the ten coolest trailers ever

Most movies suck, I think we can all agree on that. But even Renny Harlan can patch together 2 minutes of cool gunplay and funny jokes if you give him 100 million dollars and 50 pounds of coke. And since blogs are nothing if not self important rambling, I give to you the 10 best trailers ever made.

The only real criteria here was ‘no Ben Stiller’, which pains me because, when I was a kid, the Ben Stiller Show on Fox was the best sketch comedy I’d ever seen. Now he’s about as funny as a dead Christmas puppy. He went from brilliant to retarded in a matter of months. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

So, with that insightful intro out of the way, I give you the list :



10. Sin City - this one should probably be ranked higher. Or maybe not at all. It's hard to tell cause it's brand new and I'm not sure if it really is that good or I if was tricked into thinking so by Jessica Albas hips. What I do know is that it's got a cool score, a great spot use of color and the most interesting cinematography since Fight Club. Bruce Willis may be the biggest actor in the world who consistently does smaller parts. And it’s probably no coincidence that this is one of three appearances on the list for Benicio del Toro. Or maybe it is, what am I, a genius?

On a side note, Mr. and Mrs. Smith could maybe be in this spot too. I saw a study on TV once that said that Angelina Jolie is so insanely hot, when she walks down the street, people actually die.

- put on baggier pants and watch Sin City here -





9. Titanic - Like porno, the vast majority of Titanic is badly written, badly acted and about as seductive as the hokey pokey. But then …

it happens …

the money shot. And its fukkin amazing. And sitting in the dark listening to teen-age girls cry for the past two hours has all been worth it. And if you think that last reference was to porno, you should start running, cause the cops are probably at your door. The trailer is pretty much a microcosm of the movie : boring, boring, boring … and then the iceberg … and then its absolutely fukkin amazing. When a trailer can make your palms sweat, it's working.

- click here to relive the magic. And then go play with your
dolls, cause you’re a fag -





8. Reservoir Dogs - I don’t love Tarantino as much as some people, certainly not as much as he loves himself. He can't act, he’s not nearly as funny as he thinks he is, and he’s not foolin anyone by ripping off all those Hong Kong movies. But like Puff Daddy in his early 90's prime, the stuff Tarantino cut and pastes together can be pretty damn great. And none better than Reservoir Dogs. Cool style, cool music and shockingly violent. One of the very few trailers that come out with the red band.

- do a little dance and click here -





7. Heat - would probably be higher if not for the fawning voice over, some guy talkin about Pacino and De Niro like they’re gonna shield him from the rapture. Not that they aren’t brilliant here, they are. And god almighty is this thing beautiful. Film can be art, this proves it. Michael Mann could be Terrence Malick if he were boring and in love with exposition. He even kept the cast out of make-up to keep the look real. Great score by Moby and a glimpse of the best gun fight ever put on film.

- I do what I do best. I take scores.
You do what you do best and click here -





6. the Matrix Reloaded and the Matrix Revolutions - yeah, yeah, yeah, 2 and 3 sucked. Fine. Whatever. But every geek and future schoolyard assassin in the world jumped out of his trench coat the instant they saw that green font and the quick cut of Neo. Which reminds me, I know two girls who broke into Keanu Reeves house in Malibu cause they were so in love with him. Two of 'em. Meanwhile I cant even get a chick to make me a fukkin sandwich. Anyway. This is a great teaser trailer. It says a lot without sayin a thing. You can bitch about the the Wachowski Brothers if you want, but they were ambitious here and they didn’t dumb anything down. Which is normally what people say they want.

- make a list of classmates who are mean to you and
revel in the violence here -




5. Man on Fire - Hollywood doesn’t make many revenge movies. Payback and Kill Bill are the only ones that leap to mind. And why would they when it brings them such joy to bludgeon me in the nuts with Meet the Parents 2 and American Pie 5. Personally, I'd rather go see x-rays of a malignant tumor in my colon than watch crap like that, but I have eclectic taste.

And at least we got this one, Man on Fire, and while the movie itself was less than great, the trailer was angry as hell and perfect in every way. Denzel acting like a hard ass, Christopher Walken acting like Christopher Walken, punch you in the mouth dialogue from the great Brian Helgeland and Tony Scott lensing action that rivals anything big brother Ridley has ever done.

- cap some Mexicans by clickin here. What, thats offensive?
I capitalized 'Mexican'. Oh, the other part... -





4. the Usual Suspects - when you were a kid and your parents told you not to talk to strangers, they weren't talking about fireman and librarians, they were talking about Benicio del Toro in the Usual Suspects. Wouldn't he look completely in his element standing at the edge of a playground, one hand holding a puppy, the other buried way too deep in his pocket? None of that explains why he’s 30 and looks 60, but it doesn’t not not explain it either. Wait, what...

Even with a really good ensemble cast, the star of this thing is the writing of Christopher McQuarrie. For two hours, we watch Verbal Kint lie, cheat, steal, he even shoots an unarmed man in the face, and yet we still find it hard to think of him as a bad guy. Thats good writing. "Oswald was a fag" is one of the better lines ever written. McQuarie even makes Kevin Pollack seem funny, and that cant be easy.

- hear that it was Keyser Soze 1500 times by clicking here -





3. The Virgin Suicides (teaser trailer) - this trailer has to be great since I absolutely despise Kirsten Dunst, with her little pebble teeth and her giant garbage-pail-kid head. The only thing I like about her is her haircut, and that’s only cause it makes her look like a boy, which is more honest than trying to pass her off as a girl. I heard she banged Nic Cage, the one pulse in Hollywood uglier than she is. Thats great. I hope they get married. That kid would have hooves.

