Michael De Luca Movies

An undercover cop makes his way into a scene of bank-robbing extreme-sports atheletes in this remake of Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break. Ericson Core directs from a script by Equilibrium's Kurt Wimmer. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Director Alex Proyas (I, Robot) revamps the mythos surrounding Vlad the Impaler in Dracula Year Zero, a Univeral Pictures release from a script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. The horror tale is set to take place in Romania during the Turkish invasion as Vlad (played by Avatar's Sam Worthington) goes to the greatest of lengths to fight for his homeland -- even if it means selling his soul and becoming forever doomed as a creature of the night. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

E.L. James' kinky best-seller gets the big screen treatment with this Universal Pictures/Focus Features co-production. The steamy tale details a masochistic relationship between a college student and a businessman, whose desires for extreme intimacy pen from secrets in his past. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Jim Field Smith's gentle satire Butter stars Jennifer Garner as Laura Pickler, the wife of the longtime winner of a local butter-carving contest. When he decides to bow out of this year's competition, she can't imagine the family not having the title, so she begins to train herself. Her biggest rival turns out to be a young adopted African-American girl named Destiny (Yara Shahidi), who has a natural gift for sculpture. As the competition gets more and more fierce, Laura resorts to drastic measures, convincing an old flame to perform some dirty tricks in order to get the upper hand. Butter screened at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

A suburban Las Vegas teenager realizes that his new neighbor is a charismatic vampire in this remake of the 1985 horror comedy hit. After years of climbing to reach the top of the social ladder, high school senior Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) finally rules the roost. Just as Charley ditches his best pal, "Evil" Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and starts dating the most popular girl in their class, however, a handsome new face appears in the neighborhood. It belongs to Charley's new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell), an outwardly amiable guy with a quick smile and a sharp wit. But when Ed vanishes without a trace andCharley sees a side of Jerry that everyone else seems to miss, the nouveau popular teen becomes convinced that the nice-guy act is a cover for something truly sinister. Unable to convince his mother (Toni Collette) that Jerry is a genuine bloodsucker, Charley turns to Las Vegas magician Peter Vincent (David Tennant) to help exterminate the demon before he drinks the entire neighborhood dry. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Nicolas Cage headlines this high-octane thriller as Milton, a hard-case felon who breaks out of Hell to prevent the cult that murdered his daughter from sacrificing his infant granddaughter to Satan on the night of the full moon. With just three days to go before the ritual killing, Milton crosses paths with knockout waitress Piper (Amber Heard), who steals her cheating ex-boyfriend's vintage Charger and joins him on his quest to save the Earth from the forces of darkness. With Piper's help and a mean set of wheels to keep them moving, they may have a shot at taking down diabolical cult leader Jonah King (Billy Burke) before he achieves his malevolent goal. But should Jonah get the opportunity to make his dark sacrifice, he will become the most powerful man alive and all of humanity will suffer. Unfortunately for Milton, the cops are quickly closing in, and the Devil's determined minion, "The Accountant" (William Fichtner), will stop at nothing to drag him back down to Hell. With each passing minute, Milton's last shot at redemption is fading, and the fate of the entire world inches ever closer to infernal darkness. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Bennett Miller's adaptation of Michael Lewis' non-fiction best seller Moneyball stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, a one-time phenom who flamed out in the big leagues and now works as the GM for the Oakland Athletics, a franchise that's about to lose their three best players to free agency. Because the team isn't in a financial position to spend as much as perennial favorites like the Yankees and the Red Sox, Beane realizes he needs to radically change how he evaluates what players can bring to the squad. After he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), an Ivy League economics major working as an executive assistant for scouting on another team, Beane realizes he's found the man who understands how to subvert the system of assessing players that's been in place for nearly a century. However, as the duo begin to acquire players that seem too old, injured, or inept to play major-league baseball, they face stiff resistance from both the A's longtime scouts and the team's manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who outright refuses to allow Beane's more-nontraditional acquisitions to play. Moneyball screened at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Three mercenaries head into the heart of the Middle East to track down a terrorist in this Relativity Media production. Seven Years in Tibet's Jean-Jacques Annaud directs from a script by D.B. Weiss. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Director Robert Luketic adapts Ben Mezrich's best-seller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions to tell the true-life tale of six genius students who used their brains to beat considerable odds. Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) may be shy, but his wallflower reputation betrays his inner brilliance. As smart as Ben may be, however, if he can't pay his tuition he'll be kicked out of M.I.T. Fortunately, the answer to all of Ben's problems is right there in the cards. Recruited to join a team of extremely gifted students who have used their mastery of numbers to beat the odds at blackjack, Ben procures a fake identity in order to join the casino scammers and their brilliant leader -- eccentric math professor and stats genius Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) -- in some highly profitable weekend excursions to Las Vegas. Counting cards isn't illegal, and by using a complex series of signals, this team has cracked the code. Of course, it doesn't take long for Ben to become seduced by the glamorous Las Vegas lifestyle, and the attention afforded to him by his sexy teammate Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) finds him pushing his luck to the absolute limits. Laurence Fishburne stars as Cole Williams, the Sin City security chief who catches on to the group and makes it his mission to expose their lucrative blackjack scam. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Austin Powers trilogy star Mike Myers collaborates with writer Graham Gordy for this comedy concerning a self-help guru named Pitka (Myers) who devotes his life to unknotting the romantic entanglements of troubled couples. As a young child, Pitka is abandoned at the gates of an ashram in India and taken in by kindly gurus. An American by birth, Pitka absorbs the lessons taught to him by his teachers and later returns to the United States to become a leading authority on spirituality and self-help. While Pitka's methods are decidedly unorthodox, they may be the only means of ensuring that the Toronto Maple Leafs win the coveted Stanley Cup. Maple Leafs star Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) is in trouble. His estranged wife has recently begun dating L.A. Kings star Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake) in a vengeful effort to send her husband's career into a tailspin, and when Roanoke starts to falter on the ice, the whole team starts to suffer. As their visions of leading the Maple Leafs to the Stanley Cup are quickly going up in flames, team owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) and Coach Cherkov (Verne Troyer) enlist the aid of the world's best-known relationship expert in restoring the peace between Roanoke and his wife, and getting their team back on track to the championships. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

