Men In Black 3

Much like the first trailer, this trailer provides exactly what you would expect from Men In Black. Will Smith starts with an amusing quip about goldfish as we see the massive fight he just had with a fish. This is followed by some comparably amusing physical comedy involving a tongue that is way too long – nothing too serious here. We already know the film’s premise – some sort of dimensional change has placed Will Smith in a position wherein Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K has not been alive for forty years. Smith’s Agent J decides to go back in time to rectify this situation somehow (time travel paradoxes surely abound regardless of his plan). There, he finds a young K, played by Josh Brolin, who mimics Jones’ cadence almost flawlessly. Great casting there. Little is achieved in the past, although there is another humorous interaction with Bill Hader as Andy Warhol, who is surprisingly not an alien.

Side note: Lady Gaga is rumored to be in this film. What are the chances that they make a joke about her being an alien at the end of the movie, a la Dennis Rodman in the first film?

The Hunger Games

We have another Hunger Games clip, and you better believe that I’m going to keep talking about this movie until it comes out in two weeks! It’s not a great clip though. Whereas the clip we saw last week represented an important point of the plot’s progression, this clip focuses on some of the minutiae of the story. It also features our first real glimpse at Lenny Kravitz, actor. Ya, he did Precious, but I’ve not seen Precious. Anyway, this clip is the first time Katniss and Cinna meet, which is both notable and forgettable. Every time Jennifer Lawrence speaks in this clip, I think, “Katniss is so angry and guarded right now.” Every time Lenny Kravitz speaks, I think, “Lenny Kravitz is trying to act. Lenny Kravitz is trying to act.” Once again, he appears to be too forthright with his rebellious tendencies, but that’s something I’ve resigned myself to.

21 Jump Street

A red band trailer? Oh dear. I continue to be annoyed by websites that ask you to enter your birthday to make sure you’re old enough to view whatever media they are in charge of. Who are they fooling? Do they think people will be too surprised by the sudden appearance of an internet form that they won’t be able to come up with a fake birth date. Despite being of age, I always put the wrong date, on principle. It is for this reason that I learned this week that February 29, 1983 is a date they accept, despite the fact that that date never happened.

The trailer itself is solid, even though it pretty much just expands on what we’ve seen in the other trailers. The opening sequence has an amusing conversation in which Channing Tatum tells a biker he’ll beat his dick off. A fun turn of a phrase, it culminates with Jonah Hill getting absolutely trucked by a massive biker. An arrest ensues, and Hill celebrates by shooting his gun in the air. Four times. All of this is amusing, but the whole incompetent cop shtick can wear off pretty quickly. Thankfully, the trailer veers away from that and instead comes back with a few more mind-twisting dialogues. Funny, but not hysterical. The way they see Rob Riggle while using the drug is also moderately funny, but not original.

There are, however, a few legitimately entertaining moments towards the end. In what appears to be a typical, “savant writing on a blackboard” scene, Channing Tatum explains a complex science/math problem (what he says doesn’t make any sense), but when we see the board he’s only written “4’ a few hundred times in various sizes and colors. The two best lines go to Ice Cube though. When hearing that Tatum and Hill are throwing a party, he cautions, “If any of my officers are caught giving alcohol to minors, they’ll find themselves with a snorkel duct-taped to their mouth, and me shitting down that snorkel.” Guess that’s why this is a red band trailer. Finally, “So let me get this straight, you [Hill] fell in with the cool kids, and yo ass [Tatum] fell in with the smart kids? Those drugs are fucking up these kids more than I thought.”

Side note: Dave Franco was playing a med student on Scrubs three years ago. We’re supposed to believe him as a high school student now? Come on.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

The Avengers

Starting with an Inception boom and what sounds like a warning from Mace Windu about the Sith menace, this trailer is about as straightforward as they come. It introduces us to the four Avengers who had their own movies (yes, 2008’s Ruffalo-less The Incredible Hulk counts). Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow needs no recruiting, so she is tasked with bringing the Hulk on board. She finds a way to persuade him (not with sex, with guns you guys). Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury goes to recruit Chris Evan’s Captain America, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. All four show a degree of wariness, while the Hulk doesn’t even want to go. Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, meanwhile, doesn’t even get to speak. I assume this has something to do with him being a sharpshooter, and the fact that they’re loners. Or something. Loki also gets some play, talking down to Nick Fury because he has to enlist the help of … a god, a billionaire, a monster, a Captain America, the world’s best shooter, and… whatever Black Widow’s skills are. He is a wonderfully despicable villain.

