Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman
Rated R: For some crazy-ass shit

In many ways, Wanted is this generation’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Bear with me for a second.

Both movies are about an everyday kid - an underdog who deserves better.  Both movies deal with overcoming tremendous odds to achieve your goals.  And both movies involve flipping cars, bending bullets, and an elite group of assassins.

Wesley Gibson (McAvoy) is a bored drone in Corporate America. That is until Fox (Jolie) shows up at a drug store one evening to inform Gibson that, not only is he one of the world’s best assassins, but that another top assassin is right behind him about to kill him.

Oh, snap!

Gibson spends about - oh, four seconds - deciding whether to return to Corporate America or begin his life as a skilled assassin.  Since this movie isn’t called, My Life in a Cubicle, I’ll let you figure out which path he chose.

After what seems like months of training, Gibson is sent out to start doing hits.  “Kill one, save a thousand,” Jolie tells him. 

The action sequences in Wanted start off ridiculous and quickly work their way up to preposterous.  It doesn’t matter, though, because from the very beginning of the movie, the tone of Wanted is set.  There will be zero restraint, there will be zero consideration of logic or common sense, and the movie never takes itself too seriously, but who cares?

We see four or five action sequences involving trains - including a few scenes where the “L” in Chicago never makes any stops - cars being catapulted into the air by other cars, and bullets stopping other bullets in mid-flight, but you know what - I think I only rolled my eyes once during the whole movie.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.

The chaos and violence in Wanted make a movie like The Transporter look tame in comparison.  Many of the special effects borrow heavily from The Matrix and countless Hong Kong action movies, but there is enough humor in the movie that Wanted is capable of standing on its own.

Directed by: Andrew Stanton
Starring: Animated Robots, Fat People
Rated G: For nothing offensive

The greatest gift that Pixar possesses is the ability to make you forget - after only one scene - that you’re watching an animated movie.  You know that toys, bugs, and cars can’t talk, but while you’re watching the movie, you forget all about that.

WALL•E is a robot. Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-Class (to be specific). WALL•E is about as low-tech as you can get - a cross between E.T. and Johnny #5 - but he does his job and he does it well.  That job is to rid future-Earth of all the garbage that humans have created and buried the planet with.  He’s a lonely robot, but he works hard, and sometimes he sets aside interesting pieces of garbage for his own collection.  Things like Rubik’s cubes, Zippo lighters, and light bulbs.

One day, a spaceship lands on Earth and deposits a new hi-tech robot on the surface. This robot (Eve) immediately sets on its classified mission, and WALL•E is immediately smitten with the visitor.  The two robots couldn’t be more different, but they eventually create a bond - just in time for Eve to complete her mission and get sent back to her spacecraft.

With WALL•E in tow (literally), the two are reunited again on a travelling space colony, where the true reason for Eve’s mission are revealed.

After the back-to-back missteps of Cars and Ratatioulle (one of my least favorite movies of 2007), I was concerned going into WALL•E. One could argue that WALL•E is Pixar’s first real kids movie, but this big kid loved every minute of it.  I’m not ready to put it up on the same level as the Toy Story movies, or even Finding Nemo, but it’s definitely up there with The Incredibles.

By the way, it’s worth sitting through the credits to hear the new Peter Gabriel song.  After all, we only get to hear new Peter Gabriel songs every ten years, so enjoy it.

Directed by: Louis Leterrier
Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth
Rated PG-13: For intense action violence, some frightening sci-fi images, and ripped trousers.

The second most unnecessary movie of the summer (Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the first) wasn’t as bad as I was hoping thought it be, but it’s still a silly little movie.

It’s only been five years since Ang Lee’s snooze-fest Hulk came out, but someone in Hollywood thought it was time to try again.  The Incredible Hulk pretends Hulk never happened and starts the story anew.  When the movie starts, the accident that turns Bruce Banner into the Hulk has already occurred.  In Ang Lee’s version, it took almost four hours for us to see this happen. 

But I’ll stop comparing the two.   

