Back of the Trailer

Trailer Review: Total Recall - Redial

A remake of an earlier recall from 1990 originally starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and directed by Paul Verhoeven, based on a Philip K. Dick story which centered on a man needing a vacation in 2084, signs up for a tour of Mars with a virtual travel company. He sits in a chair, the gears spin, and he's implanted with the memories of a tourist - except something goes wrong with the program and his vacation turns into a chase and battle for survival.

The trailer for the new version stars Colin Farrell as the burnt out husband not looking for a vacation, but this time, not happy with how his life turned out. Needing a fix, he sees a company called recall that implants memories of any fantasy desired, but just as the gears start spinning, a SWAT team barges through the door (always) and points all guns at Farrell who quickly disposes them in a circle of knockouts (what a surprise). Farrell doesn't know how that happened, but we do.

The rest of the trailer is a pursuit through the streets of an urban design where buildings grow like mushrooms clouding the sky, car chases in the air much like The Fifth Element and women throwing punches as hard as the guys.

It's obviously got action. What's missing is the trip to Mars. This looks earthbound never leaving what looks like an overgrown Hong Kong. It also seems to be missing Verhoeven's humor and skirts with cheesiness that make his sci-fi films strange and beguiling. In short, it looks boring. Recycled, reused, refused.

Opening August 3, 2012, Verdict: Skip

Trailer Review: Prometheus - Screaming Again in Space

A lot of hype has built up for director Ridley Scott returning to science fiction. It's not trivial. He's created two masterpieces of the genre: Blade Runner and Alien. It really is worth remembering how groundbreaking the original movie was. It introduced horror into outer space and pushed those genres from their B-movie gutter into A-movie status. As with Star Wars, the movie's special effects confirmed what audiences wanted. Moreover, its design dismantled the clean future of spaceships that was established with 2001. And the people traveling to the far reaches of the galaxy were like you and me. Truck drivers hauling ore across space. Interspace travel was done for a living and it was tough. One of the best unsung scenes from the movie was at the beginning when the crew has woken up from their cryogenic sleep and are sitting around a dining table hungry from the long flight. They're a bunch of greasy, burnt out labor complaining about being underpaid and looking forward to when their shift ends. Blue collar instead of uniforms with bars, it put a new demographic of people in space.

Enough, what's the trailer like? Ridley Scott hinted that his movie referenced the classic, but he was adamant it was a new story. Well, the trailer shows clearly this is a direct prequel to Alien. The movie follows the original plot. A ship descends into the storm ravaged planet and bubble-headed astronauts find a tomb where the famous eggs reside. There's an ancient human face at the center of the chamber looking close to statues from Easter Island. They take an egg back and the horror begins with a rush to get off the rock. But what really gives away this is a direct descendant, is the slow reveal of the the letters in the same typography as the source. We also see the original alien ship crash onto the surface, but, curiously no alien is ever shown. But we all know what one looks like.

This franchise has had more sequels than needed. The second, Aliens, can be argued to be just as good, but the later ones have cheapened the brand to silliness (now with Predators). So it looks like Ridley Scott is putting a new coat of paint as a restoration. Will this be a new classic? Can't wait to find out.

Opening June 8, 2012, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: The Hunger Games - Run For Your Life

Based on the bestselling book by Suzanne Collins, the long awaited trailer for the movie adaptation has finally arrived. We've all seen stills of its star, Jennifer Lawrence, who has become the face of the movie. A story taking place in a future dystopia that trains teens to hunt each other down in a reality/game show TV watched by a totalitarian society. It combines many literary sources from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, Stephen King's The Running Man, and Koushun Takami's Battle Royale.

The trailer surprised me. First, it looks like a modest production. Settings take place in actual abandoned buildings and remote outdoor locations. I didn't see much CG. The straight forward shots and bright lighting reminded me of children's after school or cable dramas for teens on Disney (also a little bit of Fahrenheit 451). But that's the point. This is based on books for young-adults with a crossover into their parent's reading lists. It's close to Twilight. Boys and girls running around in the woods scared and falling in love.

I'm sure this will be a hit. This will make Lawrence a leading actress. A franchise born.

Opening March 23, 2012, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: Real Steel - Punch Out

Real Steel looks like the best swing for a franchise since Transformers. Except this looks better due to its smaller scale and scrappier charm by combining Rocky with Robocop and inspiration from a beloved toy. It punches for B-movie fun, instead of a death grip from tent-pole importance.

