The Screengrab

If a movie about the early days of professional football seems a strange directorial follow-up for Clooney after his Oscar-nominated Good Night and Good Luck, it shouldn't.

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Film history is full of epic rivalries. Freddy vs. Jason. Alien vs. Predator. (Ballistic:) Ecks vs. Sever...

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The apocalypse is a delicious narrative confection I find hard to resist even when it’s packaged in garbage. More often than not, garbage is what you get. Just look at Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Woof.

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Is it just me, or are all these Will Ferrell vehicles starting to look alike?

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I enjoyed the original Hellboy movie well enough, but I wasn't exactly clamoring for a second installment, even with the return of director Guillermo Del Toro. However, seeing the trailer I've got to say- Hellboy II looks pretty darn cool. Not incidentally, it also looks more like a Del Toro film than the original film, with more creepy-crawlies and dreamlike imagery. And I find it sort of amazing that Universal is actually playing up the Pan's Labyrinth connection- who would have guessed that a studio would be using a subtitled movie to sell one of their big summer blockbusters? Also, if this trailer is any indication, the boring-ass agent from the original won't be returning for the sequel, which would be an improvement. Not sure if it's actually true, but I can hope, can't I?

If I were more of cynic I would probably roll my eyes and brace myself for the inevitable op-ed pieces about how Americans don't want to see Iraq War movies that would follow the eventual failure of this film at the box office. But if I'm going to be honest, I've got pretty high hopes for this one. Maybe I'm just glad to see Kimberly Peirce making another film, as it's been a full nine years since Boys Don't Cry. Judging by the trailer, it appears she hasn't lost any of her feel for portraying flyover-country (now called "red state") life onscreen. In addition, Stop-Loss looks to be a more ground-level approach to the Iraq War, more a soldier's story than a grand statement, which is a welcome change from all the lofty rhetoric on either side of the issue. Gordon-Levitt aside, the cast isn't especially promising, but we didn't exactly think much of the girl from The Next Karate Kid either before Peirce got her hands on her, and look how well that turned out.

If Hollywood is to be believed, smart people are only interesting when they're using their intelligence for selfish, greedy ends. So it is here, in a movie inspired by an actual case in which a group of college students took a Las Vegas casino by counting cards in blackjack. Of course, blackjack and math aren't particularly fun to watch by Hollywood's standards- blackjack doesn't have the built-in drama of poker, after all- so the trailer includes plenty of tricked-up filmmaking like sped-up play and funky camera angles. In addition, he's still trying to force Kate Bosworth on us, despite her being largely rejected by paying audiences (seriously, what was she doing as Lois Lane?). Still, I'll see this, since a friend of mine worked as an extra in some the MIT scenes, and I'd like to support him. It helps that this looks somewhat better than his last extra gig, last year's The Game Plan.

There Will Be Blood



Given how exacting his direction has become, one could forgive Paul Thomas Anderson for handing responsibilities for cutting his trailers off to someone else. But ever since Magnolia Anderson has opted to assemble his own trailers, and I'm grateful that he has. Magnolia's initial teaser was a marvel of summing up the film perfectly while saying nothing, and Punch Drunk Love's trailer perfectly captured the screw-loose sense of un-pretty comedy at play in the film. Every trailer for There Will Be Blood has been a must-see, but the final version is the true classic of the bunch, emphasizing the film's macabre style and violent emotions. In addition, Anderson wisely recognizes his trump card, the great Daniel Day-Lewis, and he plays him early and often. 2007 has had its share of memorable trailers, but none will quickens the pulse like this one.

Alvin and the Chipmunks



There's a special place in Hell reserved for the makers of crappy kids' movies. Just because kids will watch just about anything doesn't give Hollywood license to sell them shoddy goods. It seems nearly impossible to find a big-budget non-Pixar kids' movie these days that doesn't contain self-aware pop-culture jokes and the unholy triumvirate of "family-friendly" gags- poop, flatulence, and "ow, my balls!" But while contenders for the dubious honor of 2007's worst trailer were plentiful, ranging from Cuba Gooding Jr. and the fat white guy who suffers most of the painful gags in Daddy Day Camp to the farting seals of Arctic Tale, the worst of all was almost certainly Alvin and the Chipmunks, a mix of CGI and live-action from the visionary who brought you Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. What exactly puts this over the top? Is it the oh-so-hip musical stylings of a trio of singing rodents crooning that cutting-edge hit "Funky Town?" The sight of Jason Lee managing, by simply appearing onscreen, to outdo the indignity he suffered making Underdog? The presence of a clearly slumming David Cross? The spectacle of Alvin farting in Lee's face? Actually, I'd say it's none of these things. Instead, I'd argue that what makes this an odious phenomenon is the idea that, now that the studios have pillaged the pop culture touchstones of our youth in the name of nostalgia, they've even more cynically begun adapting material that wasn't even very good to begin with, repackaging it for a new generation of undiscerning kids. It's times like these that make me glad I don't have kids.

