I would hope that even the most die-hard Woody Allen fan would admit that the man’s work is either hit or miss. When he’s on, he’s on fire. When he’s off, you get The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. I can’t quite get a handle on which end of the spectrum Vicky Cristina Barcelona will fall, since the trailer really doesn’t give anything away. No, really…there’s not even any dialogue in it.

From what I can cobble together based on the snapshots in the trailer and my own reading about the film, Javier Bardem (looking far less terrifying than the last time I saw him) is a Spanish artist who gets it on with a lot of women. He’s sleeping with two American tourists (one played by Allen’s new favorite ingénue, Scarlett Johansson) and also has a jealous ex (Penelope Cruz) tracking him down. And there’s lots and lots of sex.

The trailer shows little more than short clips of some steamy love scenes all set to a Spanish song, with any dialogue from the movie removed. I would think they would want to market a Woody Allen film as something more than a sensationalized adult film, but what do I know? Well, I do know this: as for this particular Allen film, I’m going to SKIP IT. If it turns out to be his next Annie Hall, I’m sure someone will tell me.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is rated R and opens in limited release August 29. (Official 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)

Today’s lesson: Life is short. So live fast, play hard, and love much while you can.

There, I just saved you $11 and an endless amount of eye-rolling at this ‘tragic love story torn asunder by disease’ movie, so you can SKIP IT.

Jack and Jill vs. the World is rated PG-13 and has an unknown release date. (Official site)

Despite what my mother may say, I don’t think anyone could ever accuse me of being a film snob. I’ve liked some rather questionable, and some outright bad, movies. (When in college, I actually paid money to see Josie and the Pussycats in the theater, and I enjoyed it. True story.) I can even get behind a simplistic romantic comedy if it’s entertaining and offers at least one original idea. That being said, when it comes to My Sassy Girl, I’m going to have to SKIP IT.

First there’s the story; kooky girl meets uptight boy and shakes up his life. You mean like Sweet November? Or the TV show Dharma & Greg? Or maybe more along the lines of Garden State? Or even Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Or maybe it doesn’t even matter, since variations of this storyline have been done to death by a slew of better movies.

Then there’s the actors. Someone at some point decided that Elisha Cuthbert was more than a pretty face and let her star in movies, when she really should stick to roles like the leading lady’s best friend or the girl the leading man lusts after before he ends up with his true love. And then Jesse Bradford is that guy who did that one movie…or was it that other movie…well, he looks familiar, so I guess he was in something I saw at some point, but didn’t care enough to remember.

And then there’s the awful title. “My Sassy Girl,” seriously? Was “My Crazy Lady” already taken? What about “My Super Kooky Chick” or “My Impulsive Impudent Gal”? (And yes, I realize this movie is a remake, but plenty of remakes have had the good sense to adopt a title better than the original one.)

So while I’m sure this movie will have a charming moment or two, I’m going to have to skip out on watching mediocre actors tell a story I’ve already seen at least a dozen times. Maybe if I’m lucky, Josie and the Pussycats will be on cable and I can revel in watching a quality second-rate movie.

My Sassy Girl is rated PG-13 and opens some time in Spring 2008. (Official site)

I think I’ve probably mentioned before that I absolutely despise our tabloid culture. That said, however, I have to admit that the tabloids really don’t affect my life most of the time. I mean, I don’t visit TMZ.com, and most of the news programs I watch don’t regularly cover Paris and Britney and Lindsay. And so long as those girls continue to make meaningless fluff like The Hottie and the Nottie or bad pop music, then who am I to say that people shouldn’t be allowed to indulge in a harmless guilty pleasure.

On the other hand, when our tabloid culture starts to infringe on entertainment that I would otherwise be interested in, that’s when I start to get a little peeved.

Take this new movie Chapter 27 for example. There’s no denying that this movie has a very compelling story (the days leading up to Mark David Chapman’s killing of John Lennon). And in a perfect world, I’m fairly confident that this trailer would have really sparked my interest in the movie. However, instead of focusing on the story of Mark David Chapman while I watched this trailer, I found myself wondering whether or not Jared Leto had hooked up with Lindsay Lohan during the filming of the movie.

