There’s a list of maybe a dozen songs that Hollywood movies, in their funny/exasperating lack of imagination, can’t stop themselves from airing anytime they want to tell the audience that we’re about to be thrust back in time to the swinging ’60s. The odds of hearing one of these overplayed jukebox staples—think: fortunate sons, runs through the jungle, watchtowers—pretty much double if the movie is about Vietnam. And none is perhaps more comically overused than Buffalo Springfield’s protest anthem “For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound),” which never fails to inspire a chortle from yours truly when some filmmaker un-ironically cues it up. Here’s the thing, though: I still actually really enjoy hearing that song in movie trailers. Maybe it’s that trailers are, of course, advertisements, and I can forgive them for crassly playing to our recognition centers—a lack of creativity is to be expected in that medium, though it doesn’t have to be. Or maybe it’s just that the song’s gentle ring creates a pretty perfect mood for a highlight reel of enticing shots: cool, smooth, urgent in its own mellow way, with the chorus coming on like a rousing wakeup call, no matter the circumstances being montaged on screen (or the version that’s used—the one in the Three Kings trailer above isn’t the original). Either way, keep selling movies with that song, Hollywood. Just leave it out the movies themselves. [A.A. Dowd]