The Hunger Games

This is just a short clip, so I’ll go through it quickly. It plays about the same way it does in the book, with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) initially focusing on the target before focusing on the pig. Even in this short sample, it is evident that the movie will have good pacing. The buildup to Katniss’ first shot is perfectly replaced by the uninterrupted conversation of the Gamemakers. Her irritation and disgust with them translates exceptionally well, and pinning the apple to the wall achieves just the right mix of shock and amazement among the Gamemakers.

That’s My Boy

Movie opens with Adam Sandler in a Jacuzzi with a bunch of model types: Oh, looks like Adam is playing a rich guy again because he can only relate to rich people now

Rex Ryan inexplicably shows up as his tax advisor to tell him he needs to pay $43,000 or go to jail for three years: looks like he’s not rich, he’s a schmuck

Sandler (naturally) goes to a strip club to try to figure out what to do, stripper Ciara explains to him that his son is a hedge fund manager: oh, he’s a deadbeat schmuck?

This movie is coming out on Father’s Day: go fuck yourselves Columbia Pictures

Sandler enters with, “Wazzup!”: does this movie take place in the past?

Andy Samberg spits on a lady: classy

Classic sequence where we hear how abysmal a father Sandler was, combined with the first real emergence of his horrible Boston accent: as a Bostonian, the all-around laziness here actually hurts my heart. That kind of fumbled accent makes people violent.

A second spitting joke: if the best jokes are in trailers, and they had to rely on this terrible gag twice, what could possibly be left?

Vanilla Ice with a bong/a stripper CALLING Sandler to remind him he could go to jail/a girl catch a fly ball with her cleavage: WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Brief sequence where Sandler teaches Samberg to stick up for himself: someone who became a hedge fund manager that young is obviously capable of sticking up for himself

Ear-piercing scene: Please, stop this

The Leighton Meester wedding dress joke: this actually titillated me. It makes up for 11% of the horrible stuff in this trailer. Adam, please go do something else.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

American Reunion

As sequel ideas go, few are more fitting than having the entire cast of American Pie come back for a high school reunion. Enough time has passed that everyone was available, while the American Pie audience would still be interested in seeing another sequel. They’re going to get one too, because this trailer hints at a movie that portrays superficial maturity while presenting all the same sophomoric hijinks.

The first such gag is a joke about the pages of a pornographic magazine being stuck together. It takes Jim (Jason Biggs) and his dad (Eugene Levy) a full second to realize what this means – no subtlety here! Next up, we have the hot neighbor Jim used to babysit, because obviously that needed to happen. Predictably, Stifler (Seann William Scott) encourages him to take advantage of this situation. There’s a decent sight gag about married people having sex, and that’s about it. No one seems to have changed, but now they are looking down on the behavior that was so popular in the first film.

A couple notes:

• Who would’ve guessed after the first film that Alyson Hannigan would wind up having the strongest career?
• How long must it have taken to reanimate Tara Reid?

Brave

There is no good way for me to segue into this trailer, which is a clip of a single scene. What I can do is comment on it. The three men arching for Merida’s heart (that’s what’s happening, right?) fit nicely into cartoon stereotypes of that situation – a massive, uncoordinated brute, an athletic and cocky skinny person, and an incompetent weakling. The fact that the incompetent weakling lucks into having the best shot is another cliché, and that is not encouraging. Pixar usually has more originality than that. What really bothers me, though, is why is something as arbitrary as archery used to determine who will marry the princess? Moreover, why is each archer only allowed a single shot? If I determined that archery skill was the most important attribute for a suitable husband for my daughter, wouldn’t I want there to be an elaborate archery competition to determine, without a doubt, who the best archer is?

Wrath of The Titans

So … the Titans are breaking out, even though Zeus had thought they were imprisoned forever? They were gods after all, shouldn’t someone have been keeping an eye on them? Whatever. This trailer is another orgy of action scenes. There certainly seems to be a lot going on, but without any real context, all I can say is, “Oooh, look at that monster. Ooh, that monster has two heads. That guy is made of lava, and he looks angry.” I mean, the first trailer got that point across well enough, what’s the point of this one?

