Things We Lost in the Fire (Oct. 26) Halle Berry needs a good movie like I need my early-morning Diet Coke. Which is to say, desperately. Will this drama about a widow who invites her late hubby’s long-time friend (fellow Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro) to move in with her (and her kids) provide the needed career boost? It’s hard to tell, based on this trailer. I just hope they don’t end up doing the horizontal mambo. I mean, think about it: Your dead best friend’s wife/dead husband’s best friend? Skeezy!
August 12th, 2007
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National Treasure: Book of Secrets is actually still in production, so it’s not like director Jon Turteltaub was all with the time to help shape this trailer into something less, er, clunky. And the flick’s plot-starting device — the discovery of one of the 18 missing pages from John Wilkes Booth’s diary — is a pretty savvy reference to a real historical mystery. But, jeez, does this flick look like it’s all with the Kraft sandwich slices. “Unlocking the mystery… the world. Isn’t ready. To believe.” Aliens. You know it’s going to be aliens.
August 11th, 2007
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Lions for Lambs (Nov. 9) It doesn’t get much more Oscar-bait-y than Meryl Streep starring in a Robert Redford-directed political drama about the war in Afghanistan and its implications in Washington and the world of academia. So how come the trailer plays so stiff and turgid? Lines like, “What is relevant is the implementation of a new strategy” don’t help, but the thing that’s really bogging me down is Tom Cruise’s performance as a powerful U.S. senator. Take his big, hoo-hah question to Streep’s reporter: “Do you wanna win the war on terror? Yes or no? This is the quintessential yes-or-no question of our time. Yes or no?” Doesn’t he deliver this in almost the same exact tone that he once asked Matt Lauer, “Do you know what Aderol is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?” Maybe my perception’s been thrown off by the photo of Cruise dirty dancing with Katie Holmes in that copy of Us that I accidentally bought last night — yes, accidentally! it can happen! — but I can’t take “Serious Cruise” seriously anymore.
August 8th, 2007
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Rendition about an Egyptian-American family man who’s nabbed by the U.S. for being a suspected terrorist and flown to a friendly Arab country where he can be interrogated outside the bounds of American law. Reese Witherspoon plays the man’s American wife, Jake Gyllenhaal’s the CIA agent observing her husband’s foreign minders, Meryl Streep’s the government heavy who authorizes the transfer, and Peter Sarsgaard is the senator’s aide Reese turns to for help. The preview starts out with that old standby, the “I’ll see you when you get back (when I really won’t)” foreshadowing phone call, and then lays out the all too unnervingly real story with perhaps a touch too much exposition — I personally didn’t need to know exactly what “rendition” actually means, mostly ’cause I like a little mystery in my movie trailers. But overall, this film looks like it’s aces.
August 5th, 2007
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Check out the trailer for Wes Anderson’s upcoming film The Darjeeling Limited, which stars Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, and a possibly post-op (nose-jobbed?) Owen Wilson as brothers who hope to reconnect by taking a train trip across India. I can’t shake the feeling that without the face brace, Owen Wilson would seem really out of place in this trailer. Anyway, the movie looks really good. I have a feeling “I love you too, but I’m gonna Mace you in the face!” will be the About-To-Hang-Up-The-Phone Catchphrase of Autumn. This is a tough catchphrase category to crack. Let’s make it happen.
July 25th, 2007
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Get Smart’s teaser keeps its gifts slightly more guarded — perhaps because it doesn’t have many? All we see of the film — based on the 1960’s TV satire of secret agent genre — is three examples of the uncouth Maxwell Smart (Carell) doing a bumbling James Bond impression and then standing around looking silly. What we are promised, however, is an interesting on-screen lineup: Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin, Terrence Stamp, The Rock, Masi Oka, and Ken Davitian (of Borat naked-wrestling fame).
July 11th, 2007
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Do we really need another bawdy reimagining of the classic Santa tale? In my mind Ernest Saves Christmas put the genre to bed back in 1988, but since then the procession has been endless: Bad Santa, Elf, Jingle All the Way, The Santa Clause, etc. Some of those movies were pretty funny, but even Mozart knew that you can only have so many variations on a theme before it’s time to find a new movement.
The conceit of Fred Claus is pretty simple: Vince Vaughn plays Santa’s roguish older brother — the outcast of the Christmas-card perfect Claus family — who returns to HQ (a heavily CGI-ed North Pole) and uses his sarcastic charm to snake his way back into the family business. Paul Giamatti actually seems pretty good as Santa, but Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin clearly thinks that Vaughn can carry a comedy solo. (Owen Wilson did it definitively with You, Me, and Dupree, so why can’t he!?) Things eventually get out of hand, and a calculating Kevin Spacey — who appears to head up some sort of evil mega-corporation that controls childhood myths — threatens to close up the shop. Like a good Christmas stocking, it’s the simple pleasures that make this trailer bearable: the ridiculousness of Ludacris playing an elf, for example. With a few eggnogs before, during, and after, this could actually be ok. Just don’t hold the rum.
July 8th, 2007
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One thing I really liked about the original 1998 Elizabeth was how much it resembled The Godfather, even down to the Coppola-style cross-cut editing. In director Shekhar Kapur’s hands, Cate Blanchett’s Tudor queen became a Michael Corleone figure, moving from naivete to ruthless consolidation of power, at the cost of isolating herself from all close emotional ties to any other human being. Now that Kapur and Blanchett have reunited to tell the rest of Elizabeth’s story — the lethal rivalry with Mary Queen of Scots, the all-important war against the Spanish armada — does that mean Elizabeth: The Golden Age will be their Godfather Part II? We can only hope, but this trailer for the sequel (which opens Oct. 12) looks promising. It’s two and a half minutes overstuffed with drama, pageantry, and the always welcome Clive Owen (as a scruffy, roguish Sir Walter Raleigh). Really, what more could you ask?
July 5th, 2007
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Click play and watch the rape trailer below:
In Descent, acclaimed actress Rosario Dawson plays the most controversial character of her career: a promising college student who becomes bent on seeking revenge after a brutal date rape. The feature debut of co-writer/director/producer Talia Lugacy, Descent is a film that unnervingly tackles
some of the country’s most taboo subjects. Read more…
July 2nd, 2007
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Margot at the Wedding, the new film by Squid and the Whale writer/director Noah Baumbach. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s getting married to Jack Black; her sister Margot, played by Nicole Kidman, seems to disapprove. I know a lot of people who hated The Squid and the Whale; they’re all wrong. That movie’s a new classic. And this movie, out in October, looks like a worthy follow-up. (Biggest hinge, perhaps: can Jack Black not play Jack Black?) Baumbach’s expressed his love for French director Eric Rohmer before, and for that reason it’s hard for me to watch this trailer and not think of Claire’s Knee. But maybe that’s just me. Love this line from Jennifer Jason Leigh: “Margot tried to murder me when we where girls. She put me on a baking sheet, sprinkled me with paprika, and put me in the oven.”
June 30th, 2007
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