TRAILER TRASH

Taxi: This movie could not look worse if it really were a big-screen adaptation of the TV show, with Jimmy Fallon as Latka and Queen Latifah as Reverend Jim. Instead, it's a bunch of supermodel-looking bank robbers being chased by policeman Fallon in cabbie Latifah's souped-up super-taxi. No, really. This movie is for people who kind of liked Bringing Down the House, but thought it was a little too intellectual.

The Aviator: So, did Martin Scorsese not see Gangs of New York? I mean, he directed it, but maybe he never watched it. Because if he had, why in the hell would he still think Leo DiCaprio has the presence to hold together an adult film? (Not adult-sexy, adult as in grown-up.) DiCaprio is a teen heartthrob (and actually those teens are probably over him by now), not a Scorsese lead. He doesn't have the look, the voice, or the talent to be a believable dramatic anchor for a movie like this. It's hard enough already to try to pass off Howard Hughes as a romantic dreamer, rather than coocoo for Cocoa Puffs, but with DiCaprio in the role, I can't for a second believe his pretty little head could contain such ambitious ideas. Screw around with actresses like Hepburn, Gardner, and Harlow -- sure. Design and build airplanes -- no. And Marty, it's not just Leo you need to think about recasting. Gwen frickin' Stefani as Harlow? Oh, Marty, Marty, Marty.

After the Sunset: I liked this movie just fine the first time I saw it... when it was called The Thomas Crown Affair. Salma Hayek is Rene Russo (though probably a lot less naked), Woody Harrelson is Denis Leary, and Pierce Brosnan is Pierce Brosnan. Big-time thief pulling one last heist, yada yada yada.

Ladder 49: Same joke, change punchline to Backdraft. No, wait, I didn't like Backdraft. And that had Robert De Niro.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: I've gone back and forth on this one. At first I thought it looked kind of stupid, but that it still might be the kind of movie I'd get a kick out of. Then I thought it would be pretty darn entertaining for a general audience. And now, the more I read about how everything but the actors is computer-generated -- the entire movie was shot against a bluescreen -- I don't think that's the kind of filmmaking that deserves to be rewarded. Maybe if it were some kind of one-time experiment, that would be fine, but this is the kind of movie that could raise acceptance of computer-generated imagery to a new level (if not by audiences, then by production studios, who may find it more cost-effective), and I do not want that to happen. I think action films are on the verge of being ruined once and for all by over-reliance on fake, uninteresting CGI. Even James Bond films, the last bastion (in America) of real, live, human stuntman-based action scenes, are degenerating into CGI-fests -- I'm thinking particularly of that idiotic windsurfing scene in Die Another Day. I know that even the simplest of action scenes usually have some kind of CGI involved in them (if only to erase the stunt wires), but still, there's something more compelling, more viscerally engaging, about a stunt with one real person in one real car, than a million CGI robots fighting a million CGI aliens.