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Dark Tide

I saw Catwoman for the first time last week, and it is so horribly abysmal that Halle Berry’s performance hung over this trailer for me. Everything Halle said sounded bad to me, but that also might be because this trailer’s terrible. Is this whole movie about people going down in cages to observe sharks? How could that possibly be a compelling wide release? As best I can tell, Halle plays a famed sharkologist who is not making enough to keep her boat. Doesn’t that sort of research depend on grant money? Is she a private shark researcher, or is she actually just giving tours in shark-infested waters? Whatever the ridiculous reason, she doesn’t have enough money. Enter a wealthy crazy person who wants to swim with sharks outside the cage. Halle (and co-star and real life boyfriend Olivier Martinez, to a lesser degree) are wary of the situation but realize they need the money. This leads to everyone going out on the water in the middle of a horrible storm. Why would they lower the cage in such choppy water? None of this makes sense to me.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Holy fuck. The only thing this trailer need to be effective is confirmation that Abraham Lincoln does indeed hunt vampires. It does so much more though. Along with a truly intense score and a handful of fantastic, period-specific fighting sequences, there are flaming train tracks WITH A TRAIN ON THEM. It doesn’t look like this movie is holding anything back. Oh, there is also a man who makes a tree explode with a single ax swing.

A couples notes:

• Mary Elizabeth Winstead is playing Mary Todd Lincoln. This may be the only instance in which there is a sexy Mrs. Lincoln.
• As a history major, I hope more than anything else that Stephen Douglass is the leader of the vampires.
• Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln will feed my superego, but this movie is going to feed my id.
• Nancy Hanks Lincoln was Abraham Lincoln’s mother, and the presence of her gravestone (er, gravewood?) suggests that she was either killed by vampires or has herself become a vampire.
• According to Wikipedia, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of milk sickness. She is also, apparently, the third cousin four times removed of Tom Hanks. That’s enough irreverence even before the inclusion of vampires.

Intruders

Leading a trailer by highlighting that the movie was directed by the director of 28 Weeks Later is a bad start. That movie had so many irrational decisions I don’t even know where to start. Every component of the premise was flawed. That’s neither here nor there though. This trailer appears to have a girl writing a scary story that happens to be happening to her. Is she writing it as it happens? Is it happening because she’s writing it? Are we supposed to believe it’s a coincidence? Whatever the deal is, she gets scared that Hollowface is in the house and informs her father, Clive Owen. He sees this monstrosity, but for some reason no one believes him. The natural progression would be to then ask the girl what happened, but since no one does that, it’s fair to assume something happened to her. What could have happened to her to keep her from responding but to not arouse suspicion from anyone else? I am genuinely intrigued, but if the conclusion winds up being some bullshit like, “We just changed the ending to the story in her diary,” I am going to be very upset.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Amazing Spider-Man

Let’s take a look at some of the characters we have in this trailer:

• Andrew Garfield as the witty but vulnerable Peter Parker, who makes criminals look foolish both physically and verbally.
• Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, doing all sorts of Emma Stone things.
• Denis Leary as her father, a dickish New York cop with an unflexible view of what’s right and wrong.
• Martin Sheen as Parker’s well-meaning, if distant, uncle Ben.
• Rhys Ifans as the slippery Dr. Curt Connors.

All of these characters are good roles for the actors playing them, and that is promising. While the trailer doesn’t appear to sway much from the formula in the previous three films, Garfield seems like a better fit as Spider-Man. Instead of Tobey Maguire’s nerdy awkwardness, Garfield looks comfortable in the role. He’s just as adept making fun of criminals as he is feeling insecure about his parents.

The Bourne Legacy

The first half of this trailer gives a mostly-obscured view of the transformation Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross goes through to become the agent he is. It’s very propaganda/brain wash-y, which fits for this series. Once we arrive at full screen, the transition from Matt Damon is completed with the quick line, “Jason Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg.” Oh, good. I’m glad you guys are so on top of this.

