Trailer Park: The Comedy: Waiting for All the Bad Reviews to End; The Sapphires- Living the Australian Dream Inside the American War

The Comedy is a drama about being stupid, depressed, rich and bored.   To its credit its first trailer proudly touts its negative reviews, a form of truth in advertising and a bit of reverse psychology.  Let me add my own negative review:  “The Comedy is the first movie that made me want to sit through Dumb and Dumber more and morer”.  Let me hear your bad reviews.

The Sapphires based on the play of the same name, takes place in 1968 and tells the story of four Australian aboriginal girls who are plucked from obscurity by a talent scout (Chris O’Dowd) and packaged as the answer to The Supremes.  The Vietnam War era setting gives a slight anti-American, anti-imperialist edge to things while still keeping The Sapphires squarely in  the overcoming all obstacles (racial, cultural in particular) to success fable.   Framing the story about finding The Australian Dream in the wreck of The American Dream lends the trailer a bitter-sweet edge.

The To Do List- Getting Through the Boys List to College

The women proudly claimed a form of the guy’s night out comedy for themselves in the recent trailer for That’s What She Said.  Now it’s the girl’s turn.  The To Do List lists has all the same bucket list items in the typical young male seeking to lose his virginity comedy plus the annoyance mixed with sweetness and rude comic sex situations and hopefully the PG-13 rating that will make it a teen girl guilty pleasure.  Rachel Bilson, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Scott Porter, Connie Britton, Clark Gregg, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Donald Glover, Johnny Simmons, Sarah Steele and Alia Shawkat co-star in the film which comes out Valentine’s Day 2013.

Comic Tandem: Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers and Joe Dante’s The Hole

Anyone who is a fan of director Ben Wheatley’s sick little joke of a horror movie Kill List will like The Sightseers.  Bobcat Goldthwait explored this kind of roadtrip earlier this year in God Bless America, giving it a political edge that idled the movie into one note repetition.  Wheatley seems content to ditch the commentary and keep the deadpan.   But can he give the film variety?  The evidence seems to suggest that death becomes him.

Joe Dante has been looking for a film with Gremlins potential since 1990.  The Hole might be his delightful return to comic horror form.  Bottomless pit, curious kids and little tiny horrors sprouting from the hole that echo the kids’ deepest fears and provide for endless morbidly comic rifts of standard horror staples—sounds like the right formula.  If the mayhem starts because they got them wet and fed them after midnight, I’m in.

That’s What She Said- Red Band and Green Band Trailers- Girls Will Be Boys If You Let Them

The red band trailer makes the three women (Anne Heche, Marcia Debonis, Alia Shawkat) look like three men on the prowl- a comedy starring women but with an abrasive style that tries to appeal to men.  The Anne Heche character seems to be fully into her man vibe.

The green band feature softens them and unfortunately “whines” them down, turning their hysterics into that unfortunate time of the month “period “piece.

Red Band trailer:

Green Band trailer:

Passion: De Palma’s New Sexy Lesbian French Kiss Remake

Noomi Rapace unique angular faciality and soft spoken English with hint of  her native Swedish lilt lets her wander both sides of the heroine/femme fatale line in the trailer for Passion, Brian De Palma’s Passion,  a remake of the Alaine Corneau french erotic thriller Love Crime a few years back about office politics that turns literally cutthroat.   Rachel McAdams plays the other side of the revenge and lust equation, with a freaky looking porcelain mask providing kinky accompaniment.  De Palma has both an erotic masterpiece (Dress to Kill) and a limp dud in (Femme Fatale) in his directing past.   As long as De Palma stays close to his Hitchcockian roots, the results are pretty entertaining.

Butter: Jennifer Garner Channels Michelle Bachman and Goes Down the Slippery Moral/Political Slope

Jennifer Garner channels Michelle Bachman in the semi-political satire Butter about Laura, a woman with political ambitions married to Bob (Ty Burrell), a butter sculptor champion par excel-lance but in an affair with stripper Tokyo Rose (Olivia Wilde).  Laura must keep her marriage together, her political ambitions alive, all while fending off a new child butter master (Yara Shahidi) challenging Bob  for the title of Butter champion.  Aside from cooking and Marlon Brando’s  ingenious use of the spread on Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris, this is the third best use of butter that I can think of.   Hugh Jackman shows up as a car salesman who takes a shine to Laura.  Opens limited in October.

Poster Board: New Looper Poster Puffs Around Time Travel’s Dark Side

The newest Looper poster finally gets real about the destructiveness of trying to kill your future self.  Parts of you just go up in smoke. Bruce Willis is the future self and Joseph Gordon Levitt the past ( or is it the present self?).  Experts in time travel theory– known as sci-fi writers and other directors who have done time travel movies– were consulted to make sure everything was logically fantastical.  Of course, no one as yet, has been able to see what the future has in store, but expect it to be more exciting than you think.   Watch your  hourglass for Looper’s premier approximately  864 flips from now.

Poster Board: Lincoln- Like Watching History; Reds 2- Which Shadows Will Show For The Sequel?

The first poster for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln highlights the uncanny makeup job done on Daniel Day-Lewis.  The rest is acting, the full absorption of a character.  The somber adaptation  of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, concentrating on the final four months of the 16th US president’s life, where he was at the end of the Civil War and on the point of outlawing slavery for good comes to life November 16th everywhere.

The Reds 2 poster features the shadows of the cast calmly walking into the fiery inferno happening down the street.  It’s a quaint way of showing that the producers have no clue about which original stars will be coming or going.   The movie is in pre-production and is not schedule to shoot until next spring.  The final cast is still in negotiations and may or may not star Helen Mirren, Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary Louise Parker,  Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Neal McDonough and Byung-hun Lee.

Trailer Park Double: 10 Years– Channing Tatum and Wife Try Not To Replay Magic Mike; The Letter- The James Franco Psycho Flick

Channing Tatum and his real wife (Jenna Dewan-Tatum)  play a couple on the edge of getting married until Channing meets an old flame (Rosario Dawson) at his 10 year high school reunion.  Jenna is making sure that there will be no Magic Mike-ing this time around.    The ensemble comedy also features Max Minghella doing the obligatory James Franco in glasses impersonation.  Chris Pratt, Kate Mara, Lynn Collins, Justin Long, Oscar Isaac and Ari Graynor fill out the rest of the senior class.

James Franco in his effort to become the Nicolas Cage of all independent cinema good, bad and in between stars in The Letter, the middle group of 13 films he will appear in 2012 and 2013.   Franco is the psycho to Winona Ryder’s psychette playwright who thinks she is being stalked in both her dreams and waking life.  Sounds like a VOD then straight to DVD artistic failure.

Trailer Park: The Impossible- Keeping the Human Spirit Alive Without Going to the Schlock Side

The Impossible is almost a complete atonement for AJ Barona’s first film, the minor horror classic The Orphanage.  Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star in this inspired by true events story about a family’s struggle to find each other after a tsunami flushes them apart.  If the title or the Michelangelo echo of the poster doesn’t clue you in to an uplifting drama about the human spirit and one family’s love for each other to do the impossible, the trailer which stops short of schlock will.  I prefer to see it as how God’s heart works in humanity during mankind’s greatest disasters.  The Impossible opens limited December 21st.