The Coen brothers are back with a new movie that’s not meant to scare the living crap out of you. There’s probably not much I need to say to convince you to go SEE IT, so here’s just a few key elements for you to consider:

• Coen brothers
• Frances McDormand
• Comedy-Drama
• Brad Pitt
• Crime caper
• George Clooney

Convinced yet? OK, John Malkovich is in it, too. I’ll see you at the theater.

Burn After Reading is rated R and opens September 12. (Official site)

Why is it that so many people get so upset over old movies getting remade? Sure, most of the remakes kind of suck, but nobody made you watch them, and the remake doesn’t diminish the quality of the original movie we all know and love so well. Hell, Cruel Intentions was actually a great remake of Dangerous Liaisons. But The Women, a remake of a 1939 classic by the same name, is the latest remake that has classic movie lovers in an uproar.

Which is too bad, because it actually looks like a decent movie. The plot has certainly withstood the test of time: a group of socialite women discover that the husband of one of their own is cheating on her, so she leaves the cheater and joins her female friends at a ritzy resort. Cue the female bonding, plenty of cattiness and gossip, and lots of twisted relationships. With a cast that features Annette Bening, Bette Midler, Candice Bergen, and Meg Ryan (coming out from under the rock she’s been living beneath), this could be another great 2008 movie for female audiences (the other being some small movie about four women getting laid in a city of some kind). I’ll definitely RENT IT when it comes out on DVD.

The Women is rated PG-13 and opens September 12. (Official site)

Finding Amanda is the story of a guy with a gambling addiction who goes to Las Vegas to convince his runaway niece to stop working as a hooker and go into rehab. Sounds like a pretty good role for someone like Steven Buscemi. But somehow Matthew Broderick is the one playing it.

Fully embracing the sad sack middle-aged loser persona, Broderick stars as Taylor, a man who has traded his drug and alcohol abuse for a gambling problem. When his wife finally has enough and kicks him out of the house, he decides to head for Vegas, where his niece Amanda is now living and working as a prostitute. Taylor figures if he can not gamble while there and convince Amanda to enter rehab, maybe his wife will take him back. But Amanda’s not too interested in turning her life around, and even a nun couldn’t go to Vegas and not gamble, so problems with the plan naturally ensue.

The movie is currently a part of the Tribeca Film Festival with no immediate wide release plans, so I’ll eventually RENT IT to see Ferris Bueller all grown up and dealing with his hooker niece.

Finding Amanda is rated R with an unknown release date. (IMDB site)

Don’t you hate it when all you want is a little peace and quiet for one day, but it seems like everyone you know has chosen that day to harass you? That one day is Henry Poole’s entire life.

Longing for a life of quiet solitude, Henry (played by the ever-affable Luke Wilson) retreats to his childhood suburban neighborhood and adopts a hermit-like lifestyle. But then a nosy neighbor notices a water stain on the side of his house that resembles the face of Jesus (or maybe it’s God; I sort of dropped out of Sunday school). So now, much to his chagrin, every devout believer in the area is coming to Henry’s backyard to worship and pray at his wall. But when he starts a tentative relationship with the women next store with a daughter who never speaks, Henry realizes that these “holy rollers” (as he calls them) may not be so crazy after all and maybe there is something to the whole faith and hope thing.

While this looks like it could be a moderately entertaining movie, I’m going to SKIP IT. Movies that use kids with weird disabilities or personality traits to tug at the heartstrings rub me the wrong way, as do overly-preachy movies. Plus, while I have enjoyed Wilson in his many supporting roles, I’m not sure he has what it takes to carry an entire movie by himself.

Henry Poole Is Here is rated PG and opens in limited release August 15. (Official site)

A sequel 400 years in the making!

In Hamlet 2, Steve Coogan stars as a man who can’t make it in life as a lousy actor, so he becomes a lousy high school drama teacher. When the school threatens to shut down the theater department, he decides to put on a benefit show to rival all other benefit shows. But that doesn’t mean some lame revival of Oklahoma! or Death of a Salesman; he’s going to create his own original production. He decides to write a sequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and manages to get around the pesky issue of 99% of the characters dying at the end of the original. All you need are a few convenient plot devices, like a time machine and the adding of Jesus as a character, and a few catchy musical numbers, like “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus.”

A plot this hilariously ludicrous and a cast that includes Coogan, Catherine Keener, Amy Poehler, and the reintroduction of Elisabeth Shue is bound to be an entertaining RENT IT. And if not, perhaps some other Shakespearian sequels will start cropping up. Coming next summer: King Lear II: The Reckoning.

Hamlet 2 is not yet rated and opens in limited release August 27. (Official site)

So I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making a fake trailer for a while now, but I didn’t have any good ideas.

But after my watching my 21st debate, as well as way too much Hardball, it finally hit me.

This trailer is a mash-up of the Election Trailer (Reese Witherspoon, 1999, etc.) and a whole lot of footage from the 2008 presidential race. It looks like Tracy Flick is all grown up now…

I’m guessing you’ll be able to figure out who I’m rooting for in this brawl between Clinton and Obama. I realize this trailer won’t sway any votes for my man Barack, but it’s my way of showing some moral support. Plus, it was fun to make.

Anyway, hope you guys enjoy.

And as always, feel free to comment here.

