I found Skim to be the perfect replacement for Preview (ie, a fast app to review PDF documents with notes, etc.). And it also provides a decent AppleScript dictionary, so it’s also the perfect app to make one of those great time-savers. Follows sample code you can save as a droplet (and process a bunch of PDF files via drag & drop) or as a compiled script to be run from any script launcher:
open (get selection of application "Finder")
on open pdflst
set cnt to 0
repeat with i from 1 to count pdflst
--> just in case comes from run handler...
tell application "Finder" to set pdfFile to (pdflst's item i as alias)
tell application "Skim"
open pdfFile
set cnt to cnt + (page count of (get info of document 1))
close document 1 saving no
end tell
end repeat
display dialog ("" & cnt & " pages for " & (count pdflst) & " documents...") with icon note
end open
I know it’s trivial code, but still you must spend some time to find a solution for your PDF-page-count needs, and this is a fast and free one.
Julio Sancho's Blog 
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Preview was driving me crazy. The best part is that with Skim I don’t even have to write the script I was going to do for Preview, turn all the pages to the left or right so I can read in bed with my MacBook Pro on its side, with Skim I just hit [command]+L or R and I’m set since it turns all of the pages at once.
Thank you!
This is great! Automator doesn’t have a “count pages” action built it and I wanted to easily count the number of pages of pdfs in a folder.