rob can definitely carry a film, no question, but there should be some serious things in place to minimize not only the cost of producing a film like his but projecting how much it needs to make in order for it to be considered a success. Obviously, what Rob is able to do is bring X number of people on average to see his films. The guy can bring in fans, and his brand of comedy is not exactly what I like, but I can see how many young males gravitate to it. It’s part slapstick part freak factor. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the way he expresses his comedy.

The opening to this trailer is great. You have opera playing in the background to get you in the European mood, there is the shot of the old European buildings and alleyways, but when you see a woman standing inside a window display only wearing her bra and panties it’s a homerun to the sect of boys who know we are being shown Amsterdam.

We get more chicks to oogle at, definitely not a selling point for any feminista in the audience, but Rob then appears in one window in his boxers as he pulls up his pants, obviously contrasting to those things that one does want to see naked in Amsterdam. It’s not high comedy but it’ll do.

Eddie Griffin is back as Rob’s pimp of sorts and he is in high octane loudmouth assery as he explains, loudly, in a restaurant that Holland was the place where chicken and waffles were created and that black people all over the world will be forever grateful for that. Rob then mentions how the Dutch also started the slave trade. Eddie’s quick bon mot to this revelation, to me, is funny.

“New Clients”

Ok, it’s real hit or miss with some of the freaks he is going to get paired up with this time. There is the tall woman (wasn’t she in the first one), a cute one with wicked awful teeth, and one with a nose that seems straight out of Pinocchio. Also, there’s even a cat who grabs Eddie’s wang and doesn’t let go which, I guess, is still a funny gag to some.

Green Day’s “American Idiot,” last heard in the WEDDING CRASHERS trailer, plays through this thing and because that song has some connection to Rob’s ugly American personality, in more ways than just one, the music is oddly apropos.

I do have to say that one woman, in particular, takes the take for making me laugh the most. Rob offers wine to a woman he is entertaining for the evening. She takes a big slurp and, as she does, you immediately notice the woman has had a tracheotomy. Your brain then makes the connection that the spray of wine that douses Rob as he sits there is coming right from that poor woman’s throat and, to add a little somethin’ somethin’, Rob leaps up and tries to plug the leak. I cringed and laughed at the same time.

It takes a dip at the end of the gag when he says “check please,” a device not unlike the annoying record scratch to connote some kind of shift in behavior, but redeems itself quickly as trach girl belches and a line of wine shoots Rob in the face. Again, cringe and giggles.

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

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

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

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

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

Dangerous territory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In a town ruled by gangs.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too late.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, these people get their powers.

“1 will be bad”

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

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

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

“You know that looked cool”¦”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A grave misunderstanding.”

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

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

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

Director: Mike Binder
Cast: Joan Allen, Kevin Costner , Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Keri Russell, Alicia Witt, Mike Binder
Release: March 11, 2005 (New York)
Synopsis: When her husband unexpectedly disappears, a sharp-witted suburban wife and her daughters juggle their mom’s romantic dilemmas and family dynamics.

Prognosis: Sorta, Kinda Positive. Alright, as part of my community service obligations to the elder sect out there, here’s a look at a new romcom with Kevin Costner and Joan Allen.

Yes, you would be right to assume that I don’t have any real hard anticipation in seeing the movie and, further, you would be correct in quickly saying that this looks like a chick flick that;’s only compounded further by the amount of starlet wattage behind Allen as her daughters. That said, however, I would like to at least put this one out there as a movie that at least one of you out there will have to see because your boyfriend/girlfriend saw this trailer while watching Live with Regis and Kelly, while you were out busting your hump, which, in turn, makes you their date but I would like to be the first with a set of nads to say your options could be a lot worse.

It seems harmless enough of a movie. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of trailers lately and this one is ok with me because a) we don’t have an annoying voiceover that usually starts these kinds of trailers and b) we get a great dollop of the back-story behind Allen’s character right out of the gate which makes her kind of endearing. It’s amusing in a feminine sort of way, the husband just running off with his secretary, and leaving his family of three hot teenage girls to fend for themselves, so by the time Kevin shows up I know right where we’re headed. Again, that’s ok.

I’ve seen TIN CUP enough times where I am almost embarrassed to mention the number of moments I find myself watching a minute or two and then watching the rest and, I have to be honest, I am not a Kevin Costner fan. Yeah, yeah, DANCES WITH WOLVES, blah, blah, blah, but really. C’mon, he’s no Bruce Willis or Treat Williams by any stretch but when I see him running into Allen the first time I am content to see where things go.

And things seem to be going in the direction of TIN CUP. Guy likes girl, girl has some attraction to boy, boy has some deep fascination with a sport that makes him unable to communicate effectively with a member of the opposite sex, girl pushes the boy away just long enough to get fitted for a diaphragm and they end up doing it. But, that’s alright with me because there really seems to be more going on than just a mother with relationship problems. She has four girls who she can’t seem to communicate with either, one of which actually gets a job where Costner works, and there is a nice interplay between what Costner knows Allen needs and what Allen is trying to fight against.

Instead of two young dolls of Hollywood’s elite having a romantic comedy where we know what’s at stake for each of the protagonists we get a layered story of interpersonal relationships built around a near dysfunctional family and one near dysfunctional man. And hey, those daughters are hot if I haven’t already said it already.

The music near the end sucks, the cards introducing everyone are kind of flat but I can’t help feeling that the story rises above common convention because of the added element of the daughters. Yeah, they’ll resist him at first and they’ll all end up loving him at the end but I am more curious to see how they get there than I am with knowing the destination.

Director: Jeff Byrd
Cast: Anthony Anderson, Leila Arcieri, Jay Mohr , Charles Murphy, Glenn Bang, Jennifer Byrd
Release: April 22, 2005
Synopsis: Hoping to foil his own gold-digging wife’s plan, a loathsome businessman arranges his own kidnapping, only to realize that there are plenty of other people interested in his wealth as well.

Prognosis: Yikes. This one is helped, as best as it can be, by the almighty voiceover guy but it is awfully awkward when Turk from Scrubs asks our object of derision, Anthony Anderson, how he is doing today. He’s about to park the guy’s car as Anderson just says “Rich” and walks right by him.

Great. A movie about a rich guy who no one likes. What fun.

“Malcom King is a millionaire everyone wants a piece of.”

So”¦our star, A-list magnate of KANGAROO JACK and MY BABY’S DADDY, is wealthy. Really wealthy and it appears, by the opening moments of this trailer, that people all around him are conniving to get a slice of his pie.

Two people in this trailer are the only things that are keeping me from going to take a look at a trailer that’s all in Swahili: Charlie Murphy and Jay Mohr. Charlie is just flat out funny in ways I wish his brother was nowadays and Jay is just a good supporting guy who possess a good amount of comedic talent. These two conspire to kidnap Anthony for money but it appears they’re not really prepared for a life of crime. They’re inept in that funny movie kind of way.

The next scene involves some dudes getting yelled at to find out what happened to Anthony but what irks me is that the lady who’s doing the yelling at these two guys (who happen to be white) says she’s gonna be on them like, “white girls on NBA players.” Yeah, again with the white people jokes. What the hell, I mean I don’t see a big proliferation of jokes at the expense of black people here in the 21st century but I guess if you want to stoke some hostility, mission accomplished.

Turk comes back into the picture, enjoying the riches of Anthony’s money as he cavorts in a silky red robe but how it relates to some nameless chick getting her groove on in a discothèque I haven’t a clue.

I do like, though, the characters that seem to take shape in this picture. Since it is a comedy, and there needs to be some way to tell the difference between our kidnappers to make the situation amusing, just like in RUTHLESS PEOPLE (a not entirely horrible movie”¦) the people in this film all have quirky personalities. One of them is a completely brainless woman, another is an ex-con played by Murphy who shows his predilection for bathing with a side order of an uncomfortable Turk, and a loser who has nothing left to lose in Mohr. I will say one thing, though, in Anthony’s defense. When Mohr says that he is holding Anderson ransom for ten thousand dollars Anderson slaps the phone out of his hands to yell at him saying he’s kidnapped a rich man, not Bobby Brown. I laughed at that. I’m a big fan of Bobby Brown jokes.

Unfortunately, this film looks like it will die on the vine in a particularly limp way at the box office but there is always video.

Director: John Pasquin
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Regina King, Enrique Murciano, Diedrich Bader, Heather Burns, William Shatner
Release: March 24, 2005
Synopsis: After Cheryl Frasier and Stan Fields are kidnapped, Gracie goes undercover in Las Vegas to find them.

Prognosis: Negative. What the hell happened to Sandra Bullock’s career? Some would argue the question: Did she really have one to begin with? I will say that I was a big big fan of 28 DAYS and even SPEED and THE NET if there is nothing else on in the middle of the night, but I remember the first MISS CONGENIALITY with such a rueful attitude that I will try to lay out exactly why every man is doomed should their lady friend or boyfriend take them to see this.

Point #1: The trailer opens and we’re in New York. We’re off to a rousing start. But, first thing on my mind is where did Benjamin Bratt go? It’s like how Elizabeth Shue opened BACK TO THE FUTURE II as Marty’s girlfriend and you knew immediately that something was amiss. Shatner’s back, though.

Point #2: We get introduced to Bullock again as the pinnacle of all tomboys. She socks one of her FBI friends in the arm and we see her preparing a meal in a most male kind of way just so we’re assured she is completely asexual.

Point #3: Diedrich Bader is obnoxiously playing a gay man who wants to make over Bullock so she can be the new PR face for the FBI. It’s flamingly fake and I cringe when I see him in much the same way I did when Anthony Clark did the same thing in THE ROCK. Would it have been so hard to get a normal gay man? I guess it was”¦

Point #4: Regina King. I love this woman. I do have to admit that seeing her is a great thing and both she and Bullock seem to be competing for the Most Butch award. They don’t get along, don’t worry they’ll love each other by the credits, and the only friction that seems to matter in this movie is how these two ladies will get along.

