If you've watched any television in the last several months or gone to see a single movie, you've probably seen a Hancock trailer. And let's be honest: The trailer makes the movie -- and what could very well be an interesting concept: a bumbling, drunken mess of a superhero -- look more silly (drunken flying in a beanie!) than sleek. But I'm pretty sure you and everyone else you know will go see this movie, because ... well, don't we all love a good twist ending? This one promises a doozie involving Charlize Theron (which is why she's been so scarce in promotional materials).

If you hate period pieces and foreign films, The Last Mistress is so not the movie for you. But it's fun and sexy, judging by the trailer, so you might want to rethink your disdain for those genres. The scenario: A grandmother is planning her young, aristocratic granddaughter's marriage to a ruffian. Grandma approves of him because she knows he loves her granddaughter even if he's not of the right social status. There's just one other minor little thing that's not so likable about the lad. What was it again? Hmmm ... let me think. Oh, right: He has had a mistress for ten freaking years! I'm sorry, was I shouting? That's because this is not the proper marriage granddaughter deserves. Particularly because it looks like the affair is still going on, and that it's hot and sexy, and involves one Asia Argento (hence the hot and sexy). Oh, and did I mention she also appears to be crazy? See, he's over her and in love with dear granddaughter, but Asia will not give up easily. She stalks him, watches him with his new love, even slices his face with a knife (though, to be fair, I think this is supposed to be during a sexual encounter rather than a crazed, stalking one). Still, it's sort of hot and sexy. You'll find yourself rooting for the crazy girl, not the meek granddaughter that we barely see. I mean, the movie's named after the mistress, so she must be the one who gets the guy in the end, right? Because as we know, in the movies, the bad girl always wins. At least in French ones. Oh, did I mention this film is directed by the lady who did Fat Girl? That means we might actually have a shot at something cool and different.

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The latest production from Disney Pixar since the former acquired the latter, WALL-E looks like another case of beauty over brains: animated feature films that are visually cool but severely lacking in story, substance, or intelligence. Because, as you know if you've seen the trailer, the animation is so good it almost looks real (that begs the question: Is there a point at which animation gets too good, since it no longer looks animated at all, but like live action?), and I'll grant Disney Pixar that the character of WALL-E is adorable and endearing. When he folded his little metal hands (clamps?) together as the voice-over narrator said he's lonely, I'd be lying if I said I didn't melt a little inside. But still... this trailer, the posters and everything else I've been seeing and reading about this movie makes me think it's all cute, gimmicky robots-having-minds-of-their-own-and-holding-hands and nothing original. In other words: More Cars than The Incredibles. And if I have to hear WALL-E say "Waaaal-eeeee" in that creepy robot voice one more time, I'll kill myself. (Really, trailer-making people, did you have to use it twice in the same trailer?)

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This is that one movie where Angelina Jolie (you might have heard of her; she's having Brad Pitt's twins any day now) plays a tattooed, bad-ass tough chick. Oh, right, that might not narrow it down enough. Well, it also has Morgan Freeman in a patriarchal role as the leader of a group of assassins, and James McAvoy with an American accent, as a guy with a normal job and a normal life who has an assassin somewhere inside him because that's what his dad was (you know assassinating is genetic, right?). If the trailer is to be believed, McAvoy's character can shoot the wings off flies. Which ... really? I know movies expect us all to suspend our disbelief in sometimes extraordinary ways, but asking me to believe someone can shoot the wings off flies might finally be going too far: This is a leap I'm unwilling to take.

Kit Kittredge is not exactly the type of movie I follow. I'll admit that I enjoyed the American Girl books when I was a kid, but back then they were still new -- there were only four girls and none of them was named Kit Kittredge. In other words, I have had absolutely no exposure to this story before now. My first reaction -- as any sane person's would be -- is WHY IN THE HELL IS ABIGAIL BRESLIN TRYING TO BE DAKOTA FANNING?! Okay, so, Kit has short blonde hair. I get that. But don't we have enough Dakota Fanning clones, without talented, likable Abigail Breslin turning into her? I have to hope and pray that this is a one-time thing. Not that Abigail's choices have been impeccable up to now (remember Nim's Island? How could we forget that, after all?), but I'm holding out hope that she'll have another shining moment the likes of Little Miss Sunshine. Kit Kittredge is not it.

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I would be happy if Mike Myers never made another movie. He's surpassed Adam Sandler, as far as I'm concerned, in the "just how stupid will he act for money?" department. And that was before the disgusting mess that is The Love Guru, which I can't think about without vomiting in my mouth a little. What's worse is that Myers has been shilling (ie showing up at events dressed as his character) the movie everywhere, including on American Idol.

