Another new feature to try out: these are some random thoughts I had during the previews at the theater today. There will be a movie review probably later tonight (at worst early tomorrow), but I often have things to say about the previews, so I might as well say them here. Note that I’m not necessarily covering everything. I really have nothing to say about another Expendables movie–I just rolled my eyes at its existence and moved on.

Commercials: Orphan Black and M&Ms

• I love M&M commercials. Like always. They do these stupid little fake movie trailers to tell people to silence their cell phones and yet they are just consistently awesome. They are such a perfect mimicry of typical movie trailers. They’re like the This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, USA 1984) of movie commercials.
• It’s good to see that Orphan Black is getting pub. I’m going to do episode-by-episode reviews this season, since I got a season pass on Amazon. Note that, like Breaking Bad‘s final half-season, I will be a little behind because I have to wait for those to come up.

Trailer: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Marc Webb, USA 2014)

• I remember when Marc Webb was an exciting young visionary. He made a brilliant film in (500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb, USA 2009) that was simultaneously a great love story, a deconstruction of movie love stories, and a masterclass in how to cover up a poor lead actor in Zooey Deschanel (Sorry F!). Then, he caught the Bryan Singer-copyrighted Superhero Movie bug.
• Spider-Man is a stupid superhero. He’s whiny and annoying.
• “You know what I love about being Spider-Man?” Clearly, the tight suit and being able to be supposedly shy but have a new love interest every five issues but it’s obvious you’re going to say everything. “Everything.” Yeah, that was obvious.

Trailer: Lucy (Luc Besson, France 2014)

• “It’s been estimated that the average human being only uses 10% of their cognitive ability” (note: this is from memory). Only by idiots! I was a psychology major. I took neurology classes. Guess what? That’s a myth. Here is Snopes.com debunking it. Here’s Scientific American doing the same thing. Even Wikipedia knows it! We need another movie perpetuating this nonsense and using it as its basis??!!! You know what would actually happen if someone could access 28% of her brain? She would be a drooling puddle of goo!!!
• I remember when Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman were real actors. I miss them.
• Luc Besson’s career is a mystery to me.

Trailer: X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer, USA 2014)

• I remember when Bryan Singer was a real director. Sigh.
• To be fair, the X-Men movies do always look much more like real movies than most comic book fare. I’ve still never wanted to watch one, though.

Trailer: Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, USA 2014)

• I thought casting Chris Pratt, in spite of his bulk, as a superhero was a little weird, because he just oozes sweetness. However, I now see why they cast him, and I’m sort of interested in this.
• Did they really just not even bother to show Karen Gillan in the trailer?
• I will not speak of what Karen Gillan did to herself for this film. I may avoid it only because of that.
• The Karen Gillan tag has way more entries than any logic would suggest that it should . . .
• Doesn’t this sort of look like a movie version of Firefly?
• My favorite part of the flipping off the camera joke was actually the computer saying, “Warning: Imminent Obscene Gesture Detected.” They have the technology to do something that impressive, and that’s what they use it for?! Yeah, that actually sounds like something a government would do. I’m sad now.

Trailer: Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood, USA 2014)

• “Oh what a night/Late December back in ’63/What a very special time for me/What a lady, what a night . . .” Oh, that’s not here. Boo.
• Clint Eastwood . . . musical . . . not sure about that idea. Eastwood has some goodwill for me, but his last film was a total embarrassment, so he’d better get it together.