There are few people who deserve a documentary (or 20 of them) more than Gore Vidal. A ferocious thinker and fierce commentator whose output is gargantuan as well as wide in scope, Vidal contributed to and steered the national conversation for decades after the end of WWII. He’s celebrated as a screenwriter (Ben-Hur), essayist, novelist, political philosopher, and playwright, but any man who nearly comes to physical blows with William F. Buckley on national television has probably earned his talking head treatment. Enter Nicholas Wrathall. The director has made Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia with what may very well be some of the last footage of Vidal ever captured before he passed away last year. The film will see its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, and it’s got a trailer that makes it look as gorgeously-shot as it is compelling:

Is it possible that all of your likes, your dislikes, the very tastes that you feel define you as a human being, aren’t really choices that you’ve made for yourself at all, but ideas that have been sold to you by slick, suit-wearing predators who pride themselves on being able to tap into your ego and insecurities in order to brainwash you into believing whatever what they want you to believe? Are you such a mindless follower that you’ve bought your entire identity off of a billboard? These are the heady questions at the center of Max Barry’s debut novel “Syrup,” which is a satirical tale set in the world of product marketing. And they’re the heady questions at the center of director Aram Rappaport’s new film adaptation of the story, which stars names like Shiloh Fernandez, Brittany Snow, and Amber Heard.

A reckless American bad boy who doesn’t play by the rules? An exotic locale with a quip-delivering partner? Lots of bullets flying with little consequence? Java Heat has it all — including the cherry on top: Mickey Rourke being a crazy bad guy. In the film, a terrorist attack leaves the Sultana of Indonesia dead and his daughter kidnapped. Jake (Kellan Lutz) struggles to produce complete sentences while trying to solve the case alongside Hashim (Ario Bayu) who doesn’t think Jake has enough clever comebacks to be a real policeman. But seriously,  you should watch the trailer just to try to understand why Lutz has trouble saying his lines. It’s baffling:

Director Neill Blomkamp has, thankfully enough, not kicked any of his thematic interests while making the transition to his sophomore effort. The District 9 helmer returns to theaters later this summer with his Matt Damon-starring Elysium, another sci-fi epic that deals with the inherent evils of rigid class division and the true measure of a man modified by technology far beyond his control. Put simply – if you were into District 9, you’re going to be into Elysium.

Frank “Misa” Grunwald lives in Indiana, but he was born in Czechoslovakia back when that was still a country. In fact, he was born just four months before Hitler came to power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. As a young boy, he was caught up in the terrors of the Nazi regime whose persecution pushed him through Prague, Terezin, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Melk, and Gunskirchen. Misa’s Fugue is his story of survival. The documentary film from director Sean Gaston — which looks like it might need to provide complementary tissues — doesn’t currently have distribution, but it does have a trailer that boasts compelling subject matter and another new angle on the most widely-covered period of the 20th century. Check it out for yourself:

It’s here! Finally, with the release of its first trailer, we get to catch our first glimpse of Michael Douglas donning sequins and feathers to play famed, flamboyant musician Liberace in Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming biopic for HBO films, Behind the Candelabra, and—oh boy—it’s not a let down. Douglas looks like he had a great time with this one, and it should be a ton of fun watching him chew scenery for one of today’s greatest (non) working directors.

Okay, Ron Howard, this will do just fine. For his first post-The Dilemma directorial outing, Howard has returned to his dramatic roots with another true life story that should fit in quite nicely alongside Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon. Howard’s Rush centers on one of sport’s greatest rivalries and one of the most wrenching comebacks in the history of athletics. The fact-based film stars Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl as Formula 1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda, respectively. Hunt and Lauda were long-standing rivals on the F1 circuit, a rivalry that was both shaken and reinforced by Lauda’s 1976 crash that left him with extensive facial burns, damage to his lungs and blood, and in a weeks-long coma. Despite the heavy Hemsworth presence in this trailer, Rush is ostensibly focused primarily on Lauda’s life and his amazing comeback, with that action framed up against his rivalry with Hunt. Only six weeks after his horrific accident, Lauda returned to racing with an intent to beat Hunt and win the F1 title (one determined by a point system). The first trailer for Rush looks absolutely stunning, and if the final film lives up to this new bit of marketing, we’re in for one hell of a treat. Not sold yet? Did we mention that Olivia Wilde co-stars? Buckle up and check out the first trailer for Rush after the break.