And there-in lies the problem. Say what you will about Lindsay Lohan’s choices in life, but the reality is that she’s a pretty good actress. And there’s no reason that she shouldn’t be playing this role or any other serious role. And yet, the truth is that any movie that Lindsay Lohan iis in is essentially ruined for me. Because instead of seeing the character that she’s playing, I will always see the rehab-ditching basket-case that’s plastered all over my TV, no matter how much I try to avoid her.

So even though I’m interested in the story Mark David Chapman, I’m sorry to say that this movie is going to be a SKIP IT for me. I hope that Hollywood will follow its usual trend and come out with another movie about the exact same subject sometime soon. And I especially hope that Lindsay will get her act together and stop being such a good target for the tabloids, so that I can finally enjoy a movie that she happens to be starring in.

Chapter 27 is not yet rated and opens in March. (IMDB page)

Feel free to Tell Us Your Opinion.

Recipe for Made of Honor:

Take two parts My Best Friend’s Wedding, one part Four Weddings and a Funeral, a couple of cheesy pratfalls, shake well, and pour over McDreamy Patrick Dempsey. Serve chilled and enjoy!

I’m slightly curious if there’s an original bone anywhere in this movie, which seems to have just borrowed bits and pieces from some of the most popular romantic comedies ever made. I admit to enjoying a chick flick when it’s clever and original, but this rehash of pilfered pieces leaves me cold. In a nutshell, Dempsey takes too long to realize he’s in love with his best friend (yes, a female best friend). By the time he realizes that she’s his one and only, she’s engaged to someone else. And to add the extra twist to the knife, she asks him to be her maid of honor. Can he put a stop to the wedding to go after his own happily ever after? Should he even try to meddle with his best friend’s happiness? Does anyone really care?

I may watch this whenever it finds it’s way to basic cable, but for now this is a SKIP IT for me. I’ve seen more original plots in episodes of Saved by the Bell (and there ain’t nothing original about Saved by the Bell).

Made of Honor is not yet rated and opens May 8. (Official site)

I realize that it’s cliche by now to make fun of the asinine behavior of Hollywood, but oh well…

My latest complaint is this Hollywood theory that if something is a success once, they have to do it over and over again, ad nauseum. The first Survivor was a hit, and now every show on my television set is a reality show. Carrie was successful, and I don’t think that there’s been a Stephen King book since that hasn’t been made into a movie. Dark Angel was a popular TV show, and now every movie in theaters is starring Jessica Alba…

And now the latest addition to this trend is this slew of Japanese horror remakes.

Granted, I’m not a big horror fan, so maybe that explains my lack of understanding on this matter, but is it really necessary to remake every horror movie that Japan produces? I mean, how many times can people see a Japanese kid with a white face before they stop being scared by it?

That said, I have to admit that this trailer for The Eye did give me a bit of a chill. And it is sort of a cool Hitchcockian sort of premise that a woman would get an eye-implant and suddenly be able to see into a supernatural world. But alas, I’m just not a big enough horror fan to sign up for this one. Even if it does seem to be the first Japanese horror remake that isn’t completely dominated by white-faced Japanese kids.

No, I’m afraid that The Eye is going to be a SKIP IT for me. On the other hand, if you’re a huge horror fan, you might as well check it out. Either that, or wait until they come out with Halloween 27 or Freddy vs. Jason 12. Gotta love Hollywood…

The Eye is rated R and opens February 1. (Official Site)

You know it’s a bad sign when your initial reaction after watching a trailer is, “Wait, was that a joke?”

And that was exactly my response after watching the trailer for the latest vehicle for Jessica Simpson. Simpson stars as a pampered celebrity (Get the fu** outta here! No, I cannot, it is serious.) who suddenly finds herself broke and humiliated. So naturally, she enlists in the Army, because it will improve her life or something. Cue the dumb blonde jokes, predictable storyline, and an image of me weeping silently for the future of American cinema.