I had never heard of Brick Lane. Turns out it's a Sony Pictures Classics film, based on the best-selling novel of the same name. (Is it wrong that I hadn't heard of that either?) From what I can glean from the trailer, it starts, like the fantastic The Namesake, with an arranged marriage in India that sends the bride far away from her family (this time, to London). But unlike The Namesake, this story is told from the woman's perspective. She leaves her sister behind and, through letters over the years, is inspired to eventually find love of her own -- outside of her arranged marriage. This has been a film festival pick but, so far, critics aren't praising it as highly as you might expect (although to be fair, it's still early and most critics haven't seen it yet). I think there is one safe bet, though: This will be better (and less offensive) than this week's much wider-release faux Indian film.

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It's hard to imagine, despite the presence of the ever-talented Steve Carell, that Get Smart will be any good. Sure, it's based on Mel Brooks's funny,'60sTV show of the same name. And it looks, judging from the poster and the trailer, as if it's sticking to the spoof/satire roots of the show. But it always feels like movie studios and actors must be scraping the bottom of the barrel when they can't find something fresher to tackle than an old TV show. Those remakes rarely turn out well (think Mod Squad, Dukes of Hazzard, or Starsky & Hutch).

You never know what you're going to get from Werner Herzog, do you? This time, it's Antarctica, which is as mysterious and fascinating as just about anything, so I guess it makes sense that the director of majestic documentaries like Grizzly Man and Little Dieter Needs to Fly (which, in turn, became the fictionalized Rescue Dawn,) would want to explore it. Herzog narrates the trailer, which means he's probably made himself part of the film like he did with Grizzly Man. He does so in a completely organic, anti-Michael Moore way, which works to draw viewers further into the film instead of pushing them away (a la Moore). The trailer is mostly just a collage of different images of Antarctica: people, ice, drilling, seals, underwater shots. This makes it hard to get an idea what the film is actually about, but knowing Herzog, I'm guessing it explores the inherent strangeness of the extreme locale and the people who choose to live and work there. In other words, probably not your typical Discovery Channel nature doc (though this one is from Discovery).

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Like most of the moviegoing world, I'm skeptical when it comes to M. Night Shyamalan. His twisty endings went from truly surprising to sort of subtly shocking to ... well, completely stupid, if we're being honest. But this trailer starts off with promise in the form of Mark Wahlberg, who can win me over in spite of my apprehension. Mark's talking to a classroom full of high schoolers about honeybees disappearing across the country. He asks for their theories as to why, but none of them care about the bees. And, really, Mark, let's face it: What high school student is going to care about disappearing honeybees? They have more important things to think about, like MySpace, texting, and dating.

From the makers of The Puffy Chair comes this strange little movie about how funny/scary a person with a bag on his head can be. It all depends on the context, apparently. For example: When it's your friend goofing around? Sort of funny. When you have a dream about a guy standing in the dark under a tree with a bag on his head? Scary. A group of 30-somethings go up to a cabin in the woods to make a movie, which has something to do with one of the ladies dreaming that she saw a guy with the "sack over his face." One member of the group, a nerdy, pasty guy, is using the movie to try to get closer to the girl he likes -- who tells him he looks like a toddler just when he thinks things are going well. Turns out he's not exactly winning her over, especially because he thinks his other friend -- who appears to be the director of the aforementioned movie within the movie -- has what the nerdy, pasty guy calls "Elvis hair." Which apparently means all of the women want him instead. As if "Elvis hair" is something women find at all desirable in 2008. In the midst of all the relationship issues, someone starts goofing around, and it turns scary. People (or one person?) keep showing up with bags over their heads, dressed in clothes belonging to members of the group, but no one will fess up. It becomes eerie and weird, and the trailer ends with all of them running for their lives at night. Yeah, maybe bagheads are more creepy than funny.

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I would be more excited about watching the trailers for The Incredible Hulk if there weren't also those awesome clips from the movie floating around online. Makes a trailer feel a little less weighty when I have actual movie scenes at my fingertips. Still, the trailer does a pretty good job getting me pumped up. I think that should be true whether you liked Ang Lee's Hulk or not (I didn't). There are a lot of positive changes here, the biggest one being Edward Norton, who embodies the loner persona we need for Bruce Banner in a way that Eric Bana couldn't. I know Norton hasn't done much lately worth writing home about, but my hopes are high this time. It looks like Bruce just wants to be left alone, but the meddling U.S. Army, led by William Hurt, is unwilling to let him be. Hurt's daughter (Liv Tyler) is, of course, in love with Bruce, so she wants to save him and be with him, etc. At the same time, she wants Daddy to let him disappear. Tim Roth plays the bad guy (who's also in the Army, by the way), who wants to become his own Hulk (Abomination, for those in the know) in order to destroy the world. It looks epic in all the right ways without being too cheesy or sappy. Judging by this and Iron Man Marvel might be the smartest movie studio working right now, churning out one good movie after another.

