Not a 'Plain' preview

Engines thunder then White Zombie's More Human Than Human blares and this trailer has the makings of a hit. Animated air planes with eyes filling their windshields reintroduce us to Pixar's world of sentient vehicles.
The preview's protagonist is Dusty, a crop duster who's afraid of heights and apparently races against World War II era planes. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something very familiar about this preview.  We find a vehicle in a small town who goes on race internationally.  There's also the little forklift characters that I've seen somewhere before.  It seems like there should be a bucktoothed airplane, but I didn't see one in the preview.  I just get the sense that I've seen this story before.
Maybe it's just me.

***Rating***
1 Ka-Chow!  You'll want to watch this preview again and again so you'll get the line about how fast you fly right.
  

 
 

Elysium Fields

I get the feeling that I've seen this preview before; the haves verses the have nots, a crisis and a reluctant hero.  A thief having paid his debt to society trying to do right but catches a bad break.  Matt Damon's playing a smart elic.  Matt Damon having his body enhanced and then being sent on a mission.
Lucky for Sony I'm a fan of movie cliché.
Elysium is of course a utopia and the Earth is of course a dystopia.  Good Will Bourne through a series of events is apparently exposed to radiation which, unlike Peter Parker or Bruce Banner, will kill him in five days. So his buddy digs out Mickey Rourke's Iron Man 2 costume, bolts it to Jason Hunting and sends him to Elysium where Jody Foster looking like her Clarice character frets about him.  Some chick has a daughter that apparently is sick & needs to get to Elysium too because our hero has to have a better reason than saving his life to get up there.

***Spoiler Alert***
There are no surprises in this trailer.  Matt Damon and his exo-skeleton make it to
Elysium and stuff blows up.

***Rating***
9 as in District 9 by the same director which was a good movie but this preview was better.

The Smurfs Rise

Just like this blog, the Smurfs are back baybee!
Just like all the kids in America have been waiting for this sequel, you've been waiting for more Preview Reviews.
Just like the last two sentences began...

I had to look the Smurfs 2 preview up on line because I haven't seen it in any theaters.  This may be the first that you're learning about this movie and just now are realizing that your kids are probably going to get a Smurf themed kids meal somewhere and start begging to be taken to this cinematic delight.
A lot of part live action, part computer animated movies are entertaining to us parents too, and if this preview is any indication; Smurfs 2 ain't one of them.
If like me you thought there wasn't enough Gargamel in the first Smurfs tilt, you will be rewarded in the Smurfs 2 preview.  He's running around like General Stryker from the X-Men gave Harry Potters powers to Mr. Bean.
He's created Bizzaro Smurfs who are grey & he spends the whole preview trying to trick Smurfette into telling them the secret to turning blue.

***Spoiler Alert***
Envy or holding one's breath for a long time cause blueness.  Duh.

I give this Preview the Deuces
As in throwing them up when it starts for one last potty break before the feature starts.

Finally, I've been waiting years for this preview. I can still remember the static ridden beep followed by "Houston, we have a problem" that was the greatness of Apollo 13. It took several years, but finally the sequel has arrived.


The preview begins with a bit of subterfuge with the tag line, "Officially Apollo 17 was NASA's final manned mission to the moon." So, I'm thinking Apollo 18 is going to be a spy movie, but no we find out that it's a documentary. Now I'm thinking great, best case scenario Michael Scott and Ricky Gervais are the astronauts, or worse case; Michael Moore's going to be running around Houston harassing rocket scientists about whether or not the moon landings were faked.


Much to my relief an intriguing development occurs. This is lost footage. First person lost footage. Now we're talking. This film is by Dimension Horror. It's not a sequel to Apollo 13, it's a prequel to the Blair Witch project. Everything is there, the "What was that?" noises and motion at the periphery of the shot. There are even footprints in the dust. I expected for the preview to end with an astronaut standing in the corner.


This preview is suspenseful. It poses a lot of questions about the movie, but doesn't answer any of them. There's even a Screamer (the sci-fi movie, not Scream)



I give this preview a full moon.

Captain America: The First Avenger Preview

I don't review movies here so I won't talk about Captain America, unless of course it was a two hour Avengers preview! Admit it, it sorta was.

Who doesn't sit through all of the credits to see the postview of whatever Marvel movie they've just watched? Not me. I even went cross eyed trying to read who all the stunt persons were. Then it came, what I'd subconsciously waited for through the whole movie-the last scene.

The other scenes in the Iron Man movies & Thor stand alone with a heavy dose of foreshadowing, but Cap's scene pretty much devolves into an Avengers Preview. It goes from Col. Fury talking to Capt. Rogers in a cliche'd boxing gym to the Avengers commercial that will probably run during the Super Bowl. I'll review the actual trailer later and will only say this about it now.

Isn't the Hulk in the Avengers?

Apes Will Rise

The preview for Rise of the Planet of the Apes totally ruins the climactic and shocking ending of the Charlton Heston cult classic, Planet of the Apes. If you haven't seen it, you need to watch it before viewing this preview; or before reading the next sentance.

*** Spoiler Alert! ***

In the first scene of this preview we are exposed to two shocking revelations; the first is that the Planet of the Apes is in fact the Earth and the second is that James Franco plays a character that cures Alzheimer's and trains a monkey.

I'm sorry, but I must indulge in a brief rant. Don't a lot of people believe that apes started walking around on their hind legs, then lost that awesome opposing digit on their feet that the Beast from X-Men First Class had, and then started wearing clothes? So; in effect, haven't the Apes already risen? This move should be titled Planet of the Apes with the tag line, Apes will Rise-Again.

Anyway, back to the preview. We quickly learn that a drug tested on Caesar, a chimpanzee, is the cure for Azheimers; however it also makes Caesar smarter than James Franco. The chimp is separated from his family by a bunch of Mageirocophobiacs (people with fear of monkeys). Caesar then causes monkey mayhem. The action hinted at is probalby worth a matinee movie ticket. The effects were done by the same folks who did Avatar. Unfortunately I didn't see any glowing trees or blue gorillas in the preview; maybe they're in the full length movie.

I would love to give this preview two opposing thumbs up, but I can't based on the fact that Franco is seen too much to maintain credibility as a scientist. Secondly, how many times does some awesome cure for a major disease or some awesome global military defense computer have to be the cause of mankinds demise? I think they should have called the film, Ape is Legend or Terminator 5: Rise of the Apes. And it leaves one major question unanswered, where does Mark Wahlberg fit?

Yes, this may be the best marriage proposal ever; however it might also be the worst thing for movie previews ever as well.



Thank you Mr. Cavanaugh first for making my proposal woefully inadequate and second for creating unbelievably high expectations for single guys looking to enjoy a movie with a single gal. Now, if the couple is at that stage of their relationship the lovely ladies will all be expecting something like this while the guy is just getting hyped about the next comic book movie adaptation. I can see it now, he leans over and whispers softly in her ear, "I know what we're doing June 17th" at that moment a tear forms in her eye and he has no idea why.
I got to hand it to you Mr. Cavanaugh, or should I say Mr. New York 2007, the movie trailer was awesome. I'd like to see that film, Jason Bourne meets any Hugh Grant character.

My advice guys, just check out the previews on your phones and go to the concession stand to buy your lady something special until the opening credits roll.