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.

Let the Same One In.

“If you’re looking for a quality film before the coming holiday deluge (or, if you’re like me, and can pretty much tell from afar that [the fourth] Twilight likely won’t be your bag), look no further than [Matt Reeves’] taut, eerie vampire flick [Let Me In]…A[n American remake of a] Swedish import that combines elements of the age-old vampire mythos with My Girl, My Bodyguard, and Morrissey (hence the title), [Let Me in] moves and feels like a particularly well-crafted Stephen King short story (or perhaps a bleaker version of one of Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish Civil War fairy tales), and definitely makes for a compelling nightmare before Christmas if you’re in the mood for it.”

Particularly given how far behind I am on reviews these days, I am tempted to keep playing Mad Libs with my December 2008 take on Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In — which ultimately ended up at #38 on the decade list — all the way down the pike for this one. And the shoe would fit: While watching Matt Reeves’ American adaptation of this story, I was almost irritated by how similar Let Me In turned out to be to its Swedish source material. At times, it feels like the exact same movie, to the point where, months or years down the line, one might forget which scene was in which flick.

But, upon further reflection, isn’t that exactly what you want from a remake? (I mean, decent jobs like The Ring aside, it could be and usually is worse: Even as good a director as Christopher Nolan didn’t do much with his Americanized version of Insomnia, and just think of how botched George Sluizer’s US version of The Vanishing turned out to be.) So, if you’ve never seen the original Let The Right One In, and/or if you take the extreme similarities here to the original to be a feature rather than a bug, Let Me In actually turned out rather well. It is not an embarrassment by any means.

Let me go ahead and get the “haters gonna hate” portion of the review out of the way first. The ads and end-credits note that this film was “written for the screen and directed” by “Matt Reeves, the director of Cloverfield,” (Why they’d keep bringing up that awful flick as a selling point is anyone’s guess.) Well, maybe if by “written for the screen,” you mean “transcribed the subtitles from the original.” Otherwise, that’s a pretty blatant resume-padder. Just moving the story from a socialist-style housing complex in Sweden to wintry, northern New Mexico in the 80’s does not on its own make this a deeply original enterprise.

Ok, there are a few small differences, I guess. For no particularly compelling reason, Reeves starts this version in the middle of the story, with the grim fate of “Hakan” (Richard Jenkins — The character isn’t named in this version), the long-suffering companion to and handler of the strange new girl in town, Abby (a.k.a. Eli a.k.a. Hitgirl, Chloe Moretz.) Reeves also leaves out some memorable moments from the original film (the cat-attack, Abby’s scar) and, presumably because we Yanks are a touch simple and all, spells out exactly what the eventual ending means for our young, bulliied protagonist, Oskar/Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) (Owen stumbles on some old pics at one point that close the implied circle of the story.)

Otherwise, this is basically exactly the same movie as the one that was in theaters less than two years ago, albeit now without subtitles. Reeves’ most promising new flourish is early on, when the sound drops out of Reagan’s Evil Empire speech, playing on a hospital television, at an ominous moment. (“And if America ever ceases to be good…“) And between that and the Los Alamos setting (i.e. home to the Manhattan Project), I initially thought Reeves might be trying to inject an ambitious new flavor into the story here — that Owen’s eventual love for Abby, despite her committing clearly evil deeds, is not necessarily as strange and alien to us as we would want it to be. But, no, this is really just Let the Right One In all over again, now with a goofy joke about Now and Laters.

And, y’know, in the end, perhaps that is a good thing. Sure, Reeves does not build on the original film, really. But he doesn’t sell out to the Twilight crowd either. In fact, he does an impressive job of capturing the original’s essence and distilling it for an American audience. The movie looks right and feels right. It too has a strong sense of place, and it benefits from two child actors who succeed in selling the coming-of-ageless relationship at its core. Moretz is a name at this point, and so not as innately creepy as the unknown Lina Leandersson in the original. But she’s still self-possessed enough to convey Abby’s otherworldliness. And, Smit-McPhee plays the damaged, lonely Owen as well as Kare Hedebrant in the first one. (Although, between this and The Road, I hope for his sake that Smit-McPhee isn’t as needy and whiny in real life.)

So, the upshot is this: If you caught Let the Right One In recently and are looking for some sort of value-added to sit through the remake, I would skip this one or wait for Netflix. But, if you think Swedish horror movies with subtitles are for film snobs, or happen to live in a place where the original never got any run, well, this American doppelganger version isn’t a bad adaptation by any means. It may not break any new ground, but at least this Let Me In is haunted by the same wintry sadness as its source.

The Girl Next Door.

With only Richard Jenkins and a Rubik’s Cube to entertain her, Hit Girl Chloe Moretz slogs through her (500th) Year of Winter in the international trailer for Matt Reeves’ Let Me In, the potentially needless American remake of Let the Right One In. Well, “from the director of Cloverfield” still doesn’t inspire any confidence, and it seems like Kodi Smit-McPhee is going to simper and whine here even more than he did in The Road. But it’s not a bad trailer, and always good to see Elias Koteas getting work.

The Vampires (Back) Next Door.

