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.

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.

Unlike a lot of summer monstrosities that label themselves as being nothing more than “dumb fun” but forget to treat the audience with respect, Fast & Furious 6 remembers that people who do in fact watch this might actually have brain. While the movie itself is pretty stupid, it doesn’t treat viewers as being so themselves, understanding and respecting the audience in a way big budget enterprises of similar ilk rarely do.

It’s great, filled with superb set pieces and moments, not the least of which is a dynamic attack on the Stark mansion that had the majority of the preview audience sitting on the edge of their seats holding their breath, and I can’t say I was ever bored by anything that was going on. At the same time, there is an almost television-like efficiency that can grow stale, nothing ever popping out or calling attention to itself in a way I could ever say was entirely memorable.

It’s hard for me to say that Oblivion didn’t keep me entertained, and even though after it was over I wanted to pick all 126 minutes to pieces, while I was sitting in the theatre I was more than content to soak in the visuals and not worry about anything else.

My feelings towards Olympus Has Fallenaren’t exactly euphoric, and my reaction to the overall motion picture itself isn’t anywhere near positive. At the same time, for a schlock Die Hard variation (i.e. knockoff) Fuqua’s film isn’t anything close to a disaster, it’s too competently acted and directed for that to be the case. At the same, it’s also not anything even slightly special, making watching it more of thing to do when there’s nothing else to do than a necessity worthy of rushing out to the multiplex to experience.

There is no reason for Red Dawn to exist.

While steps in the right direction are made with Breaking Dawn – Part II, it’s much too little and far too late, and this saga of undead romance is as laughably soapy now as it was when Meyer’s first book initially hit the bestseller list.

For 50 years James Bond’s thrilling escapades have stirred imaginations and kept audiences glued to the edge of their theater seats eager to discover what was going to happen next. Based on Skyfall, it wouldn’t surprise me if the British spy keeps on doing it better than anyone else for 50 more.