Film Trailer Reviews

It’s England. It’s the 50’s. One boy just can’t find a break. “Why couldn’t God make me Elvis?” laments a young John Lennon, only to be told “Because he was saving you for John Lennon.” And thus begins the heartfelt, heavy-handed trailer for Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy. “Glasses John!” Lennon is reminded. Hey, he needs those glasses. We’re treated — of course — to the obligatory scenes of John as a schoolboy, John making out, John defying authority with witty, Britishy quips. He fights with his foster mum, he looks for his real mum — he probably doesn’t like what he finds. He flirts, he brawls, he strives to become the man we’ll all know and love. “You’re going nowhere,” he’s told by some square who’s trying to keep him down. “Is nowhere full of geniuses?” John asks, inexplicably creating quote-worthy ditties even when no one was around to be impressed, “Because I probably belong there.” We’re supposed to like this guy, right? Paul makes an appearance, played by some pointy-faced elf. It’s a coming of age story with a healthy dose of fan-fiction. Whether or not you care about John Lennon as a young man will probably dovetail with your interest in the Beatles, and this trailer doesn’t make an exceptionally compelling case that that should be any different. Trailer: C

The newest trailer for The Social Network begins with a strangely compelling collage of photos and status updates from a social network set against a version of Radiohead’s Creep sung by what sounds like a choir of schoolchildren. It’s effective, it’s depressing, and it sets the tone for what will apparently be an excessively dark exploration of the roots of… Facebook. Slowly the trailer introduces the characters in our story, the kid from Adventureland, Justin Timberlake, Quincy Jones’ daughter. Zuckerberg wants to impress “clubs” but he may have stolen an idea from the jocks. Jones is impressed by all the hits (“2,200 hits?” “22,000!”), but the jocks are still upset about the theft of their website and now they’ve got old, white lawyers on their side (very Revenge of the Nerds). Timberlake wants a billion dollars. Sex, drugs, and the drinking of some kind of yellow appletini looking thing all occur. Zuckerberg is twitchy, aspergersy, but a relentless climber who will stop at nothing to succeed, from what we can tell. The film is bathed David Fincher’s signature yellow/green tinge, making it all look like a Nine Inch Nails video starring the cast of Degrassi High (not surprising, Trent Reznor is doing the soundtrack). “Your best friend is suing you for $600 million dollars,” we hear an old man say, presumably to Zuckerberg, who can’t be shaken from his tourettes-like behavior, even by a tough Jane Lynchian school board member. The trailer is effective in making a film about Facebook seem less silly than it appears on the surface, but the heavy-handedness of the musical choice leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I’ll be seeing it on opening day. Trailer: B-

The Valhalla Rising trailer begins with an incredibly awful voice over — “In the beginning, there was man and nature, and on the fringes of the Earth there was a reckoning.” It’s so bad, it’s hard to take the rest of the trailer seriously — but perhaps it’s a testament to the editors here that one manages to hang on through the full two minutes. The bad guy with the bleeding eye from Casino Royale is our star, this time with another eye problem (watch out Mikkelson, you’re being typecast). He was a soldier, now he’s a slave; shades of Gladiator. He kills some folks, meets a father and son on a holy quest, then kills some more people. Mads Mikkelson doesn’t say much, but then again, who has time to speak when you’re constantly shoving axes into people’s craniums? We get some critical praise that makes the film sound better than it probably is. “A trippy nightmare of savage poetry” says the Village Voice, and admittedly it looks pretty trippy and savage — we’re not sure about the poetry part. It’s not clear what the plot is here, but a lot of swarthy, dirty men with beards suspect they’re on a cursed mission and One-Eye is the devil. Needless to say, the movie probably has a happy ending. Trailer: C+

The Town trailer makes no allusions about what kind of movie it is. Right off the bat, the smoldering, sickening stench of a crime-gone-wrong drama a la Heat or The Departed is palpable. I mean, why else would bank robbers dress up in hideous monster costumes and take a beautiful hostage? Jon Hamm is here playing the renegade or by-the-book (you don’t know!) I’m-not-Don-Draper-I-swear-it FBI agent. He knows there’s more to this story, and by gum he’s going to get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, obvious kidnapper and all-around nice guy Ben Affleck offers to take his victim on a regular date — she’s oblivious to his crimes. OR IS SHE? She told Jon Hamm that she couldn’t see through her blindfold, but frankly he seemed surprised. Cue old, mean Boston hoods who all drink and smoke and fight and are clearly Irish, especially but not limited to the priest from Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann version folks) and the guy from The Hurt Locker. This time, he’s going to be the one doing the exploding (bah dum bah!). Oh, one of the Gossip Girls is here too. She plays a hooker. Affleck wants out, but they just keep pulling him back in. He’s also falling madly in love with the kidnap victim, which probably doesn’t help. Hurt Locker won’t let him go, and certainly there are homoerotic echoes to this plotline that will stay with you long after the trailer ends. Lots of stuff blows up, there are a ton of guns, and Pete Postlethwaite makes a number of brief appearances looking like a less healthy zombie — all set to a musical score not wildly dissimilar from the groundbreaking A Few Good Men trailer. I don’t know about the movie, but this was a two and half minutes I didn’t mind losing. Trailer: B+

Danny Trejo is Machete, who I’m pretty sure is a character in an earlier Rodriguez vehicle. Sure, it’s got a rough beginning with some fake slo-mo, but it’s slo-mo of the main character doing all sorts of bad ass Mexican maniac stuff, like running around with gigantic guns that no regular human could possibly carry. Then Jessica Alba makes an appearance — who cares? “Rogue federal agent” is all we needed to hear. Then some guys shoot someone with a gun disguised as a bouquet of flowers. Pretty smart. Danny has a crazy knife-chain thing, then he flies out of a window. Okay, you’ve got our attention. WHAT THE FUCK. Was that De Niro? FUCK YOU!? Is that Steven Segal. Yes, holy shit yes. Who cares what happens at this point (explosions, Danny Trejo is ruled by a sense of destiny, Michelle Rodriguez doesn’t own a shirt)? Then they show Jeff Fahey and “introduce” Don Johnson. “CIA, FBI, DEA all rolled into one.” It’s fairly obvious that this will be the best movie ever made, and what happens in the trailer is inconsequential. Trailer: A+

Things start out strong for M. Night Shyamalan’s Devil as we’re presented with appropriately disorienting upside down views of a cityscape, while being told that “our lives are filled with chance encounters.” We’re then introduced to a coterie of characters; the hot girl, a black dude, an old lady, a mysterious looking dark-skinned guy with a Jew-fro, a bike messenger. Things take a turn for the worse then the trailer starts hitting us with Sam Raimi-esque fly-throughs of a CGI elevator shaft. The Jew-fro guy keep acting sketchy and is probably a devil. You’re losing us Shyamalan. But then back to the action — everyone is on an elevator? This can’t be good. We learn that the entire movie will take place on an elevator. You can just see M. Night coming up with this idea “What if the entire movie took place on an elevator? You’ve done it again M. Night!” So anyway, someone is super evil on this elevator — probably the dark skinned guy with the fro — we know this because someone bit the hot girl. Or was it a cut? Who knows, but the guy who played Claire’s boyfriend on Six Feet Under is going to find out via video camera. Anyhow, a bunch of thrilling stuff happens and we see some flashes of dead people and we’re reminded that this movie is “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan” like that’s supposed to make us feel better. Trailer: C