Hit-Girl trades in butterfly knives for fangs (and a Rubik’s cube) as the first stills emerge from Matt’s Reeves forthcoming Let Me In, i.e.,the potentially-unnecessary American remake of Let the Right One In, with Chloe Moretz ((500) Days of Summer, Kick-Ass), Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road), and the venerable Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Six Feet Under.) Well, so far it looks a lot like the original, I’ll give it that. (Although, as an observant AICN’er noted, why is Eli/Moretz wearing a hoodie? That was part of the eeriness of the original, that this tiny girl was somehow not feeling the frigid Swedish winter.)

And, elsewhere on the neighborly vampire re-make front, Anton Yelchin’s Charlie Brewster now has his Jerry Dandridge: Apparently, Colin Farrell is taking Chris Sarandon’s role in the remake of Fright Night. (Toni Collette also joins as Charlie’s mom.) Well, I would’ve preferred Mark Strong, but that works too. Now, on to casting the crucial part of Peter Vincent, nee Roddy McDowell. (And perhaps Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Evil Ed?)

It’s Godzilla, We’re Japan.

While poorly executed, surprisingly unengaging, and mostly banal, Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield, the much-hyped version of Godzilla-meets-The Blair Witch Project produced by Lost/Alias guru J.J. Abrams, does pose at its heart one truly frightening scenario: What would you do if the moment the next 9/11-level catastrophic event happens here in New York City, you just happen to be stuck at a party downtown with a bunch of godawful douchebags? Seriously, though, I’m not sure how you screw up a ground-eye-view of “Huge Monster Destroying New York” so badly, but Cloverfield is as big a January dog as they come. Not above milking blatant 9/11 imagery for gravitas (which doesn’t offend me per se, although I do wish it was in the service of a better story), Cloverfield basically tries to be little more than a monster movie thrill ride for the Youtube generation. (The film is bookended by a trip to Coney Island, and, yeah, I’d say that’s about right.) But given that the none of the main characters are all that likable, and given that the film falters on the promise of showing NYC in full disaster mode, I can’t say it’s a ride worth paying for, Sadly, one or two brief moments notwithstanding, last year’s eerie teaser is about as good as it gets.

The setup’s all in that teaser, of course, but that doesn’t stop Cloverfield, an 85-minute movie, from starting off wicked slow. After a few moments with two young lovers in a Deluxe Apartment in the Sky (Time Warner Center, to be exact), the film begins with a surprise going-away party downtown for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), a young financial type heading for Japan. (Not to obsess over real estate, but this apartment too is as impressive as the monster.) We then spend about 20 minutes wandering around said party, meeting all the young beautiful people who may or may not become Cthulhu food. (Rob, it seems, has many friends, but none of them are plain-looking.) So, let’s see, there’s Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogel), his best friend (and our cameraman) Hud (T.J. Miller), Jason’s girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas), Hud’s current crush Marlena (Lizzy Caplan)…but conspicuously absent amid them all (at first) is the fetching young lass we saw in the opening moments with Rob, Beth (Odette Yustman). She shows up late, with — ZOMG SC4ND4L! — another man in tow (I think his name was Travis, but it doesn’t matter — he’s a plot point that’s forgotten anyway), and, soon thereafter, leaves in a huff. (By now you may be thinking, uh, where’s the monster in all of this 90210 dreck? Yes, my thoughts exactly.) Anyway, so after enough time has elapsed that Beth could’ve gotten back home, there’s a shaking and a rumbling and…finally…well, you know what happens next.

Now, I could’ve forgiven Cloverfield its interminably long set-up if we then got a New York City disaster movie for the ages. But, after letting some obvious 9/11-ish images and moments — the collapsing buildings, clouds of billowing smoke, panicked cell phone calls — do the heavy lifting, the film mostly just stalls out. As far as the story goes, Rob decides he must go save Beth from the TWC, and, for reasons that don’t make much sense, everyone else just decides to tag along. Ok, that’s fine — you gotta get the protagonists moving around New York for one reason or another. Except, once the monster attacks, the city is almost completely empty, aside from U.S. infantrymen (who, as my friend pointed out, somehow got there before the Air Force.) I mean, it’s Manhattan. You’d think there’d be people wandering around everywhere in various states of terror and confusion, but, nope, all two million people either hunkered down or got out right away. In fact, other than the Statue of Liberty and the 9/11 nods, there’s not much point for the film to have taken place in New York at all. I mean, sure, there’s a sequence in the subway tunnels in which our heroes magically leap from Spring St. to 59th St. (and one which will seem rather derivative if you saw 28 Weeks Later or The Descent.) But, otherwise, this could have taken place pretty much anywhere.

If this review all sounds a bit nit-picky, well, perhaps. But, when the film never really engages at an emotional or visceral level, you gotta do something to pass the time. (The midnight crowd at my local Magic Johnson sat there more dutiful than dumbstruck.) Except for the occasional rare moment, as when the gang get caught in a full-out alley melee between the creature and the US Army, or witness a horse pulling an empty cart around Central Park, Cloverfield never establishes a groove. And everytime you think it might start to get interesting, it falls back into Archie and Veronica grandstanding. Throw in a few wildly implausible escapes and people rallying from seriously painful injuries, and there’s not much here to recommend. To be honest, I’d wait for the video. And, if no one ever finds said video under all the debris in Central Park, well, trust me, you didn’t miss much.