Point #5: The movie is about, apparently, not just how she and Regina eventually become bestest friends but how Sandra can go undercover as an old lady to save her best friend from a kidnapper. I really don’t know if I can go on explaining this plot. Do you realize someone got paid more money than you probably make in a decade to write this?

Point #6: The two of them, grudgingly, make their way to Las Vegas. A lot of the trailer’s running time focuses on how these girls have to use teamwork in order to accomplish their goals. Seriously, someone got paid for this.

Point #7: I was going to give it up for the faux beat down Regina gives Regis Philbin but I take it back because the trailer literally ends with Bullock’s trademark double snort like it’s amusing to listen to.

I do understand I am not the target audience. I even know that my presence in the movie’s audience isn’t needed but if you think that this trailer will get me to go willingly and not put up a fight when my wife is screeching to see it you’ve got another thing coming, Buster Brown. Couldn’t you have focused more on the Vegas showgirls aspect, give me a little more Regina a little less Sandra? For the demographic it’s aimed for, in all honesty, it’s a fabulous trailer. For every other individual who doesn’t share the same chromosomal pair, however, it should put the fear of God in you.

Director: John Maybury
Cast: Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley
Release:March 4, 2005
Synopsis: A military veteran goes on a journey into the future, where he can foresee his death and is left with questions that could save his life and those he loves.

Prognosis: Negative.Adrian Brody, fresh off his shucking and jiving in Coca-Cola ads, stars in yet another installment in a little known genre as the “man with amnesia” mystery movie.

The trailer is good going, though, in giving us a clear understanding of what’s going on in this movie. Adrian is a thin and skinny John Rambo type who is aimlessly wandering America with his army issued duffel bag and dog tags.

In the next scene he sees someone stopped on the side of the road and goes to help them out.; he’s a mobile AAA, if you will. A young girl who was in the car when he arrived asks if she can have his “˜tags. He says sure without so much as batting an eyelash. They move on as he walks down the road a bit before being picked up by some random dude in a station wagon but this is where everything trips out, acid style. He somehow gets thrown into the loony bin and is framed for shooting someone he didn’t do and we’re told this all happens in 1992.

I think to myself that, wow, another one of these happy just to be alive kind of movies where our protagonist comes out of prison with a greater understanding of humanity. But then, something really cool happens. When he gets committed some kooky therapist there gets the idea to strap him in a straight jacket and slide him into a morgue holding container for hours on end. Hey, some dudes at Abu Ghraib like to stack prisoners in naked pyramids in real life so this brand of behavior conditioning is nothing shocking to me.

Flashes of random images start whipping by as his breath becomes labored and intensive. He cries out and I assume, judging by the frequency they take him and in and out, they continue doing this for a long long time.

He eventually gets out, looking none the worse for wear, his dental hygiene, oddly enough, being well cared for in the crap hole he was shown in, and meets up with Keira Knightley.

It should be no surprise that she is the girl who got his dog tags over a decade ago. Ta-da! He has no idea what year it is, he talks some gibberish about how he met her 15 years ago and then things get really choppy.

Essentially, we’re to believe that there was some odd behavior modification going on with the doctor that “helped” Adrian, somehow we’re to believe that Keira is the one woman who can help this man, he’s shown getting busy with Keira (Because I know if I was having problems knowing what year it was and who I was that I would need some sweet warm womanly love to get me thinkin’ straight, too, yo.), and then some A-chord musical interlude starts in to show how these two kids git “˜er done to get to the bottom of things.

Thoroughly unimpressed.

Director: Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato
Cast: Gerard Damiano, Erica Jong, Linda Lovelace, Norman Mailer, Harry Reems, Gore Vidal, John Waters.
Release: February 11, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: More than 30 years after Deep Throat’s provocative debut, this documentary examines the legacy that the most profitable film of all-time left on society.

Prognosis: Positive. First of all, the green screen that comes before the trailer begins proudly displays that this trailer is for a movie rated NC-17.

Yahtzee!

I feel like I’m 13 years-old again and I look over my shoulder to see if anyone can see my monitor as the clip unfolds.

Instead of an annoying voiceover by “the guy” we slide into the controversy this film caused by listening to the ramblings of Hick McPodunk about the decline of western civilization that was pushed forward by the release of this porn movie.

The basics are tossed out there in print form: it was a $25,000 movie that has grossed over $600 million.

I like the way that in lieu of the voiceover we get fact after fact. True, this film caused a ripple effect inside the Nixon administration, and it only heightens the social subtext to what this flick did.

What’s hilarious is that at one point in this montage of clips and pictures is some old Aunt Bea character that looks terribly close to my grandmother saying she doesn’t, “want someone telling me I can’t see a dirty picture.” While it induces a certain “ewww” reaction in me I like the contrast.

Also, we get pundit commentary from John Waters, Gore Vidal, and Hugh Hefner so it’s a real cavalcade of those who were right at the nexus point of what this movie did or can comment on in it as it related to the sociological implications of its debut. And here you thought it was all about butt shots and ti%&y shakes and pu%#$ pumps. For shame, you lotharios.

The commentary gets more interesting as we see the director and production manager and other vital people in this story being interviewed about their involvement in the movie and it’s interesting, just on the surface, to see where their lives have taken them. There is a tennis back and forth motion of showing pictures from the past with modern images of these people and I like that what is happening here is someone wants to tell a story. Walter Cronkite, in file film footage, says how a judge ruled the movie obscene and you just know the kind of PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLINT arguing that’s gonna be present throughout this picture.

I am very and utterly surprised that Brian Grazer is attached as the producer of this movie as just being affiliated with a tawdry subject, read here: Kevin Bacon in THE WOODSMAN, starts comments about the ridiculous implications that might have for a career. Obviously, for Grazer, nothing will hamper that Ryan Cabrerra love slave look so I commend him for at least thinking this was an interesting story to tell.

There is a certain cheesiness to it all, the production value of the trailer and the music that goes along with it, but I can’t help but be confused whether I really want to see this documentary for its depth or because I want to see the naughty bits. I’ll publicly state that it’s for the former and secretly for the hope of looking at some poon.

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Will Ferrell, Radha Mitchell, Chloe Sevigny, Amanda Peet
Release: March 18th, 2005
Synopsis: Two alternating stories about Melinda’s (Mitchell) attempts to straighten out her life.

Prognosis: Negative. Yeah, ANNIE HALL is the best romantic comedy ever put to film. Woody Allen is pure genius. He is one of the most unappreciated director/writers of our generation. Everyone in Hollywood always says they’re honored when he picks up the phone to ask them to star in a new production of his. He has the best taste in women.

Stop it already. Seriously.

How long can this guy turn out average fare before people stop believing the hype? I’m not saying people are wrong to say things that are more than complimentary but just adjust your perception of the world and see that his hit-or-miss style, for a long time now, isn’t as genius as the press would have you believe. For every SWEET AND LOWDOWN there’s two ANYTHING ELSEs just waiting to be released. This film, MELINDA AND MELINDA looks like something in-between.

If I could go half-way myself on either positive or negative I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one I’d choose with any great accuracy. This movie almost feels like a more cerebral lost episode of Seinfeld.

“Let me tell you a story and you tell me”¦is it material for a comedy or a tragedy?”

I like the premise and the way this trailer begins. It already supposes where we’re going with the story and it sets my anticipation that what we’re going to be shown is two scenarios seen through two different emotional lenses.

The cards introducing Woody as the writer/director is simple, the music is nice and as the voiceover says that everything is going to take place during a dinner party I am content. The party’s host, who comments that he’s running out of “obsequious” banter and seeming just like the kind of city-yuppie a-hole intellectual poseur who needs to have his faux ivy-league ass kicked in a bar fight, is a little pretentious but the premise that someone unexpected comes to the party is good. Then, that’s when Wallace Shawn, a near and dear actor for his timeless role in A PRINCESS BRIDE, pipes in and let’s us know we have the makings of a great comedy. It’s odd, a little stilted but it does rise above some other kinds of openings I’ve seen.

So”¦same dinner party premise, same kind of people, same unexpected guest but this time instead of asking for some wine or champagne (who the hell serves champagne at a dinner party?) she admits to having ingested fistfuls of sleeping pills. Of course, the wackiness ensues with the hostess admonishing her guests from getting up from the table to help the damsel in distress because the food will get cold and before she can yak on the rug Will Ferrell tells her to go to the bathroom because that’s new carpet. The premise is continued when Melinda, the sleeping pill chick, is being introduced to a man who has a successful dentistry practice. Will Ferrell tells his wife Melinda has already been married to a doctor and a dentist is the same thing but”¦oral. I loved that Seinfeld episode.

The trailer kind of slides here for me as this chick Melinda is the centerpiece for the film and in-between all the talk of finding her a man and settling down, to say nothing of the fact that all we know about this chick is that she likes sleeping pills, Will ends up really liking her as well.

“Love can be a tragedy or a comedy.”

Now, as I see it, it seems that Chloe Sevigny takes a shine to Melinda’s man and they hit it off as well. Things also go awry when, at the end of the trailer, Will catches his wife in bed with another man. He seems pleased because his fantasy to have Melinda to himself seems to be coming true, and I know it is supposed to appear funny, but wasn’t this all a plotline in Rescue Me, another television show?

Yeah, I don’t think the audience who this movie is catering to would watch a show like Rescue Me, either. It’s too gauche and bourgeois for the kinds of educated people this film is aimed at. Still, that was a good episode. Here, though, the joke could work for those not in the know. It looks like a serviceable comedy, if I can be so bold as to say that, but it will live or die on how well the dialogue comes across because there isn’t anything worse than a movie that tries to be clever only to impale itself on its own petard of bad clichés.

Director: Darin Beckstead
Cast: Todd Wall, Aaron Fiore, Kahil Dotay, Bill Allison, Tony Larimer
Release: November 20, 2004 (New York), DVD release soon
Synopsis: Inspired by the making of Spielberg’s 1974 shark blockbuster. Steven, a young filmmaker must find a way to make his monster movie after he and a friend (George) accidentally break the film’s main prop (A Mechanical Shark).

