Here’s the thing. If your movie is going to feature two attractive women, completely nude, my first reaction shouldn’t be to laugh. And my second reaction most definitely shouldn’t be to hope they get dressed as soon as possible. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Black Rock is a new thriller with a fairly unusual pedigree. Katie Aselton (The League) stars and directs from a script by her traditionally light-hearted husband, Mark Duplass, and the resulting film is an occasionally successful hybrid of character piece and generic slasher. It essentially drops well-written characters into a highly traditional genre scenario, and while the combination has its benefits it also allows for more than a few issues.

Jack Kerouac is best known for his novel “On The Road,” which helped inspire the Beat generation and brought the author fast fame, but his next novel, “Big Sur,” told the story of how success only made Kerouac feel more lost and trapped. Director Michael Polish attempts to bring the novel to life with Big Sur as we watch Kerouac (Jean-Marc Barr) travel to the beautiful area to secretly stay in his friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s (Anthony Edwards) cabin and try and find some peace.

As if relations between the sexes weren’t strained enough already, along comes Black Rock, a new thriller from writer Mark Duplass (from everything) and director Katie Aselton (The Freebie) that looks like it’s going to fan the flames further, ensuring that we get at least another year of clueless nincompoops publicly declaring their unsettling opinions about rape. The basic story follows three ladies (Aselton, Lake Bell, and Kate Bosworth) who trek out to an isolated island where they used to have camping trips when they were young; you know, to rekindle lost youth or something. When they’re out there though, the island proves to not be as isolated as they thought. They happen upon a group of three very male hunters (Will Bouvier, Jay Paulson, and Anslem Richardson), one of the ladies gets a little frisky with a bearded gentleman around the campfire, and then he gets way handsy and his buddies suddenly turn super-psychotic. While it doesn’t seem like this story ever reaches Straw Dogs or I Spit on Your Grave levels of grossness, things then degenerate into a battle of survival between the sexes that seems to have more than a little bit of that revenge movie/backwoods horror vibe crossed with a smidge of the Surviving the Game/Hunger Games man-being-hunted trope.

Multi-hyphenate Katie Aselton returns to Sundance with her second film, a much different outing than her gorgeous and melancholy 2010 entry, The Freebie. This time around, Aselton has ceded writing duties to her husband, Mark Duplass, and the pair have made what will likely be referred to as “Deliverance for girls” for many years to come. But Black Rock is a twisty little horror outing that perhaps shares more with The Freebie than might be obvious from first blush. Both films hinge on interpersonal relationships, the confusion of behavioral signals and perceptions, and mistakes that have far-reaching consequences. Yet, Black Rock is most certainly a thriller and a genre picture, and its wooded island setting, thumping soundtrack (with remarkably sage picks from The Kills), and grim plotline only serve to show how well Aselton can cross genres with style.

Writer-director Rod Lurie was in a bit of a lose-lose situation when it came to dealing with the hardcore Straw Dogs fans. Like all remakes, if Lurie deviated too much, many critics would ask, “Why call it Straw Dogs?” If the Nothing But the Truth director stayed too faithful, then he’d get ripped on for making a carbon copy. There’s a tough middle ground between those two sides, and Lurie made enough changes to try to find it. For one thing, unlike Sam Peckinpah, Rod Lurie doesn’t hate women. All jokes aside, the original film earned controversy, partly because Peckinpah’s depiction of his female lead was deemed misogynistic. That’s not much of a surprise — Peckinpah treated that character with such disgust, as he treated all the main characters in that film with disgust. His film was about David (played in this version by James Marsden) finding his inner animal, while Lurie opted for David finding his inner man. Here’s what Rod Lurie had to say about the commercial potential of a Straw Dogs remake, the fine line between David being manly and narcissistic, and Peckinpah’s depiction of Amy versus his own: Note: this interview contains spoilers.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr feels the weight of the fall movie season. It’s September, and while the kids are heading back to school, he’s playing hooky with Sarah Jessica Parker chick flicks and yet another not-quite-70s-video-nasty remake. Kevin is consoled by the release of Drive, however, because Albert Brooks as a crime boss makes him chuckle. And his love for 3D and Disney meet head-on in a collision of awesomeness.

“EVERYONE HAS A BREAKING POINT,” Yeesh. There’s a good poster in here, but that unneeded and silly tagline doesn’t help matters much. But, really, how many taglines are genuinely good nowadays? Pretty much none. Screen Gems has just putout this lesser homage (via director Rod Lurie’s twitter feed) to the original 1971 Straw Dogs poster; something that’ll anger fans, but will probably work for the average filmgoers who have no idea what a Peckinpah is.