The trailer is an inviting, well paced outline of the story with Hugh Jackman as a boxing coach of robots explaining in voiceover that humans have limits and the crowd is always hungry for more. Scenes are wonderful of a near future with a gritty look, sharp focus and color that reminded me a little of David Fincher's style from The Social Network. The robots are better looking than Transformers because they look more like robots - you can see where the ball and joint fits together and can pull apart. The action scenes look fluid with less of the rapid edits that make usual CG action incomprehensible.

The most memorable shot is Jackman training his robot outside a roadside motel along the interstate at dawn. The shot is amazingly believable because the setting is so commonplace. Get ready to rumble.

Opening October 7, 2011, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: In Time - Every Second Counts

One of the smartest sci-fi films from the nineties was Andrew Niccol's "Gattaca" about a future where everyone knows their DNA makeup when they are born, thus society is divided between the genetically privileged and the challenged. The story concerned a have-not (Ethan Hawke) who wanted to fly a rocket to the stars, but didn't have the right genes to get into the academy so he faked his identity with a perfect specimen (Jude Law) who could no longer walk and was fed up with the way things are and more than happy to give his genetic code away to hack the system. The movie was also gorgeous to look at, giving a handsome vision of the future using sixties modernism with its minimalist spaces that was a sharp change from the overcrowded and banged-up futures predicted from movies like "Blade Runner."

Watching Niccol's new trailer for "In Time," it's remarkable how similar the plot is to his first feature, only now the rare commodity in short supply is time instead of chromosomes. This is a future where babies are time stamped when they are born with a clock on how long they will live. The rich can buy all the time in the world giving them eternal youth, while the poor live to a quick old age and die. Justin Timberlake (Ethan Hawke from Gattaca) plays someone who doesn't like this scheme and teams up with a disillusioned immortal (Matt Bomer, also Jude Law from Gattaca) who gives him his extra hours before leaving this mortal coil. Timberlake now has a lot of time on his hands and like money, that brings trouble. Cillian Murphy (Alan Arkin from Gattaca) plays the detective out to find the man with the stolen time and Amanda Seyfried (Uma Thurman from Gattaca) is Timberlake's love interest and conspirator in saving him.

But what is new for "In Time" is dropping the moody film noir of "Gattaca" and replacing it with hyped up action. Guns appear in the second half of this trailer and Timberlake is determined to rob the bank and spread the time to everyone. Where "Gattaca" kept you on the edge by wondering how Hawke will slip through a genetic test without a trace, "In Time" forces you to wonder if Timberlake has pulled the trigger fast enough. "Gattaca" had the protagonist leave the planet, never to come back. "In Time" has Timberlake staying and remaking it. He didn't need to.

Opening October 28, 2011, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Trailer Review: John Carter - Rescuing a Princess of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs's less famous series of novels about a Civil War veteran, John Carter, dying and being transported to the planet of Mars always took a corner of the sci-fi shelves in the bookstore that I never got around to reading. They were regarded as racy, pulp affair, since the Mars where John Carter had his adventures was a place where the air was breathable with plants and oceans that didn't square against the cold wasteland that would be only visited in spacesuits and rockets. But you couldn't stop looking at the covers. Carter was very much like Tarzan, muscular with a curvy woman at his side, and wielding swords against green creatures twice his height and with twice as many arms. These weren't stories about technology or science, but fantasy adventures full of slaying and sex. Next to the other titles with their future predictions they seemed outdated silliness.

But I never forgot them. Many people didn't. Now Andrew Stanton, the clever storyteller behind "Wall-E", is taking a big leap into live action by attempting to bring it to the screen. The trailer looks promising, tapping into steampunk aesthetics and delivering a possible original franchise. The sex has been dialed back from the racy book covers (It is a Walt Disney production), but Mars still looks like the dreamy landscape of a wild west. For a 3D film, it also looks restrained in bombastic visuals. No explosions or slow-motion replays, just widescreen pans and close-ups. This looks like a great adaptation of a wonderful book cover.

Opening March 9, 2012, Verdict: Must See

Trailer Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes - New Ideas

I grew up watching "Planet of the Apes" movies on television. They were fun to watch, but "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" was scary because it was based in the near future (when I would be a grown-up) where cats and dogs had died and society had domesticated apes in their place. This future was disturbing not only for all-concrete cities, but because America looked like a military state with humans as oppressive rulers and apes their slaves doing all manual labor. The movie chronicled the rise of an extra intelligent ape, Ceasar, the son from a pair of talking apes from the future who plots a rebellion and frees the apes to fight against their masters. The great end to the movie shows a battle at night where the army is overrun by the apes and while the city burns, Ceasar gives a fiery speech to the victors that this is the beginning of a new species of rulers on earth - the planet of the apes. That speech haunted me and it was supposed to. Made in the early seventies, it reflected the recent upheavals of civil rights and assassinations and the uneasy worry of America's decline with an inevitable destiny.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" doesn't want the same social analogies to current events. Instead, this trailer is a tech demo by Weta Digital, the effects company from "Lord of the Rings," showcasing their ability to realize CGI apes. The plot is James Franco playing a geneticist who finds a cure to brain disease by successfully testing on apes and boosting their intelligence as well. Now with more ideas, the apes decide to rebel and the trailer shows their outbreak as they jump and crawl over everything. It looks similar in grim spirit and tempo as the last "Terminator" trailer showing machines taking us out. But seeing apes rise again, brings back that same uneasiness about a possible future where I imagined myself a slave to a simian race with a leash around my neck.

