Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Movie News- New Trailer Reviews

There's been a gaggle of new movie trailers out this week and it's my job to watch them all for you and give my two cents. We've got 2011 and 2012 releases showing off teasers and snippets and I've had way too much fun sifting through them all to find the most anticipated. So let's take a look shall we?

1. Arthur Christmas (November 23, 2011)
        A cute British Christmas movie about the son of Santa Claus, Arthur Christmas, who has to finish an important mission before Christmas morning. The teaser trailer was released several months ago, last December before Christmas in fact, and now Sony Pictures Animation has released another much cuter teaser about Arthur showing the audience what Christmas preparations go on during the summer. It's fun and will appeal to families. James McAvoy seems to be having a LOT of fun voicing Arthur Christmas and he is joined by a brilliant British cast including Hugh Laurie (House), Jim Broadbent (Moulin Rouge), Bill Nighy (Love, Actually), Imelda Staunton (Professor Umbridge from the Harry Potter franchise).




2. Disney's John Carter (March 9, 2012)
                Based on the character from the Barsoom series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, this movie tells the story of John Carter, played by Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch, who is transported to Mars and must take over saving the planet from conflicts between its people. It sounds slightly interesting, but after Disney's Prince of Persia was unimpressive with critics and at the box office, it'll be a long journey to the top for this film. John Carter features an all-star cast just like Prince of Persia with Thomas Haden Church (Easy A), Willem Dafoe (Spiderman) and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad).



3. Hugo (November 23, 2011)
             Here's another November 23rd release: a 3D tale about an orphan boy who lives in a Paris train station who tries to discover mysteries about his recently deceased father with the help of a young girl who unknowingly can provide answers. It's a family adventure adapted from the best-selling novel, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" and can anyone guess who it's directed by? The master of family adventure himself, Martin Scorcese! Wait a minute... that doesn't sound right... Why is the man who is famous for dark movies like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Shutter Island and The Departed doing a children's movie? I have no idea but that's what makes this film intriguing for me. This film also boasts a fantastic group of actors (like all Scorcese films): Chloe Grace Morez (Kick-Ass, Let Me In), Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat), Christopher Lee (the Lord of the Rings trilogy), Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) all have important roles in the film and Jude Law plays the deceased father. The trailer is beautiful and gives the right amount of child wonderment and excitement to interest me as an audience member.




4. The Thing (October 14, 2011)
          The earliest release on our list, this is NOT a remake of the brilliant 1980 John Carpenter film that blended the lines between science fiction and horror (much like the Aliens franchise). In fact, this film takes place three days before the events of the first film, when a group of Norwegian and American scientists find the alien for the first time. The lead is a girl this time around, Mary Elizabeth Winstead from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World plays American scientist Kate Lloyd who has to try and destroy the alien who can mimic any other life form. If we know anything from the 1980 movie, we know that all of the old crew is dead so we may already know the ending to this film. Nonetheless, the trailer is sufficiently creepy and it seems Mary Elizabeth Winstead is capable of carrying this science horror flick on her shoulders.




5. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (December 16, 2011)
            This is one of the three highly anticipated films and trailers that I'll be showing this week. After a fairly successful critical release and a great success at the box office, it seemed like a no-brainer that the 2009 Sherlock Holmes would garner a sequel. But how were they going to top the first in terms of villainy? Well in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows it seems Holmes will be facing the teased about villain from the first film, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris). Other plot developments include Watson's wedding and subsequent honeymoon and a lot more homoerotic jokes and shenanigans. There seems to be one significant change from the first film to its sequel: No Rachel McAdams. Instead, the female leads seems to be Noomi Rapace who gained fame after starring in the successful Girl with Dragon Tattoo films in Sweden (the first of which is being remade in English for release this December by The Social Network's David Fincher). As usual, the trailer is more comedy than plot but that's the fun with these Sherlock movies.



6. The Dark Knight Rises (July 20, 2012)
           So this is the teaser the world has been waiting for. It was released as a part of the trailer package during Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and now it's finally up online. After the great poster for The Dark Knight Rises, the trailer is a bit underwhelming. It has some great images of Tom Hardy as the villain Bane and a great final snippet of Batman looking slightly frightened as he fights Bane but overall, all we get is this weezy dialogue from Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon telling what sounds like Bruce Wayne to bring Batman back. This obviously means Batman has been completely out of the public eye this whole time after being accused of murdering Harvey Dent in the last film. The image from the poster of the bat symbol made with the Gotham City skyscrapers is a nice touch. No matter what, I'm still extremely excited for this film if only for the director and the cast alone. Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and all of the other favorites return along with some talented new faces added: Tom Hardy (Inception), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer, Inception), Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada, Rachel Getting Married), and Marion Cotillard (Inception) are all involved in the final Chris Nolan bat adventure.


For anyone who couldn't understand the dialogue in the trailer, here it is. 
Commissioner Gordon: "We were in this together. And then you were gone. Now this evil rises. The Batman has to come back."
Bruce Wayne: "What if he doesn't exist anymore?"
Commissioner Gordon: "He must. He must."


7. The Amazing Spider Man (July 3, 2012)
             Now this might be the most exciting trailer for me. After all the talk of how bad this new Spiderman reboot might be, we finally get some images from the film and a new teaser trailer that should quiet down many of the naysayers out there. Andrew Garfield, the extremely talented star of The Social Network, is cast perfectly as the nerdy but lovable Peter Parker and Easy A's Emma Stone looks beautiful as Parker's first love Gwen Stacy. We see the origin story again but this time we get snippets of the mystery behind why Peter Parker ends up living with his aunt and uncle. I'm not too familiar with this particular story from this comic books so I'll be interested to see what the film does here. I will admit I had some doubts when it was announced that 500 Days of Summer director Marc Webb would be directing this gigantic budget film as his sophomore project but after seeing the darker atmosphere of this teaser, I'm definitely less skeptical. Here's yet another film with a brilliant cast: Martin Sheen (The West Wing), Sally Field (Brothers & Sisters), Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill), Denis Leary (Rescue Me), Irrfan Khan (Slumdog Millionaire).

Judge for yourselves- I've added some pictures (courtesy of Entertainment Weekly's Spiderman Gallery) and the teaser:




Now the teaser:


That's all the major trailers I have for this week. Hopefully we'll get to see clips from more anticipated releases soon!

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