This trailer for David Cronenberg's new thriller manages to introduce all its major plot elements -- orphaned baby, abandoned corpse, secret diary, Naomi Watts -- while maintaining a sense of intriguing mystery. How does it all add up? No telling. Only thing we know for sure is that Viggo Mortensen is one sexy tattooed Russian gangster. Eastern Promises opens today; if its success is anything compared to that of A History of Violence, it'll stick around for quite some time.

The new teaser trailer for Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Jon Favreau, dropped today. As it was being passed around the office here at TDR, REELEDin manager Spencer Somers was overheard muttering, “It’s gonna take a lot for me to see another superhero movie that’s not Batman or Superman.” And you know what? He’s never been more right (In fact, he’s hardly ever right. Burn!). After such recent debacles as Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four 2, Spider-Man 3 and X-Men 3, comic book movies, especially Marvel ones, are wearing pretty thin.

But this would be a good time to list some other quotes heard by TDR staffers as this trailer was going around: “Badass!” “This is fucking awesome!” “That looks great!” And yes, Spencer agreed that he would indeed be seeing this one.

So of course, leave it to Favreau (whose last effort was 2005’s best-movie-no-one-saw Zathura) and Downey Jr. (in the midst of a career revival that includes another one of my favorite movies of 2005, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to get us excited again. I’m almost ashamed to say that I had my doubts, but it’s reassuring to know that there are some filmmakers that you can count on.

In June, we posted the intriguing first "trailer" for P.T. Anderson's upcoming There Will Be Blood. I use the quotation marks because that clip was more of a beguiling short tone poem than a typical teaser. Nonetheless, it got us excited.

The new clip, which began making the rounds on the Net last week, is substantially more informative. It's also amazing. There's blood, there's oil, and there's Daniel Day-Lewis, who eats up every frame of screen time as a greedy prospector in early 20th Century California. There's also Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano as a fanatical preacher who locks horns with DD-L.

The clip may only be two and a half minutes long, but this has multiple Oscar nods written all over it. Paramount Vantage releases the film Dec. 26.

There’s an old dictum in the movie business that while it’s always exciting to see one actor play multiple parts in the same film, it’s merely frustrating and confusing to see multiple actors play the same part. History has largely born this adage out, giving us films like Kind Hearts and Coronets and Back to the Future Part II in the case of the former, and the 1967 version of Casino Royale in the case of the latter. Leave it to indie maverick Todd Haynes to say “eff that” and make a biopic about Bob Dylan in which the famous singer/songwriter is alternately played by Batman, The Joker, Richard Gere, a twelve-year-old black boy, and Galadriel Lady of the Galadhrim.

Stunt casting aside, this first full trailer for I’m Not There really goes out of its way to bow down and kiss Bob Dylan’s folksy ass. I have to confess that, unlike everyone else I know, I was not baptized at the First International Church of Dylan. I think Dylan is fine and all, but I can’t really get on board with the slavish Dylan worship that this trailer seems to be pushing. The fact that Haynes has taken such liberties with the casting gives me hope that maybe the film has a more irreverent approach to the subject than is let on here. After all, this is a movie from the same guy who made a biopic about Karen Carpenter and her battle with anorexia using stop-motion animation and Barbie dolls. It would be a real shame if he started taking himself, or Bob Dylan, too seriously.