It turns out Aaron is far and away the best they’ve ever seen. Wasn’t Jason Bourne the best? Why do they keep losing track of their best agents? More importantly, why are they so unprepared when they lose them? This is the CIA, shouldn’t there be some protocol for handling … whatever it is that keeps happening? This is especially surprising because so many characters return for this movie, including David Strathairn’s Noah Vosen and Joan Allen’s Pam Landy. Still, rogue agent stories can only go on for so long, right?

Seeking a Friend at the End of the World

As odd a pair as Steve Carell and Keira Knightley look initially, they appear to have great chemistry in this trailer. Set against a world that will end in three weeks, they are both people looking for the ones they love to spend time with. Despite the heavy material, it is almost entirely a humorous trailer.

Not only does Carell’s character go into his (almost deserted) office, he still has to deal with office nonsense. Knightley’s character is introduced to us with the line, “Maybe I’ll run into you at an orgy or something.” Carell struggles with the language barrier and eventually gives up when attempting to tell his maid she doesn’t need to come any more. Along with some end-of-the-world hijinks plus a smattering of Patton Oswalt, Connie Britton, T.J. Miller, and Rob Huebel, makes it look like an exceptionally funny film.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Hunger Games

This is the first of two Super Bowl movie trailers (along with an Avengers trailers that shows us carnage and the faces of all of the protagonists) that came out this week. This trailer amplifies the emotion of the first theatrical trailer. Instead of showing us Effie’s (Elizabeth Banks) bubbly personality, we see her and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) expressing excitement and glee about the approach of the Games. Instead of showing Gale (Liam Hemsworth) carrying Prim (Willow Shields) away, we see her face as she screams. Instead of a brief shot of training, we see just how intensely Cato (Alexander Ludwig) maims a dummy. Instead of seeing Katniss’ (Jennifer Lawrence) fears about her own death we see just how worried she is about her family’s survival. The Capitol even looks more grandiose.

All of these components have developed nicely, but the biggest part of this trailer is the Mockingjay pin. In the book, Katniss did not give it to Prim. Madge Undersee gave it to Katniss after she volunteered to go into the games. Since no one is listed on IMDB as playing Madge Undersee, it appears that that plot has been changed for the sake of efficiency. It doesn’t make much difference in this movie, but there are a few references down the line that will have to be changed.

More worrisome though, right at the end Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) affixes the pin to Katniss’ clothing and makes it seem like she should keep quiet about it. In the book, she is freely allowed to wear it. If she weren’t, it would be removed immediately, because the Gamemakers have that power. The fact that it is made to seem like an illicit object hints towards revolution way too early in the trilogy’s arc.

A couple other exciting notes:

• We see a brief shot of Katniss, arrow taut on her bow, in the Hunger Games. That’s about as close as we’ve gotten to fighting footage from this film.
• We also hear the first reference to her as, “The Girl on Fire.” With that on the table, I’d like to mention something. I’ve been saying for months that Adele’s Set Fire to The Rain should be involved with this movie somehow, surely we can get that ball moving forward now? (I also apparently need to tweet about this connection again on February 12).

Lockout

Last week made it two weeks in a row that a major trailer came out after I finished this article. Damn you arbitrary (and self-imposed) deadlines! This trailer was worth it though. Why? Because Lockout appears to be the rare movie that is both ultra-clichéd and batshit insane.

To start, we have the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace) visiting a prison in space that is home to the world’s most criminally insane individuals. Now, women are often asked to wear loose clothing in low-security prisons to as not to rile up the inmates. With that in mind, sending someone as attractive as Maggie to a normal prison would require a certain deal of preparation and baggy clothing. In this prison, there probably shouldn’t ever be any women, let alone Maggie. The fact that she is the president’s daughter should also merit a flurry of security precautions. No one seems to think of any of this though. Not only is she dressed to the nines, SHE’S WEARING FUCKING JEWELRY.

Setting aside this horribly improbably beginning, the prison has become overrun by its inmates because a single inmate gets a single gun in an interrogation room. His possession of a gun inexplicably causes an explosion. I cannot fathom a reason for why security standards would be so lax or explosive materials would be so readily available. We don’t have time to ponder that question though, there’s too much to cover.

