Trailer Hitch
By Eric Hughes
August 13, 2008
Welcome to Trailer Hitch, BOP's look at the latest movie trailers to hit the Internet. This week: Sony unleashes a Cloverfield clone, a hamster steals the CGI show and Frank Miller locks down Christmas.
The Women – Opens September 12th
Guys, if you were part of the select group of men who were dragged into seeing Sex and the City with your lady friends earlier this summer, consider yourselves completely exempt from seeing The Women. From Murphy Brown creator Diane English, the comedy follows a circle of friends (Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith) whose loyalty and friendship are put to the test after Ryan's character, Mary Haines, uncovers her husband's recent affair with a perfume salesgirl (Eva Mendes) – who the ladies dub as "the spritzer girl" (har har).
The trailer admittedly has a few funny moments, and the cast – Candice Bergen, Carrie Fisher and Bette Midler, in addition to its strong leads – is certainly commendable. I'm not asking for a sausage fest by any means – especially in a film titled The Women – but at least one male role would have been nice. Instead, The Women is literally exactly that – all women! It's based on a 1939 film of the same name (which is itself based on a play published three years prior).
Grade: C+ Also expected to be released on this date: Burn After Reading, The Family That Preys, Righteous Kill, Towelhead, Phoebe in Wonderland, 12, FLOW: For Love of Water
Quarantine – Opens October 10th
A remake of the 2007 Spanish horror film, [REC], Quarantine marks the latest edition to a new style of the horror genre popularized by the 1999 release of The Blair Witch Project, where the events of the film seemingly unfold in real time. You saw it earlier this year in J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield, too.
In Quarantine, Jennifer Carpenter plays television reporter Angela Vidal, who with her cameraman (Steve Harris) is assigned to spend the night with a Los Angeles Fire Station. The pair follow the crew during a seemingly routine 911 call to a small apartment building in response to blood curdling screams. When they arrive, they discover a woman who is infected by some kind of virus, and then are unable to escape because of a quarantine order from the CDC. The only evidence of the evening's events are on the videotape, which is the basis of the film.
Grade: B Also expected to be released on this date: Body of Lies, City of Ember, Sex Drive, What Just Happened, Ashes of Time Redux, Happy-Go-Lucky
Bolt – Opens November 26th
Featuring the oh-so-cute Hamster-in-a-ball – real name Rhino, but we here at BOP really prefer Hamster-in-a-ball – the animated Bolt stars John Travolta as the title character, a dog who believes to be endowed with super powers, when in reality he is merely the star of his own hit TV show he knows nothing about (think The Truman Show, only less dramatic, more kid friendly and sadly no Jim Carrey). After the hound is accidentally shipped from his soundstage in Hollywood to New York City, Bolt, along with an abandoned housecat (Susie Essman) and Rhino (Mark Walton) begin a cross-country road trip to find fellow co-star, Penny (Miley Cyrus).
The trailer is nothing more than cute, due mostly to its colorful animation and adorable, talking pets. And of course, I just couldn't get enough of that frickin' Rhino. His performance in the preview makes his character seem like the very definition of a scene-stealer.
Grade: B- Also expected to be released on this date: Four Christmases, Transporter 3, The Road, Milk
Punisher: War Zone – Opens December 5th
The Punisher was released more than four years ago to very little fanfare. The critics kinda hated it – just 28% of reviews were positive, according to RottenTomatoes – and the flick barely surpassed its $33 million budget when all was said and done at the domestic box office. A look at initial previews of its sequel, Punisher: War Zone, leads me to believe the series' latest movie will be the same old news for the fledgling franchise.
The film, featuring ruthless hero Frank Castle waging war against organized crime (this time against a man who goes by the name Jigsaw), is rather generic-looking in its presentation, with excessive amounts of guns and violence for the sake of looking like a cool piece of action property. Now I'm always down for good comic book adaptations (Iron Man), and even those that are excessively violent, but tastefully done (The Dark Knight). Punisher: War Zone, however, just isn't that kind of movie.
Grade: D Also expected to be released on this date: Youth in Revolt, Frost/Nixon
The Spirit – Opens December 25th
So since the Punisher sequel should be sitting firmly off your radars, go off and see Frank Miller's The Spirit instead. The trailer, in a word, is dazzling. Reminiscent, in fact, of another popular Miller product: Sin City, where the visuals appear to be mostly black and white, with certain bright colors highlighted for emphasis and other meanings. In The Spirit, Gabriel Macht stars as the title character, who mysteriously returns from the dead to fight crime in Central City, especially arch-enemy, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson). While tracking down the killer, The Spirit also faces off against a number of women – Scarlett Johansson, Paz Vega and Sarah Paulson, among others – who all aim to seduce or even kill the masked man. It's based on a comic strip first published in 1940 by Will Eisner.
Grade: A- Also expected to be released on this date: Bedtime Stories, Hurricane Season, Marley & Me, Doubt
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