Trailer Hitch
By Eric Hughes
July 9, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Frozen River – Opens August 1st
Columbia film grad Courtney Hunt marks her writing and directing debut in Frozen River, a drama that snagged the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Starring Homicide: Life on the Streets' Melissa Leo, the film explores the lengths one New York mom will go to make ends meet. Here, that means teaming up with a professional smuggler to carry illegal immigrants over the U.S.-Canadian border (think Weeds, only it's human lives, not pot, and probably a heck of a lot less funny, too). The trailer has a gritty, low budget feel to it – let alone Hunt's use of cinema verite – all which effectively highlight the drama's core themes of lost hope and making do-or-die sacrifices.
Grade: B
Also expected to be released on this date: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Swing Vote, Midnight Meat Train, Sixty Six
College – Opens August 29th
First-time scribes Dan Callahan and Adam Ellison tackle every high schooler's wet dream in sex comedy College, a film originally scheduled to be released in January. In it, Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell and Kevin Covais play prospective college freshmen who pay the local college campus a visit for (at most) the best weekend of their lives. There, the boys connect with the campus' craziest fraternity, which offers the pre-frosh all-access passes to wicked parties in exchange for endless hazing and humiliation. If the funniest parts – Ryan Pinkston detailing his sloppy college weekend, Caldwell showing some cleave, Covais receiving the most unfortunate of blow jobs – aren't just in the sneak peek, than I'd say this little MGM project could be a sleeper hit. The film also benefits from its August 29th release date, which is just about the time its target audience is back at school/raging uncontrollably.
Grade: B-
Also expected to be released on this date: Babylon A.D., Disaster Movie, Hamlet 2, Sukiyaki Western Django, Ballast
Blindness – Opens September 12th
Please God don't tell me the entire movie uses the same echo effect utilized to the absolute max in this dramatic thriller's trailer. Nearly every word of dialogue, which there is plenty to sift through here, is replayed two or three times, and in close proximity to each other to produce said echo. The film, an adaptation of a 1995 novel about a society suffering through an epidemic of spontaneous blindness, is said to be hyper-stylized, even reflecting the lack of point-of-view that the newly blind characters would experience. In which case there is "hope" – good God – that the trailer's annoying reverberations are in fact a reality.
Outside of this potential calamity, the movie looks like it could be okay, given its solid casting – Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover – and unique story (even if the trailer ends on some fairly melodramatic moments). A line of particular cheese is from Ruffalo, who presumably says to Moore: "I see you ... After all this time I actually see you."
Grade: C+
Also expected to be released on this date: Righteous Kill, The Family That Preys Together, The Women, Assassination of a High School President, Burn After Reading, Phoebe in Wonderland
The Day the Earth Stood Still – Opens December 12th
Keanu Reeves will get back into his sci-fi groove with the December release of The Day the Earth Stood Still, itself a remake of the 1951 cult classic. In it, Reeves will be Klaatu, a humanoid alien who warns leaders on Earth that they must end their violent conflicts with one another or face destructive consequences. Even though Reeves appears a bit silly in the make-shift interrogation room, answering questions with that familiar, monotone voice we have definitely heard from him before – only this time he is appropriately acting alien, because he should – the rest of the trailer, including co-star Jennifer Connolly of course, is particularly appetizing. Highlights include a gigantic orb growing out of the sea, the destruction of an entire football stadium and a city skyline fading to black – all connected through blaring (yet catchy) rock music.
On a side note, the box office battle between this and the adaptation of literary vampire hit, Twilight, should make for an interesting mid-December weekend for number crunchers, much like David and company here at BOP. The Day the Earth Stood Still was originally scheduled to be released this summer, but production delays pushed it back to its present date.
Grade: A-
Also expected to be released on this date: Twilight, Seven Pounds, The Reader, Defiance, The Kings of Appletown
Hotel for Dogs – Opens TBA
Is it just me, or does Hotel for Dogs' score, heard here at the trailer's onset, sound eerily similar to the one used in all of the Harry Potter adaptations? Well anyway, comparisons between both films end there as Hotel for Dogs' plot is revealed to be a little less...fantastic. In the Nickelodeon comedy, Emma Roberts (Julia's niece), Jake T. Austin and others star as a group of youngsters who (secretly) care for a number of stray dogs in an abandoned building. The kids are inventive enough, finding unique ways to feed mass quantities of food to their adopted pooches and elaborately getting rid of their waste (they've for sure given new meaning to the term "doggy bag"). They're even cunning enough to outsmart the adults (Lisa Kudrow and Don Cheadle), i.e. the demographic always thwarting the harmless fun of younger humans in any given kiddie film. I'm not exactly targeted by the movie execs to enjoy this feature, but tweens will certainly eat it up.
Grade: C-