There’s nothing inherently wrong with The Incredible Hulk, it just doesn’t show me anything I haven’t seen before.  The plot is paper thin: Banner turns into the Hulk, the military wants to capture him and use him as a weapon, madness ensues.

Ed Norton does an okay job as Bruce Banner, but we never really get a chance to see him do much of anything except sulk and attempt to control his heart rate.  Tim Roth comes out of nowhere as some military hot-shot, and within ten minutes (or so it seems), he’s so obsessed with capturing Banner that he’ll do anything to level the playing field.  And I do mean anything.

There are many nods in the movie to the original TV series, which I liked, but again… another stupid Stan Lee appearance?  Come on!

The thing that ended up sinking The Incredible Hulk for me was the special effects.  Don’t get me wrong, the effects are fine, but it says a lot when a Lou Ferrigno (who also makes an appearance… of course) Hulk is more convincing than a CGI Hulk. 

I grew up watching the TV show, and every time Bruce Banner turned into the Hulk, it scared the crap out of me. The Hulk was one scary dude, even when you knew that he meant well.  In The Incredible Hulk, I never got the feeling that the Hulk was all that scary.  Mostly because I never believed he was real.

During the final Hulk vs. Abomination fight, it was difficult not to laugh as we watched these two CGI beasts battling it out in the streets of New York City.  What was even funnier is when the Hulk and Abomination were talking to each other during the fight. 

Just shut up and fight, okay?

There was a lot of hubbub about the camero by Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) of Iron Man, but it really is much ado about nothing.  In fact, when Stark first appeared on screen, the girl behind me said, “Oh, Spider-Man!”

Is the movie an improvement over Ang Lee’s version?  Absolutely.  Does the Hulk have the potential to be a long-standing franchise?  I just don’t see how.

Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Marky Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo
Rated R: For violent and disturbing images

Something is happening.  What’s happening?  Something.  Do you know what’s happening?  We should really find out what’s happening.  Could this really be happening?  Maybe. Someone has to know what’s happening, because I don’t know what’s happening.  The Happening is happening, apparently.

I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to like this movie. I’m a fan of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable (I’m one of the few fans of the latter), and I even liked Signs for what it was.  I was so betrayed and disappointed by The Village that I almost yelled out “BULLSHIT!” when the ending was revealed.  But I didn’t.  And then there was Lady in the Water, which had the potential to be a good movie, but it wasn’t. At all.

I viewed The Happening as the make-or-break movie for my relationship with Shyamalan.  If I liked it, I’ll keep going to see his movies.  If I don’t like it, I’m through with him.

I’m through with M. Night Shyamalan.

M. Night Shyamalan is an ego maniac.  A point that is documented in the book, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale.  It is because of his ego that Shyamalan may never make a good movie again.  But it’s not Shyamalan’s ego that ruins The Happening, it’s his inability to tell an interesting story any more.

The Happening begins in Central Park (we’re told it’s in New York City, just in case we’re inbreds), at 8:33 AM to be specific.  I took note of the time, figuring it would have some impact on the final plot.

As people go about their business in Central Park (New York City), the wind starts to blow, people stop in their tracks, then walk backwards, then kill themselves.  All of them.  We then head to a construction site we’re told is “Near Central Park” (New York City).  Construction workers begin throwing themselves off the top of the building for no reason.  Okay, creepy.

Have construction workers come up with a more impressive way of telling their union they’re not getting paid enough?  Nope.  It’s something much worse than that.

If people are dying for no reason, it can mean only one thing:

TERRORISTS!

Eek!

News outlets are quick to assume that terrorists must be to blame for these deaths, which would be insulting if it weren’t the actual state of the media today.  But it’s still insulting.

Enter Mark Wahlberg, a high school science teacher in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania).  Wahlberg has had solid performances in Boogie Nights and The Departed, but his performance in The Happening is so laughable, so bad, one has to wonder if the only scenes of his that made the final cut were from the blooper reel.

Wahlberg hears about the stuff that’s, uh… happening in New York City and decides to grab his wife, played by Zooey Deschanel (Psst! Zooey, fire your agent!), and his useless friend (Leguizamo), and his friend’s even more useless and annoying daughter.

