I just saw the remake of Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still, considered to be one of the top 10 sci-fi films in many polls and expert commentaries. I wasn't expecting the new version to be anything other than dire and an insult to the original, so I was pleasantly surprised. I saw it in Imax, which rendered it quite dramatic at points.
It stars Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm (from Mad Men) and John Cleese and they are all pretty convincing in their roles and playing it seriously. If you don't know the plot it spoils nothing to know the aliens are the goodies with the heavily armed and destructive American humans gradually realising they are themselves the baddies, not the aliens. It's a farewell wave to George W Bush's America by a bunch of liberals in Hollywood.
It's an homage but not a literal remake, the original was a warning about the perils facing humanity in the atomic age, this is a green/gaia storyline about humans destroying the planet and America especially being incredibly destructive.
My main criticism of the remake is that there is not enough of Gort, the 50' tall terrible automaton, who is wonderfully evocative of the 50s version, and of classic comics, but completely credible.
The abomination that is The Day the Earth Stood Still should have been drowned at birth!!! 