Don't



While it's nice to have the extended cuts of Death Proof and (to a lesser extent) Planet Terror out on DVD, for me the movies don't feel quite right without the trailers that played with them. Every Grindhouse had his favorite of the four trailers, but while Robert Rodriguez's memorably trashy Machete and Eli Roth's sick joke Thanksgiving were both worthy, for me the best of the lot was Edgar Wright's Don't. Not only is it hilarious (love the way he sets up that wonderfully awful last line) but it's probably the only one of the four I could imagine playing at a real grind house. Unlike his fellow Grindhouse trailer directors, Wright plays it almost completely straight, mimicking the atmospheric shots, frenzied editing, and borderline incoherence of 70s advertising campaigns for Eurotrash thrillers like Torso. I somehow doubt that a real-life version of Don't would have been very good, but this trailer would have guaranteed my presence at the theatre opening weekend.

Be Kind Rewind



For a time, I was toying with the idea of simply calling this "Funniest Trailer" and giving the award to Superbad, but I've rewatched the Be Kind Rewind trailer so many times that I couldn't bear with the thought of not recognizing it here. The trailer has a distinct 80s-style wacky buddy comedy feel to it, with Jack Black and Mos Def teaming up to shoot low-budget remakes of some of their favorite movies. But I don't think the familiarity of the genre is necessarily a bad thing here, and it could provide a certain amount of grounding for the Michel Gondry flights of fancy, which was sorely lacking in last year's The Science of Sleep. But mostly, this just looks like a lot of fun. Also, ever since the trailer first emerged I've taken advantage of every chance I've gotten to quote Jack Black's priceless line, "I will shoot you, and I know robot karate." So that's something, right?

From now through the end of the week, I'll be posting some of the most memorable trailers from 2007.

Iron Man



2008 looks to be a banner year for movies geared toward fans of fantasy and comic books. But while I'm excited for movies like Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight, no trailer of 2007 had me geeking out more than the spot for next summer's Iron Man. A lot of it has to do with Robert Downey Jr.'s presence in the lead role. It pleases me to no end that he's finally cleaned up his image in Hollywood's eyes, to the point where he can headline a summer blockbuster. But if the trailer is any indication, he's still Downey through and through, which if anything is even more exciting. So yeah, this trailer won me over even before he donned the iron suit. Everything after this was a pure geek delight, with the trailer blaring Black Sabbath right on time to accompany Iron Man doing what he does best. It takes a very special- and very cool- trailer to get me as pumped to see a big-budget action movie as I used to get when I was a kid, but the Iron Man trailer does just that.

For many of my peers, A Christmas Story is almost certainly the greatest unironic holiday classic, but Gremlins is probably the ultimate wicked Christmas movie. For the two of you who haven't yet seen it, it's a sly fusion of the monster movie with an idealized Norman Rockwell-style vision of the small-town Christmas. In other words, it’s a perfect Joe Dante movie, one that plays to all his strengths as a satirist of comfortable Americana. Gremlins is the kind of older kids’ movie Hollywood has forgotten how to make- with fun characters and adventure for the younger crowd, and enough of an edge to make it endlessly rewatchable even for adults. Gremlins is great any time of the year, but it’s essential around the holidays, especially for the scene where Phoebe Cates recounts her tragic (and hilarious) Christmas story. What’s even more amazing is how convincingly wholesome Cates managed to be here, just two years after her immortal scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

I love Die Hard as much as the next guy, but this is pretty hilarious. Now that Stiller has become the star of such comfort-blanket fare as Meet the Fockers and Night at the Museum, it’s hard to remember what a brilliant comic mind he used to be. Not to much a wicked impressionist- despite looking and sounding almost nothing like Bruce Willis, he manages to perfectly mimic Willis’ most famous mannerisms- the steely-eyed squint, the pained grimace, the smartass cackle. This spoof trailer originally aired on the short-lived Ben Stiller Show, and Stiller smartly enlisted the services of Taylor Negron, the baddie in the Willis-starring The Last Boy Scout, to serve Die Hungry's nefarious archvillain. Fifteen years later, in the wake of Willis’ own fourth Die Hard movie, this isn’t exactly cutting-edge anymore, but the familiarity only makes it funnier.

