I laughed. A lot. Even better, I did so consistently, and even the parts I didn’t particularly care for contained a gag or two that, at their worst, still brought a smile to my face.

I didn’t dislike Man of Steel, not at all, but I just as readily didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I wanted to, either. Nothing about this latest Superman iteration captivated me, none of it connected on an emotional level, and while the action theatrics fly considerably higher than any previous adaptation the shortcomings found in the human department frustratingly kept the project as a whole from soaring.

It’s a venal shell game where grey overwhelms all of the black and white ideals Sarah originally held, making her ultimate destination all the more emotionally affecting in the process.

But for the most part I enjoyed The Internship, and even the stuff that made my dander rise didn’t do so enough to make sitting through any single part of this comedy anything close to a chore.

The director juggles all of the aspects of the scenario with confidence, none of the three main stories transpiring within the confines of the film losing their focus, all of them coming together beautifully during The Prey’s energetic climax.

Say what you will about either movement but the heart and soul of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party did bring about conversations about wealth disparity and cultural (and corporate) privilege in this country, those ideas taken to a grotesquely unsettling extreme in the world imagined by DeMonaco.

There’s much of Violet & Daisy I did respond to, large portions that struck the kind of chord I unapologetically responded to.

“Going through a difficult experience isn’t the end of the line. There can be hope. It’s out there; you just have to grab it.”
– Scott McGehee

Without a doubt, this big budget high-concept science fiction spectacle is Summer 2013’s first unmitigated disaster, and seeing how anyone involved creatively could walk away from this calamity unscathed is way beyond me.