Reel Previews

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Reel Previews: Rubber (2011)

I love movie trailers – come deconstruct them with me!

(Don’t cloud your judgement! Watch the trailer then read my rant.)

Rubber (April 01 2011* |Magnet Releasing)

*US Release date. Shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 2010.

(Advanced apologies for the sailor cussin’. It is necessary, as you’ll see in the trailer above/review below).

My first exposure to this movie was the poster. Very different from the orange and blue movie posters currently dominating the walls of cinemas these days. The thumbnail on the Apple trailers site was so small, I couldn’t see the tagline. I simply assumed that it was some sort of documentary on the millions of tires choking landfills and making our planet a sad and dirty place to live. For a split second prior to this I also thought of condoms (rubber, condoms, geddit?! Mind perpetually in the gutter, or just feeling horny these days? Hmm….*rubs chin*).

But assumptions make an ass out of the person doing the assuming, and I felt like an idiot thinking that this was some sort of environmental wake-up call to the materialistic masses. This is not a documentary.

Rubber Movie Poster
The poster has a grindhouse feel, doesn't it?

My first clue was at the very beginning of the trailer, when the fucking tire spins and gets up and starts rolling itself down the fucking road going on his merry way whatthefuckisthisfuckeryhisnameisRobert?!?!

So yeah, colour me confused. And really, really fascinated. Because he gets pulled over. By Babylon – *cough* I mean, the cops. The tire turns around and fucking blows the head of one of the cops to fucking smithereens ohmyholyshitiamdyingthisishilarious!

Just give me a sec while I catch my breath and wipe the tears from my eyes.

Okay! So this is a horror movie about a killer tire. If that isn’t the higher heights of brilliancy, I don’t know what is. And so, on the movie’s premise alone, I know that this is a must-see film. But does the rest of the trailer hold up to my heightened expectations? I mean, what are you supposed to expect from a movie about a murderous car part?

I suppose this could be a horror-comedy hybrid that the filmmakers, after puffing up some high grade hydro spliffs, though would be good for a laugh, not realizing that you’re not supposed to go through with any ideas you come up with when you’re high. Or it can a serious avant-garde film with deep themes and other bullshit that would just go over my head.

A brilliant idea then occurred to me and I tried a little thought experiment: re-watch the trailer again, but pretend that the tire is a person. How would I perceive the trailer then? Turns out, it was kinda hard to do. The film does look like a mixture of camp and artistic, though. The camp definitely comes from the tire itself, as well as the numerous jokes such as the briefing with the cops (“Is it black?” HAHAHA!) and the obligatory horror/suspense movie shower scene (around the 1:14 mark). But the cinematography and editing look like top notch indie film material.

I actually feel sorry for the damn tire when he forlornly stares at the fire at the 1:54 mark. Did he see the injustice of it all and then turn on mankind à la Falling Down? Is this a complex character study of a good tire gone bad? And just who the hell is this ‘visionary’ filmmaker Quentin Dupieux and his composers Mr. Oizo and Gaspard Augé? (Hint: one of these things is not like the others.) This is so confusing! Movies as ridiculous as this should look and sound shitty and have terrible, cringe-worth acting. And yet, it doesn’t seem to have any of these traits.

My final judgement is that it probably doesn’t matter; I will be seeing this (if I can) whatever the filmmaker’s intentions. Do you think the trailer sold you on the movie? Because it surely fucking did for me!

If you missed them, read the previous installments of Reel Previews here (The Mechanic) and here (Winnie-The-Pooh).

Reel Previews: The Mechanic (2011)

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I love movie trailers – come deconstruct them with me!

(Don’t cloud your judgement! Watch the trailer then read my rant.)

The Mechanic (January 28 2011 | CBS Films)

Years ago, I was bored and happened to flip to a local channel showing some seventies movie with Charles Bronson in it. I thought it was going to be lame, old-timey shit.

I was wrong.

That movie was The Mechanic, and it was fucking badass. The details of the plot are hard for me to remember, but simply reciting the movie’s title summons a soft blanket woven with fond memories of badassery over my heart.