In the late '60s, American culture experienced a period of change as the youth movement challenged conventional attitudes about politics, sex, drugs, and gender issues, while the advancement of the Vietnam War found many citizens questioning the actions and wisdom of their government for the first time. As American attitudes continued to evolve, so did the American film industry; as costly big-budget blockbusters nearly brought the major studios to the brink of collapse, smaller and more personal films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, and Five Easy Pieces demonstrated there was a ready audience for bold and challenging entertainment. As the '60s faded into the 1970s, American cinema moved into an exciting period of creativity and stylistic innovation, which led to such landmark films as The Godfather, MASH, The Last Picture Show, Shampoo, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chinatown, and Taxi Driver, and new freedom for directors and screenwriters. Ironically, however, it was another pair of big-budget blockbusters directed by students of the new wave of filmmaking -- Jaws and Star Wars -- which brought the studios back to power and put an end to Hollywood's flirtation with offbeat creativity. A Decade Under the Influence is a documentary which explores the rise and fall of new American filmmaking in the 1970s, and features interviews with many of the key directors, screenwriters, and actors whose work typified the movement, including Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Roger Corman, Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, and Julie Christie. A Decade Under the Influence received its world premier at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and an expanded version of the film was later shown on the premium cable outlet The Independent Film Channel; the documentary was the final work of co-director Ted Demme, who died shortly before the film was completed. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross stretch one of the characters from their HBO comedy sketch series Mr. Show into a full-length feature with Run Ronnie Run!. Ronnie Dobbs (Cross) becomes a media celebrity when he becomes the star of his own show ("Ronnie Dobbs Gets Arrested"). On this premise, the writers (and director Troy Miller) hang a series of pop culture spoofs. Among the targets are Mandy Patinkin, the television series Cops, and Survivor. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker make a cameo appearance. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi