A worldwide epidemic encourages a biotech company to launch an organ-financing program similar in nature to a standard car loan. The repossession clause is a killer, however. An epidemic of organ failures devastates the planet. Panic erupts and scientists feverishly make plans for a massive organ harvest.

Out of the tragedy, GeneCo, a multi-billion dollar biotech company, emerges. GeneCo provides organ transplantation for a profit. In addition to financing options, GeneCo reserves the right to implement default remedies, including repossession. For those who can’t keep up with their organ payments, collection is the responsibility of “organ repo men”, skilled assassins contracted by GeneCo, ordered to recover GeneCo’s property by any means necessary.

Repo! The Genetic Opera … read more »

Wild behavior forces a pair of energy drink reps to enroll in a Big Brother program. Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott star in Role Models as Danny and Wheeler, two salesmen who trash a company truck on an energy drink-fueled bender. Upon their arrest, the court gives them a choice: do hard time or spend 150 hours with a mentorship program.

After one day with the kids, however, jail doesn’t look half bad. Once the center’s ex-con director (Jane Lynch) gives them an ultimatum, Danny and Wheeler are forced to tailor their brand of immature wisdom to their charges, Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson). And if they can just make it through probation without getting thrown in jail, the world’s worst role models will prove that, sometimes, it takes a village idiot to raise a child.

David Wain (The Ten) isn’t nearly as famous as Judd Apatow, but he got his career started the same way (both guys turned oddball comedy shows into cult hits in the early/mid-90s) before taking tentative steps toward the big screen. And from the sound of this movie’s premise, it appears that Wain is learning the lesson Apatow aced a few years ago: Get less cerebral with your comedy, rotate key players through your projects, and gun for the hard-R rating. I’m curious as to why these Models earned a winter release when they are clearly a summer-movie confection, though it is a savvy and rather funny counter-programming effort by Universal.

Rated R for crude and sexual content, strong language and nudity.

On a deserted back road in alabama, Jack and Stephanie find themselves driving fast and running late. Their world suddenly changes when a strange accident leaves them stranded with no car, no cell phone coverage, and no help in sight. They have no choice except to continue on foot. As darkness approaches, they round a bend and see a small sign at the top of a long gravel driveway: The Wayside Inn.

The exhausted couple stands in front of an inviting house, complete with gated stone wall, ancient oak trees, and a note welcoming weary travelers. Inside they find another couple with an equally troubling story about a similar accident. It seems that backwoods pranksters have made their day miserable. Still, they are safe . . .

Or so they think.

This adaptation of the best-selling novel from Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti finally locked in a post-Halloween release after a year of come-and-go dates. Seeming to combine elements of the Saw legacy, Vacancy, and even Se7en, the material here focuses on the struggle between Good and Evil; that fact, combined with the faith of the writers, is causing a lot of people to brand House as a “Christian cult film.” Be that as it may, the trailer reveals a potentially controversial phrase (the villain apparently “killed God” after he let Him into his house) — a brazen statement that to me makes Jigsaw (who is so tired after Saw V) and his ilk feel somewhat tame in comparison. Director Robby Henson has worked from novels by Dekker (Thr3e) and Peretti (The Visitation) before, and something tells me this triad will find their greatest success working together. Fans of the hardworking Michael Madsen will not be disappointed here, either.

Rated R for some violence and terror.

A WWII-set story as seen through the eyes of Bruno (Butterfield), whose Nazi-Officer father (Thewlis) has just been made the commandant of a concentration camp outside Berlin. Bruno’s eventual friendship with Shmuel, a boy his age who is detained at the camp, will usher in a troublesome reality for Bruno, and lead to a fateful attempt to alter Shmuel’s situation.

Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.

Typically cheery British director Mark Herman (Little Voice) looks back to the dark days of WWII in his adaptation of John Boyne’s acclaimed, super-depressing novel. Prepare to be horrified by David Thewlis and Rupert Friend in what could be the saddest film released this year. Awards bait? Certainly. What are its chances? We’ll have to see what sort of push Miramax gives it — they’ve also got Mike Leigh’s buzzing Happy-Go-Lucky on their plate this season.

Rated PG-13 for some mature thematic material involving the Holocaust.

Molly Hartley (Bennett) looks to put her troubled past behind her with a fresh start at a new school, where she sparks with one of the most popular students (Crawford). But can her secrets stay buried, especially as she learns more about the horrific truth that awaits her once she turns 18?

Molly (Haley Bennett) is a 17 year old girl who has physically recovered from a stab wound inflicted by her mother, but the psychological scars that remain run deep. To help her begin a new life after her trauma, her father has moved her into a new school. With her eighteenth birthday approaching, Molly is haunted by nightmares of her mother’s attack upon her while dealing with the stress of being the new girl in school. Symptoms of psychosis that seem to be affecting her seem to foreshadow an onset of the mental illness that took control of her mother’s life, but of several different explanations for her distress, the most unforeseen and terrifying is revealed as the truth. Ultimately, Molly discovers that her mother and others who share her mother’s concerns want her killed in order to save her from a preordained life as a servant of the Devil.

Rated PG-13 for strong thematic material, violence and terror, brief strong language and some teen drinking.