Wow, I actually had to scroll up to remember what I was writing about. Virgin Suicides, got it. Okay, this thing is insanely beautiful. The music is dreamy and a perfect match for the images and pace and style Sofia Coppala put together. Really gorgeous work here. And its always cool to see people like Josh Hartnett (oops, I mean Hot-nett, giggle, wink) and Hayden Christensen in early work.

- get sleepy by clicking here -

I feel compelled to mention Daredevil in this spot too, since it was another teaser that was perfect, exactly what it should have been. Jennifer Garner has better lips than Angelina Jolie, if for no other reason than they never been wrapped around Billy Bob Thornton. And her ass is listed somewhere between tungsten and diamond on the chemical hardness scale. Can anyone explain how the action in a 30 second teaser can be more coherent and better cut than in a two hour movie. How does that happen? And the score here is better than anything in the movie too. In fact, the score here is pretty damn great.





2. Fight Club - a perfect trailer. Dust Brothers. Pixies. Chuck Palahniuk and Andrew Kevin Walker. An unexplainably sexy Helena Bonham Carter and an unexplainably underrated Brad Pitt. All helmed by the unrivaled brilliance of David Fincher. It pains me to this day that for five glorious minutes, 'Spiderman' was in the hands of Fincher and Walker, with Wes Bentley set to play the lead. Instead we got a two hour Dawsons Creek that was so overly bright and cheery it makes Starlight Express look like a damn snuff film. But I digress…

The first rule has the second best trailer ever. Only this low because of Ed ‘Im average in every way’ Norton.

- I want you to click here as hard as you can.
( Christ that was lame. youre supposed to stop me before I make an ass out of myself, you know ) -





1. the Way of the Gun - one of the great unappreciated movies in my lifetime. Brilliant in every fukkin way, including the best trailer ever cut, the only one here I’m absolutely positive is in the right spot. Christopher McQuarrie directed the best thing he ever wrote, and he kept it hard, the way he wanted Usual Suspects to be.

Del Toro may be the coolest fukkin guy on earth. Seriously. They should give tours of his boyhood home. And Ryan Phillippe may be even cooler. Julliette Lewis is great, although I have no idea how one second I can think she's really hot and the next I'm ashamed of myself for wanting to fukk a retarded girl.

There’s really nothing more I can say about how great this thing is, so I'll just point out that the second song in the trailer is 'redefine' by Incubus. And if you think smokin a pound of chronic everyday won't grind down all of your edge and ambition, listen to how intense Incubus sounded just a few years ago and then compare it to the James Taylor cover band they’ve turned into today.

- step off the path -
Windows Media
click 'movie preview' under the poster -
RealPlayer
scroll half way down. sorry, best I could find online




some other cool trailers that probably could have made the list :

Seven - this trailer is actually surprisingly average, but its Seven, so I put it up here. I read somewhere that this was voted the best trailer of all time. I think they said Seven. It might have been something else. I’m not really that smart.


Airplane - this stuff is still insanely funny to me, but its really only here to show how much trailers have changed. This came out in 1980, and the pacing here seems painfully slow, actual scenes in a trailer, it's almost unthinkable today, especially in a comedy.


Lord of the Rings : Return of the King - another trailer that you know is really really great cause I didn’t like the movies at all. And I know I’m alone in that. I just found them long and dull and couldn’t get past the inherent geekiness of it all. Not to mention the "gay cowboys eating pudding" feel between Sam and Frodo. But this thing is beautiful, no doubt about it.


Star Wars Episode II : Attack of the Clones - I have to admit, that son of a bitch tricked me with this one. I heard that great opening music, saw those cool new worlds, the Jango Fett stuff and then that great money shot at the end. Lucas may be the only director in the world who could make all that boring.

By the way, I would have linked this in the larger format, but you need Quicktime Pro to watch it. Cause apparently Lucas and Steve Jobs are just scraping by in life and need your 30 dollars to watch a trailer. The next movie should just be called Star Wars, Episode III : Fukk You.


Vanilla Sky - really kind of annoying until the last minute, when the Chemical Brothers kick in and the editing gets quick and suddenly it’s great. I never did see this movie. Apparently I'm not alone in that.


Punch Drunk Love - should be here if only for that 'he needed me' song, which I cant get out of my head for days after I hear it. If anyone knows what that song is, I'd love for you to tell me. And Sandler yelling, "ow, ow, ow." I could watch that for days. And the great Philip Seymour Hoffman. Fragments. I write in.


True Lies - I forgot how cool the last hour of this movie is. I also forgot how cool James Cameron is since he turned into Steve Zisou, but this trailer reminded me.


Unleashed - this probably has no business being here, cause if its affiliated with Luc Besson, its guaranteed mediocrity. But its Jet Li doing cool Jet Li stuff. And Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins are great in everything. Having a score by Massive Attack doesn’t hurt. Although I liked the movie more when it was called 'Danny the Dog'. ('dog', 'unleashed' - get it! oh Luc, youve done it again!)


Moulin Rouge - A musical! About a poet! In Paris! What’s not to love? I'll spare you straining for a joke and admit right now that, for a straight guy, I'm way too into Moulin Rouge. But this thing really was completely different and beautiful and creative and engaging, so yeah, its on the list.


A Life Less Ordinary - this movie was ignored from the start, and I'll never understand why. Maybe it was just too different and Danny Boyle had just done ‘Trainspotting’, so no one knew what to think, but I’ve always loved this movie. And watching this reminds me how much I like Delroy Lindo. Which I probably shouldnt say just after admitting I like Moulin Rouge.