Putting the lameness of the movie itself aside, the trailer for it plays like one of the gag trailers you can find on YouTube (like our featured trailer mash-ups). I figured someone took footage from Private Benjamin (a far superior film about a ditzy blonde in the Army), footage of Simpson being stupid (not hard to find), and footage of Vivica Fox and the Guttenberg kissing their careers good-bye, and mashed them up into this amateurish trailer.

Needless to say, this is a big SKIP IT. The movie doesn’t even have a rating, release date, or official site yet, so there’s hope that this will never find its way to the movie theaters and will languish in the $1.99 DVD bin at Wal-Mart.

As soon as I finished watching this trailer for Awake, about five different questions popped into my head simultaneously. And since I’m not sure which one is more important, I’ll just list all of them and let you guys decide:

1) Why hasn’t Hayden Christensen done more movies in the past couple years?
2) How exactly do you make a movie about a guy under anesthesia?
3) Why would you want to make a movie about a guy under anesthesia?
4) How is Jessica Alba able to star in fifty movies a year?
5) Why the hell aren’t there any good movies anymore?

I’m not sure what the answer is to most of these questions, but I’m pretty sure at least one answer has to do with the Star Wars prequels and another has something to do with Oscar season. But I guess the more pertinent questions for this post are #2 and #3.

Now, I get the drama involved in watching a person discovering that nothing about is life is as he thought it was, and that there are people trying to kill him and all that. But the fun of that kind of movie comes when the protagonist gets to act on what he’s learned and take revenge on the people who’ve wronged him. But how the hell do you take action when you’re laying on a hospital bed, trapped in an anesthetic paralysis?

My feeling about this movie is that this is one of those stories ripped from the headlines that probably should have stayed in the headlines. Yeah, it’s incredibly freaky that 1 in 700 people remain conscious while they’re under anesthesia, but you can’t really make a movie about that. Movies about action, and it’s hard to have any action when the main character can’t move during the majority of the film.

Unless I hear that this movie is the next Sixth Sense, with some sort of unbelievable twist at the end, I’m afraid I’m going to have to SKIP IT. And the saddest part is that I think Hayden Christensen is a far more talented actor than those Star Wars flicks revealed (have you seen Life As a House?), but this movie doesn’t look like the right vehicle to try to reawaken his career with. My guess is that it’ll just put it to bed for good.

Awake is rated R and opens February 26. (IMDB page)

Every once in a while, we’ll get a nasty comment on this site from an obsessed movie fan who thinks that it’s unfair that we judge movies solely on their trailers, without seeing the actual films. However, it’s my personal opinion that a trailer speaks volumes about how a movie will turn out. Especially a bad trailer.

Take this trailer here for example.

When I first heard about The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, I was rather intrigued. I think Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck are both good actors, and I liked the idea of them going against each other on the big screen. And the story itself seemed like an interesting twist on the Western genre: turn the bad guy into the good guy by pitting him against an even worse guy.

But then I watched this trailer, and I knew immediately that the movie was going to suck.

I’ve watched a lot of trailers in the past year that I’ve been writing for TrailerSpy, and this one definitely ranks among the worst that I’ve seen. It’s way too slow, the narrator makes me want to shoot myself, and there doesn’t seem to be a single second of real action in the entire film. I mean, how can I be expected to enjoy a two hour movie when I can barely make it through the trailer without falling asleep?

And this is exactly what I mean by learning a lot about a movie from its trailer. A trailer is a two and a half minute highlight of the best scenes from a two hour movie. Plus, they get to add whatever music and narration they want to help make the story seem more exciting. I mean, if you can’t make a movie seem worthwhile using those criteria, then the movie is simply not worth seeing.

I know this is a highly anticipated movie with bankable stars, but I for one am going to SKIP IT. It’s a risky endeavor to basically give away the movie’s ending in the title, and if you’re going to do that, you better offer the audience one helluva fun ride along the way. But unfortunately, this trailer just doesn’t convince me that the movie will deliver.

The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford is rated R and opens in limited release on September 21. (Official Site)