I actually think Anna Faris is a pretty funny lady, so it’s nice to see her doing an actual comedy, rather than yet another installment of the horror movie spoof series, Scary Movie. Faris plays a bubbly Playboy bunny (and Hef himself makes a cameo appearance) who is tossed out of the mansion for being a bunny of a certain age (27!). She stumbles onto a college campus and gleefully sees that the Greek system isn’t unlike the lifestyle she’s used to at the Playboy mansion. So she applies to be a house mother to one of the sororities.

And naturally she lands a position in a sorority house with the most awkward and socially clueless group of girls. They have dull hair, glasses, and non flesh-baring clothes; talk about inept! Time for a makeover montage! Faris takes the misfits under her bunny wing and teach them how to be better versions of themselves, and the clueless girls also teach her a thing or two when a campus cutie appears to be immune to her beguiling bunny ways.

There’s nothing earth-shattering going on here, but The House Bunny seems like it could be entertaining enough to RENT IT. It has a distinct Legally Blonde feel to it: ultimately pointless, yet harmlessly entertaining. I just hope no one has the “brilliant” idea to turn this one into a Broadway musical.

The House Bunny is not yet rated and opens August 22. (Official site)

If you’ve ever taken the time to read TrailerSpy’s “About” page, then you have way too much time on your hands. But also, you would have noticed that Grosse Point Blank is one of my favorite movies of all-time. I own the VHS (google it) and I’ve watched it more times than I care to admit publicly.

Anyways, a couple weeks ago, I was reading some guys blog, and he said that John Cusack’s new movie, War, Inc. looked like Grosse Point Blank 2. And I remember thinking, “Yeah right buddy, nice try.”

But then I saw this new trailer, and I have to say that the similarities are suddenly undeniable.

After all, John Cusack is once again playing a hit-man, and once again, his sister is playing his head-set wearing, foul-mouthed assistant. Dan Aykroyd is in this one as well (although this time they’re on the same team). And once again, he’s having morality issues and delaying the hit that he was sent to perform (this time on a foreign oil minister). Obviously there are a number of differences, but for the most part, Cusack’s character and the tone of the movie look to be exactly the same.

The truth is, this movie was bound to be a SEE IT for me, anyway. I love John Cusack, and the idea of him humorously tackling the Iraq War and the whole terrorist thing is music to my ears. But now that I see this movie for what it really is, a clever non-sequel sequel to one of my favorite movies, well, I am beyond excited.

War, Inc. is rated R and opens in limited release on May 23 (although the IMDB Page says that the DVD premiere is July 1st…are they serious?!! They’re really just going to do a pseudo straight-to-DVD for this movie?!! Maybe these guys just don’t like making money, because I guarantee this movie would gross at least $10 million on opening weekend. Hopefully they rethink that, so that my SEE IT doesn’t involuntarily become a RENT IT, because I’m just dying to pay someone, anyone, $11 to see this movie on the big screen. Alright, I’m done complaining now.)

It seems like Helen Hunt has been pretty much MIA from the Hollywood scene for a few years, and now she’s making her return by pulling double duty as both the director and star of Then She Found Me. At least she’s been busy during her downtime!

Hunt plays a middle-aged woman who’s life takes a nasty turn when she realizes her chances of having a baby are quickly dwindling, her adoptive mother dies, her husband (Matthew Broderick) leaves her, and her birth mother with boundary issues (Bette Midler) shows up (if I found out Bette Midler was my real mother, I’d be having a pretty rough time, too). But things start to look better when she begins a relationship with Colin Firth (from Broderick to Firth; talk about an upgrade!). And of course her life takes another dip when in a moment of weakness she sleeps with her estranged husband, and it leads to a pregnancy. Now Hunt needs to figure out how to make things work with Firth, how to incorporate Broderick into the life of their child, and how to deal with her new overbearing and oversharing mother. Sounds like fun. Or maybe it just sounds trite and predictable. I’ll have to RENT IT to find out.

Then She Found Me is rated R and opens in limited release April 25. (Official site)

Tropic Thunder has the potential to be one of the funniest movies to premiere in Summer 2008. Or it could be one of the most angrily controversial movies in recent memory. Either way, it should be interesting to see the public’s reaction.

Starring and directed by the sometimes funny Ben Stiller, Tropic Thunder tells the story of a group of narcissistic actors (is there any other kind?) filming a new Vietnam War epic in the spirit of Apocalypse Now. One is a typical action star (Stiller), one is a comedic actor looking to establish himself as a serious actor (Jack Black), and one (here comes the controversy) is a white actor who is so serious about portraying a role written for an African-American actor, that he dyes his skin black (Robert Downey Jr.). The film crew eventually gets fed up with their high-maintenance cast that they dump them in the jungle to fend for themselves, all to the blissful obliviousness of the cast, who thinks the cameras are still rolling.

The idea of having a movie that stars a white guy in blackface is certainly raising some eyebrows, but Stiller insists that the movie is poking fun at pampered actors, not black people, as seen in this article in Entertainment Weekly. That may very well be the case, but is that what the audience will allow themselves to see? Given the mixed feelings I have about Ben Stiller movies, I’ll wait to RENT IT and find out.

Tropic Thunder is not yet rated and opens on August 15. (Official site)