This Straw Dogs trailer ain’t too pretty, but neither is the audience it was cut for. Screen Gems made this for all the youngin’s going to see Priest (*shudders*) this weekend, and it plays well for that demographic. The audience I was with didn’t look to be the types that are Peckinpah fans, a.k.a. the young and texting generation. To fans of the original and Peckinpah, yes, this is not a good trailer. But for those completely unfamiliar with the original, it works. It is completely by-the-numbers, but why wouldn’t Screen Gems cut a trailer to showcase the main showdown at the end? The trailer does reveal a whole lot, except for the “big” scene, which is surprising. Rod Lurie is a solid writer/director, so I have faith that he’s made something far less generic than this first glimpse implies. Also, to those complaining about the idea of having James Marsden playing a wimpy and passive man, that’s ridiculous. Far more masculine men or equals to Marsden have played those characteristics greatly, even Stallone, someone that doesn’t exactly have a wide “range,” did it well in Cop Land. Marsden has got the chops to pull it off. Check it out for yourself:

So, in case you didn’t know, Len Wiseman is directing a remake of Total Recall for Sony Pictures. I know what you’re thinking, “Total Recall was a perfect film, how could they possibly remake it and not make something disappointing and stupid, especially in this age of homogenized action movies?” Well shut up you, we will have none of that negativity here in this casting rumors article. Even though Arnold Schwarzenegger is once again free to start acting, this update has Colin Farrell signed on to step into the Hauser/Quaid dynamic. So what we need is a couple of chicks for him to knock boots with. If you recall, the Paul Verhoeven classic had four big female roles. The first is the undercover secret agent playing Quaid’s doting wife. The second is his spicy space mistress Melina, who he hooks up with as part of a rebel uprising on Mars. The third is the hooker with three boobs. And the fourth is the midget hooker who blows a bunch of guys away with a machine gun. We have yet to get any word on the casting of the second two roles, but Deadline Thal has dug up some info on the process behind filling the first two.

Yes, that one shot does make The Warrior’s Way look like a remake of The Birds featuring ninjas, and the rest of it looks like an effects-driven martial arts movie. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, but it honestly feels like the natural evolution from the Wire Fu movies of the past, and here it looks like everything is carefully done. Plus, it’s cowboys vs ninjas. How can that go wrong? Cross your fingers for decent-looking CGI blood (or no blood at all). The film stars Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth, Korean star Dong-gun Jang, and Danny Huston. What do you think?

The actors have signed up for the drama featuring young teen girls who run away to Los Angeles to do bad stuff with skaters.

Too many actresses are believing the line that you can’t be too thin. Please, ladies, eat a sandwich or something at the craft services cart. Here are a special shout-out to ten skinny-ass celebs that used to really turn heads.

21 galvanizes you from frame one and never lets go. It’s the most entertaining movie about Sin City in recent memory; right up there with Ocean’s Thirteen.

While the actual concept and events in the film are real, they have been so gussied up with glitz and flash that we lose the essence of the drama. It tries to be as slick and as cool as an MTV music video, but it completely busts. [Grade: C]

Anyone who has ever been to Vegas knows that you get free drinks at the blackjack tables. And while this will cloud your mind and hinder you in counting cards, free drinks would be great in a movie like 21.

Today, I’m teaching you how to run the house. Sort of. Ok, not really. The deck is still stacked against you, but in honor of 21 we’re going to quickly go over the rules of the game.

A group of MIT students take the concept of card counting to a whole new level in this seemingly sharp witted, fast-paced heist flick.

What defines a great superhero movie? Of course this is a topic that would spark a very heated and potentially violent debate if brought up in any comic book shop across America. It is also something that is very subjective, but there are a few things that very successful and beloved superhero films of the past have in common. In fact, I have narrowed it down to three specific elements that I believe to be necessary in making a great superhero flick. The first is that the film must have great action. Not good action, not lukewarm action, but GREAT action. It must contain the kind of action sequences that cause your back to stick the seat because you are sweating (and the sweating can not be related to any pre-existing conditions, a la obesity). A great superhero movie must also have performances by their lead actors that make us believe that these characters whom we loved so much in print are really coming to life. We cannot survive on actors who just look like our favorite heroes, they must also be able to walk in their shoes. And lastly these successful superhero films must have a story that keeps us yearning for more. We have read every comic, seen every animated episode, and we even have the bootlegged director’s cut of the 1970′s serial edition; we need more than just a rehashing of yesterday’s saga. All of these elements are absolutely necessary in making a superhero movie that will