Flying, Spidering, Roaring, Zerging.

As a follow-up to the ambitious and underrated Cloud Atlas, the siblings Wachowski return to their manga-centric sci-fi roots in this first trailer for Jupiter Ascending, with Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, and James D’Arcy. Hrm…looks a bit like The Fifth Element, art direction wise, and Kunis sure does seem to fall off things a lot. Anyway, I’m in.

Also in the trailer bin of late, Spiderman (Andrew Garfield) makes at least three more enemies — we’ll get to a Sinister Six soon, no doubt — in Rhino (Paul Giamatti), Electro (Jamie Foxx) and the Green Goblin (Dane De Haan) in the first teaser for Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spiderman 2, also with Emma Stone, Sally Field, and Campbell Scott. After Chronicle, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Kill Your Darlings, I’m a mite tired of DeHaan, to be honest, but I’ll grant that his schtick does work well for Harry Osborne.

Update: And another I missed on the first sweep: David Strathairn gamely rallies the paratroopers in the atmospheric trailer for Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla reboot, also with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe. I prefer the leaked one with the Oppenheimer voiceover (“I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds,” bringing the thunder lizard back to its Hiroshima roots), but I can see how that might’ve been too edgy for a summer blockbuster.

Update 2: Tom Cruise cosplays Starcraft, and gets some mechanized infantry pro-tips from Emily Blunt, in the first trailer for Doug Liman’s The Edge of Tomorrow, a badly-named adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s All You Need is Kill. Eh, maybe.

Update 3: Matthew McConaughey and Christopher Nolan celebrate the dream of flight in a brief and relatively vague teaser for Interstellar, also with Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, John Lithgow, David Gyasi, Wes Bentley, and David Oyelowo. As it says, one year from now.

Update 4: Speaking of gamely rallying folks, Gary Oldman tries to get San Francisco’s few remaining humans to chin up against those damn dirty apes in the first teaser for Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, also with Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Judy Greer, and, of course, Andy Serkis. The first one was surprisingly ok, and this can’t be worse than Oldman’s last dystopian epic, The Book of Eli, so I’ll likely matinee it.

Update 5: A few more come down the pike for the holiday film season: First up, computer genius Johnny Depp goes the way of the The Lawnmower Man in this short teaser for Wally Pfister’s Transcendence, also with Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy, Clifton Collins Jr., and Cole Hauser. The Matrix-style binary is a bit of a cliché at this point, but Pfister has done memorable work as Nolan’s cinematographer, so I’m optimistic.

And, following up on the first trailer of a few months ago, Wes Anderson introduces us to the cast of characters of The Grand Budapest Hotel, among them Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Almaric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saiorse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, and Tony Revolori.

Heard You Like Wes Anderson…

Hyperbole is lazy, I know. Still, I’m not sure it’s possible, given what we know of physics, to construct a more Wes Anderson-y trailer than the trailer for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, starring Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Almaric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saiorse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, and Tony Revolori.

That’s not a dis, mind you — I’ll definitely be seeing this. Even if I keep presuming we’ve already reached Peak Anderson, the only movie of his that really left me cold was Darjeeling Limited (although Bottle Rocket didn’t feel fully formed, and The Life Aquatic could’ve been better too.) But with Rushmore, Tenenbaums, Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom on the positive side of the ledger, I’m still in for more. Besides, what a cast.

Sounds and Furies.

In today’s trailer bin, Guillermo del Toro tries to out-Bay Bayhem in the new trailer for Pacific Rim, a.k.a. Monsters vs. Robots, with Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Rinko Kikuchi, Clifton Collins Jr., Burn Gorman, Willem Dafoe, and GLaDOS. Hrm, ok. This looks ridiculous, and I’d rather just see a straight-up Del Toro Cthulhu film, but I suppose this’ll do until the trouble gets here.

If giant robots aren’t your bag, how about some Faulkner? For his directorial debut, James Franco aims to bring to life As I Lay Dying, also with Tim Blake Nelson, Danny McBride, Logan Marshall-Green, Richard Jenkins, Ahna O’Reilly, and Beth Grant. Haven’t read the book myself, but this might be interesting — I’d have gone with a different font, tho.