Apparently only one man capable of rescuing such a situation and saving the president’s daughter, Guy Pearce’s “Snow.” Naturally, “He’s the best there is, but he’s a loose cannon.” Great writing! Now, if I may ask a question, why is only one man permitted to save the president’s daughter and restore order to the most dangerous prison to ever exist? Aren’t there always “extraction teams” for situations like this? What are the various branches of the military doing about the situation? How about the guards in the prison? Have they all been killed? How did that happen? Also, the man who is apparently the best there is for a mission in space is afraid of heights.

Not crazy enough for you? How about the fact that, again, this orbiting jail (I love the idea, by the way. 22^nd century Alcatraz?) is home to the world’s most criminally insane individuals? Wait, if that’s not enough, the space station is apparently going to crash into the eastern seaboard as well.

I think I’m going to have to suspend my disbelief for this one.

G.I. Joe.

Here’s our other Super Bowl trailer. The majority of the trailer is The Rock quoting Jay-Z and then mindless action scenes flashing across the screen as we hear the portion of the song that The Rock just quoted. Make no mistake, this movie is the definition of mindless drivel. Instead of going down that road though, I would like to focus on the cliff scene once again. I just stopped having nightmares about why no one involved uses the weapon most perfectly suited to cut rope TO CUT THE ROPES THAT KEEP THEIR ENEMIES ALIVE, and now I see that no one is even trying to use their swords. “Hey look, I have this super sharp sword, why don’t I kick that guy in the head?” Also, Bruce Willis is now demanding that we call him Joe. This movie is too much for me. I need it to stop.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Jeff, Who Lives At Home

About eight minutes after this column was posted last week I became aware of this trailer. Thankfully, it has not wound up being a terrible oversight. This movie looks … good, but nothing more. It takes Jason Segel and Ed Helms, two of the most popular comedic actors today, and puts them both in straight, dramatic roles. What’s the draw? Segel plays the titular Jeff, and he does in fact live at home. Helms is his brother who, like all Ed Helms characters, finds out he is being cuckolded. This leads them through a series of events that may or may not be necessary, while references to destiny are sprinkled throughout. How can a movie be so hopeful when the core conflict appears to be infidelity? Also, why is Susan Sarandon so happy when the sprinklers go on in her office? Isn’t she worried about the ruination of her documents?

Darling Companion

This is a movie about a dog, which always a difficult proposition. The trailer does nothing to convince me that the movie can pull it off. After Diane Keaton and daughter Elisabeth Moss take in a stray dog, father/husband Kevin Kline reacts by being too incredulous and then losing any sense of incredulity. Moments later, the dog (the stray dog) runs away when Kline is taking him for a walk. Keaton loses her shit and blames this on Kline’s talking on the phone, because … the dog hates business calls? People are capable of paying attention to dogs while they’re on the phone. Whatever. Then, despite the dog just arriving in the family, everyone they know is rallied to find this dog. THEN, Ayelet Zurer’s character claims (based on intuition and/or craziness) that she can see that the dog, Freeway, is just fine. This leads to a search for the dog is presented as some sort of life-altering quest for a bunch of old people who only seem partially interested in finding Freeway. Even worse, he comedic timing in this sequence is cringe worthy. How can a cast with so many Academy Award winners and nominees (and Elisabeth Moss!) be so boring? Also, this movie comes out on 4/20. Talk about not knowing your audience.

Seeking Justice

After learning that his wife has been assaulted, Nicholas Cage’s character is approached by Guy Pearce’s character, who offers to kill the wife’s attacker. In exchange, Cage’s character will be asked to do “a favor” in the future. Since he has apparently never seen a movie, he agrees. What, did you think they would ask you to paint their house? Immediately after, Jones’ character is fine and Cage’s character is tasked with killing a sex offender. He balks, and then explains to his wife that he can’t go to the police about the situation because the shady outfit Pearce represents is filled with cops. Why didn’t they go to the cops in the first place? Have they no faith in due process? I understand she was injured, but she got better awfully quickly. Moving on, Cage is somehow able to outrun a careening truck on a highway. Impossible. Next up, he screams, “I’m done!” into a phone. If they can arrest you and charge you with murder, I’m pretty sure they say when you’re done, but whatever. Nicolas Cage is absurd, and this movie fits perfectly into everything else he has done recently. It may only appeal to anarchists, but I suppose that’s better than nothing.