The inherent problem in making a good remake of a classic film lies in presenting something new to the audience, some fresh angle, something they haven’t seen before, even if they have watched the original a million times. Depsite previous claims to adhere more to Stephen King‘s novel than Brian De Palma’s previous feature, director Kimberly Peirce‘s Carrie looks exactly like a copy of the first film – at least if this trailer is to believed. Instead of playing with our Carrie knowledge base, this first look just rips it right off. Yup, Carrie (Chloe Moretz) is a weirdo outcast at school. Yup, her uber-religious mother (Julianne Moore) isn’t helping matters. Yup, something bad is going to go down in the girls’ showers at school (though the apparent injection of smart phones is an interesting new addition). Yup, Carrie is going to stumble into her telekinetic powers. Yup, there’s even going to be a pig-blood-bathed prom. So what’s left for this new entry? Let’s hope something beyond just a random iPhone. Go back to high school (wretched, wretched) high school with Carrie, after the break.

The Great Gatsby may tell a story that was set in the Roaring Twenties, but it’s also a Baz Luhrmann film, so there should never have been any doubt that it was going to be packed to the brim with music from some of today’s most famous artists. Want to get a taste of what it has in store, sonically? Well, you’re in luck, because this new trailer for the film shows some of the music off. It features a track that teams up Beyoncé and Andre 3000, new stuff from Lana Del Rey, and a contribution from Florence and the Machine, all packed into a little over two and a half minutes. The music that Luhrmann hired producer Jay Z to put together for the film isn’t the only thing this new trailer shows off either. The ads we’ve seen up to this point have hinted at what F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary story is all about, but mostly they’ve focused on showing off the visual style of Luhrmann. This new trailer digs much deeper into the Gatsby’s pursuit of married woman Daisy Buchanan, and it does a great job of selling how passionate their indiscretions are, and how dangerous the consequences their infidelities are likely to become.

Alright, alright, Terry Crews‘ unabashed excitement over the upcoming Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 isn’t entirely inexplicable – the former football star (and apparent renaissance man) is lending his voice to the new production, taking over the role of tough cop Earl Devereaux from Mr. T – but damn if the man is not excited about this new sequel. Fortunately, we are too. In the new film, Flint Lockwood (voice of Bill Hader) and gal pal Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) return after the disaster of Swallow Falls, with Flint now employed at The Live Corp Company, run by his idol Chester V (Will Forte) and his “highly evolved orangutan with a human brain” Barb (Kristen Schaal). But while Flint and Sam have matured since we last saw them, they’re not the only ones, as Flint’s FLDSMDFR machine has also evolved, and it’s busy pumping out a number of different food-imals that threaten the entire world (and its taste buds). Crews’ favorite? The Sasquash. We’re still partial to the Wild Scallions. Check out Terry Crews, his swank smoking jacket, and a brand new look at Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 after the break.

The worst thing about the Only God Forgives trailer is the “Coming Soon” tag at the end. This thing needs a US release date quick or Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling‘s fans are going to riot in the street. I’ll be at the front of the pack participating in some anarchy with whatever I can grab. In the movie, Gosling plays a gangster feuding with a man of the law (Vithaya Pansringarm) in the mean streets of Bangkok. To settle the score, the two men agree to take the fight into the ring. The trailer itself is aggressively sensual. Entire scenes bathed in red. A dreamy music-box-based song to go along with all the violence being shown. It also looks like it might have the best Kristin Scott Thomas performance since Tell No One.  Check it out for yourself:

Great horned beasts loosing their urine on Adam Sandler‘s face, middle-aged male nudity, cheap jokes being ritualistically sacrificed. This is the trailer for Grown Ups 2. At least they got to use Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” in a not-at-all-cliche way. Check it out for yourself and get ready to eke out your best Colonel Kurtz impression:

This much is obvious about Craig Zisk‘s The English Teacher: Julianne Moore‘s eponymous character is somehow sexually repressed because she’s sporting both a ponytail and ugly glasses. Horrors! Someone give that woman a makeover, stat! The romantic comedy stars Moore as a never-married high school English teacher whose entire world is thrown into a tailspin when a former student (Michael Angarano) pops back into her life with a brilliant play that she’s convinced her relatively staid high school will put on. They won’t, but you know what will get put on? Julianne Moore on Michael Angarano! Oh, yeah! Not messy enough? Well, it looks like Moore also takes a shine to his dad, played by Greg Kinnear. Will it all turn out for the best? Of course it will. Hey, at least there’s potential for Nathan Lane to have a nervous breakdown. Check out the trailer for The English Trailer after the break.