Opening August 5, 2011, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Trailer Review: Battle: Los Angeles - Running out of Ammo

One of my favorite books is "The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells. I've been captivated with the premise of an alien invasion since I was a kid. It's a great adventure, but can also be a great allegory for many things as the original was for the coming terrors of warfare in the twentieth century. This tale has gained resonance since 9/11 and with the availability of CG effects to show it. Unfortunately, filmmakers keep getting caught in the effects and leave out the great storytelling opportunities.

Look no further than the trailer for "Battle: Los Angeles" which is nothing but an invasion of that city by an armageddon of flying junk shooting at people and armies with guns and missiles blazing. An "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" remake with a military centric story about soldiers shooting at things in the sky, there really isn't much to get your mind working when the trailer just loves to show Hollywood being blown up. The only thing interesting is its grim tone. People are just scrambling for cover as the electronic voice singing a chorus of "blue sky" near the end give it an especially hopeless account to the last struggle of mankind.

There was another alien invasion film called "Skyline" that came and went earlier this year that also beat up on Los Angeles with similar intensity. This ferocious display of rage against the city of angels is a curious sight. This genre is dead, and I hope this creative destruction will wring out the last of it so Hollywood can get on with building something better from the ashes.

Opening March 11, 2011, Verdict: Skip

Trailer Review: The Adjustment Bureau - Fedoras of Fate

I just laughed at the end of this trailer. Matt Damon is a man running for New York senator who gets flirty with the pretty Emily Blunt who is a dancer. They hook up and at the foot of their bed they wake up to a man in a fedora who takes Damon to an empty warehouse and teach him about the real world. These men in fedoras control life. They make sure the world is running like clockwork. They prove this by showing him his life map in a moleskin book in scribbly pen and ink. But he's screwed up their plans and you can see it in their notebook in red! Run Damon, run.

"The Matrix," "Dark City," "Seconds." Yes, anyone remember that last one? That was a trippy, but dated film from the sixties about second chances. What it seems to borrow most from that film is a secret organization of white men in suits who control everything. Back then, that symbolism was more potent, but now it feels really dated, and watching these men in fedoras running around claiming they control life's fate is funny. Instead of a threatening conspiracy, they look like performance artists who have escaped from your local art house group.

This film has a great cast, both in the chased and the chasers. Damon and Blunt are a nice pair, but John Slattery and Terence Stamp make great looking agents. And that's where this film seems to come essentially down to: running up and down stairs in Brooks Brothers.

Opening March 4, 2011, Verdict: Wait for the Critics

Trailer Review: Monsters - Forbidden Zone

Airplanes strafing the horizon. Soldiers shooting at something large in the dark. A man and a woman traveling across a Central American landscape that looks like a war zone. "Monsters" is a road picture where a couple hike through a quarantined area between Mexico and the US where aliens the size of Godzilla are living. Their goal is to get across the border in one piece. This sounds awful as a plot, but the trailer is alive with a jittery excitement in low-budget alternative sci-fi storytelling similar to last year's "District 9."

These scenes remind me of a travelogue across an exotic landscape like the two young travelers discovering South America from the "The Motorcycle Diaries" of 2004. The man is a photographer, so his camera shows details of the population, buildings, and sky with curiosity than terror. The B-Movie title isn't representative of a film that seems to be an emotional journey of discovery. The cinematography looks beautiful with scenes being shot in the twilight hour of the day with an otherworldly glow. What's also refreshing is the trailer doesn't follow the usual blockbuster tempo suggesting a big final battle or reveal of the alien demolishing landmarks. Instead, this is another movie in a new wave of sci-fi films that's using the next versions of editing software with lower costs and more features to create effects that can tell stories without spending blockbuster dollars. The constraints seem to force filmmakers to be more inventive with their stories and work outside bluescreens to make striking images. Like "District 9" this is a film about aliens and immigration. Impermanence and dislocation is one theme of our times.

Opening October 29, 2010, Verdict: Must See