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When directors go back and reboot a franchise, the most successful are always those who boil a movie down to its core, give it a firm base in reality, and then let the character take you from there. Christopher Nolan boiled a man who wears a suit that looks like a bat down to a man whose family was killed and seeks vigilante justice. Spider-Man was more than a kid who got bit by a radioactive spider; it was about a kid growing up in the world and learning for every one of his actions there is a reaction. What Joe Johnston has done with The Wolfman is boiled a film about a man dealing with his inner demons down to simply a film about a man who turns into a wolf.  And breaking a film down and missing the mark only serves to reveal the films inherent silliness.

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Based on the Alice Sebold novel of the same name, The Lovely Bones is the tale of 14-year-old Susie Salmon who is tragically raped and murdered by her neighbor in a suburban town in 1970s Pennsylvania. Upon her death Susie finds herself stuck in the "in-between," watching her family struggle to stay together as they try to find her killer and accept her death. The story is told from Susie's perspective as she floats back and forth between the fantastical "in-between" world and the real world while striving to make contact with the living to help them find her missing body. In doing so, Susie also observes her father's obsessive quest for vengeance and unwillingness to accept his daughter's demise.

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Here's a hint for director/writer Nancy Myers: If you're going to make a movie about love, affairs, middle age, and family, go ahead and try and make at least one of your characters relatable, you know, so we have someone to root for and care about. Oh, and while you're at it, go ahead and develop some dimensions for your characters too!

The latest schlockfest from Myers is this Christmas's release of It's Complicated, which follows around wildly successful baker, Jane, (Meryl Streep) as she prances around her wildly successful bakery, upscale New York hotels, and her Pottery Barn porn house. Jane has been divorced for ten years, and one fateful night falls drunkenly into her ex-husband's, Jake (Alec Baldwin), arms for a one night shag-a-thon. Jake, who is now unhappily remarried, couldn't be more happy and in love with his ex-wife, and Jane couldn't be more guilt stricken. Couple this with the fact that Jane is potentially falling for the architect (Steve Martin) who is redesigning her (already huge) kitchen for more space, and you've got yourself a recipe for complication--and by complication, I mean stereotypical characters and predictable story.
 
 
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During the Chinese Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s in the late Qing Dynasty, General Qing-Yun (Jet Li) is the only survivor of his slaughtered troops. In his aimless wanderings after, Qing-Yun encounters a woman who nurses him back to health. Qing-Yun is then welcomed into a group of bandits by Wu-Wang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) only to find the woman who had helped him is wife to other bandit leader Er-Hu (Andy Lau). The three men form a blood pact to always look out for one another, and Qing-Yun convinces the bandit leaders to join the Qing Army in an attempt to give them their financial independence. Qing-Yun assumes the leadership role and what follows is two hours of epic battles, confusing Chinese politics, love-triangles, and a test of fraternity, not to mention eight wins at the Hong Kong Film Awards including director, picture, and actor.

...more after the jump.
 
 
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Based on the Jon Ronson book of the same name, The Men Who Stare at Goats follows the 'true' story of a reporter, Bob Wilton, (Ewan McGregor), trying to lose himself in the romance of war after his marriage fails. Bob gets more than he bargains for when he meets an alleged special forces agent, Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who reveals the existence of a secret psychic military unit whose goal is to end war as we know it. Having heard some truth to his tales Bob dives in and follows Lyn on his 'mission'. Is Lyn crazy or is he a super soldier member of The New Earth Army?

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It's easy to think up a post-apocalyptic world and how you would inhabit it; round up a couple of friends and family members, hoard your resources, and loot a local Wal-Mart of guns and supplies before holing up in a safe place with those you care about. But what would you realistically do?

There's no electricity, there's no communication, and you have no idea what's going on outside besides knowing civilization is coming to a end.  Nearly all of humanity has been wiped out by some unknown cataclysm, and those who remain are either well-armed xenophobes or canabilistic mauraders.  The sun has become obscured by a blanket of ashy grey sky, and plant and animal life is all but extinct. 

That's the life that is depicted in the bleak and haunting future in the John Hillcoat directed Cormac McCarthy adapation The Road. The story centers on an ailing father (Viggo Mortensen) traveling south with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) when he realizes they cannot survive another winter at their present location. The journey follows the father as he wields a pistol with two bullets to protect his son from cannibals, starvation, and everything else the cruel world has to offer him and his uninitiated young boy.

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Don't be fooled by the marketing campaign that promises a fun and whimsical vampire film with a mix of action and adventure thrown in because, frankly, that's not the Vampire's Assistant.

The Vampire's Assistant tells the frightening tale of a boy who unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires. Pulled into a fantastic life of misunderstood... The Vampire's Assistant tells the frightening tale of a boy named Darren who unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires. Pulled into a fantastic life of misunderstood sideshow freaks and grotesque creatures of the night, Darren must choose a side and rise up to be the vampire he was foretold to be.

Unfortunately, by the time Darren does rise up, it's only in time to set up the hopeful sequel, and not even the super celebrity cast of John C. Reily, Orlando Jones, Salma Hayek, Ken Watanabe, Ray Stevenson, and Willem Dafoe can save this thing.

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What would you do if two men broke into your house, stabbed you, and then raped your wife and killed your daughter in front of you? Not only that, but one guy rolls on the other after being apprehended, and, while one gets sentenced to lethal injection, the other walks after three years of 'hard' time. You'd probably bleed a little at first, then stew in your anger for 10 years, and then methodically plan out the dumbest, most implausible form of revenge you could think of, wouldn't you? I knew it!

Such is the premise for Law Abiding Citizen, the latest from director F. Gary Gray (Italian Job, A Man Apart, and several R. Kelly Videos). Gerard Butler plays the judiciously wronged father, while Jamie Foxx plays the well-to-do lawyer who is seeking to advance his career by keeping his conviction percentage high. Upon being wronged both by the aforementioned stabber/rapers and by the justice system, Butler takes the law into his own hands and tries to create what could have been a fun little revenge flick. Unfortunately, though, things go horribly wrong.

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Every once and a while there is a movie that manages to sneak up under your skin and affect you in ways you didn't think it could. It's a movie with a message—but don't they all have messages? This message, though, manages to stealthily work its way inside you, bypass all rational thought, slide past the shell surrounding your bitter, jaded heart, and leave you deeply entranced. Where the Wild Things Are managed to circumvent my emotional defenses and tap right into the mainline of the nine-year-old kid inside me.

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Uwe Boll is quite the prolific director. He has made several video game adaptations, as well as shot some original visions of his own. He writes, he produces, he directs, and no matter how gigantic the failures  of his productions (both critically and commercially), he always has another movie coming out. For a guy who's made 18 movies now, none of which have broeken $10 mil at the domestic box office or even garner more than a 10% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it is astounding. But as they say, every dog has his day, and today is Uwe Boll's day.

Rampage is the director's latest effort that tells the story of Bill, a mild mannered suburban-dwelling twentysomething who works at a mechanic shop and lives with his parents. Bill goes about his life like most of us, dealing with everyday struggles and frustrations--from the guy who can't make our coffee right to having to go out on our own and make it in the world. Only difference is, where you or I would sink or swim in the world, Bill decides to create and bulletproof steel suit of armor and go on a killing spree across his town, murdering indiscriminately. Sounds like a blast right?

more after the jump...