Starbuck, Riddick; Riddick, Starbuck. After misfiring several years ago with The Chronicles of Riddick, David Twohy and Vin Diesel apparently set to remake Pitch Black again, given the new trailer for Riddick — also with Katee Sackhoff, Karl Urban (who’ll presumably explain what happened since end of the last film), and a bunch of creature fodder (Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine, Jordi Molla, Noah Danby, Nolan Gerard Funk). Er…this looks…no.

Meanwhile, Foley artist Toby Jones discovers working on a Dario Argento-style giallo film isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in this trailer for Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio, with Tonia Sotiropoulou, Cosimo Fusco, and Suzy Kendall. Looks like somebody’s seriously bucking for that Sound Editing Oscar…

Presumably sick of playing second fiddle to Kevin Spacey on House of Cards, Robin Wright sells her persona to Harvey Keitel and Danny Huston in this look at Ari Folman’s The Congress, also with Kodi Smit-McPhee, Sami Gayle, and Christopher B. Duncan. Wasn’t expecting traditional animation after the intriguing set-up.

Elsewhere in the Cineplex, Rachel McAdams is falling in love with time travelers again in the trailer for Richard Curtis’ About Time, with Domhnall Gleeson, Bill Nighy, Lindsay Duncan, and Tom Hollander. I like the cast, I like Sliding Doors, but I still haven’t forgiven Curtis for Love, Actually, so this, as with the last two above, will likely be a Netflixer.

And, since I somehow missed this last month, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke check in again with Celine and Jesse in the official trailer for Before Midnight. Vaguely spoiler-y, in that this basically tells you what happened after Nina Simone in Paris nine years ago. But hopefully the journey is the reward with this one.

Age and its Discontents.

Another slew of new arrivals in the summer trailer bin:

With a little help from his friends (Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Mary-Louise Parker), Bruce Willis eases out of retirement from the Company in the trailer for Robert Schwentke’s Red (formerly a Warren Ellis comic, apparently), also with Julian Glover and Karl Urban. Eh, could be fun.

Todd Solondz offers up another misanthropic and probably-funny smorgasbord of quirky, highly damaged people in the trailer for his Life During Wartime, with Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, Ciaran Hinds, Paul Reubens, Michael K. Williams, Ally Sheedy, and Charlotte Rampling.

For the sake of completion, the trailer for Paul Weitz’s Little Fockers, a.k.a. Meet the Parents 3, with Ben Stiller, Teri Polo, Robert DeNiro, Blythe Danner, Barbara Streisand, Jessica Alba, Laura Dern, and Harvey Keitel. Didn’t see the last one, won’t be seeing this one…particularly after that hard-to-watch Sustengo lameness.

Captain Kinsey and the Phantom’s Treasure.

Several new trailers have emerged since the last update around here: Along with a new look at Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (looks bluescreen-ish, to be sure), Liam Neeson channels Alfred Kinsey, Joel “I tanked the Batman franchise” Schumacher goes after Phantom of the Opera, and Nicolas Cage, Sean Bean, and Helen of Troy undertake a search for political booty in National Treasure. Of these new three, I might pay money to see Kinsey.

Adaptation.

Caught a number of films in the theater and on DVD over the past week, so as per usual, here’s the skinny:

L’Auberge Espagnole: I went into this movie more blind than usual – The only review I had read was George‘s, and for some reason I thought the film was about a mid-life crisis. So I was quite happily surprised by this sweet comedy about assorted European Erasmus students enjoying a Barcelona summer. Like Y Tu Mama Tambien (which I thought was a little overrated but good nonetheless), this movie illustrates yet again just how tame and lame our domestic youth comedies have become. L’Auberge was funnier, sexier, and more intelligent than any of the assorted American Pies or their ilk, and, whatsmore, all of the characters acted and seemed like “real” people. This movie seems to understand that it’s possible to capture the joys of youth and friendship without resorting to a constant stream of lame, mostly unfunny gross-out jokes. Even when L’Auberge founders in cliche (Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson) or somewhat hamhandedly offers us a life-lesson in the last ten minutes or so, its moralizing still didn’t come off as egregiously as in Old School or Anger Management, to take two recent examples of bad American comedy. In sum, L’Auberge Espagnole is a fluffy film but a fun one nonetheless, and special marks go to Kevin Bishop as the visiting brother/terminal wanker – He more than makes up for the Audrey Tautou factor.

