Trailer Mash

Simply because the trailer self-destructs in a blaze of cliché, it does not follow that a movie will not be a work of unparalleled genius. Nor is the opposite the case. But in a week of powerful females leading sharp, witty trailers, hope is high for almost all of them. Mashup above by Sara Gardephe. Chloë Moretz, who sprang fully formed from Zeuss's head as Hit Girl in the compromised but thrilling Kick-Ass, is perfectly assured in the trailer for Hick, a rather modern road movie. She's a 13-year-old who marks a path across a map of the USA and then follows it for real, hitchhiking with strangers, gun in hand, always ready with her catchphrase, "Do you think I'm pretty?" Blake Lively appears to be a fellow traveler who takes the child under her wing, Paper Moon-style, and Eddie Redmayne, his Eton physiognomy strangely appropriate, is the redneck with an unhealthy interest. In case you are in any doubt, there's a quick scene showing Moretz dressed in an outfit that's an homage both to Sue Lyon in Lolita and Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. The week's second girl with a gun on the road is Tara Lynne Barr in God Bless America, a satire as blistering as it is broad. Bill Murray's sweet-faced brother Joel discovers he has a brain tumor, and the cause, it is hinted, is America. Or at least the version fed to him through his TV. Accompanying Murray on a revenge killing spree, Barr's snotty teen is an ideal mouthpiece for writer-director-comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite's bile. Kardashians, "women who call their tits 'the girls,' " and people who use their cell phones in cinemas are all viable candidates for extinction in his world. A copy bobcat killing will be most embarrassing. The third teen-girl hero of the week is Cierra Ramirez, who even has lessons about what coming of age actually means. This is useful when your mother is feckless sex bomb Eva Mendes. The trailer for Girl in Progress starts well with spiky bilingual insults and flashing eyes but gets pretty daytime TV by the time counselor Patricia Arquette shows up. Expect tears and lessons. A little older and wiser, Sophie Quinton is a starlet and sometime Marilyn Monroe impersonator in Nobody Else But You. Whether or not she actually exists is moot, since she begins the trailer as the creation of a writer sketching out the plot of a new novel during a snowy drive. Thereafter, a montage of slapping, snowscapes, Frenchmen with guns and a number of scenes of Quinton not wearing much promise an entirely seductive mix of Gallic comedy, sex and violence. For all the evidence presented to the contrary above, it seems unlikely the world would run less smoothly were key decisions not left to men in so many areas of life and the world. Where Do We Go Now? has women reaching the unlikely conclusion that one approach to resolving a feud between Christian and Muslim men in a Lebanese village might involve the hiring of Eastern European dancers. The stupidity of the men is irritatingly accurate in what seems to be a cheerful and optimistic story from Nadine Labaki, who made the excellent and adored Caramel. Lightening the mood, the trailer is lifted by a tune that mixes Middle Eastern instrumentation with the riffs of a genius jazz clarinetist. Presenting another aspect on the war of the sexes is Tonight You're Mine, which takes the old movie conceit of handcuffing arch enemies to each other so they may learn and grow. A skinny hipster guy from a band and a scruffy hipster girl from another band are handcuffed together on the night they are both due to perform at a music festival. The trailer promises a sweet enough three minutes of entertainment, no doubt the leads will go on to be massive, but The Defiant Ones it ain't. The Johnny Depp and Tim Burton sideshow rolls into town yet again, this time in the guise of a remake of Dark Shadows, a '70s TV series about a vampire reborn in the present day. Historical records suggest the series compensated for its low budget with histrionic melodrama: Burton's meat and drink. From the screaming '70s fashions and Depp's idiotic accent to Eva Green's blonde wig and Michelle Pfeiffer, this is no more or less than a big-budget pomo comment on camp, at least according to its gaudy trailer.

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Trailer Mash

Ladies first, and quite a bunch they are, in this week's opening movies

Stevan Keane

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Stevan Keane