Despite a handful of high-profile disappointments -- Green Lantern and Cowboys & Aliens to name just two -- this summer proved to be a pretty good one (box-office wise, at least) for Hollywood. Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger showed that comic book movies are still a draw, Bridesmaids kicked off a strong season for R-rated comic hijinks and a few -- gasp! -- original, non-franchise movies like Super 8 and Crazy Stupid Love actually became modest hits with critics and audiences. But there was one genre that moviegoers resoundingly rejected during the summer of 2011: horror.

Leave it to The Girl on Fire to ignite an otherwise sparks-free awards show. Last night's Video Music Awards offered the usual mix of underwhelming live performances (Adele excepted), slumming movie stars shilling for their upcoming features (way to slip a Moneyball reference into your stage patter with Nicki Minaj, Jonah Hill!), forced acceptance speeches (could Katy and Kanye have looked more awkward?) and embarrassing attempts at comedy (go back to your day job Kevin Hart... whatever that is). But things finally started looking up towards the end of the night when Jennifer Lawrence appeared via videotape to introduce the first footage from The Hunger Games, the upcoming film version of Suzanne Collins' best-selling novel (the first in a trilogy) that's due in theaters on March 23, 2012.

It's taken 27 years, but Hollywood finally got around to making another Conan movie. Since the original big-screen Cimmerian barbarian is currently in exile following a detour into politics and a series of personal troubles, Conan's sword has been passed to a new slab of beefcake, Jason Momoa. The Hawaiian-born actor has a fair amount of experience playing muscle-bound warriors with superb fighting skills and great hair -- check out his work on the TV shows Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones for proof. And if the new Conan flops, there are plenty of other '80s fantasy franchises in need of a revival that Momoa would be a good fit for. Because, let's be honest: we're all kinda tired of these girlyman action heroes, right?

It's been eight years since those resourceful Spy Kids last saved the world from an overacting mad-man, but this Friday they're back in theaters in the Robert Rodriguez-directed fourth chapter Spy Kids: All The Time in the World (now in 4D!). Actually, the original kiddie spies -- Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara -- aren't the stars of this particular outing, since, you know, they're not actually kids anymore. (They do both make cameo appearances though.) Instead, there's a new pair of pint-sized action heroes in town, played by Rowan Blanchard and Mason Cook. Other new-to-the-series actors include Joel McHale as the duo's father and Jessica Alba as their stepmom, a retired agent that introduces them to the spy game. Spy Kids 4 is far from the first film to try and restart a dormant franchise with an infusion of fresh faces playing new characters. Here's a look back at some of the other series that have attempted similar relaunches and whether or not they succeeded. (Hint: The answer is usually, "No.")

Spoiler alert (in case you haven't seen No Strings Attached or any other rom-com in your life): at the end of Friends With Benefits, Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are going to fall in love. What's also obvious? All of the annoying, unrealistic crap they're going to do to lead them to that point, which we see all the time in these kinds of movies. Real-life couples don't do things like jump over fences and stand at the Hollywood sign in order to push each other to be daring, as these two fated lovers do in the FWB trailer. And before we begin: We aren't about to shit on the classics, which is why we're going to point out the modern films that ripped off these ideas and made them the pathetic clichés that they've become.

Nepotism in Hollywood is as old as the film industry itself, so it's never a surprise when the less-attractive, less-talented relative of a big-time movie star tries to become the town's next big thing. And sometimes these upstarts even equal or surpass their famous predecessors -- witness George Clooney (nephew of Rosemary Clooney), Angelina Jolie (daughter of Jon Voight) and Jeff Bridges (son of Lloyd Bridges). But more often there are folks like Emma Roberts, daughter of Eric and, more importantly, niece of Julia, who make multiple attempts at movie stardom only to be roundly rejected by audiences every time out. After bombing in Scream 4 earlier this year (her fifth box office underperformer) the younger Roberts returns to screens on Friday in the New York City-set teen romance The Art of Getting By, co-starring Freddie Highmore and Sasha Spielberg (yes, of those Spielbergs). The chances of this movie turning her career around seem slim though. Here are the reasons why she's never clicked with moviegoers.

When we heard that America Ferrera's TV show Ugly Betty was getting cancelled, we were happy for her, because that meant the talented actress would be able to go off and do something a little more challenging and less goofy than Betty. At the very least, the beautiful Ferrera would no longer be saddled with braces, big glasses and garish clothes. But her latest movie doesn't give us a lot of hope for the future. In the snoozingly titled Our Family Wedding, Ferrera plays a bride-to-be whose impending marriage is threatened by her father's rivalry with the father of the groom, who is Black, and also Forest Whitaker. Hilarity ensues, grandmothers faint and Whitaker and Regina King have a cake fight. Basically, the movie looks like a rehash of several other terrible films (Guess Who?, The In-Laws), and we had hoped that Ferrera was better than that. Here are some things we'd like to see her do in the future, all of which we might actually be interested in watching, unlike her latest movie.

We really shouldn't have expected much from a film adaptation of a Saturday Night Live sketch. After all, of the ten movies that the show has spun off, you can count the ones that are entertaining on one hand (The Blues Brothers, Wayne's World, Superstar, list over). But the MacGruber sketches are so funny, with a bomb-defusing Will Forte getting held up by father-son issues, political correctness and heroin addiction, that we thought there was no way the movie could fail -- especially with co-star Kristen Wiig on board. But the redband trailer, which surfaced last week, makes it look like a huge mess. Maybe they're focusing on the more risqué elements for this particular trailer, but since it's the first one we've seen, we're gonna go ahead and assume the rest of the movie is like this, meaning a shoestring assembly of far too on-the-nose jokes.

The newest Jennifer Aniston movie opens this weekend, and we already feel weird saying that. If there is such a thing as an "Aniston movie," it's defined by terribleness, and almost certainly does not deserve its own categorization. But it's not like we can call it the latest Aaron Eckhart film, or the newest Brandon Camp picture, because those are both even more preposterous, so we're stuck with it. Luckily, we have zero plans to see the movie, because... well, there are several reasons, really.

There is a part of us that is vaguely interested in the movie Taking Woodstock, since we love Demitri Martin on his show Important Things, and the supporting cast (Emile Hirsch, Eugene Levy, Liev Schreiber cross-dressing again -- remember Mixed Nuts?) is impressive. But while the concert at Woodstock was certainly an exciting event, haven't there been enough movies about it? And is Ang Lee really the director to tackle the subject matter? Because when given exciting material, Lee has a tendency to turn it into a snooze-fest.