Prognosis: Positive Ok, so when I had to access the trailer for this independent movie I had to first go to the movie’s home page. When I opened it up I seriously thought I was going to be watching something on the Branch Davidians as I could swear the man looking back at me on that site bears a strong resemblance to David Koresh.

What this movie is, really, is something that feels along the same lines of GEORGE LUCAS IN LOVE and I think that may have something to do with Lucas being depicted again in this short with the tell-tale beard and semi-morose attitude. Plus, at 25 minutes, the film looks like that’s just about enough to keep a gag like this going before it becomes tiresome and annoying.

The trailer is really amusing as it shows how JAWS really came together after Spielberg accidentally destroys the shark, trying to secretly show it off to Lucas one night. Right off the bat we get into why I need to see the movie, the conflict, and that’s too important not to make mention of here. Sometimes first time directors are so eager to show off everything they’ve done that they feel a need to cram but this trailer feels open and it doesn’t rush me through things. Within the first 20 seconds I know this is a comedy and that in a moment of child-like exuberance Spielberg kills the one thing that the entire movie rests on: a killer shark.

The trailer could’ve started right into how this malfunction affects the other people in the movie but we get an introduction into the various other members of the cast. Some people that are shown are good in their own thespian right. The producers of this interpretation of JAWS are rightly concerned about how this will affect the rest of the production when the shark is no longer usable, there is a guy who bears a wicked resemblance to Richard Dryfus and eerily sounds like him too, but the sheriff’s line about Spielberg, when commenting about this young auteur and his film style, saying that he wouldn’t be able to direct his way out of a paper bag is a groaner. It is. It’s just like those people who like to use a sentence that has the predicate of “on crack” and they insert someone or something that’s really just crazy or loony to them. “Out of a paper bag” is another one that needs to be jettisoned out of the earth’s verbal lexicon.

This doesn’t take away from the trailer’s ability to tell me why I should give a crap about its existence, though. I like parody. I am the fiscal reason why “Weird Al” still cranks out CD’s every couple of years. Comedy is, by some people’s estimation, a far more tenuous medium than any other genre. I was smiling at a couple of things in this trailer and I think that says something. Does it mean the movie might be great? Yeah, but it also could mean the rest of the film is filled with duds.

The trailer here sets the premise up, gives us a little look into the chaos that ensues after Spielberg trashes one of the most important props in movie history and it even tosses in some moments that would have me, at the very least, seeking this one out on television.

Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Christina Ricci, Shannon Elizabeth, Portia de Rossi, Michael Rosenbaum, Scott Foley, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Joshua Jackson, Mya
Release: February 25, 2005
Synopsis: Set in Los Angeles, “Cursed” centers around an estranged brother and sister dealing with the recent loss of their parents, whose lives are irrevocably altered one dark night in Los Angeles by a vicious animal attack.

Prognosis: Negative. I think one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever seen put on a screen involved Bill Paxton, an enormous toadish outfit and a little fly. For those who don’t know what scene I was talking about it is when Bill is turned into a hideous little creature in WEIRD SCIENCE. He’s just sitting on his stumpy little legs and thwips a fly right out of midair, enjoying it, before he realizes what he’s done. Somehow description doesn’t do it justice but you never forget a funny like that when you’re a kid as everything that comes after it just seems weak in comparison. Cases in point: Daniel-san grabs the buzzing fly with his chopsticks in KARATE KID, Jeff Goldblum in THE FLY, and even Booger in REVENGE OF THE NERDS II: NERDS IN PARADISE when he gets the fly with the monstrous loogie he jettisons from his mouth just don’t compare to Bill.

Even Christina Ricci’s fascination with catching flies out of the air with her hands just doesn’t do anything for me.

It seems that Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson (it’s a true Marvel Team-Up if there ever was one) came together to make a werewolf movie but you would never know it by watching this trailer.

The thing starts with Christina taking her brother home. They’re bickering and I can’t really follow it, and it’s really late at night. The road is dark and of course there is heavy foliage besetting both sides of the street so Christina doesn’t see this mysterious something crash into her windshield. In the process of swerving her car away from the point of impact she knocks some lady off the road. I am genuinely curious to know what’s happening but it honest to God seems like it’s a promo for the TV show Lost as this other woman is yanked out of her car by some faceless creature and we have nothing but a blur to go off of. End of scene.

Some days later the brother says he is displaying some odd traits (like the aforementioned fly thing with Ricci), he’s able to bound some school bleachers in a single jump, and dogs start to gather around his house just like the whole cat thing from SLEEPWALKERS (a fairly strange Stephen King movie that I didn’t terribly dislike). His own dog, as well, turns into one of those freak HULK dogs but without the overtly odd physical transformation. It’s not scary, it just seems funny.

The whole trailer is trying to convince me that this is a new chapter of what AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON did for werewolves in the 80’s but I just don’t buy an inch of it. And I really do want it to be good, honestly, I do. Wes Craven gave me NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, Kevin Williamson gave me SCREAM, but all this looks like is an inbred mix of crap acting and bad attempts at trying to seem like a horror film when this only seems like a great cautionary tale as to what film should be avoided come the end of February.

The real reason here why I can’t even be kind of helpful towards this movie is that I have nothing to invest in any of these people. They seem, first of all, like bratty little whelps that need a reed across the ass; second, there isn’t really an explanation as to what’s at stake for any of these people as for all I know killing their friends in werewolf fashion might be a good thing; third, the transformation into a werewolf isn’t even hinted at until the end when we really do get a nice Dracula-like shot of Christina gorging into the neck of what I think is her boyfriend.

Disappointing, to say the least.

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons
Release:May 6, 2005
Synopsis: During the Crusades of the 12th Century, Balian of Ibelin (Bloom), a young blacksmith in Jerusalem, rises to protect his people from foreign invaders.

Prognosis: Negative. “From the director of Gladiator,” the copy says. What it should say is, “From the director of Gladiator comes the exact same thing but just add many hundreds of years”¦”

I joke, I kid”¦sorta.

The trailer opens up wonderfully enough. Orlando Bloom has a voiceover where he is trying to rally the troops about some noble cause they’re involved in. We get an overhead shot of galloping horses that kick up lots of dust and that makes it seem more “epic.” We even get some nameless hottie hugging a young kid as he’s probably sold off into male slavery but the chick is squatting among the same damn crop field that looks exactly like the kind of agricultural product that Russell Crowe walks among at the end of GLADIATOR. It’s probably left over from that film but I can’t say for absolute sure just yet, and then we get some badass wielding a huge blade on a nice sunny day. Is it a knight in battle? Orlando makes me think it’s so but we press on for a before I have a chance to ascertain that.

The hottie shows up again, looking like one of those goth chicks I wanted to mack on in high school with the amount of black eyeliner she has on, but it looks like she’s spoken for by Orlando.

Ok, here’s why this is a bad beginning so far to the trailer: I don’t have an idea of who Orlando is supposed to be (good guy or bad), I see Liam Neeson but haven’t a clue what or who he’s scripted to be and as someone who might be a little helpful in getting people into the seats with the buzz surrounding him for KINSEY this might be a prudent time to get him more properly introduced, and, moreover, where the hell is the story? I feel like David St. Hubbins from THIS IS SPINAL TAP looking into an empty olive and feeling a sense of anger and dejection.

I get a flash of Liam getting surgical with his own sidearm sword but we come upon his voiceover as he talks, again I can only assume, to Orlando about being part of a kingdom of conscious. This time we get Jeremy Irons who looks all suited up for battle on a Hollywood screen, some shots of people riding horses, a lot of pomp of kings and queens and I am completely lost without a road map. Who the hell are these people and what are they doing?

Is Orlando fighting for good? Is he on a crusade against Jeremy Irons? Is that the whole point of the title of the film? If all these things are a yes then I am going to need something more than the quiet lead-in to the battle of thousands (I am sure many of whom who are shown were digitally placed into harms way for my pleasure). I got burned on TROY and on ALEXANDER last year because I thought “how can you screw up a battle sequence after LORD OF THE RINGS?” Well, both of them tried and succeeded in doing so and here it isn’t any different.

However, when some guy who is kneeling on the ground gets socked across the head by something heavy and blunt, the dude’s long curly locks whipping around his face, you’ve got my attention. Also, I am a sucker for the dozens of arrows in the air at a single time trick so I appreciate that as well.

It’s as the trailer is heading into the final turn that I finally become invested in Orlando’s character. He’s on a mission, for sure, but there is a nice lady who waits his safe return and that’s illustrated quite nicely. Liam, though, is oddly shown whipping his sword around in what looks like the exact same fight as the beginning of the trailer. I am happy to add, in the trailer’s defense, that there is an awesome display of flaming catapults. Those little orbs of molten beauty are really the only saving grace here. I mean Middle Earth is one thing but if this is the time of the crusades Orlando looks too damn cute in every shot. Couldn’t they have at least roughed him up a little around the edges? It’s a minor quibble but, even still, this is one of the first movies Ridley Scott has done in a while that I’m really not amped up to see and I think that’s the true letdown of the entire trailer.

Director: Elliot Greenebaum
Cast: Michael Bonsignore, Maggie Riley
Release: February 4, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: “Assisted Living” chronicles a day in the life of Todd, a janitor who spends his days smoking pot and interacting with the residents for his own entertainment. Todd’s detachment from his surroundings is compromised only by his unlikely friendship with Mrs. Pearlman, a resident who begins to confuse him with her son. On this particular day, Todd must choose whether or not to play the part. “Assisted Living” is shot and staged in a real nursing home and gains much of its unique effect and style from the participation of actual residents and staff members. During much of the film, it is impossible to distinguish between what is real and what is fiction.

Prognosis: Positive. Now this is the kind of trailer that makes me smile.

Just when I start to think that maybe I am the jerk-off who can’t find anything nice to say about the labors in trailers of other people one like this makes me think that there are people out there who are trying really hard.

