Amy's Robot

Three good trailers

Just before watching The Devil Wears Prada (finally) last week, I saw trailers for three movies that looked interesting. Although we all know that the trailers almost always make the movie seem better than it is, I am uncynically hoping that these movies will be as good as they appear to be.

The Departed. The latest from Martin Scorsese features Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jack Nicholson in a contemporary piece about the Irish mob in Boston. If you're familiar with the story of Whitey Bulger, the plot elements might seem somewhat familiar: One cop is undercover with the mob; another is leaking information about the investigation to the criminals. Nicholson is the Bulger figure, and the young'uns are the two cops. Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, and Martin Sheen turn up, too. From what I could see in the trailer, it's a Scorcese film that at times looks like it was shot by Michael Mann: sleek, modern, and teeth-grittingly tense. Trailer.

Children of Men. Set in the near future, Clive Owen occupies an almost-apocalyptic world that seems to draw in equal parts from 28 Days Later, War of the Worlds, and V for Vendetta. But instead of zombies or aliens who haven't gotten their flu shots, humanity faces a more passive problem: Women can't have babies. The youngest human is 18 years old, and there are no more in the queue. Looks like we're going the way of the dinosaurs and dodo birds until Clive's ex-wife Julianne Moore shows up with a surprise: newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey (I think) is in tow, looking very lovely and very pregnant. Clive's job? He has to escort the world's only expectant mother to the safe harbor of "The Human Project," a bunch of M.D./Ph. D.'s who've been trying to figure out why nobody can get knocked up. Apparently, there are those who don't want Clive to accomplish this mission, and he has to come up with ordinary-man-in-extraordinary-circumanstances maneuvers to get Mary to the manger in time for Christmas. Let me guess: he makes it. Despite the extreme probability of a happy ending, I think the fun in this one will be in the journey and the "What if...?" nature of the basic plot. Trailer.

Babel, aka We are Totally Fucking Fucked. It's Syriana meets Midnight Express meets Home Alone in this insane-looking international thriller starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Brad and wife Cate are in an Arab country where they don't speak the language. Then Cate gets shot, they can't communicate with anyone, she's bleeding to death, and they are totally fucking fucked. But it gets worse: back home, their kids' nanny attempts to take them across the border to Mexico where they'll be safe, but instead she gets arrested by border control and no one knows what the hell is going on with the kids, including Brad and Cate. The trailer almost had me in tears in the first 60 seconds. Trailer.

categories: Movies
posted by adm at 10:31 PM | #