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Hand-held black and white camera work and a voice-over narrator talking about Winnipeg opens this trailer. Specifically, the narrator discusses getting out of Winnipeg. Director Guy Maddin has lived in the mid-Canadian town his entire life and is attempting to film his way out. He sublets the house he grew up in and re-creates his childhood years, hiring actors to play his family. He even brings his girlfriend's pug on to play his childhood chihuahua. The reenactment is supposed to free Maddin from Winnipeg in some way. I'm not sure how, but making a shaky Ozzie and Harriet-looking film isn't the worst thing people have done to cope with their bad growing-up experiences. One of the critics quoted in the trailer compares the movie to Borat, which might be the last thing I would have expected, but that makes it even more intriguing. There is snow, some boxing, sledding, ice skating, a man standing on the ledge of a building, séances, and more. Then Maddin says that he's finally leaving for good. Again. Why am I not buying it?

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Colin Firth takes on a considerably more meaty role in When Did You Last See Your Father? than we're used to seeing him in, and that's a good thing. After all, he doesn't want to get typecast as the handsome man of every woman's dreams who comes to the rescue and gets the girl in the end. Although ... come to think of it, there are worse things to be typecast as, aren't there? Here, instead of playing the loverboy, he plays a son dealing with his father's terminal illness. His dad is played by Oscar winner Jim Broadbent, who in an ironic turn, plays the loverboy here. He's the sick father, of course, but seen in flashbacks, he's a philandering, nutty, emotionally distant father and husband. Firth seems to see that as the worst kind and they don't have too much of a relationship, but once he knows he's going to lose him, he works to remedy that. With two actors of this caliber and a story like this, I think it's best you bring your Kleenex to this. Heck, you might need Kleenex just to get through the trailer.

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This trailer begins with a razor cutting into a soft white substance. It looks like wax, but it unclear. A woman asks another woman to come and take a look at something and one of them cuts herself. A drop of blood falls and she says, "Dammit!" Then we get the name "Dario Argento," which reminds us that this is the third in his Three Mothers trilogy. The women discuss what one of them found: some kind of talisman. And then we get more creepy images and sounds than should be allowed: Hands reaching up under a red cloth; screaming; a woman pulling down a red negligee; someone being pushed or otherwise falling down; same person (I think) with someone in his or her mouth; same person with a bloody mouth, crying. While that's happening these words appear on the screen: "Mother of Tears is back ... to feed on your pain." A priest tells a woman that violence spreads through the city: "murder, fires, church vandalism" (hopefully he's not ranking them from least to most horrifying). The woman replies, "Michael, you're scaring me." That makes two of us. Seriously. Maybe it's that I'm watching this while home alone at night, or maybe I'm just a huge wuss, but this is possibly the scariest thing I've seen ever. Which explains why I cannot watch Argento's films despite knowing that he's brilliant. They're looking for the mother of tears, but the problem is that what we cannot see is truth and what we see doesn't exist, apparently. That's grim. There is lots of screaming and running away and other very scary stuff, which comes to its disturbing conclusion as a woman asks, "Who wants to eat the girl?" Please, if you watch this, don't tell me what it's about. I'm going to have nightmares for weeks just from watching the trailer.

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Here we have Heather Graham (which, by the way, where has she been?) sitting with a doctor who's telling her she only has one egg left and then she won't be able to have a baby. I thought usually women were a little older than 38 before they hit menopause, but who am I to quibble with the facts of this movie? After all, it also expects us to believe that Graham is British (although it's not exactly clear why she's British since the movie tackles topic that could happen pretty much anywhere). Heather's friend Mia Kirshner (also British here, by the way) is at the doctor with Heather (although appears not to be her girlfriend) and interprets the doctor's warning as, "It's bye-bye baby, hello moustache." What a supportive friend. And oh so hilarious. So, now Heather's biological tock is clicking, and she and her friends are out to get her pregnant at any expense. She appears to even be attempting to have sex with an unwilling participant in a hotel room. The maid walks in and he cries, "Help me" as Heather says, "Can you come back later?" Yes, because rape jokes are so funny. I think I'd take Mia's moustache joke over this. The real highlight of the trailer, though, is that they spelled Mia Kirshner's name wrong. Someone obviously considered her a big enough star to name her in the trailer with BIG LETTERS, right after Heather Graham, but not a big enough star to actually bother to spell her name correctly. Classy.

