Toys in the Attic.

In the wake of Wolverine comes a handful of explosion-heavy trailers for your pre-summery consumption: First up, Shia LeBoeuf and Megan Fox, as well as Tyrese, Turturro, et al, run with the robots again in the full trailer for Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Given how boring I found the first one, I’m pretty sure I’ll take a pass. But, hey, if “Bayformers” is your particular cup of awesome, have at it.

If your attic harbors a different set of deteriorating toys, however, Dennis Quaid is assembling a top-notch team — Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rachel Nichols, Ray Park — to avenge the Eiffel Tower in the new trailer for Stephen Sommers’ GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. (That’s Sommers of the woeful Van Helsing, by the way. Also, is it just me, or aren’t bad summer movies completely abusing the after-the-colon-subtitle this year? It reminds me of my teaching days.)

Anyway, imo this looks really terrible, and I barely know who any of these characters are — the ninja-fellow was called Snake Eyes, right? So the only point of interest I’m finding here, with the possible exception of the Ninth Doctor paying the bills, is Sienna Miller as the Baroness. Thing is, I already fell for that British-vixen-in-a-leather-catsuit trick once with Underworld, which was also terribad. So in the parlance of the ex-decider, “Fool me once, shame on you. Ya fool me, you can’t get fooled again.“

Finally — and this one might actually be decent — South Africans complain about the new refugee camp in their midst in the teaser for Neil Blomkamp’s District 9. This has been done before with James Caan and Mandy Patinkin in Alien Nation, but I like the verite style, and it’ll be interesting to see where Blogkamp (and producer Peter Jackson) go with it. Count me in.

Dead on Arrival.

Writer-director Stephen Sommers had best lock his doors at night, ’cause I have a feeling a very angry and very dead Peter Cushing may just be thinking of paying him a visit. Some movies are bad-funny, others are bad-bad…However much it may seem like one of the former from the previews, Van Helsing emphatically falls in the latter category. This movie is so loud, dumb, and nonsensical that it makes Kate Beckinsale’s last vampire movie seem like The Shining. In short, I’m ashamed that my ten+ bucks helped this godawful piece of claptrap make $54.2 million over the weekend.

What else is there to say, really? One of the early AICN reviews summed Van Helsing up as a “big, gawdy, dumb disaster,” and I think that pretty well encapsulates it. Hugh Jackman, so promising as Wolverine, seems bored and distant. Kate Beckinsale and Richard Roxburgh duel it out for the lousiest accent this side of Don Cheadle in Ocean’s 11. David “Faramir” Wenham’s bookish friar sidekick might’ve worked in a different movie (John Hannah played the same part in The Mummy)…it doesn’t here. And the CGI throughout — particularly that of the Wolfman and Dracula’s demon incarnation — is cartoonish and terrible. We’re talking Hanna-Barbera .

But I guess you can’t fault the actors and FX guys too much for phoning in such a terrible script. After all, everyone’s forced to chew out extended passages of completely clunky exposition, except during the long, interminable bouts of rope-swinging. The amount of time CGI characters spend swinging, flying, or falling in this film (with the camera invariably positioned just behind their CGI shoulder, so as to complete the roller-coaster effect, I guess) is flat-out ridiculous, and particularly given that the laws of physics never seem to once apply. And the denouement — which takes forever and a day to finally happen after all the flying, swinging, and falling — makes no sense in a number of ways. (How long is midnight again?) Trust me, Van Helsing is as terrible as you’ve heard…Abandon all hope all ye who enter here.

Starsky & Stakes.

It’s Friday, which as y’all know usually means a new batch of trailers. First up, we’ve got Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson mugging as Starsky & Hutch. Even with Snoop as Huggy Bear and that Will Ferrell cameo, I’d say the chances of me spending money on this are slim to none. Then, Kate Beckinsale continues her Underworld vamp streak in Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing, a.k.a Raiders of the Lost Coffin. Jackman’s no Peter Cushing, but this one actually looks like goofy summer B-movie fun to me, even if some of the CGI FX here are suspect.