I appreciate that this trailer starts off with a steady flow of information. The makers of this trailer, first of all, use a nice piece of running time of the actual movie to introduce us to the protagonist. It’s a guy who looks like a male nurse, but who I guess turns out to be the janitor, and he’s apologizing for coming in late to work. He walks past someone who might be a co-worker or boss but he doesn’t care because he’s already given the excuse as he was walking and that’s the end of that. He works in a retirement home. The screen goes black. Now, how hard was that?

The next scene has a nice guitar score in the background as our man starts to make a few phone calls to the residents. He’s pretending to be dead members of these people’s families. It may sound cruel, and in a way it is, but it’s too damn funny to see the number of people he talks to and what he says to them. The Q&A ranges from who’s there in heaven with them to what heaven-sex is like.

We get to know this guy a little more when he starts to talk to one of the residents in particular. He seems genuinely nice, to a point, but he also appears to have a way of trying to find different things to amuse himself while working. The cards that are interspersed with the trailer have written sound bites from various news publications regarding the quality of the film. Here it is quite useful in couching the right expectations for the film.

What’s more is the use of long scenes in this trailer. Where many studios want you to at least see a frame of every shot done for a film that’s crammed into their trailer this film appeals to me because I see how these people talk and act with one another. It’s risky but it’s funny to see how our protagonist operates inside the boundaries of his job.

There is a real vulnerability to this guy and the trailer is able to communicate that wonderfully.

Director: Christophe Barratier
Cast: Gerard Jugnot, Francois Berleand, Jean-Baptiste Maunier, Jacques Perrin, Kad Merad
Release: January 14, 2005 (New York)
Synopsis: The new teacher at a severely administered boys’ boarding school works to positively effect the students’ lives through music.

Prognosis: Positive. Yeah, this one’s a reader, an import, a foreign language flick, but I absolutely enjoyed this trailer enough to give it a mention.

What’s nice about this trailer is that it starts off very subtly. A metronome tick-tocks in front of a classroom where a small boy watches it go back and forth. A dozen or so small feet shuffle in quick succession as if they’re running to or from somewhere. As is usually the case with foreign language films we get sweeping views of the landscape to show us that we’re in a different time, a different country but everything is tight.

“They were the orphans of World War II that were forgotten.”

The choral singing of one boy fills the background with sound. It’s nice, soothing even. Young boys mill about, I take it to be, a small rural orphanage.

“He was a composer who had given up on music.”

We see what looks like Mr. Stick Up His Ass come to the gates of this boys town as the singing subsides and gives way to a jaunty piano that opens us up to what looks like a KINDERGARTEN COP classroom but with all dudes. The man looks unimpressed and even more so when they pull a Mr. Shoop (Yeah, I’m a Mark Harmon fan, a SUMMER SCHOOL aficionado, so what?) as play keep away with the guy’s belongings.

So far I am really into what this trailer is selling because the set-up was done simplistically and there hasn’t been a moment of stuffiness. That’s a really good thing what with my short attention span these days.

And then it happens. The trailer gains foreword momentum.

The sad and lonely guy eventually does find inspiration with these lads, somehow, and I like that I’m not shown how this happens after these hellions do all they can to make this guy’s life miserable, Something is triggered as our teacher finds a way into these kids’ insides. The choral music begins anew and it’s superb.

This all leads to the mini-scenes of boys being boys, seeing what they did to amuse themselves in their downtime, and there are even a couple of camera shots that just linger long enough to be quite provocative. One is of some man dressed very nicely in a vest and tie but stands on his desk, flying a paper airplane around himself. It’s absurd but it makes me wonder. The same can be said of a shot that has a very small boy, no older than maybe 4 or 5, standing all alone as it appears someone is driving away from him. I’m not sure whether I should feel sad for the lad or wonder why he just stands still as the camera pulls away.

It may be a lot of things but the premise is interesting, the music is splendid, the camerawork is more than adequate and I loved the last thing that this director has done which was WINGED MIGRATION.

Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Jason Aaron Baca, Christian Bale, Greg Cooper, Colin Farrell, John Ghaly, Wes Studi
Release: November, 2005
Synopsis: A Terrence Malick-scripted drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and the British in the 17th century.

Prognosis: Surprisingly Positive This is one movie that will most defiantly be discussed in certain media circles come next Thanksgiving.

What I like about the film, immediately, is the trailer page where I watched this thing. The photo art that accompanies the small screen for viewing the trailer has a picture of an Indian. You can only see the back of his head, it’s slightly shadowed, with trees all around him. His Mohawk is in full-effect, the feathers are a great touch, very punk circa 1982, and I am struck at how poignant the image is when you see the approaching ships in the background of said picture. It’s eerie, for most who know American history, knowing what will be coming then and in the next couple hundred years. If you live anywhere else in the world and aren’t up on world history, specifically this nation’s love of Thanksgiving, we here in the States celebrate our arrival in the New World, forgetting all that liberal jazz about the smallpox, the mass slaughter of innocents, how we drove a native population nearly into extinction, and everything else we’re literally paying for today, by killing various forms of fauna and having kids make these gnarly hand turkeys that stay on the fridge well after the holiday is finished. But I am getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? What I am trying to illustrate is that I think this film may be a good step in showing how pleasant we were to the natives and the kind of chaos many thousands of white folk brought to this New World and the trailer does an admirable job in fanning the flames of what will, no doubt, be brought up in about 10 months.

The trailer sets things in motion nicely.

The sound of native music echoes among the people on the screen as they are communally joined in a ritual. It’s barely dawn and they stand in a large bank of water. They’re hunting fish.

We’re given, casually, the fact that Terrence Malick, from THE THIN RED LINE, directed this film. The transition is very smooth and it’s not obtrusive.

Virginia, 1607.

A three boat armada enters the frame as a single bang of a large drum symbolizes the weight of what’s about to come next. Another bang of the drum shows the natives getting restless as they spot a small patrol boat led by Colin Farrell. Hell, I would be restless too if I had no idea what a mullet was but yet had no way to describe the evil I felt on the inside by looking at that insidious hairstyle coming ever closer into my life.

The men come off the ship and there is a nice close-up of a single leather boot squishing into the muddy bank as its wearer plods onto land.

The Indians seem to welcome these strange men as the whiteys seem perplexed as to what to do. Even the head of P.A.G.A.N. from DRAGNET, Reverend Jonathan Whirley aka Christopher Plummer (I’m also a big fan of that midnight movie), seems wierded out by the welcome.

We see a nice depiction of the tribal people more than the Europeans (God only knows what nationality Colin will be playing this time) and we then get right up to the lip of where things start to boil over but we don’t get there. There also doesn’t seem to be conflict between the Indians and Europeans but we get a peek into a certain assimilation that takes place with Colin. In a way that makes me think this is a little bit like THE LAST SAMURAI (a movie that should’ve been better but decided to piss any cred it had away with Tom Cruise walking away from a machine gun assault. Bollocks.) but without too much depending on a love story. Not that there isn’t one, though. There is a very nice ending shot of an Indian woman, in full-on Pocahontas garb, walking slowly into a grassy thicket. She’s all alone and maybe she ahs something to do with Colin but since I can’t say for sure I can only guess. But what I will say is that, again, this is a good case why voiceovers don’t necessarily have to be the knee-jerk go-to solution in telling a story. If you use good imagery, like this one does, and you really try to organically get your point across the audience is a lot smarter than some will have you think.

Yeah, I also know it’s Colin Farrell and it’s so hard to trust him to take the lead in anything but I just have to think that TIGERLAND wasn’t just luck. I’m pullin’ for the lad, I am.

Director: Uwe Boll
Cast: Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff, Will Sanderson
Release: January 28, 2005
Synopsis: Based on the video game, Alone in the Dark focuses on Edward Carnby, a detective of the paranormal, who slowly unravels a mysterious events with deadly results.

Prognosis: Negative. Christian Slater. Christian Slater. I still maintain that HEATHERS, TRUE ROMANCE and PUMP UP THE VOLUME were his true pinnacles of celluloid history. INTERVIEW OF A VAMPIRE? That was supposed to be River Phoenix and doesn’t count. KUFFS I am extremely happy to own on DVD but would never admit to that in public conversation. So, it is with great dread that once again Slater is pumping out another weak-assed attempt to try and finagle some better roles; this, I am afraid, will only get him a supporting spot in DUNSTON CHECKS IN 2: DUNSTIN GOES APESHIT.

The poster, though, for the film is an HR Giger nightmare and I like that. It’s creepy, it’s dark and it’s says to me that this movie is looking to be something more than just a weak scare flick. Uwe Boll, the mastermind behind the lens, just looks like he was on autopilot making this. Sure, HOUSE OF THE DEAD was applauded by some, certainly not by me by any means, but, come on, let’s take a look at this trailer.

We get an overhead shot of a city during the day. Whether it’s supposed to be New York, Chicago, L.A., Peru, I haven’t a clue and none is even offered as we switch to a Christian Slater voiceover and he is in full-on Nicholson as he starts to talk about investigating whatever the hell seems to be happening again. Somehow, using backgrounds as the clues, it has something to do with mosquitoes and human lungs. I’m not sure but this could be the first movie based on West Nile Virus.

Slater talks with someone, wearing the same trench coat and black t-shirt as he seems to be donning in every shot, a requisite for any bad movie mo-fo with an attitude but a good moral compass, and their talk is fixated on an ancient tablet of some sort. Tara Reid, hot off her role in MY BOSS’S DAUGHTER, is the one woman who will be accompanying Slater on some trek into the depths of someplace dark where you just know she’s not gonna get killed because she’s supposed to be the hot chick and hot chicks never get knocked-off although I don’t think Tara really qualifies anymore”¦

What is so alarming to me is that we are well into the trailer and we don’t have any sense of trepidation or buy-in as to why I should give a care about any of the things happening on the screen. So far it’s like being jerked around from scene to scene with no real context and I am actually thankful for Voiceover Guy when he finally chimes in.