Joining the ranks of DisneyNature’s Earth, Oceans, African Cats, and Chimpanzee, the studio has now unveiled a first look at their latest entry - Bears. The latest of their Earth Day offerings, Bears centers on a family of, well, bears, with the film focusing on a family of Alaskan grizzly bears. Co-directed by Alastair Fothergill (who has directed three other DisneyNature features) and Keith Scholey (who also directed African Cats with Fothergill), the film looks to give us a very intimate look inside the life of a typical American bear. Oh, who are we kidding? Bears looks to give us the dry heaves, the wet sobs, and the sort of in-theater wailing we haven’t experienced since Chimpanzee. Stock up on your tissues now. Get to know DisneyNature’s Bears (and relive the glory of some of the studio’s other films and their indelible animal characters) after the break.

The first trailer we saw for James Wan’s (Saw, Insidious) upcoming horror film, The Conjuring, didn’t really hit all the usual beats that horror trailers do. Instead it played much more like a short film, building to a big scare in the end. It was an effective tactic that really sold the movie as something that was going to scare the pants off you. So it’s pretty head-scratching as to why the approach was completely abandoned for this new ad for the film, which is just about as generic as a horror movie trailer can get, even while going completely over the top with what it gives away. It opens with some faux found footage that looks derivative of every bad horror movie that’s come out over the last five years, moves on to the same invisible-ghost-yanking-the-legs-of-sleeping-people trick that the Paranormal Activity movies have driven into the ground, checks the creepy kids box off of its list, and then goes on to show way more special effects craziness than probably even the feature itself should contain. The rule of that which you don’t see being scarier than that which you do see seems to be completely thrown out of the window here.

A lot of people make fun of Adam Sandler for choosing his projects based on whether or not their filming would make for a good vacation for him and his friends. He picks a story set in an exotic local, shoehorns a bunch of product placement into the script to make sure everything gets paid for, casts his buddies in all of the supporting roles, and then they go hang out. It’s not a bad scam. And if the trailers we’ve been getting for This is the End are any indication, it’s a scam that the next generation of comedic actors have finally gotten hip to.

The new trailer for The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is incredibly encouraging. Not because it avoids the overused normal-person-discovers-they-have-extraordinary-powers-in-a-magical-world-beyond-our-own trope that’s been hollowed out for a decade. Not because it steers clear of what looks like a crush-triangle. But because it looks like it’s injected some horror sensibilities into the Young Adult world. Which is kind of funny to think about. With the two most famous horror icons at its disposal, Twilight never went that route. It was all big CGI action and brooding. Meanwhile, TMI: CoB (which really needs the acronym) definitely has a dark side. It even has werewolves. Check it out for yourself:

Yes, April Fools jokes are, by and large, just kinda silly and essentially pointless in movie-land (except for this one!), but every now and then, a good one comes along. Such is the case with this fake trailer for Pineapple Express 2, a little slice of movie trickery that actually functions as trailer for this year’s Seth Rogen and James Franco team-up, their apocalyptic comedy This is the End. With Pineapple Express co-star Danny McBride also starring in This is the End, no wonder the team felt the need to cook up a couple minutes of laughs that make us jones for such a sequel. Very clever. Check out the special April Fools trailer for Pineapple Express 2 (aka This is the End) after the break, and relive the glory of McBride saying “thug life,” Franco and Rogen professing their love for each other, and the sweet sounds of music that relies on gunshots for nearly one-half of its runtime.

After pulling in an Oscar nomination, Kon-Tiki is going to hit theaters on April 26th. The adventure film tells the story of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl who (in real-life) crossed the Pacific ocean on a balsa wood raft in a voyage that took 101 days. The trailer is absolutely thrilling. It’s got dangerous sharks, sweeping camera shots and indefatigable optimism. Plus, you shouldn’t feel bad if you get a sense of Cast Away going on, because the beard Pål Sverre Hagen is sporting as Thor is pretty wicked. Check it out for yourself:

Hey everyone… we’re finally getting a new buddy cop movie! Kind of. The genre was an industry unto itself throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s, but somewhere along the line Hollywood stopped producing them. Or they at least stopped producing good ones. (I’m looking at you Cop Out.) The drought may be ending this summer though as we’re getting two high profile buddy cop flicks. First up is the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy comedy The Heat on June 28th, and then in early August things kick in to high gear with 2 Guns. The Baltasar Kormákur-directed film stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as good guys playing bad guys who don’t know that the other is actually a good guy too. Crazy! An assignment goes awry, and the two are forced to work together to bring down the real bad guy. Explosions and insults ensue. Check out the first trailer for 2 Guns below, but be warned… it’s the entire movie in three minutes.