Currently Coming Soon at a Theater Near You

The following are the trailers I saw at the theater this week when I saw Babel/Smokin' Aces. Each link takes you to a site where you can watch the trailers yourself.


Shooter — a story that could only happen in the movies. Mark Wahlberg plays one of the five best snipers in the world, recruited to help stop an assassination that only he or the four other dudes who shoot real good could do. This is, in all regards, dumb. The only reason you'd need Wahlberg's character is to frame him, which is exactly what Danny Glover's character does. Wahlberg's character's supposed to be smart and tough and resourceful, but if he went to the movies once in a while he'd know he's totally getting hosed here. The rest of the movie has him on the lam trying to prove his innocence while shooting people (it's in the title after all) from very long distance.

The trailer rather blatantly tries to sell the picture as The Bourne Identity meets The Fugitive. For all I know the producers sold Paramount by telling them it'd be Bourne Identity meets The Fugitive so this is quite certainly intentional.

Reign Over Me — This is the curious picture in which Adam Sandler grieves over a family he lost during 9/11. Interestingly, the trailer makes no mention of that event: though it's quite clearly set in Manhattan, and we know Sandler has lost his family, the exact cause isn't given. Obviously, Sony doesn't think that's a great selling point for the movie.

It's still kind of ridiculous to me that Adam Sandler, the guy who once punched out Bob Barker in a celebrity golf tournament, is now our most sincere and unironic sentimentalist; even his last crowd-pleasing comedy, Click, was a completely heartfelt and, at times, oppressively mushy ode to familial bonding. In this one he gets to play a guy whose lost that all-important family bond and who becomes a bit of a mental patient. With a big mop of messy hair, he kinda looks like a really mopey Bob Dylan. Don't think twice, movie audiences, it's all right.


Hot Fuzz — From the guys who did Shaun of the Dead comes a movie by the guys who did Shaun of the Dead. Not as immediately appealing a premise (star Simon Pegg plays a disgraced cop sent to a sleepy town where he thinks a serial killing spree is underway) and I'm half sure I've seen this movie before and it starred Robert De Niro and maybe Eddie Murphy and was completely terrible. But whatever. These guys did Shaun of the Dead.


Zodiac — At last a new movie from David Fincher and it's...a period Se7en. Or at least, that's what the trailer sells it as. Still unsure whose head will wind up in the box at the end of the movie, or the full meaning of the enigmatic image on the poster. But it's got a good cast and Fincher's presence, and he made Alien 3. And other movies that were actually good.


Ocean's Thirteen My guess is a lot of people will think "Another one?" — after the poorly received Ocean's Twelve (which I actually liked almost as much as the original) Soderbergh and company have probably outstayed their welcome. But I couldn't be more pleased; particularly because of the addition of Al Pacino, an ideal casting choice, and the apparent lack of Catherine Zeta-Jones, who was an unquestioned damper on the last one. Everybody else is back (except Julia Roberts apparently) including composer David Holmes, whose swaggeringly cool music is an absolutely vital (but often overlooked) aspect to the series' success.