A similar situation happened with El Mariachi; having never heard of it, nor having seen any plot-spoiling trailers for it, I watched El Mariachi one idle night on that same local channel with expectations so low, it was digging quite successfully to China. Needless to say, I was blown away by its majesty (and by the fact, which I only found out later, that it was the precursor to Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico).

Now there’s a remake of The Mechanic, starting Jason Statham.

I guess you can cue the sad violin and sense of foreboding, right? A remake is cruel, surprize buttsecks to the cherished films of yore, right? Well…I dunno. The Mechanic actually seems suited to a modern retelling. The plot is simple enough – sophisticated assassin takes on an apprentice (and hijinks ensue!). You can go interesting places with an outline like that.

The problem is that this new version looks like it goes to the least interesting corner of the Imagination Station. The original version had an almost meditative quality, which had the effect of making the violence even more chilling. The Wikipedia page for the original has a little note on the existentialism of the film, ferchrissake! But the trailer for the new version is hardly Zen-like. Almost instantly after the green rating card disappears you get wacked over the head with the sound of a pulsating electric guitar. You know, ‘cuz rock music makes everything cooler.

Quick cuts in the beginning showcase the lead character’s résumé of death screaming “Hire me! Hire me, bitch!” Bronson’s Mechanic would need no such brazen excessiveness. He’d kill your enemy’s dog and make it look like it accidentally choked on its favourite chew toy if you asked him for an employment reference.

The rest of the trailer is an infodump of gadgets and violence that leads me to believe that this movie will sink into the bowels of mediocrity. Case in point: “Time to take your training to the next level.” What the fuck is this, Training from Hell?! I’ll give the trailer’s tagline (“A good mechanic is hard to find.”) a pass, though. Because it’s true. Jason Statham may be a mechanic, but I doubt he’s a good one. It’s not that I don’t like him as an actor. He just doesn’t seem like the spiritual successor to Bronson. So keep on looking, folks! Nothing to see here!

Taken by itself, this is an exciting trailer that piques your interest in the movie, no doubt about that. Flashy action isn’t bad by itself, but come on…so many modern action movies are like that. The 1972 movie was special because it transcended the tired clichés that films about assassins are wont to slip into. Will the 2011 version do the same? If the trailer’s any indication, probably not. That’s a shame for badass lovers everywhere.

Reel Previews: Winnie The Pooh (2011)

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I love movie trailers – come deconstruct them with me!

(Note: Don’t cloud your judgement! Watch the trailer, then read my rant.)

Winnie The Pooh (July 15 2011 | Walt Disney Pictures)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2Wtpphk_Ss&feature=fvst

When I read that there was going to be a new Winnie The Pooh movie, I GOL’d. I actually Groaned Out Loud. Call me cynical, but for an industry that’s currently taking all the sacred memories of my childhood and butchering them (case in point: Smurfs!) I barely had any hope for this.

I began to watch the trailer and WHAT THE WUT? Is that frickin’ Copperplate Gothic Bold they’re using? I’m not an expert, but I like to think of myself as a font whore. I love fonts. But Copperplate Gothic Bold belongs in whatever circle of hell Times New Roman resides. So now the trailer looks cheap. Damn you Hollywood Bastards™!

But then…I saw the animation…I oooohed and aaaahed…simply exquisite. It’s as if E. H. Shepard came back from the grave to animate the backgrounds (I can stare at them for hours). Not that he would, were he to rise from the dead; apparently he came to resent Pooh Bear because it overshadowed his other work.

The voice acting sounds similar to previous incarnations, with one notable exception: Christopher Robin is British! Correct me if I’m wrong, but CR has never had a British accent in any of Disney’s Winnie the Pooh adaptations. Purists rejoice! Not that the real CR would care, were he to rise from the dead also. CR thought his father stole his childhood and made money off of it.

But back to the trailer, which isn’t as depressing as real life. Font bitching aside, I really liked this trailer. Some parts are whimsical, like Piglet knocking letters off a page, or goofy, like Eeyore getting a new tail. Did I mention the backgrounds? I wish I could snort it like cocaine. Most of all, I got a warm, fuzzy feeling in my jaded little heart. I got goosebumps. I got a longing to see this movie. And I got a craving to read the books all over again.