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It's hard to tell here if Seann William Scott is taking a step up into a film with a little more substance here (which wouldn't take much for the guy who was in Dude Where's My Car? and all three American Pie movies) or if John C. Reilly is dumbing himself down. I'm going to hope it's the former, since we also have Jenna Fischer and Lili Taylor in the (much less important) female roles here. The premise is that Seann William (or is it just Seann?) and John are both losers in dead-end jobs. John also might be kind of a racist, but that's not supposed to make us dislike him, because he's just trying to support his family. And even though Seann's girlfriend Jenna is happy to be the breadwinner, Seann cannot let that happen because he's a guy. So much for feminism and equality and all that. Instead, let's root for our grocery-store-managing heroes as they compete for a job at an even better grocery store (hence the film's title). Obviously they can't both get the job. Or can they? The trailer isn't making it clear who we're supposed to be rooting for, which makes me think there will have to be some twist of fate allowing them both to succeed in life. The moral of the story: Being a loser is okay as long as you have a job. The end.
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Okay, to start off there's just a wolf looking through some branches at a child who is meditating in the snow. It really gives no clues as to what this movie's about, but it's so visually stunning I could watch it all day even if nothing else happened. We get more great cinematography as we see horse riders from a distance and then a close-up of a child on a horse (I can't tell if it's the same child as we just saw meditating, but for continuity's sake I'm going to say that it is. Then we find out this was one of the five Oscar nominees for best foreign language film. From here we quickly discover that our meditating child is Genghis Khan as a boy. He's a fairly happy kid, making friends with other kids, until he loses his family tragically and is captured himself. He grows up, escapes and goes back to the same spot to meditate (where we are to believe that the same wolf gazes at him; it's pretty, but I'm not buying it, even as symbolism). He finds love, but his real purpose in life is to "fulfill his destiny," according to our narrator. That destiny is to raise an army to recover everything taken from him as a child, and then some. He doesn't just get vengeance for the murders of his loved ones; He takes over and rules the largest empire ever known. This is a film that should shed some light on Genghis Khan. Most people think of him as a tyrant (or as that guy from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure). I'm going to ignore the stupid narration -- "Greatness comes to those who take it"-- and focus on the fact that this is a story that we haven't seen 1,000 times already ... and it's pretty to look at.
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Because Adam Sandler doesn't look goofy enough already, for You Don't Mess With the Zohan, they gave him the most ridiculous haircut since the mullet -- and then we're expected to buy that he's a hairdresser. In Israel. Uh, okay, but why? Oh, wait, let's start at the beginning. See, the worst part is that there are two trailers for this movie, and I suffered through both of them so that none of you have to (just hit fast-forward if it comes up on your DVR, and don't arrive at any movie early until this one's safely out of theaters). Between the two trailers, we discover that Zohan is the greatest soldier Israel's ever seen. He can catch bullets with his fingers, kick through brick walls and swim like a dolphin fast enough to catch a speeding boat. So, this is really sort of a superhero movie, see? And it's also sort of making fun of Israeli soldiers. And hair stylists. Or is it? With Sandler, it's hard to tell what is making fun and what is just stupidity, after all. But this amazing soldier decides to leave the army to cut and style hair. It's a common dilemma for soldiers, I'm thinking. Probably especially so in Israel. As always happens in Sandler movies, Rob Schneider shows up in an inappropriate role. And it's more than a little racist. And, of course, stupid. People love his ridiculous haircuts, but his old life does come back to haunt him. After all, as the old proverb goes: You can't hide from your past by becoming a hairstylist. Or something. Unfortunately, the world also can't hide from Sandler's past, present, or future. I was very hopeful when he did Punch Drunk Love and even Spanglish but now he's back to the mind-numbing idiocy (and horrible hair) we haven't seen the likes of since Little Nicky.

This trailer's short and sweet, giving us just enough to whet our appetites for this movie without giving away too many jokes. Maybe I'm being an optimist, but I am choosing to believe the film's filled with hilarity that they didn't want to waste on the trailer, unlike, oh, I don't know, EVERY OTHER MOVIE. In this trailer, voiceover guy tells us to behold the ancient styles of kung fu: monkey, crane, mantis, viper, tiger (all of whom do awesome kung fu moves), and then, panda, who's caught using his moves to get food. He pleads: "Don't tell monkey." And when asked to show what he can do, he says he just ate, so his kung fu won't be as good as later on. We do get to see that he can actually kung fu, and it looks pretty cute and hilarious. The best part is that Jack Black (the voice of Panda) at least sounds like he's being cool, mellow-ish Jack Black (for Jack Black; I said "ish") instead of so-crazy-he-looks-like-he-might-explode Jack Black.
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