Mirror, Mirror

When we last left Mirror, Mirror, it was presenting itself as the saccharine, less necessary Snow White film. This new international trailer offers more of that. While the focus is more on Snow White (Lily Colllins) and the Seven Dwarves, it goes through the same general beats while revealing a little bit more about a story that everyone already knows. Snow White and the Huntsman, it’s your move. To be fair though, you could release a trailer that is just two minutes of Kristen Stewart scowling and it would still be more interesting than this trailer.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Re5ident Evil: Retribution

Confession #1: I had to look it up to make sure that none of the other Resident Evil films had been subtitled “Retribution.” It sounds like something that’s already happened, right?

Confession #2: About 27 seconds into this trailer, I began to worry that I had actually been intently watching a mediocre advertisement. It joke went on too long.

Confession #3: I wish it went longer, because it was the only part of the trailer I could follow.

Confession #4: I’ve never watched any of the Resident Evil films, but five movies in, how is there still fighting going on?

Confession #5: I have no idea what is going on in this trailer. Milla Jovovich fires some guns, gunships also fire some bullets, and the world appears to be on fire. How has this conflict not been resolved yet?

Brake

As best I can tell from this trailer, this movie loved Buried as a claustrophobic setting, if not as a movie. Replacing Ryan Reynolds with Stephen Dorff may be a questionable decision, but is too soon to tell. He stars as a Secret Service agent trapped in a trunk by a terrorist with a countdown fetish. Beyond that, everything is pretty vague. He appears to have intermittent cell reception/connection to the outside. Meanwhile, the terrorist seems interested in finding Roulette, the frequently-changing location of the bunker the President is taken to in case of an emergency. The trailer tells us that very few people ever know the location of Roulette, which raises the question of why the terrorist thinks a Secret Service agent would know where it is. Is there more to him than meets the eye? I suppose it’s something to think about, but I’m far more worried about whatever was released into the trunk. Were those bees? Fruit flies? Something far more sinister? I know I would freak out in that situation.

Sassy Pants

There are a number of strange allusions to sexuality and gender stereotyping in this trailer:

• Ashley Rickards’ Bethany Pruitt, doesn’t care how her hair looks and intentionally screws up her makeup.
• Moments later (in trailer time, which could mean just about any period of time), her mother (played by Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn) insists her favorite color is pink, right as she tries on a red dress.
• Her mother makes a comment about her clothing looking like something her father would wear.
• The next cut informs us that her father is gay.
• In her search for a job, a passerby yells at her to show her tits while she holds a sign, and then she goes to apply for a job at a store called Jail Bait.
• Her interview there is a single question about relationships.
• After that, Haley Joel Osment appears to show up as a stereotypical gay best friend.

Honestly, I don’t know what all of this means. I don’t know why there needs to be so much focus on Bethany engaging in gender-normative behavior or why her only healthy relationships with men are with gay men. On top of all that, I don’t know why she is suddenly (and very briefly) sexualized while she is portrayed as a drab character for most of the trailer. Most of all, I don’t know if I want to see this movie. Is it really about a high school graduate with moderate problems trying to find a job? That’s all I could gather.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

LOL

I feel compelled to address this trailer because of Miley Cyrus’ presence in a relatively quiet trailer week. I was not disappointed. This trailer is fascinatingly plain. The only thing that sets it apart from hundreds of other films is the fact that people call Cyrus’ character Lola “Lol.” First of all, people wouldn’t do that. Secondly, the ham-fisted attempt to incorporate text speak is coming about eight years too late. There’s nothing edgy about showing IM abbreviations. Given the title, that is a surprisingly small portion of the trailer though. The rest goes through the tired ideas from the premise that, “Being a teenage girl is hard but not actually that hard.” There don’t seem to be any conflicts that are remotely worthwhile, although I say this sitting well outside the target demographic. Lol (I hate myself for acknowledging that) does tell an unnamed gentleman at the end of the trailer that he needs to have sex with her, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly understandable reason for that. Watch this trailer if you have nothing to do.

