Trailer Tracker: Mother’s Day, A Little Bit of Heaven

Our featured trailer this week is Mother’s Day from growing horror film connoisseur Darren Lynn Bousman, a loose remake of the 1980s cult favourite. Also, Kate Hudson finds love at the wrong time in the romantic drama A Little Bit of Heaven, the famous story of maimed surfer Bethany Hamilton gets a the big-screen treatment in Soul Surfer and finally famous documentarian Werner Herzog adds 3D to his latest venture Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The year is just warming up at Trailer Tracker.

New Trailers this Week:
Mother’s Day
A Little Bit of Heaven
Soul Surfer
Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Mother’s Day

Horror films getting a modern reboot are certainly far from a rarity these days, and director Darren Lynn Bousman is the next man to lay claim to a (very minor) classic. Bousman along with filmmakers such as Alexandre Aja and Eli Roth are the next generation of career horror artists dubbed “The Splat Pack” and he has dabbled in quite a few different types of features. He debuted with sequels for Saw III and Saw IV, crafted the ambitious horror musical Repo: The Genetic Opera and now he is into remake territory.  This year he will also debut the alien invasion film 11-11-11 (on a date I’m sure you can guess) and has also been tipped to helm the remake of Scanners.

The original Mother’s Day (like this reimagining) is a product of the famed Troma studios and was directed by Charles Kaufman (not to be confused with Charlie Kaufman). At the time the film was highly controversial, and that essence seems to have carried over to this modern take on a deranged mother and her sons who torment the inhabitants of their former home. Jamie King and Rebecca De Mornay star in this exploitation flick due out in North America April 1. 



 

A Little Bit of Heaven

Oddly, cancer-themed dramas seem to be more prevalent in mainstream Hollywood productions than one would assume considering the disposable fare usually offered. That is not to say this is a good or bad thing but just simply strange in my opinion. A jaded Kate Hudson finds love with her doctor (Gael Garcia Bernal) after she is diagnosed with cancer and as I’m sure we can assume, she struggles with either loving and losing or not loving at all. Kathy Bates and Whoopi Goldberg co-star as her mother and some sort of angel (?) respectively. Nicole Kassell directs and though having few credits to her name, she did helm the disturbingly effective pedophile-themed The Woodsman starring Kevin Bacon back in 2004. If she can bring those kinds of complex themes to this rather bland looking product then this could be the rare romantic offering with guts.

Soul Surfer

In 2003, young surfer Bethany Hamilton was viciously attacked by a 15-ft. tiger shark in Kauai, Hawaii losing most of her left arm. Since that day she has returned to surfing, been featured on about every talk show in existence, had a book written about her and now that has been adapted into Soul Surfer. Anna Sophia Robb embodies the plucky 20 year-old alongside an all star cast including Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt and Carrie Underwood in this uplifting family drama.  The story certainly has teeth (pun intended) though unfortunately these types of events usually seem to translate into formulaic weepy camp on the big screen. Let’s hope the great cast can do their thing.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Werner Hertzog is certainly not a man to play it by the books, having crafted not only some of the most famous documentaries of all time including offerings such as Grizzly Man, he toys with formats which blur the line between a true account and fiction. Now 3D has been tossed into the mix with Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which explores the Chauvet Cave in France that contains the earliest known cave paintings of which the oldest are estimated to be from as far back as 26,000 BP. Hertzog’s efforts are always interesting and along with some stunning visuals, this will certainly be one of the bigger docs to come along in 2011.