The Hulk: Ok, we may suck at comedies, but there are some things that American film does well, and very few of them are evident in The Hulk. “I’m trying to make a delicacy out of American fast food,” said Ang Lee about this project, and I had high hopes he might make something special out of the green machine. Well, I usually like Ang Lee, and I like the Hulk comics (never cared all that much for the TV show), but sadly, the two together didn’t work at all. Hulk begins with a great credit sequence and then falters for the next hour and a half…in fact, the Hulk himself doesn’t show up until an hour or so into the movie – Instead, we’re forced to sit through long, bad monologues about memory repression and daddy issues that never really amount to all that much. Even when it seems the movie is starting to find its sea legs, when [Significant Spoilers to follow] Hulk escapes into the desert and Nick Nolte (chewing the scenery like Al Pacino gone rabid) surprisingly becomes the Absorbing Man, it turns out to be just an illusion. Instead, we get more improbable conversations about daddy, and the Absorbing Man – one of the Hulk’s classic villains – instead becomes Cthulu the Jellyfish God or something. All in all, Hulk turned out to be long and boring. It’s sad, really, ’cause this film could have been really good. The Hulk looks right, even if his jumping is a bit off (He should come down with the force of a minor earthquake each time, not bounce around like Q-Bert), and I liked the comic book wipes and fades employed throughout the picture. But, in the end, to quote Amadeus, the Hulk suffers from too many notes. They could’ve played up the Frankenstein angle or the Jekyll and Hyde angle, but they don’t have time to do both and layer on all the Freudian repression stuff. Make all the delicacies you want, but in the end Hulk should be big, green, angry, and destroying stuff (He also should be talking, but oh well.) Somewhere along the way, Ang Lee lost focus and became more concerned with making an arthouse “comic-book movie” than with making the Hulk. Particularly given how pitch-perfect X2 turned out, this is a considerable disappointment.

Human Nature: Charlie Kaufmann’s other movie (besides Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Adaptation, the last of which seems at least tangentially related to the material of this film) was a holdover from my Blockbuster night earlier in the week. And while there are a number of funny scenes throughout the movie, they sadly don’t add up to being a very funny film. The performances are generally good, particularly Tim Robbins as a repressed, manners-obsessed scientist (who tells his tale from beyond the grave, which was a bit strange since I watched Jacob’s Ladder again only last weekend), Rhys Ifans as “Puff,” the ape man subject of Robbins’ experiments (One of the funnier scenes in the movie involves Ifans trying frantically to hump a slide show screen, despite being continuously shocked by Robbins), and Miranda Otto (a million miles away from Rohan) as Robbins’ coquettish, quasi-French assistant. Sadly, though, there’s a lot of downtime between the jokes, and I lost interest in the movie in the last half hour or so. I’m on the fence on this one, but in the end I guess I wouldn’t recommend it.

The Grey Zone: This film is obviously a 180 degree turn in tone and content from Human Nature, so I’m glad I ended up watching them on different nights. The Grey Zone is a very bleak tale of the 12th Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners assigned to tend the murdering gas and fires of Auschwitz in 1944. Hard to watch at times, it might even be more unflinching than The Pianist, since it just throws you immediately into the horror without the slow buildup of the Szpilmans. Most of the action of the movie, which began as and still feels like a play, evolves around the plans for a coming uprising, and how they’re thrown into disarray by an unusual event in the gas chamber. If you can stomach it – and can get over the anachronistic accents and Mamet-y dialogue, the Grey Zone is well worth viewing, not the least to experience the surprise of a film in which David Arquette gives a more nuanced and absorbing performance than Harvey Keitel, who reminded me of Kurt Fuller’s impression of Col. Klink in Auto Focus.