“Some gateways should never be opened”¦”

Thanks. Now we’re getting somewhere. Slater and a bunch of people, who will no doubt be dead by the third act less Reid and maybe Dorff, depending on how good his agent is, find their way into some ancient something or another. There are skulls on one wall so that should be plenty creepy, right? Then, some security guard starts to investigate what appears to be a big black room. As soon as the poor sap starts to say “Hello?” you know how this encounter is going to end. I just hope to get a glimpse of the thing that’s gonna kill him. I’m robbed of that but somehow I there are display cases everywhere and now I get the clue that this might be happening in a museum. Huh? Yeah, no context equals confused. Confused leads to anger and anger leads to wondering why this film looks like it was shot on one soundstage and appears to meld elements of STARSHIP TROOPERS and every lame one-guy-against-it-all cliché you can hurl at it.

Ahh, but I am not without some compliments regarding this film. At about one minute six seconds I get exactly what I need: gunfire, hand-to-hand combat, and a better look at our titular villain. Yeah, it’s like a midget horde of Godzillas but it’s loud, it’s visually engaging and I actually feel some sort of pull towards to the theater to see it.

However, after the hard rock soundtrack ends and the night watchman gets it by what looks like a Shiwalla car scrubber with fangs, I am no more inclined to see this movie than I am anything else Slater has done in the last five years.

Director: Peter Segal
Cast: Martin Lawrence, Horatio Sanz, Steven Anthony Lawrence, Steven C. Parker, Patrick Warburton
Release:April 15, 2005
Synopsis: An acclaimed college hoops coach is demoted to a junior varsity team after a public meltdown.

Prognosis: Negative. “A comedy where old school meets middle school”?

A tagline like this really does tell you exactly what kind of film you’re in for. I was about to get all mental on this trailer, an obvious target for some sharp commentary about where Martin Lawrence’s career is going, but I won’t. This film isn’t for you or I and but it is trying to cater, I think, to a more youthful audience. I guess Lawrence is thinking is if Eddie Murphy is getting paid big money to not be that funny and cater to kids, why can’t I? And who could blame him, anyway? I sure as hell would like some of that sell-out action. This trailer, though, to its credit, gives us everything we need to know about the story from start, middle to finish.

First, we see that he is a very successful college coach. He appears to be the coach of a team that has done very well for his reputation as a great leader of men, but, like all movies that are about big tumbles from the top, he’s knocked off his pedestal. It seems he was excessively cruel to a school’s live hawk mascot when he accidentally kills it by punting a basketball into its head. He’s immediately banned from coaching college basketball and we even see more of his Bobby Knight-like qualities when he tries to refute the punishment.

So far the story is well-put, the camera angles are about as vanilla as you’re gonna get, there is nothing at all special about the acting and we pretty much know this is going to be all about Martin.

He somehow makes his way back to the middle school where he used to go, I am sure there will be a huge plotline surrounding why this indignant little man would stoop so low, and asks to coach their basketball team. Would you be terribly surprised to know that each one of these kids homogenously suck at playing basketball? Yeah, me neither. Each one of these kids, though, especially the girl, have a wacky characteristic that sets them apart from any other normal kid in the world and I guess that will appeal to the eight to twelve year-olds out there who may want to waste their time to see this.

I do have to say it is kinda funny that when the kids don’t listen to Lawrence’s advice to keep their hands up while guarding their man he, in turn, puts Icy Hot under their armpits. I found that little act of child abuse hilarious. I’m actually going to commit that bit to my future Rolodex of Things To Do To My Own Kid Someday. I actually laughed.

But for every step, though, we take forward we go twenty backward. What happens near the end of this trailer is we see these kids do what every other kid’s movie show underdogs do: win. They now have great looking uniforms, Lawrence fires them up by letting them know they’re winners (Awww), there seems to be a great celebration at the end, and there’s even a moment when the guy who fired Martin at the beginning of the trailer tells him the following, “Are you out of your mind?” The guy is holding a contract in his hand and Martin goes on to explain that he found a group of kids who blah blah blah. Essentially you now know that he’ll be offered his old job back and he’ll refuse it. Um, who the hell cut this trailer? Isn’t the whole point of one of these things is to stoke interest and to possibly, at times, tease? To even give away the secondary ending seems absolutely beyond anything I can comprehend but I guess that’s what’s needed to bring in the young’uns.

For the rest of the audience, though, that this movie does not appeal to I am sure we all give you thanks for ruining an already wafer-thin movie and for saving me the money of having to find out myself how this thing ends.

Director: Moon-saeng Kim, Park Sunmin
Cast: Joon-ho Chung, David Naughton, Hye-jin Yu, Ji-tae Yu.
Release: February 18, 2005
Synopsis: Civilization has been destroyed by war and pollution, but the survivors have built the last city of Ecoban. As most natural resources have been exhausted, Ecoban is powered by pollution. The citizens of Ecoban need to continue creating this pollution leading them into conflict with the inhabitants of Marr, while one man just wants to clear away the clouds and show the sky to his beloved.

Prognosis: Visually Positive. As a big fan for all things TRON, I submit to you SKY BLUE.

At first I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting. I mean nearly the first thirty seconds of this trailer is spent showing us who made the damn thing. Yeah, it’s cool to have a really great lead-in to show what company put the time into making the film but when it represents a good percentage of your running time you may want to think about scaling things back a bit.

After the intros are finally out of the way we’re shown a really nice close-up of rain falling to the ground; rain just coming down on concrete. It’s simple, it’s artistic in a way and I like the way it sort of eases us into revealing what film festivals really took a shine to this movie: Tokyo Film Festival, Sundance, Venice, London.

“How long has it been raining? Forever.”

A nice female voice is the first sound I hear as the screen goes black and that’s when it happens. A bike, right out TRON but without the neon shite on the sides, goes blazing, hauling major ass, into the side of a mountain that has a tunnel etched into it.

Were told it’s 2142 and, as all movies that go this far in the future show us, people seem to be living underground in vast networks of post-apocalyptic urban jungles, there is a very musty and dreary feel to everything but it all seems very real to me. I am amazed when I see that this is an animated movie.

The story is daring with its cocksure overlords, their grand designs to be rulers among men, and the lone rogue out to stop it all. I’m not faulting the film, though, as I would if the animation used traditional methodologies to tell this tale but every story like this one needs to have a twist to set it apart and the visuals that are supporting the action pop out at me with a colorful panache.

Yeah, there are grandiose moments of bombast of our hero trying to rally his troops in killing whoever is in charge of their misfortune but the sequences used how the action will go down beats to hell anything I’ve seen for a while in the realm of Asian animation. I can’t tell for sure if it’s a blend of live action with animation or if it’s CGI mixed with animation but it’s riveting.

I do have to give even more props to how this thing goes out. I have a thing about liking it when trailer really blows out the wad at the end to really sell a film with bits and pieces that may not even be related to anything. The explosions, the energy, the gunfire, the movements of the characters, they all get me excited to find out where this film will be coming to my part of the world. It’s animation with serious style.

Director: Jesse Dylan
Cast: Will Ferrell, Robert Duvall, Mike Ditka, Kate Walsh
Release: May 13th, 2005
Synopsis: Family man Phil Weston, a lifelong victim of his father’s competitive nature, takes on the coaching duties of a kids’ soccer team, and soon finds that he’s also taking on his father’s dysfunctional way of relating.

Prognosis: Positive. The only thing that Will Ferrell has to fear is being pigeonholed as the “go to” guy for a character that needs to be slightly off from the norm. His performances in recent years have been nothing less than commendable for their ability to raise an average production into something more when they’re entrusted to his brand of comedy. From his recent stint as a crazed ex-Santa helper in ELF and even as Ron Burgundy in ANCHORMAN they both have shown his abilities as a comedic actor. He is really one of the best talents that is actually maturing in an age where EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND or JOEY pass for what mainstream culture demands of its humor.

Thank god for Will.

This trailer starts off interestingly enough. Kids are all frolicking with one another in a series of youth sports. From soccer (I remember sucking at that) to football (I was too big of a puss to even try) to baseball (Let’s face facts”¦I was once the walk leader for my little league division I was so scared of that white leathery thing) Voiceover Guy let’s us know that these are the things that build character in young children’s lives and it took coaches to instill these values into us.

Cut to Will Ferrell, in a crazy pair of Blublocker shades, telling a pack of small kids to play dirty if they have to, while admonishing them not to get caught if they try, as Mike Ditka looks on, gnashing on his gum as only Da Coach can do. The children go in for the huddle and it seems that soccer is the name of the game in this film.

What comes next, though, is genuinely amusing. A little kid, literally, no more than a few feet tall rolls over a soccer ball. The ball is half this kid’s size. Will Ferrell, short of using foul language, yells at this poor child and at the end of the rant he tells him to, “grab some bench.” Verbal abuse, when put in odd contexts, is an excellent brand of laugh getting that Will seems to have a knack for doing well.

What’s more is Will’s verbal taunting of an opposing team’s player as he trash talks from the sidelines. The abused child eventually goes after Will, even gets him on the ground, and nearly has him crying uncle.

Will then turns his attention to these kid’s parents. Where there has been much made, as of late, of coaches who abuse their positions for their own sake the trailer has Will calling out a parent’s utter lack of respect for himself and makes one of them run a lap.

The trailer ends with his own son, who is on the team, trying to keep his father in check. Will doesn’t see what his son is even referring to as he says he’s doing everything for him and for the two of them to have fun. Herein, then, lies the crux of the film. While things don’t seem to be anything more than just a vehicle for Will to be”¦well”¦Will it does seem like a flick, like ELF, that will get parents as well as kids in to his movies.

Is this a bad thing or a good thing? Does having a career essentially built on films that just showcase you while everyone else is really just a supporting character a positive way to move through movies? His stint in BEWITCHED, one of the first times since OLD SCHOOL, will show how he really does with sharing the screen. The thing with that is, though, that I can’t even think why that would be a problem. Will has shown himself capable of melting into the background as well as being at the forefront where the action is. He is all about giving seemingly normal people just that slight quirk that is amusing to the rest of us in an audience but confounds all those who come in contact with him on the screen. So far it’s working well.

