Kinematoscope

A look at the taglines for this week's major releases. How do studios try to hook us when they only have a sentence?

Actual tagline: Who Will Be The Last Man Standing?

OR: To Protect and Serve. Yourself.

A film about an armored truck heist picked the second-most indicatie of those three words for the title (to be fair, there's already a Heist, and Truck would be worse). And then the theives turn on each other? Until only one is left standing? Is he standing on the truck?

And armored truck guards are not police, I believe, so I doubt they take the exact same oath to "protect and serve."




Actual tagline: There are two sides to every family.

I guess there are, Brothers, I guess there are. I'm not sure if I like that better than the original Danish film's tagline: "How far would you go for Family... Surival... Love..."

One is a nonsensical platitude, the other keeps heading toward a question mark that never comes. Let's let the internet at large decide!




Actual tagline: Frank wanted the holidays to be picture perfect. What he got was family.

Wow, that stings. Sam Rockwell, I forgive you. It may take some time, and I'll cringe everytime I see commercials for this film, but I'll forgive you, I promise.

I bet this would make a hilarious Rockwell/Kate Beckinsale double feature if you watched it and Snow Angels back to back.




Actual tagline: Euro-trashed! Euro-smashed! Euro-slashed!

OR: College kids. The other white meat.

This terrible-looking comedy has some terrible slogans, sure, but the bigger issue here is this: this movie used to be Dorm Daze 3, as in National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze 3, which means that the name of the National Lampoon film series has been tread on so much in recent years that they've REMOVED IT FROM THE NAME of this meaningless trifle, instead latching onto the vampire craze of the late aughts to carry it to sub-mediocrity.

What is the world (of incomprehensibly not direct-to-dvd campus comedies) coming to these days?