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Trailer Tracker: Tower Heist, The Ides of March and more

This week on Player Affinity, let us make like a sharing group of individuals enjoying a cake and split things up shall we? My compadre Steven has chatted about director Brett Ratner’s heist comedy Tower Heist here, but I’ll chip in my thoughts as well while turning my gaze to George Clooney’s political thriller The Ides of March, starring Ryan Gosling. Capping off the four clips this week will be Margin Call, a true-to-events and star-studded Wall Street tale about the impending financial crisis and WWII dog-fighting (as in airplanes, not Michael Vick) drama Red Tails. Heads or tails, you win — it’s Trailer Tracker.

New clips this week:
Tower Heist
The Ides of March
Margin Call
Red Tails

  

Tower Heist

After prodding the wrong end of the proverbial pitbull for many with X-Men: The Last Stand and for a third time (one too many to be sure) visiting the “Rush Hour” franchise, Brett Ratner moves onto another comedy/action hybrid with Tower Heist, an Oceans Eleven-esque caper flick with an undeniably stellar cast including Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Mathew Broderick, Tea Leoni, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Michael Pena and Gabourey Sidibe of Precious fame. These employees plot to steal a corrupt business man’s cash after he bankrupts them all thanks to his Ponzi scheme.

 

The trailer is solid and seems to offer an ensemble approach which is encouraging considering the talent, not to mention the propensity for Murphy to outstay his welcome in large doses. To be fair, the comedian has not headlined a more “mature” comedy arguably since 2002’s I Spy (unless you count Norbit) as most of his ventures have been kid-fare and voicing Donkey in the “Shrek” films. If the trailer gives an indication of what’s to come, I just want to see this wacky cast at work in a genre that I truly enjoy.



The Ides of March

Talk about your strong starts. Check out the principle cast, intelligently blistering trailer and one of the best posters of the year for director/star’s George Clooney’s The Ides of March, an adaptation of the play Farragut North. The man-in-everything Ryan Gosling co-stars as the too-idealistic political aid to Clooney’s possibly two-faced presidential candidate alongside Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachael Wood, Paul Giamatti, Jeffrey Wright and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Sometimes all it takes is a respected talent like Clooney to assemble a cast like this as here he also writes (his first venture into screenwriting since his Oscar nomination for Good Night and Good Luck) and directs. The trailer reveals both a lot and nothing; it is a congested barrage of political intrigue and that makes me all the more curious. This is not your typical fare, and many will be turned away despite the stars involved. Hope for awards recognition to get theater seats filled for this intriguing project.




Margin Call

It seems like the week of ensemble casts this week on Trailer Tracker; this time Margin Call assembles Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci for this financial thriller about the employees of an investment firm who try to save themselves on the eve of the economic meltdown. Margin Call seems to offer Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps for more cerebral audiences and like The Ides of March does not go for the lowest common denominator when representing itself. I can see this movie going one of two ways: culminating in an intelligently close-to-home and somewhat disturbing portrait of greed or a muddled mess of jargon and slick twists. Let’s hope for the former. The film debuted to a mostly positive reception at this year's Sundance Film Festival.



Red Tails

Though the WWII genre has never gleaned mainstream adoration save a few key exceptions, the war of the skies (especially beyond the age of biplanes and The Red Baron in the first global conflict) has been greatly ignored, but now thanks to producer George Lucas we not only get a lavish look at the cloud-bound heroes of the war, but also a peak into the struggles of African-American soldiers as they strive to prove they have the same merits as any other. The battle sequences in the trailer are truly stunning, as Tuskegee airmen volunteer as part of a special squad sworn to stick to, and protect, the bomber squadrons no matter what. These can be tricky sequences to pull off and they are quite thrilling especially considering a reported budget of only $35 million. As I said, this will likely not get a wide audience, but as a sucker for period action films let’s hope Lucas can finally pull off something original in his waning career.

 

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