Trailer Hitch

By Eric Hughes

December 10, 2008

Stop telling me to take a bath! I took one just last year.

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Welcome to Trailer Hitch, BOP's look at the latest movie trailers to hit the Internet. This week: A Friday the 13th reboot earns this edition of Trailer Hitch's highest marks with a solid B grade?! Yeah, it shocks me too.

Che – Opens December 12th (NY and LA), January 9, 2009 (limited)

Even though Focus Features is set to release Steven Soderbergh's epic Ernesto "Che" Guevara flick this weekend, the studio only has what feels like an extended tease on the ready. Even worse, it only captures video from the first half of the 235-minute movie. Worse than that, it's hardly engaging.

Problem is we don't learn anything about the movie from its advertisement. Instead we get "rebels gather in the hills" and "from their ranks...one man will rise" and other nonsense filler that suffocates the ad and exposes little story.

*A note on Che's release dates. It will be in New York and Los Angeles for one week only beginning this Friday to qualify for February's Oscar ceremony. The movie will then be re-released in those same cities on January 9th as two separate films, titled Che Part 1: The Argentine and Che Part 2: Guerrilla. The two parts will expand to more theaters the following week.

Grade: C
Also expected to be released on this date: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Delgo, Nothing Like the Holidays, The Readers, Doubt, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, What Doesn't Kill You, Where God Left His Shoes, The Kings of Appletown




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The Class – Opens December 25th

Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival – the first French film to do so in 21 years – Laurent Cantet's The Class (Entre les Murs) is about one teacher's struggle to give the best education to his students, who come from tough neighborhoods. As amusing as his students often are, they at the same time jeopardize his ability to teach them important material. The movie stars François Bégaudeau, who penned the 2006 novel on which the film is based, in the lead role of the literature teacher.

No matter how many good things I've heard about this one, its trailer says nothing to the supposed quality of the picture (similar to Soderbergh's Che). So his students are snappy (har har). There's nothing else to show in the preview? I feel like that's all we get there, besides endless quotes from critics who speak so highly of the movie. The Class may be good, but its trailer surely isn't.

Grade: C+
Also expected to be released on this date: Bedtime Stories, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Spirit, Hurricane Season, Marley & Me, Walts with Bashir, Shanghai, The Class


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