Trailer Park: Films With Promise

Sometimes finding five trailers with a common theme is like searching for substance in a Pauly Shore movie; it just ain't gonna happen. My only criteria for this week is that the movies in question are ones that I'm personally looking forward to. It's Films With Promise week on Trailer Park.

D-War
Admittedly, films of giant monsters demolishing large urban areas are an acquired taste. I'm still a big fan of many (though certainly not all) of Godzilla's movies, and D-War appears to be in the tradition of The Big G, only the stuntmen in rubber monsters suits have been replaced with CGI. The trailer is narrated in Korean, but the dialogue, and presumably the film itself, is in English. The mayhem looks pretty cool, with a giant snake creature obviously being our star, as well as some winged dragon types (presumably that's what the D stands for), and there are some flashbacks to what appears to be ancient Korea. D-War comes to us from the same production company that gave us the critically acclaimed The Host (which sadly I still haven't seen), but according to Peter Martin's posting back on June 5, this film will be seeing a much wider U.S. release.

Cashback
This one reminds me quite a bit of Garden State, since it has a young male protagonist trying to work his way through the unreality of his own world and finding love along the way. After breaking up with his girlfriend a young man finds he can no longer sleep and takes a job in a grocery store to fill the extra eight hours. After several weeks of sleeplessness he begins to fantasize that he can stop time (at least I assume he's fantasizing). There are some interesting scenes of him moving the time-frozen store patrons around like mannequins, and removing their clothes so he can sketch them. Looks fun and just a bit trippy. Here's Kim Voynar's review of the film, and you can check out the trailer right here:
Sunshine
I mentioned this one several Trailer Park's ago, but now there's a full length trailer to Danny Boyle's science fiction epic, and this one has some meat on its bones. A space ship crew including Cillian Murphy and Fantastic Four's Chris Evans are headed toward earth's dying sun with hopes of reigniting it and saving humanity. Of course, what fun would it be if things went smoothly? The success of the mission is jeopordised by someone on board, and the fate of mankind hangs in the balance. Chris Evans has a speech in the trailer outlining their mission that fairly reeks of clumsy exposition (they're already on the ship, so why would he be explaining this?), but I'm hoping it will make more sense when viewed in context. The film hits U.S. theaters on July 20.

Feast of Love
I only had a passing interest in the work of Greg Kinnear before seeing Little Miss Sunshine, but his work in that film was enough to get me curious about Feast of Love, which is based on a novel by Charles Baxter. Morgan Freeman plays a small town professor observing the romantic machinations going on around him in this examination of, as Queen called it, this crazy little thing called love. I suppose a more or less omniscient narrator isn't a huge leap for an actor who has played God twice. Kinnear (whose casting was first mentioned here) plays a friend of Freeman's character whose wife (Selma Blair) leaves him for another woman. U.S. theaters will be getting this one on September 14.

Introducing the Dwights
A British coming of age comedy about a young man named Tim falling in love against the wishes of his somewhat off the wall mother. Both of Tim's parents are entertainers, a fact that he finds deeply mortifying. The part where he explains to his mother that he and his new girlfriend have sex constantly is priceless, and the trailer earned a few bonus points with the use of ELO's song "Do Ya." I suspect there are laughs to be had here.

And here are this week's new trailers on AOL Moviefone:

• Lights in the Dusk: A lonely night watchman strives to find a place for himself in society.
  
• Lions for Lambs: In a film directed by Robert Redford, Tom Cruise stars as an up and coming U.S. Senator. Check out the trailer right here:
  
  
• The Simpsons Movie (trailer #4): The first family of TV animation leaps onto the big screen.
  
• Mr. Bean's Holiday: Rowan Atkinson bumbles his way into a new Mr. Bean adventure.
  
• Who's Your Caddy: Comedy about a rap mogul trying to join a super stuffy country club.
  
• No End in Sight: A film chronicling the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerilla war.
  
• Resurrecting the Champ: A sports writer gets his career-making story when he discovers a homeless man who used to be a legendary boxer.
  
• The Hunting Party: U.S. journalists attempt to track down a top Bosnian war criminal.