Bob Clark’s 1974 classic is the granddaddy of the slasher genre, and although it helped create the template for the movies it spawned, there are also quite a few atypical elements to the film. For one thing, the cast isn’t composed of the nubile nobodies who would populate most later slasher films, but a fairly classy ensemble- the gorgeous Olivia Hussey (post-Romeo and Juliet), 2001’s Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder just a year after Sisters, and future SCTV star Andrea Martin. But make no mistake- Black Christmas is no watered-down thriller. As the trailer’s narrator (James Mason- talk about classy) says, “if this movie doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight.” If you’ve never seen this- or worse, if you’ve only seen the 2006 remake- check it out. Black Christmas is a must-see both for fans of the slasher movie and for people looking for Scrooge-friendly holiday fare. Bless its black, two-sizes-too-small little heart.

Speed Racer



I never really watched the old Speed Racer cartoons, so I can't say how faithful this is. But I find the cartoonishness of the trailer to be pretty charming. With something as stylized as the original, it would be a mistake to try for realism, so the Wachowskis are aiming for a more animated style in the lighting and the CGI, and this has extended to the performances. What clinched it for me was Emile Hirsch's vigorous nodding when he asks the little kid, "oh no?" toward the end of the trailer — this is about as un-naturalistic an acting decision as one can make, and it fits in perfectly. Whether this movie will please the fans is a question I can't hope to answer here. I only know that this looks like a lot of fun.

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Cloverfield



While the 1.18.08 teaser that played before Transformers this past summer appeared to simply be a brilliant piece of viral marketing, it now appears that the project, now titled Cloverfield, will actually be shot largely by characters wielding personal camcorders and camera phones, instead of in a conventional style. Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I think it's a good idea in theory to make a kind of Godzilla for the YouTube generation. But a movie like this is tricky to pull off. The Blair Witch Project worked because you always got a sense that there were really three people lost in the forest and beset by forces they couldn't explain, but it'll be much harder to get that same vibe with a project this large-scale and effects-intensive. I'm not sure the director of the 1996 David Schwimmer vehicle The Pallbearer is the man for the job. Regardless, I'm curious to find out.

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Vantage Point



This trailer has actually been floating around for a while now, but I’ve only now gotten around to writing it up because I’ve been a little unsure how I feel about it. Namely, I questioned the use of an attempted assassination as a central plot point, much as I questioned the wisdom of same in such forgettable mid-'90s fare as The Jackal and Murder at 1600. But then I realized that similar stuff goes on every week on 24, and if it’s OK for Jack Bauer to do it on television than movies are surely fair game. And make no mistake — Vantage Point looks like nothing so much as a feature-length episode of 24, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And the cast is fairly impressive, anchored by Dennis Quaid, who has become the new Harrison Ford — the no-nonsense middle-aged man of action — now that Ford himself can barely be bothered anymore.

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Valkyrie

Despite the movie's late June release date, a high-toned thriller set in Nazi Germany would not appear to be summer movie fodder. But based on the trailer, Valkyrie looks typical of Hollywood’s approach to the Third Reich, boiling it down to the Ultimate Evil in charge and the morally-just "traitors" who have history on their side. Why else would they mount a big-budget telling of the story of the man who tried to kill Adolf Hitler, starring Tom Cruise, who, with a handful of exceptions, has made his reputation playing morally uncomplicated heroes?  Perhaps director Bryan Singer and his collaborators could have taken a cue from Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, whose breakout star Carice Van Houten is cast here as Cruise’s arm candy — in the shadow of the Nazi regime, things were rarely so simple as black and white.