Where is his friend’s wife?  Well, she’s trying to escape what’s, uh… happening in New York City by going to “the town of Princeton.”  I’m assuming Shyamalan went to this level of detail so the audience wouldn’t think that she was going to Princeton University (which, by the way, is in Princeton, New Jersey).  If I were Princeton University, I’d want to make sure that my name wasn’t mentioned in this movie, too.

I mention that line of dialogue because it is one of countless lines that will make your skin crawl more than the thought of all these people dying.

Anyway, Wahlberg, Deschanel, Leguizamo and the annoying kid decide to head to rural Pennsylvania, because we all know that nothing ever happens in rural Pennsylvania.  Especially terrorists.

As the group journeys across the Keystone State, they run into other people with the same idea.  Most of the people they come across are dead, which is going to be a real bitch for the Pennsylvania Tourism Board to handle.  Leguizamo decides to go find his wife (”in the town of Princeton), which is fine, because we’re never given a reason to give a crap about the guy.  Unfortunately, he leaves his annoying daughter with Wahlberg and Deschanel.

I suddenly pray that whatever is, uh… happening, better happen soon to this kid.

So, they join a group of a few other survivors and decide to head west to EVEN MORE rural Pennsylvania.  While the group heads to the promised land, Wahlberg - Mr. High School Science Teacher - decides that maybe terrorists aren’t attacking us, but that it’s… never mind.  I can’t tell you.  I can’t deprive you of the laugh that I got when I was told the real cause (or the supposed caused) of the attack.  It’s just too funny to give away in the review.

All I will say is that this movie was much funnier when I thought it was terrorists.

Eventually, the group is convinced by Wahlberg’s explanation of the events, and even listens to him when he offers a suggestion on how they could survive.  His survival-theory turns out to be true, until later in the movie when it turns out not to be true.  Don’t worry about that, though, because his theory kept the main characters alive, even though it proved ineffective to everyone else.  Minor detail.

At 9:27 the next day, the stuff that was, uh… happening, stops. 

Why does it stop? 

We’re never told.  “Some times things… happen,” experts say.

What was it? 

We’re never told. All we get is more assumptions - Maybe it was terrorists! Maybe it wasn’t terrorists!

Whatever it was, I’ve decided that I don’t give a shit.

* 

*Only because I could stare into Zooey’s eyes forever.

Directed by: Bryan Bertino
Starring: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Your Worst F-ing Nightmare
Rated R: For violence, terror, language and situations you never, ever want to experience

I’ve seen every Friday the 13th movie more than I care to admit, starting at an age far-too-young that I also care to admit.  But I’m pretty picky when it comes to watching contemporary horror movies.  Most of today’s horror films deal with teenagers getting hacked to bits by some maniac with a power tool.  That’s cool and all, but I’ve been there, done that.  Well, you know what I mean.

Recently, there have even been horror films about killer cellphones.

In other words: it takes a lot to get me to see a horror film in the theater. 

Not because I’m scared, but because it’s rare that a trailer for a horror film ever makes me want to run out and see it.  That wasn’t the case with The Strangers.  The trailed roped me in as soon as I saw that it was a home-invasion premise, which - come on - is a pretty damn scary premise. 

Especially when the invaders are wearing scary-ass masks.

The Strangers begins with a young couple (Tyler & Speedman) returning from a wedding reception, where their relationship has just taken a turn for the worse.  The two decide to crash at Speedman’s secluded family summer-home, then they’ll go their separate ways the following morning.

After a couple of hours of talking, Tyler and Speedman are interrupted by a loud knock at the door.  They open the door.  A young girl, shrouded in darkness, asks if Tamara is there.  They tell her that she has the wrong house, and the girl walks away into the darkness.

P.S. She’ll be back.

Speedman runs out to get cigarettes, and while he’s gone the girl knocks on the door again and again.  Each time asking for Tamara.  Only each time she knocks the knocking becomes even more deafening. Tyler gets scared, she hides, Speedman comes home but doesn’t see anything amiss.

And then things go horribly wrong.