Director:Ron Howard
Cast: Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger, Connor Price
Release: June 3rd, 2005
Synopsis: Set in New York during the Depression, this is the story of James Braddock (Crowe), who takes up boxing to make money to feed his family, and ends up becoming quite famous in the process, eventually going up against champ Max Baer.

Prognosis: Positive Yes, this is one of the most manipulative trailers you’ll see in a long time but, damn, it does it really well.

I wasn’t necessarily a fan of his work in MASTER AND COMMANDER nor was I in love of everything that he did in A BEAUTIFUL MIND (made by the same people here) but this film does feel different in a way that almost makes me feel lured to see what this film can do.

The thing opens up with Russell Crowe getting his ass beat in a boxing ring. Everything about it feels like a period piece and the boxing gloves (the rope tied around those leather mitts) give it all away. The camera moves in slow motion, Russell looking obviously exhausted from the fight, as he falls from the ropes.

The scene dissolves.

Paul Giamatti appears to be Russell’s trainer and the two of them are sitting on the edge of an empty ring. Paul lets him know that he’s getting old, he’s getting slow, and that it’s over. Russell just wants another fight. He looks like a man beaten. The scene dissolves.

Renée Zellweger is his wife and she tells him that she’ll always be behind him; it, too, feels like a sincere statement of love that I somehow manage to take at face value.

“I believe we live in a great country”¦”

Russell takes the reigns on a voiceover that has little to do with the action on the screen. He appears to be locked out of a factory, along with the rest of the working population there, and it all has the texture and scent of the depression in New York as the foreman of the warehouse shouts out from behind a locked gate that he needs only nine men to work out of the dozens that have shown up. Russell isn’t one of them.

An interesting point of fact here is that even though that Brian Grazer and Ron Howard are the men helming this thing from behind the lens the cards that tell us this are miniscule in comparison to the savage fonts that some directors employ to let anyone within eye shot of their trailer know who’s in charge.

Russell admits in the voice over that he owes everyone money. Renee stands in a snowy alleyway sobbing her eyes out. The man is down as low as one man can get but yet he mentions the things he’s grateful for, with accompanying film to show it: his three healthy “troublemaking” kids and his beautiful wife. You’re so busy looking at the people he’s talking about that you don’t ever sense that the cards that introduce Renee as Renee just blend seamlessly into the background of the narrative. Absolutely splendid.

The trailer ends with us seeing him behind a half dozen radio microphones, this voiceover being a small conceit that hasn’t revealed until the end, and that he’s been talking to the media about how this is his second chance; the last second chance of his career. The feeling I get as things come to a finish is that you don’t really know if this boxer will come out and win this fight. You know everything that’s prelude to this but it doesn’t feel hokey in a way that most sports movies are. It could go either way for this palooka and that’s about as much as you can ask for in a film like this.

The music, as well, gets some extra points for its smooth and ethereal like quality. It carries us delicately from one moment to the next.

Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Djimon Hounsou
Release: February 18, 2005
Synopsis: Based on the DC/Vertigo comic book Hellblazer and written by Kevin Brodbin, Mark Bomback and Frank Capello, Constantine tells the story of irreverent supernatural detective John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), who has literally been to hell and back.

Prognosis: Getting Warmer… I know that some of the production issues this film has had in the past have already made people talking heads on the subject of doomed productions. However, it does not take away from the feeling that this film, at the very least, delivers on a visual level when you see this trailer.

I reviewed the teaser way back in May when this film was already slated for a 2005 release. There was a lot that Warner Brothers could’ve done to that teaser or, more importantly, left out in order to really tease the premise of this film. Instead of doing that what do they go and produce? A trailer-worthy cavalcade of images and small snippets of really good bite-sized pieces of eye candy, that’s what.

This new trailer exceeds even my own expectations out of a production that has Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz helming the leading roles.

The thing starts off oddly enough. Keanu sits in a very large room in an electric chair. The floor seems like gold linoleum as a guy who could pass for the authentic Huggy Bear tosses a pot full of water onto the floor where it touches Keanu’s feet. (Those of you with a fetish for that sort of thing will be more than delighted at the images provided) Huggy busts a floor lamp light bulb wide open, leaving the center filament intact as it illuminates the already bright space. He asks Keanu if he’s sure about this, to which our “Whoa” man says no. Homeboy jams the lamp downward, Keanu gets some voltage not seen since that one part in FACES OF DEATH or even SHOCKER and we’re off. What’s really special about this trailer is that with this new installment Warner Bros. jams even more visuals for us to consume so it’s really hard to keep things together.

Next, some dude stands before a fireplace; we’re not shown his face but he extends his wings like it’s a deleted scene from X2. We’re offered context at all but it’s just there to be shown.

Weisz stands before Keanu and wants to ask him a couple of questions. She tells him she knows what circles he travels in, that he’s interested in the occult and as we get her voice doing a sort of impromptu voiceover over a scene that shows a woman crawling on the ceiling. This bit has me digging this film even more; any movie where you can get people crawling on ceilings gets my attention for a few more seconds than it really should. It’s an Achilles heel.

In one of the longest scenes provided Keanu is hanging out with a friend of his. The friend has a magic wand of sorts and says the thing contains dragon breath. It’s all well and good until Keanu turns to the side and unleashes a wicked stream of fire from the tip of that thing. I’ll admit, it looks pretty impressive.

It’s about this time when the plot comes into fuzzy focus as Keanu refers to the explanation given in the teaser earlier this year that God and the Devil made a wager for the souls of all mankind; no direct contact, just influence to see who would win. Now, that’s an easy enough plot to understand. Things get interesting, though, when Weisz’ character gets the chance, just like in that sweet film THEY LIVE, to see those that are in possession of one or the other. Mostly, though, it appears that she’s just gonna see those who are ready to tear the world a new one.

There is a nice baptism scene in Keanu’s bathtub where we get a little wet shirt cleavage from Weisz but her femininity is too much to be contained and the tub busts open. This when strange things go afoot near that man’s Circle K.

We’re not really sure what’s happening after this as what we’re given afterwards is the same as from the original teaser where Weisz gets ripped backwards through an office building. It’s a nice effect, regardless.

We’re given intros into all the characters, Keanu’s slapping his arms together in a Wonder Twins sort of way to unleash some unholy hell, Weisz gets hers through a series of personal possessions and other strange occurrences, but this thing does end quite limply with Keanu saying “Go to hell.” I’m sure it’s in reference to something really very dramatic but, still, those kinds of puns need to go away. Quickly.

What can I say but that it actually looks impressive? The same could be said for any other movie that depends too much on its CGI but if Garth Ennis had anything to do with the screenplay this may very well be a good start to the comic book movies of 2005.

Director: Peter Segal
Cast: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Burt Reynolds, James Cromwell, Walter Williamson, Michael Irvin, Nelly
Release:May 27, 2005
Synopsis: Prison inmates form a football team to challenge the prison guards.

Prognosis: Negative. Ok, so the trailer beings with “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses.

Now, I can appreciate the vibe of the song and what it is supposed to connote superficially but wasn’t there nothing made in the ’90s or 2000s that could’ve done the same thing? It really is a small quibble but when I also see that this film is a part of MTV Films I get a little nervous as the marketing for this project will be brutal. Any pre- or recently post-pubescent with any working knowledge of how MTV Films uses its own network to whore their films, as is the case right now with the soon-to-released, COACH CARTER, can attest how you will be an assault of commercials and personal appearances from the film’s line-up on TRL and anything else they damn well own. I know all about synergy and how it’s supposed to help market films but there is that thin line of promotion and the way some make pimping a film a lesson in visual saturation.

About the trailer, though, Sandler starts off by being shown as an inmate inside a prison. 364 days a year they’re chained up and beat down. (I not only like that tagline but I appreciate that Sandler is getting shown getting his ass booted off a bus. It’s oddly satisfying and I rewind that bit a few times just for the visual satisfaction.) For the audience this trailer is catering to it does everything right to help them understand why they need to see this new Sandler product. I’m not criticizing that, but can see how these things are being softballed to a very specific audience.

Sandler is told that another prison has a great guard football league and the warden in charge wants him, and whoever the hell he can get to play, to go up against them. Of course, the prison guards are all beefed out, have huge muscles, have nice uniforms, practice fields, equipment, etc”¦ The prison guards actually appear to be nothing less than a watered down professional football team. What this does is to visually contrast the guys that Sandler, throughout this trailer, is going to try and get to play for him. The first dude, though, looks like a mad meld of Lou Ferrigno and Hannibal Lecter. He’s completely savage and of course he says no when asked to play in this game. Of course, as soon as Sandler says it’s the guards they’re going to go up against he’s all for it.

It’s all about contrast from here on out. The guards are slick, the inmates are clumsy and hapless; the guards have moves while the inmates are inept. It goes back and forth like this for just a few moments while “Two Steps” from Lynyrd Skynyrd plays in the background.

Sandler and Chris Rock get to make a little jokes so everyone knows, if you don’t already know, this is going to be a comedy while Burt Reynolds gets to show up in the trailer to keep with the whole having to bring someone from an old production as an “homage” to the new one; I don’t yet understand why that needs to happen in most any remake nowadays.

And what would an all male football picture be without poking fun at homosexuality? Rock does an answer/response with the guys he’s trying to motivate and tricks one of them to say something that suggests that the guy is a homo. Ha Ha. Great. You know, the sooner that writers can find jokes that don’t depend on trying to harness a dangerous zeitgeist in social thinking like this one does I could more enjoy supporting a film that looks like it’s 90 minutes of pure formula.

As it stands it still looks like it’s following all the things necessary to have a standard opening while having a little latitude to get a few extra dollars should they open this at just the right time in the year when people are looking to fill their time with a little crap at the cinema.

Director: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker
Cast: True blue American soldiers.
Release: March 4, 2005
Synopsis: GUNNER PALACE reveals the complex realities of the situation in Iraq not seen on the nightly news. Told first-hand by our troops, ‘Gunner Palace’ presents a thought provoking portrait of a dangerous and chaotic war that is personal, highly emotional, sometimes disturbing, surprisingly amusing … and thoroughly fascinating.

