If after seeing the lackluster The Other Boleyn Girl you are still jonesing to see a period piece somewhat based on actual events, then The Duchess may be of interest to you. Based (loosely, one must assume) on the life of the Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, The Duchess stars Keira Knightley as Georgiana, a woman forced into marriage with the Duke of Devonshire, a man who barely acknowledges his wife’s existence. When the Duke lashes out at her for not producing a male heir and then begins an affair with another woman, Georgiana acts out and attracts the attention and affection of every man in England. And while the Duke may not see fit to pay his wife any attention, it certainly doesn’t go over well when she seeks it elsewhere.

As I’ve stated before, I’m a sucker for movies featuring funny wigs and ruffled shirts, and The Duchess looks like it’ll be filled with plenty of good old-fashioned bodice-ripping passion. Knightley has certainly proved that she shines best in period pieces, and it’ll be interesting to see her hold her own against Ralph Fiennes (playing the Duke), so I’ll definitely RENT IT.

The Duchess is rated PG-13 and opens in limited release September 19. (Official site)

The trailer for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is very careful not to give away any major plot points. But when the premise of your movie is the story of a man who ages backwards, I guess you don’t need to reveal too much to get people interested.

Brad Pitt stars as Benjamin, and Cate Blanchett is the woman he knew as a child, when he was an old man, who he falls in love with as an adult, when he’s a young man. Confusing, yes, but after seeing the bizarre old-man child in the trailer, I am indeed curious to see how Benjamin looks as a young-child old man. I’ll eventually RENT IT.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not yet rated and opens December 19. (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)

I must be getting hard up from some decent movie releases, because I actually find myself drawn to this trailer for an animated children’s movie. Granted, it looks like it’s slightly edgier than your average kid’s movie, but still…

Igor tells the story of, well, Igor, the fabled hunchbacked lab assistant from the various Frankenstein movies. Turns out, there are many mad scientists out there, each with their own personal Igor who they belittle and abuse. One Igor in particular (voiced by the amiable John Cusack) is tired of being treated so poorly, and decides to break out of his mold and try his own hand at inventing something that will win him the annual evil science fair. Throw in a couple of kooky sidekicks, and you have one irreverent “triumphing against all odds” movie.

While I doubt Igor will be worth an $11 movie ticket (it ain’t Pixar, after all), I’ll probably eventually RENT IT.

Igor is not yet rated and opens September 19. (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)

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)

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)

Ellen Page’s characters always seem to be in some sort of peril. First she’s hunting down a suspected pedophile in Hard Candy. Then she’s being threatened with a mutation cure in X-Men 3. And then she was everyone’s favorite knocked up teenager in Juno. Now she’s naked on a bus, desperately searching for her missing younger brother.

I’m trying to think of something clever or witty or insightful to say about The Tracey Fragments’ trailer…but I’m coming up blank. It doesn’t necessarily look bad, but I’m not sure it’s really all that good, either. Perhaps I’ve just seen Ellen Page be snarky while in peril in an independent movie too many times and I’ve become immune to reaction. Hm…when do the trailers for the big summer films start coming out? I’ve never been so desperate to see some shit get blown up.

As for The Tracey Fragments, I’ll probably eventually RENT IT. I’m curious enough to know why she’s naked on a bus and if she ever finds her brother.

The Tracey Fragments will probably be rated R and opens in limited release May 9. (Official site)

While I’m not working on TrailerSpy, I actually make my living as a scientist. And on more than one occasion, I’ve heard my scientist friends exclaim that someone should make a movie about life inside the lab. And not some Hollywoodized movie about a horrible genetic experiment gone wrong, but an actual drama about what it’s really like to be a scientist working in the research world.

But whenever I’ve heard this proposal, my response has always been the same: “It’ll never happen.” And it’s not that there aren’t some interesting story-lines that take place in a real laboratory. It’s just that the realities of science do not jive with the realities of Hollywood. I mean, what’s the chance of Hollywood making a movie about a bunch of socially awkward, not-so-attractive intellectuals, grinding out experiments in relative solitude?

But then I saw this trailer for Dark Matter, and I’ll be damned if Hollywood hasn’t just made a movie about what it’s really like to be a scientist working in the research world. Granted, they’ve obviously taken a few creative liberties, and it’s obviously dramatized quite a bit. But in general, it really does look like a pretty realistic depiction.

And what I’m really impressed by is the fact that the lead-character is Asian. Granted, it’s based on a true story, but they could have easily changed the character to a European and then just taken a well-known Hollywood star, slapped a pair of glasses on him, and given him an accent. But instead, they made a movie about a very real phenomenon in science: an Asian immigrant who joyfully comes to America, only to work for an overly critical boss, who pressures them into spending 24/7 in the lab, at the expense of their both family’s and their own well-being (I’ve had more than a few co-workers who fit that description perfectly).

Since Dark Matter is going to have a limited release, I’ll probably just RENT IT when it hits DVD. But I am definitely very intrigued by this movie. And kudos to Meryl Streep for joining the cast and giving this movie some leveraging power. I doubt it would have even gotten its limited release without her.

Dark Matter is rated R and opens in select cities on April 11 (Official Site).

If you’ve ever looked at one of today’s overly pampered celebrities who has everything, yet never seems to have had a lesson in basic manners, and wondered, “What the hell is their problem?”, Flashbacks of a Fool may be of interest to you. The newly minted 007, Daniel Craig, plays a spoiled movie star getting on in years whose career is taking a nosedive and whose “friends” can no longer stand to be near. Ah, the joys of being a celebrity! During this career crisis, he goes back to his hometown for the funeral of a childhood friend, where he is forced to flashback to the days of his youth and revisit the choices he made then that turned him into the pompous ass he is now. Oh, and apparently Craig does a full frontal nude scene.

This looks like it could be a pretty good film (with or without Craig baring his junk), but unfortunately there’s no immediate plans to release this in US theaters. So I guess I’ll have no choice but to RENT IT.

Flashbacks of a Fool will no doubt have an R rating and it opens in the UK on April 18 (no word yet on a US release). (IMDB page)