The mysterious girl at the door comes back (again) - this time wearing a doll mask… and she brought two friends with her.  A man wearing what can only be described as a potato sack with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth, and a girl wearing a Betty Boop-style mask.

The three intruders then spend the better part of the night chasing and tormenting the young couple, until their chase concludes in the early morning hours the next day.

I don’t scare easily, but The Strangers had the same affect on me and big, empty houses as The Blair Witch Project had on me and going into the woods at night.  That is to say that I will be avoiding both of these locations for the immediate future.

There’s been some talk about the ending, which I can’t touch on without giving anything away, so I’ll just go on the record as saying that it’s not that big of a deal.  The ending - specifically, the final scene - is uneccessary, but it didn’t ruin the movie for me.

The Strangers certainly produces chills, but it fizzles out a bit as night turns to day.  Still, 3/4 of a good horror movie is far better than most of the movies out there claiming to be “scary.” 

The Strangers is scary.  What else do you want? 

If you can watch this movie in a big, empty house by yourself at night, I applaud your bravery.

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Laughing Gophers, Swinging Monkeys, Aliens from “Signs”
Rated PG-13: For adventure violence, scary images, and Shia LaBeouf’s pompadour

I spent last week revisting the first three Indiana Jones movies in preparation of seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  It turns out that watching the first three movies served only one purpose:

A reminder of how completely unnecessary a fourth Indiana Jones movie was.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is George Lucas’ latest attempt to regain relevancy.  Not coincidentally, it’s also his latest failed venture.  Why anyone would agree to make this movie is, oh… that’s right, it made a crapload of money over Memorial Day weekend, that’s why.

I tried to have no expectations going into Crystal Skull, but let’s face it, I knew it was going to suck.  For the first twenty minutes - okay, fifteen - I thought, “This isn’t so bad.”  But every minute after that the movie became so exponentially worse that I would’ve walked out if my wife didn’t have the car keys.

There’s a fine line between Fun Summer Action Movie and Scene After Scene of Eye-Rolling Moments.  Crystal Skull is filled with so much of the latter that you wonder if you’re watching a two hour version of the droid factory scene from Attack of the Clones. 

Yeah, it’s that bad.

What, you want to hear about the plot?  Let me take a stab at this.  There are Russians, and a crystal skull that looks like it could’ve belonged to one of the coneheads, and there’s an ancient city, and aliens.

Oh, come on!  I’m not ruining anything there.  You’d have to live in a cave to not know there are aliens in this movie.  That’s right, aliens in an Indiana Jones movie.  It’s like apple pie and vanilla ice cream - a perfect match.

But let me get away from the aliens for a moment.  Not because I don’t want to talk about them anymore, but because I really have no idea what they were doing in the movie in the first place.  Even after they explained it to me, I still have no idea.

Cate Blanchett plays the most unintentionally funny Russian stereotyped character since Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, hell-bent on getting her hands on the crystal skull.  And wouldn’t you know it, Indiana Jones is the only one that can find it.  You know, kind of like how the Nazis used Indy to find the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, only not as interesting.

Which brings me to my next complaint.  A crystal skull?  Seriously?  That’s the best you could come up with?  Searching for the Ark of the Covenant - that’s cool.  Searching for the Holy Grail - very cool.  Searching for that rock thingy in Temple of Doom - not so much.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  If we’re not interested in the prize Indiana Jones seeks, then why should we care about the movie?  A crystal skull.  Why not have his final mission be something big.  Really big.  Like, I don’t know - Noah’s Ark, maybe?

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull plods along for what seems like hours, with many scenes of Harrison Ford hamming it up for the camera, Shia LaBeouf counting the seconds until he can drink his next Red Bull, and bad guys that range from jumping ninja monkey-men, to wall-dwelling natives that are disposed of in a blink of an eye.

There is a hilarious sword fight in the jungle, capped by an improbable vine-swinging scene that would make George of the Jungle look like an Oscar® contender.  And not one, not two, but three waterfall scenes that will have you searching for the nearest exit. 

All of this leads up to an ending so funny, so ridiculous, well… you just have to see it for yourself.