Moonrise Kingdom

I … I just don’t care. This trailer yells WES ANDERSON at you with every image, so if you’re into that, you’ll enjoy the trailer. I am not. It’s really just a collection of people acting and reacting in ways that make me feel uncomfortable more than anything else. Why can’t they act like normal people? I suppose the aim is nostalgia, but nostalgia for what? There are a few images not based in reality (the tree house, for example), what is that about? I can’t be nostalgic for fiction, Wes. I suppose this film deserves some credit because Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton and others are involved, but I’m just not seeing it.

Friends with Kids

This is the best trailer of the week, although it achieves its success more on potential than on actual entertainment value. The film’s cast is filled with veteran comedic talent. They are all good actors of course, but they don’t just say funny things, they have perfect timing. It is this timing that seeps through. Jon Hamm’s character’s reaction to the semi-ridiculous premise is perfect. The writing is plain, but he delivers it the best way possible. The trailer just makes me feel good. I have complete confidence that it will be funny and original. There are too many talented people (Adam Scott, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Jennifer Westfeldt, the cop from Bridesmaids) to fail. This trailer is too big to fail.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz

Upside Down

How are you feeling about sci-fi? Are you willing to suspend your disbelief? If not, just move on to the next trailer, because the premise of this movie is that there is one world separated from an upside down world below it by some sort of gravity barrier. Now, this is impossible because:

A) The worlds would destroy each other.

B) If they didn’t destroy each other, the only way for there to be some sort of gravity barrier between the worlds would be if they had the exact same mass, a statistical impossibility.

C) Again, the worlds would destroy each other.

D) The whole upside down thing doesn’t make sense.

It feels like a combination of Inception and In Time, as performed by our blandest stars (Jim Sturgess, Kirsten Dunst). On the bright side, this continues Dunst’s string (Melancholia) of starring in the ultra-specific, “planets dealing with other nearby planets” genre. How was she not one of the Frost Giants in Thor?

Thin Ice

Let’s just go through the beats of this trailer.

• Greg Kinnear finds himself in financial trouble, a point amplified by his annoyed secretary and locks-changing wife.
• In his travels, he comes across an old man who doesn’t realize he owns an expensive violin.
• Kinnear (his character, actually) resolves to steal said violin to cure his financial woes.
• Billy Crudup (also just the character he’s playing, probably) becomes involved in this caper and winds up assaulting (killing?) the old man.
• He cons Kinnear’s character into keeping quiet using a goddamn Polaroid camera. There’s obviously nothing Kinnear (ok, his character’s name is Mickey Prohaska) could do to thwart such an action.

From there, chaos ensues. At one point, the guy who played Russell Dalrymple (Bob Balaban) on Seinfeld shows up. Did you know he’s been working consistently for almost forty years? I had no idea. There’s not much rhyme or reason to this section of the trailer beyond showing us that Prohaska is in a whole lot of trouble. Also, Billy Crudup is a fantastic actor.

ATM

We (well, me) only had room for one “mysterious figure terrorizing people in the dark” trailer this week. Sorry Elizabeth Olsen. Maybe next time. Anyway, this trailer opens with the irreparably clichéd, “Life’s about choices man, and one bad one can ruin every good one you’ve ever made.” THEY UNDERSTAND FORESHADOWING YOU GUYS. The trailer then leaves the party “after midnight.” What kind of young people are these? Midnight is early. Whatever.

Our three principles Josh Peck (you know him), Alice Eve (you know her), and Brian Geraghty (you probably don’t know him) pull up to what might be the most isolated ATM I’ve ever seen. After retrieving cash (why not just use the debit card to get food?) they realize a hooded figure is watching. Creeped out by this creepy creep, they pause in the ATM. Then, in a fortuitous turn of HOLYFUCKIMAMURDERER, a homeless man (or possibly just a guy getting his dog) shows up for the hooded figure to stab to death. Suitably freaked out, our heroes decided to stay in the ATM. Now, given that Hooded Figure’s only apparent weapon is a knife, I would think making a run for it would be the best option. Why isn’t calling 911 the best option? Because no one brought their cell phone into the ATM. That’s the point where my disbelief stops being suspended.

Sadly, the trailer continues. Hooded Figure proceeds to kill a security guard, turn off the heat (ATMs have heat?) in the ATM, flood it with water (ATMs have reservoirs?), and pull a car up to the door to lock them in. I don’t buy any of this. Just stop, whoever made this trailer.

Dan Spritz / Cherry On Top / @DanSpritz