As "300" proved, you won't have to wait until the summer blockbuster season to have your block busted.
What movies should you be marking your calendars for before classes end? And which ones should you avoid like your 8 a.m. chemistry final? Well, we have put our nose to the grindstone and left no such stone unturned (OK, we watched the trailers) to find those elusive answers.
Trailer Treasures
1. "Grindhouse"
Out: April 6
Directors: Quentin Tarantino "Death Proof" and Robert Rodriguez "Planet Terror"
Starring: Rose McGowan, Kurt Russell
A double feature from the directors of "Kill Bill" and "Sin City," respectively? Yes, please. Tarantino's "Death Proof" refers to a stunt driver's car which is pretty much indestructible, yet provides a whole lot of nasty destruction. Plus, there are babes everywhere.
Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" is your typical story of boy meets girl . no wait, it's about mowing down hordes of zombie-like townspeople. Nice!
Best part of the trailer: 1 minute, 10 seconds in, a lady shoots a rocket out of her leg. And yep, her leg is actually a rocket launcher.
File under: Gratuitous violence. Okay, gratuitous pretty much everything.
2. "Spiderman 3"
Out: May 4
Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Topher Grace, Kirsten Dunst
Could Spiderman get any better? The producers of this film must have asked themselves that question after a marathon of "That '70s Show."
Wisely they skipped on casting Ashton Kutcher and went with Topher Grace (Venom). There's far too much money on the line for Spidey to not be good.
Best part of the trailer: 2:04 – A newscaster says "This could be the end of Spiderman." Um, we'll wait until after we see the box office run on this movie.
File under: Sequels to sequels that don't suck.
3. "Shooter"
Out: Friday
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Mark Wahlberg
Whereas the set-up to the story – a guy named Bob Lee who lives in the woods gets framed for killing the president – would have you believe this is going to be a terrible Tony Scott-directed dramedy starring Billy Bob Thornton, it's definitely not.
Instead we get a killer-looking feature by "Training Day" director Fuqua in which Marky Mark runs around wearing sunglasses and occasionally blows stuff up.
Best part of the trailer: 0:18 – Immediately following a make-out session with his woman, Bob Lee's dog grabs him a Bud from the fridge.
File under: "Starring Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg."
Trailer Trash
1. "TMNT"
Out: Friday
Director: Kevin Munroe
Starring (voices): Patrick Stewart, Sarah Michelle Gellar
See how there's letters instead of actually saying "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" That's to show how hip and cutting-edge the new Turtles movie will be. Here's how the actual movie studio conversation went concerning the making of this film:
Executive 1: "You know, there were some pretty good independent Ninja Turtles movies back in the day. Maybe we should take a dump on that legacy by coming up with a crappy-looking computer-generated movie about them." Executive 2: "Okay."
Worst part of the trailer: 0:46 – Raphael informs us that if the Turtles don't stop the evil invading forces, the monsters will dominate the entire world. And here we though global warming would get us first.
File under: Heroes in a half-a-good-movie.
2. "Are We Done Yet?"
Out: April 4
Director: Steve Carr
Starring: Ice Cube
Sequel to the film great that is "Are We There Yet?" Ice Cube continues to destroy whatever legacy he once had by appearing in this insipid movie.
Hopefully the deleted scenes will include a few obscene raps – at least he's good at that.
Worst part of the trailer: 0:15 – In a hilarious sequence, Ice Cube wakes up, steps on a toy and goes to breakfast, where food accidentally gets on his shirt. Hahahaha!
File under: Career suicide.
3. "The Reaping"
Out: April 5
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Starring: Hilary Swank
Hilary Swank runs around in this horror thriller with an increasingly concerned face. Naturally, this is a horror film, so there has to be some weird little child running around.
Judging by the movie's two- hour running length, she doesn't get to Swank as fast as we all would like.
Worst part of the trailer: 1:11 – When the mom of the little weird child has this conversation with Swank: Mom, "Are you going to kill my baby?" Swank, "No!" Mom, "Why not?" Poof! There went the movie's one good line and any reason to see it.
File under: Not as good as the "Sixth Sense"
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