Prognosis: Very Positive. Regular readers out there know of my love for PALM Pictures. They’re a great outfit that gives financial boots to really out-of-the-way pictures that rise above the idea that independent has to equate to stifling, self-indulgent productions. When you watch this trailer you can see that this is a documentary that seems just as relevant now as it was when it was shot.

Quickly, this movie draws you in and gets right to the point as if seconds are too precious to waste. As the screen illuminates we’re treated to a quote from someone from the NY Times and, as is my thoughts on this sort of thing, it gives instant credibility to the production and it makes people linger on just a little longer had it not been there. I could’ve quickly pressed stop and gone on but I liked that someone else had already done the work and seen the film.

A nice baseline starts pumping. The sky is now yellow as a large plane banks on its side and we cut to a US soldier walking backwards, cradling his weapon. We know exactly where this has been filmed without needing an explanation.

We then see another soldier in a bulletproof vest, a flow of words streaming from his mouth as he’s the one rapping over the bass, standing in front of a Humvee; it’s a stark contrast to the more popular versions of current media depictions of the Cristal guzzling misogynists who stand comfortably, and safely, in front of H2s with their hoes in tow.

This is Iraq and a flood of unrest dots the screen. A punk rock tune takes over and the assault is on to showcase the chaos that is military life. It’s vivid, real, and I can’t look away and this is only the first twenty seconds of the trailer.

We’re told that 400 troops set themselves up at a palace once built for Sadaam Hussein. These guys are shown taking advantage of its large interior and pool area for really letting off some of their pent up energy. The music is perfect as troops flounder into a nice looking pool.

Some guys cruise the streets of an Iraqi town at night without their uniforms on and they appear to be just trying to take it all in. A small pack of soldiers, armed, manhandle some unwilling participants in what I can only assume is a raid. Guys are rounded up, ammunition is found, as is a lot of dough, and you begin to see character studies of the real guys who are on the frontline of this war. What’s really interesting to note, apart from one soldiers’ view about how many Iraqis greeted them with open arms a year ago and how now they’re shot at, is at one point in this trailer a soldier lets the camera see one of the vehicles he uses. The truck is outfitted in a slapdash pishposh of heavy metallic objects that are supposed to be his “bulletproofing.” It’s a sad commentary about how these soldiers have to find scrap metal to reinforce their vehicles but, again, it’s chillingly relevant.

What’s also remarkable about this movie is that, as a documentary, there isn’t really a bias that can be traced back to a left-wing liberal or a right-wing pundit. I am appreciative of any story about a conflict such as this but if this is truly a documentary about the soldiers told from the soldiers, as this trailer purports, I would do anything I could to see what it’s really like to be so young and in the middle of a war so heinously out of control.

Director: Stephen Herek
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Kelli Garner, Vanessa Ferlito, Monica Keena, Christina Milian, Paula Garcés, Cedric the Entertainer
Release: February 25, 2005
Synopsis: Tommy Lee Jones stars as a Texas Ranger who must protect a group of cheerleaders who have witnessed a murder.

Prognosis: Negative. This is one you should only watch through the spaces of the fingers that are secure on your face while reeling in horror that Tommy Lee Jones needed money this bad. As it stands, I also don’t think you’ll hear him on Regis and Kelly saying, “You know, I read one page of this script and knew that I was born to play this part.”

As it is, in the beginning of this trailer Lee comes walking through the smoky entranceway of a college football stadium, looking Texas tough and proud of it. Now, in contrast to this, in the next scene a gaggle of cheerleaders are witnesses to some murder. Quickly we are to infer that he’s in charge of keeping them safe because they’re in immanent danger of someone doing something very untoward to them and that these girls need a middle aged man to protect them. The girls act so so cute when they’re all collected together in an interrogation room. They actually start flipping through albums of the po-po’s mug shot books and start picking out the cute convicts. Too bad the Kids In The Hall did the joke over a decade ago but I’m quite sure most of Middle America hasn’t so it’s a safe hack.

Essentially what you have here is a bland blend of Walker, Texas Ranger and a not as near as funny BRING IT ON, which, I still contend and will die believing, is a tour de force of teenage cinema.

Back in this movie, though, Tommy saves our girls from harm as someone rigs their cheerleader van to explode but was shoddy enough to leave some wires dangling in plain view so Tommy could get them out just in time before it all goes ka-blooey.

The plot thickens, or weakens, after we find out that Tommy decides to move in with the girls to really make sure nothing happens to them. One of the other jokes that’s made is a pizza guy comes to the door and I swear it’s the U.S. Marshall I really liked from THE FUGITIVE and then hated in U.S. MARSHALLS comes back to auditory life. He makes the pizza guy put his hands above his head and turn around; I damn near thought I would see a waterfall next. Unfortunately, what I received was Tommy getting stampeded by Grade A co-eds with no real ability to keep the crazy chicks in control and this is when Cedric “The Entertainer” waltzes into things. Again, like a studio joke that will not die, C&C Music Factory starts bumpin’ with “Everybody Dance Now” as Cedric gets into a dance off with the cheerleading ladies. I have no idea what it’s all about, apart from it being an obvious gag for simpletons everywhere to have a good snort, laughing at the funniness of it all, but it doesn’t help wherever the hell this movie is supposed to be going.

Oh, and P.S., middle-aged men like Tommy aren’t allowed to use the words “old school.” I’m positive he had no idea what it even meant before a scriptwriter put it into his vocabulary and it’s embarrassing to both him and us.

You ladies will be happy to know, though, that in this movie Tommy Lee actually allows himself to be emasculated. He gives into the girls, although, hell, who wouldn’t, and dons a cucumber facial mask while getting a lesson in whoring oneself up for a date. From what I can gather I think you girls are supposed to find that amusing.

The rest of the trailer just gives me no positive note to give you. I really tried to find something good in Tommy mistaking the mascot for the killer or when Cedric gives a sin speech about casting the first stone and Tommy wings one at his temple or even where Cedric does a series of back flips down a church aisle only to come down on a wooden table, shattering it.

Sorry, but this one is homogenously bad.

Director: Andrew Douglas
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George
Release: April 15, 2005
Synopsis: A family is terrorized by a demonic force in their new home that was the site of many gruesome murders a year earlier.

Prognosis: Positive I like the beginning and the way it slowly pulls me into this trailer.

It’s totally dark, a completely black screen, and we suddenly hear what sounds like three gunshots.

Static engulfs the picture and then tunes, black and white no less, in on what seems like a news report on a crime committed at a home. Quick flashes of police tape, bodies being carried out; a newspaper title of “Family Slain” jumps erratically into our viewing area; mechanical and static sounds crunch in the audio field while we get pictures of the victims; and then a nice shot of a body bag rolls right into the picture.

Oh yeah, and we’re clearly told that this all based on a true story.

Sweet.

Next, we get a man who looks like Jesus himself, with the exception that Jesus wouldn’t slay his own family, I’m just saying, being arraigned at a trial. A news reporter says that the guy heard voices in his head that told him to kill his family.

The screen goes black again but we’re quickly given a card that says “One year later”¦the Lutz family movies into….” and you can pretty much start guessing this is where the weird stuff starts to happen.

The first thing that’s odd is that Ryan Reynolds is the main Lutz in question as the card then says “They only lasted 28 days.” Of course you get copious amounts of freaky violin music in the background and I have to admit that it’s good, it’s effective. It’s the kind of music that brings me back to the FRIDAY THE 13TH days where the violin would play that one high pitched note right before someone would get a machete right through their melon. Of course, even here, there’s lightning and rain to give it that certain creepiness as Ryan slowly walks up stairs where I assume he thinks something is going on.

We don’t know for sure what’s happening, though, because after that all we’re given is cut scenes of an ax stuck in a stump, some person hiding behind some wooden closet doors (the bad guys ALWAYS know you’re watching them behind those things), a swarm of insects start buzzing around a priest who is obviously trying to use the whole “The power of Christ compels you”¦” and is failing miserably, we get a creepy looking ghoul who seems to be hanging out at the bottom of a pond and then we are treated to a whole lot of chick screams as the woman in question is caught in the middle of a rainstorm and on the roof of her house while doing it.

This film looks promising only because of the buildup to the scattered money shots and even though there isn’t a whole lot of talking I am aware of everything that is happening in this film. A voiceover would have rendered this trailer sterile and I appreciate the way things just happen on the screen naturally.

Director: Ekachai Uekrongtham
Cast: Asanee Suwan, Sorapong Chatree, Orn-Anong Panyawong, Nukkid Boonthong
Release: January 21, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: Based on the real life story of Parinya Charoenphol, a Muaythai boxer who underwent a sex change operation to become a woman. The movie chronicles her life from a young boy who likes to wear lipstick and wear flowers to her sensational career as kickboxer whose specialty is ancient Muaythai boxing moves which she can execute expertly with grace and finally her confrontation with her own sexuality which led to her sex change op.

Prognosis: Positive. The trailer opens up at the very beginning of daylight in the Far East. The sun rises over a hilly and grass-covered mountain range.

In the next scene we get two different images being constructed for us: one is of a hand pulling up some fishnet stockings up a leg, the next is of a boxer pulling up his fighting trunks. A dress is pulled up and some manicured red nails are turned upside down as the boxers hands are wrapped up in white tape.

“When did you first realize you wanted to become a woman?”

What we have here, kids, is a movie about a man who wants to be everything he’s always desired to become: a member of the opposite sex. Instead of launching into the exacting details of the here and now we get some exposition into this man’s past.

As a child we see him admiring women. There is a delightfully beautiful dancer on a stage in his small town as she cavorts for the delight of a crowd when a tube of lipstick rolls to within his grasp. He says in a voiceover that he always knew he was different. The kid decides to put the lipstick on and come home to his family and perform the same dance the woman was performing for the town. The dad is looks concerned but what we can infer is that he’s tossed out of the family for his femme ways.

We next see the awards this film has won and assuages any subliminal concerns we aren’t being lulled to believe this is some Chicks With Di%&# Volume 43 advertisement.