Harrison Ford is practically unrecognizable as Indiana Jones.  Sure, he’s wearing the fedora and the leather jacket, and he even has a whip at his side, but there’s something, well… wrong.  It just doesn’t feel like Indiana Jones.  It feels like Harrison Ford playing a caricature of Indiana Jones.

I actually don’t have a problem with Shia LeBeouf.  Normally.  In Crystal Skull I not only wanted him to face a death more painful than the Nazis at the end of Raiders, but I wanted him to come back from the grave so we could see him die again.

And those rumors you’ve probably heard about George Lucas wanting to continue the Indiana Jones franchise with LeBeouf taking on the titular role.  Yeah… suddenly all of that End of Days talk doesn’t seem so far fetched, does it?

Lastly (and believe me, I could go on for days about this movie), I want to touch on little plot hole.  Now, this is hardly a spoiler because we all know that Sean Connery isn’t in this movie, but I’m wondering if somebody (anybody) can answer this question for me:

How the Hell did Henry Jones, Sr. die if he drank from the freaking holy grail at the end of Last Crusade?

Directed by: Andy & Larry Wachowski
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox
Rated PG: For sequences of action, some violence, and über colors

Growing up, my younger brother and I would spend hours - okay, days - playing F-Zero and Mario Kart on the Nintendo.  F-Zero, in particular, was fun to play because the racing speeds would approach 1,000 MPH at times. 

Speed Racer isn’t too dissimilar to watching a video game on the big screen.  It’s fast, it’s loud, most of the time you’re distracted by things going on in the background, and once you’re done playing/watching it, you don’t have much desire to revisit it.

That’s not to say that Speed Racer is a bad movie - because truthfully, I thought it was quite fun.

Prior to seeing this movie, the only thing I knew about the original Speed Racer cartoon is that I changed the channel whenever it came on.  I tried to watch it, but there was something about it that annoyed me enough that I never got into it.  Needless to say, I had my doubts when I heard they were going to make a movie - a 2 hour 19 minute movie - on the premise of a boy racer and his younger brother and pet monkey that always hide in the trunk of the car.

If Speed Racer has one thing going against it, it’s the running-time.  It’s too damn long.  The plot is too thin and too silly to be stretched out into over two hours, and this is never more evident than in the middle of the film.  Which, oddly enough, is also the longest stretch of time where there is no racing taking place. 

And that’s what Speed Racer does best - the racing.  We see three main races in three totally different environments that put The Phantom Menace pod racing scenes to shame in terms of excitement and creativity.

After all, driving fast is totally different than flying fast.

I chose to see Speed Racer on the IMAX screen, and despite having an assigned seat at the far left side of the theater (seriously, an assigned seat at a movie?), it was a great visual experience.  There were times during the races when the speed and colors were a little overwhelming, but for me it only enhanced the speed and danger of the races.

I’ve been following Emile Hirsch ever since I saw him in the grossly underrated The Girl Next Door, and his work in Into the Wild showed me that he could carry a movie all by himself.  I have my doubts that Speed Racer is going to put Hirsch on anyone’s radar, but if someone had to play Speed Racer, then it might as well be Emile Hirsch. 

I had no expectations going into this movie, which is probably why I wasn’t impressed nor disappointed with it, but Speed Racer is essentially a big bag of candy, and once you’re done with it, you’re done with it. 

Which is pretty much what we want from a summer movie, right?

You didn’t think I was serious, did you?

Directed by: Jon Favreau
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges
Rated PG-13: (For some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content)

The summer movie season is finally upon us, and you know what that means?  It means that I went nowhere near Made of Honor. 

Growing up, who didn’t want to don a suit of titanium alloy, fly around the city and fight crime?  I know I did.  The problem is, I’d never be able to keep my mouth shut about my adventures.  I’d be running around telling everyone who would listen about all of the cool things I just did.

We’ve all seen the trailer, so we know what happens - Tony Stark (Downey, Jr.) gets kidnapped by terrorists, he’s forced to build a weapon, he refuses, in walks Iron Man Mark I.  Stark manages to escape and, inspired by his Mark I suit, decides to take things a bit further.