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Cassandra’s Dream

Like Match Point two years ago, Cassandra’s Dream is being sold as a standard-issue British-made thriller, with Woody Allen's name withheld until the very end of the trailer. And like Match Point, this is by all accounts a crime drama steeped in class envy (reports from Toronto were respectful but unenthusiastic). What intrigues me most about this isn’t the crime stuff but the familial issues in play, with working-class brothers Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell (notice the accents) coming to rich uncle Tom Wilkinson to borrow money. At this point, the movie could go either way, but I’d rather see Allen make movies like this than the mostly lame comedies he’s been churning out since Small Time Crooks.

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Werewolves on Wheels

Here’s one of my favorite B-movie trailers, advertising "the most thrilling horror motorcycle movie ever made" — and as it turns out, the first. It seems that by 1971, just two years after Easy Rider, the motorcycle-movie well was running dry, so producers started jumping on gimmicks to liven up the genre. . . and bless ‘em for it.  To be honest, I’ve never actually seen Werewolves on Wheels in its entirety, although by all accounts I’m not missing much. Then again, there’s no way anything could possibly live up to this trailer.

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The Eye

The original Pang Brothers’ version of The Eye was a cheesy mix of the forgettable Madeleine Stowe thriller Blink and the early, funny films of M. Night Shyamalan. But the film nonetheless got solid reviews, so it was only a matter of time before a studio decided to mount an English-language remake. It’s hard to imagine someone out-hacking the Pangs, but David Moreau and Xavier Palud, making their English-language debut following the middling French home-invasion chiller Ils, look to be giving it the old college try. And as shoddy as most of the Asian horror remakes have been thusfar, at least some have been cast with interesting actors. That this one stars Jessica Alba doesn’t inspire confidence. But why should Lionsgate do any different? The formula of hot chick + semi-proven commodity + February release worked for When a Stranger Calls, right?

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CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR

For a movie about a couple of well-placed rogue elements helping to kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan, Mike Nichols' latest looks about as glossy and middle-of-the-road as a movie of this sort can be.  But homogenization aside, is it just me, or does something about Charlie Wilson’s War seem a bit familiar? Let’s see: two of Hollywood’s biggest stars top-line a comedy in which they find themselves in the middle of a war being fought in a Muslim-dominated country. Wait a sec. . . could this turn out to be Nichols’ Ishtar? Come to think of it, that would be kind of awesome, considering that (a) Nichols’ former comedy partner Elaine May hasn’t directed a single film since that 1987 flop, while Nichols’ career thrives despite turds like Regarding Henry and What Planet Are You From?, and (b) the studio is intent on selling the movie as prime Oscar material. If my suspicion pans out, no amount of hot-fudge love or cherry-ripple kisses could help endear this to the Academy.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

You know, it’s bad enough when Hollywood makes mincemeat of good books by popular authors.  But to see the work of a Nobel-prize-winning author like Gabriel Garcia Marquez sold like a Hispanic Nicholas Sparks adaptation. . . no, it’s just too much. I despair that this will be the first taste of Garcia Marquez for the majority of moviegoing audiences, and that in all probability the movie won’t give them any reason to discover his books. I’m also not a big fan of the credit "original songs by Shakira," but that’s a relatively minor quibble. The big problem here is this: just because it’s a novel doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to adapt it. My only hope is that the inevitable surge in popularity for Doris Lessing following her recent Nobel won’t suddenly prompt Hollywood to green-light a film version of The Golden Notebook starring Scarlett Johansson.

— Paul Clark

Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

When it was announced that Hollywood was finally going to adapt Steven Sondheim’s hit musical, it seemed a no-brainer for Tim Burton to be tapped to direct. Yet judging by the trailer, I’m not sure he was the right choice. Sure, Burton has become the go-to guy for dark-yet-commercial, but Sweeney Todd is unpleasant stuff, and Burton’s tendency towards cartoonish style and scary-yet-sensitive man-children may lead him to soft-pedal the story’s less savory aspects. Too bad, because Sweeney Todd could be a hell of a movie if made right. Jury’s still out on the singing voices of the actors — Sweeney’s a demanding role vocally, and Depp mostly speak-sings his one song in the trailer.  But let’s not forget that (a) a really strong voice isn’t altogether necessary when you’ve got multiple takes and post-production facilities at your disposal, and (b) for whatever reason Hollywood studios are still reluctant to give musicals an all-out singing-and-dancing push.  Perhaps they’ve realized that the core audience for musicals is both older and more female than the demographic of teenage boys they court so aggressively?

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