It seems this kid was banished to a life of literal wandering for a long long time before stumbling onto a camp where all they do is train fighters. He decides to give it a go and allow himself to achieve mental and physical perfection.

Now comes the kicking in of some heads.

The guy lands some nice punches and even gets in a sweet kick. This is interspersed with his desire to cross-dress while still retaining his desire to achieve greatness with his boxing. Some taiko drumming kicks into overdrive as we are shuttled off to Japan for a championship of sorts. The guy is a superstar and what’s nice is that he still finds in himself the ability to be the woman on the outside he always wanted to become. The kicks get stronger, the violence gets harder, and we see the road of introspection this man has had to go through in order to get to where he is.

His training is embedded in his identity and so is the need to put on make-up before each match. These moments are assisted by the cards from the major press here in the States that have seen this film and want to give the movie its due by saying how moving a picture this is.

The subject matter alone will keep some people away but this trailer is wonderfully constructed to keep the line tight between showing what this man wants and balancing it with who he is. It doesn’t seem like a movie that belongs exclusively to the gay/lesbian genre but with the element of dudes kicking the crap out of one another, especially the wicked awesome monkey punch our hero lands at the end of this thing, it shows some things that could appeal to all different sorts of backgrounds. These words, I know, will fall on some deaf ears but this film, just on the surface, looks like it will be more than a man who just wants to be a woman. It looks like a man trying to define himself as he defiles opponents in the boxing ring.

Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, Beyoncé Knowles, Jean Reno
Release:September 23, 2005
Synopsis: A prequel to the 1964 Peter Sellers original film, where the detective must solve the murder of a famous soccer coach and find out who stole the infamous Pink Panther diamond.

Prognosis: Negative. Quick background on the guy who’s directing this. He has been at the helm for all of the following movies: CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (2003), JUST MARRIED (2003), BIG FAT LIAR (2002). I had to endure the savagery that was JUST MARRIED and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN all on my wife’s insistence. I wasn’t impressed and, as married to a woman who likes her entertainment as mainstream as Friends was in Must-See TV, she loathed it more. JUST MARRIED was a vapid, useless, needless movie that could’ve just as easily been used at Guantanamo Bay to elicit confessions out of all the detainees present there and could’ve avoided all this controversy there now and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN was only good, for me anyway, to watch Hillary Duff start her downward roller coaster ride in films.

And, apart from the directing, what the hell happened to Steve Martin? He isn’t what he once was. He’s no Bill Murray, this much I know, but what’s odd is his taste in art is impeccable (I saw his collection at the Bellagio years ago), his writing is decent (he shouldn’t try so hard, though), but his films in the past few years have questioned my feelings about his brilliance in PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES, BOWFINGER, and even THE SPANISH PRISONER. It’s truly been a confusing times for those who are trying to understand what made him do CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, BRINING DOWN THE HOUSE and even LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION.

I’ve watched the trailer and I just can’t recommend this film. I’ve tried to be open-minded but let me just try and put this into a language we all will understand.

At first I’m kind of excited because I really think this film will be interesting because of its international embracement of football (Americans, read here: soccer) and of the chaotic mess that is a football stadium at mass capacity. We even get Jason Statham who steps out onto the field and brandishes a ridiculously sized ring to the crowd. I don’t know how a dude showing off a ring as hideous as that in front of soccer hooligans would elicit the kind of pandemonium, even if it is the pink panther diamond, but I guess this is the movies so we have to take it at face value. I’m bummed when Jason is quickly killed off and his big ring is stolen in the process. Not that the ring is gone but that Jason isn’t going to be in the film any longer.

Of course we’re told that that only one man can solve the case but right then and there I’m not quite sure why in the hell this bumbling idiot is handpicked to solve the case. I realize this is a comedy but if one wants to build some sort of believable characterization that someone can suspend their disbelief in they are going about it in the wrong way. But who the hell am I to judge, right?

So, Steve Martin, a pale imitation of Peter Sellers, introduces himself, donning a moustache that not even I can believe, to the tune of the Pink Panther. I do, however, have to give proper credit for an amusing gag where Steve whips out his id to show Kevin Kline, one of two foils in this movie, as he introduces himself as Inspector Clouseau and the badge hurls at Kline and sticks in his chest.

It’s all downhill after that.

We’re introduced to his partner, Jean Reno, who seems to be Clouseau’s handler more than anything else. In our first viewing of Reno, Martin and he are walking down a street. Wearing an embarrassing beret Martin lets Reno know that he’s going to attack him to keep him vigilant. (Huh?) Apart from me not understanding the purpose Reno, though, gets him first by sucker punching him in the face. The absurd facial expression that Martin contorts into puts me at a loss to explain what’s supposed to be funnier, his mugging or the fact that Reno hit him first.

The two of them next visit a crime scene where a dead guy is on the floor. Reno explains that what happened to the man was fatal. “How fatal?” is the quip back from Martin. Ha, we’re supposed to say, but I’m seriously not even cracking a smile. What the hell am I watching, I’m asking myself.

Next is a look at the moment where Martin is trying to cut into a piece of glass to get into a drug store late at night. Why he’s trying to cut into glass, while other cars are whizzing by, is beyond me. He makes a circular motion to imply that he’s going to only take small part of the window out the whole thing but, except for the middle he’s cut out, everything shatters around him. That was amusing, I’ll admit that.

After that, Steve puts on a blue light on top of his car (the lights that cops in the old days would put in their dash like in the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” video) and of course it falls off as he’s taking a corner and gets an old lady in the forehead. Nice try, but that’s lame. Seriously.

Beyonce Knowles gets introduced after that gag and I start to wonder why it is that pop singers suddenly feel that they have what it takes to make it as an actor in this business. Far be it from me to judge because I’m sure everyone around her tells her how great she is at everything she does I don’t, however, have to feel secure just because she’s in a film. I’m a little bit less interested that she is, but there’s nothing in this trailer that shows even what kind of part she’s playing so what’s the point other than the fact she can walk well down a street.

The trailer ends with Martin falling down some steps to a subway but it’s not amusing to me to spend the time trying to explain it.

I really am a fan of Steve Martin. There is more than enough to support the assertion that he was definitely one of the best men working in comedy in the early ’80s. With careers of Chevy Chase going the route of a VEGAS VACATION and of Bill Murray’s going the way of Oscar-worthy performances, one has to say that Steve seems inexorably caught right in the middle of these SNL alums. I don’t know why that’s the case but one look at this trailer is more than enough reason for me to withhold my box office dollars from this turkey.

Director: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Elijah Wood, Maria Bello, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Michael Madsen, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Nick Stahl, and the rest of Hollywood’s elite.
Release: April 1, 2005
Synopsis: An adaptation of Frank Miller’s stories based in the fictional town of Sin City. Chief amongst the town’s residents is Marv, who trawls the darkest areas of town looking for the person who killed his one true love, Goldie.

Prognosis: Positive, I guess. This one’s complex so let me just break things down.

The trailer essentially does all the talking. There are no voiceovers and no descriptive cards letting us know how everything fits together. This alone deserves a golf clap.

We first see the image of Marv as realized in comic form by Frank Miller. The live action comes right after with Mickey Rourke smoking a cigarette, looking like a pastiche of assorted foreheads and chins from DICK TRACY. Black and white seems to be where Rodriguez wants to take this and it looks wonderful. Color, though, is used to highlight his girlfriend’s, Goldie, blonde hair and of the red silk on the bed that both her and Marv shared. Cops are coming for Marv and he hears them right outside his flophouse apartment door. He busts through the front door, though, before they can get in, Hulk-style, with both biceps flexed.

Hartigan’s next with Miller’s depiction of the old guy. Obviously, Willis is a younger stand-in from the comic but with X-MEN’s success we can see how film adaptations can benefit with the bending of the rules. He’s in a seedy bar looking for Nancy Callahan. Jessica Alba is Nancy in all her showgirl glory. The music chosen is sultry, the colors used to accentuate her dancer outfit are really choice, and the way she moves is alluring even for the few seconds we see her. Actually, it’s really alluring. Now, even though some artistic license is being taken with the characters I’m a bit torn on the way they decided to go with having Nick Stahl as the yellow guy in the film. It’s really cartoonish but if helps to serve the plot then, oh well.

Dwight, as played by Clive Owen, is up next and he’s as every bit of tough guy as he is a handsome chap out for some trouble. Dwight’s voiceover shows some of Benicio Del Toro’s character as well as some of the other dangerous ladies of Sin City. Some great angles are all cobbled together to create some tension leading into the final half of this trailer. Even Marv’s character has some “weight” as a real person and not some Sunday morning funnies cutout.

There is a moment when a car flips over after going off the side of the road where it does feel slightly artificial but then we’re back into things with a rundown of all the people who are starring in this production.

Alexis Bledel is one who immediately caught my attention as her claim to colorization in this film is her stunning blue eyes and Jamie King gets some props for her blonde locks. Brittany Murphy and Rosario Dawson, however, get nothing but shrinkage from me as I couldn’t get a feel for what parts they are supposed to command although I am sure there are Miller aficionados who could easily tell me how they fit into everything. Elijah Wood’s mysterious appearance as a pair of whitely illuminated spectacles was visually impressive as was all the other cut-scenes included right after his introduction. I’ll take a guess here, as I can’t know for sure because the credits didn’t list her in the trailer, but it may have been Devon Aoki’s moves that I rate second best to Jessica Alba’s. Shurikens always hold a dear place in my heart and I believe it was she who was the one tossing them at one point in this thing as well as the wielding of two samurai-sized blades, descending from a high place in the city towards the camera below.

I do also have to give some love to Marv’s mention that you “can walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything” as the visuals pull back from the city proper, the camera turning, revealing the title of the film. That’s nice.

Now, after seeing this, though, I am still left unsure as to how I should feel about the movie. So much of what I saw did remind me, in a bad way, of DICK TRACY. However, much of everything else had me wanting to see how all these stars come together to tell one of the greatest gritty noir crime stories in the last fifteen years. I’m conflicted and I’m not sure why. Hopefully more footage will either secure my spot one way or the other.