Let’s take a step backwards.  Stark is the owner and president of Stark Industries, a multi-billion dollar company in the weapons business.  After his little run-in with the terrorists, Stark decides that his company would be better suited for the powers of peace, rather than promoting the use of weapons.  The Iron Man Mark II suit his Stark’s answer for peace.

The bulk of Iron Man is spent building Stark’s character, which is fine, because there will be plenty of time to see more of Iron Man in the sequels.  And we all know there will be sequels.  A lot of times in movies like this it’s hard to believe that anyone would be capable of designing - as the Joker once put it - those wonderful toys.  But in Iron Man, we believe that not only is Tony Stark capable of designing a flying, shiny suit of mass destruction peace, we believe that he’s capable of operating it. 

I mean, Stark puts on the Mark II suit, flies from California (I presume) to Afghanistan in what seems like a couple of hours, and I never once thought, “Oh, come on!” 

He’s Iron Man, why couldn’t he do that?

Iron Man contains everything you want to see in a superhero movie and more.  It’s funny, the action sequences and special effects are great, and pretty much all of the characters contribute to the story in their own little way.  Even the brief appearance of a male-pattern-baldness-inflicted Peter Billingsley was entertaining. 

It’s nearly impossible to screw up the origin story of a superhero.

Well, unless you’re Fantastic Four.

At the end of the movie we see that Tony Stark is pretty much exactly like we would be if one of us were a superhero (and insanely rich… and brilliant).   The man can out fly an F-22 fighter jet, he can shoot tank-busting rockets from his wrists, and take out terrorists with a pulse ray shot from the palm of his hand. 

And he can’t wait to get home and tell all of his friends about it.

Robert Downey, Jr. was born to play this role.  He has the charm and sense of humor to pull off Tony Stark.  Somewhere, Tom Cruise is kicking himself, because if it weren’t for his couch-jumping escapades and cookoo rantings, he’d probably be playing Tony Stark in this movie.  I assure you, we’re better off with Downey, Jr. as Iron Man.

For me, the only real misstep in Iron Man is with Jeff Bridges’ character.  Thanks to the trailer (which I saw 183 times), we all know that he ends up being a bad guy, so the eventual reveal of his turn-to-evil isn’t exactly a surprising one.

That is the one and only problem I had with Iron Man - a great movie to start off the popcorn season.

Finally, for the love of God, enough with the Stan Lee cameos!  It stopped being funny a long time ago.

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Jason Segal, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand
Rated R: (for strong language, two scenes showcasing a penis, and a William Baldwin sighting)

I’ll see just about anything starring a Freaks & Geeks alum.  So far, I’ve yet to be disappointed.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the story of Peter Bretter (Segal), who was just dumped by his girlfriend - you guessed it - Sarah Marshall (Bell), who also happens to be the star of a hit TV show.  The movie begins with said breakup scene.  A scene that I have been trying to wipe from my memory ever since. 

Why?  Well, let’s just say that is has something to do with the numerous shots we see of Segal’s penis.

Thanks to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (a movie I watched on DVD) and now Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I have seen two movies in the last week that featured scenes showing male genitalia.  Please, for the love of God, let this be a trend that stops now. 

Moving on…

Following the breakup, Peter decides to go on vacation to Hawaii to escape his sorrows. The problem is Sarah Marshall is there, too.  At the same hotel.  With her new boyfriend - pop music sensation - Aldous Snow.  Peter, Aldous and Sarah continue to bump into each other and hilarity ensues.  Throw in that girl from “That ’70’s Show” for a little love triangle, and you’re left a very entertaining and sweet comedy.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a funny movie, the only problem is, I saw over 75% of the really funny moments in the trailer.  I realize studios need to sell a movie by making a good trailer, but at what cost?  It’s not like I was out on the Interwebs actively searching for trailers and clips from the movie.  All I had to go off of was the one trailer I saw in the theater (granted, a dozen times, but still).

Do we really need the whole movie spelled out in front of us in the trailer?  I don’t.