The Fast and the Furious franchise's gradual transformation from action movie serial to full-blown TV soap opera (with occasional car chases) is at last complete with the release of the sixth installment, Fast & Furious 6. Think I'm kidding? Just watch the first ten minutes, which kick off with a few quick scenes that re-introduce us to central heroes Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) and then flow directly into the opening credits sequence, a music-drenched montage of scenes from the previous films, followed by title cards and glamor shots of each individual member of the series' by-now large ensemble. The whole thing climaxes with a shot of the entire cast -- with bullet-headed Diesel front and center, natch -- walking directly at the camera in slow-motion as the title (which, for the record, is styled as Furious 6, despite being advertised as Fast & Furious 6 on all the ads) pops up onscreen. It's only an "Also Starring Jason Priestley" and "Executive Produced by Aaron Spelling" credit short of being a note-perfect recreation of the opening titles of any early '90s primetime soap.

Had Jeremy Renner not suddenly become Hollywood's go-to utility franchise player in the past few years, it's easy to imagine Aaron Eckhart taking over the Bourne series once Matt Damon decided to move on to greener pastures. Where Renner is an innately more volatile screen presence, Eckhart has the same contrast between his placid, matinee idol exterior and inner action hero that made Damon's Jason Bourne so relatable. Eckhart must have realized the missed opportunity, given that his new thriller Erased is essentially Bourne-lite, sending the star's ex-CIA alter ego on a cross-country race through Europe as his Agency past nips at his heels.

It's been awhile since we've had a good old-fashioned blockbuster premise-off -- a duel between two high-concept, high-intensity action movies with the exact same premise. Who can forget the great Deep Impact vs. Armageddon asteroid-destroying-Earth battle of '98? (Winner: Armageddon by a country mile.) Or how about the epic Dante's Peak vs. Volcano exploding-volcano confrontation of '97? (Winner: Neither.) Well, this year we're getting a pair of flicks where the White House becomes the setting for a Die Hard-like game of cat-and-mouse between a terrorist organization that's seized control of the place and the lone Secret Service agent who takes it upon himself to stop them. The week before America celebrates its 237th birthday, moviegoers can watch this disturbing scenario play out in the Roland Emmerich-directed, Channing Tatum-starring White House Down, scheduled to hit theaters on June 28. But why wait 'til then when you can watch the Antoine Fuqua-directed, Gerard Butler starring Olympus Has Fallen this weekend? Well, here's one good reason -- Olympus is awful

I'll say this for The Call: it's a film that knows its audience. Pitched squarely at the Times Square crowd -- not the new Disney-fied version, but the one from the neighborhood's Taxi Driver days -- this Halle Berry-led serial killer thriller is specifically calculated to elicit a steady stream of vocal reactions from viewers, reactions that range from shouts of surprise to screams of "You idiot -- don't go in there!" Like a midnight screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show (minus the costumes and sing-a-longs), The Call isn't meant to be viewed in reverent silence; it wants, nay demands audience participation.

Colin Farrell may possess a questionable taste in material, but he's generally aces when it comes to picking directors to work with. Just look at some of the names he's managed to rack up during the course of his decade-long stint in movie stardom: Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, Oliver Stone, Woody Allen, Neil Jordan, Terry Gilliam, Robert Towne and Terrence freakin' Malick. Granted, not all of these films turned out for the best, but that's an impressive collection of filmmakers to have on anyone's résumé. (Of course, there are a few Joel Schumachers and Len Wisemans in the bunch, but everyone makes mistakes now and then.) In addition to A-list directors, Farrell has teamed up with some promising up-and-comers, whether it's Martin McDonagh (who cast him in both In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths), John Crowley (who made the underrated 2003 crime comedy, Intermission) or, now, Niels Arden Oplev, a Danish director making his American feature debut with Dead Man Down, a solid, eminently watchable thriller that has the misfortune of going up against Oz the Great and Powerful this weekend.

Given that it's being dumped into theaters at the tail end of February right before Oscar night, one would expect for Snitch to be yet another disposable Dwayne Johnson action programmer where the content is as generic as the one-word title -- think Faster and Doom. But in this case, looks are somewhat deceiving, as the film turns out to be one of Johnson's stronger star vehicles, one deserving of a better box office fate that awaits it this weekend. If you do decide to drop a dime on Snitch either now or, more likely, on cable a few months from now, here are four things about the movie that will surprise you.

We critique all the big movie ads that aired during last night's big game, from Iron Man 3 to World War Z.

Leave it to a pair of old pros to teach all those young whippersnappers out there how to make a crude, violent, racist, exploitative, T&A-filled and altogether brainless action movie. Dumb as a bag of rocks and as blunt as a... well, a bullet to the head, Bullet To the Head brings director Walter Hill and star Sylvester Stallone together for the first time in their respective careers. It proves to be a fruitful collaboration, with the two of them bringing out the best in each other. Now, that's not to say that movie itself is any good, because it's not... at least, not in the typical definition of "good" where elements like storytelling, character development and thematic subtleties are taken into account. No, this particular brand of "good" is more sensory in nature; while watching Bullet To the Head you're acutely aware of how stupid and pointless the whole enterprise, yet at the same time the movie successfully delivers a steady stream of short, sharp shocks to your system that keep you engaged. Put another way, it's bad, but it's never, ever boring.

Forget the Schwarzenegger dud The Last Stand; the most authentic, ridiculous and overall entertaining '80s action movie throwback in theaters right now is Parker, the Taylor Hackford-directed, Jason Statham-starring big-screen version of the crime novel anti-hero created by Richard Stark (a.k.a. Donald E. Westlake). Although the character has been brought to the screen several times before -- including the 1967 classic Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin, and the compromised 1999 Mel Gibson-led Payback -- this is the first film that has been able to legally use the Parker name. And unlike those movies, it's not an adaptation of Parker's 1962 debut The Hunter, but rather a more recent installment, 2000's Flashfire (although the plot, once again, involves the character being betrayed by his fellow crooks and then embarking on a mission of revenge). But even though it takes place in the period of iPhones and Google, Hackford is very much working in the tradition of seedy Reagan-era crime pictures like John Frankenheimer's 52 Pick-Up and William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A.. Here are five ways in which the mostly satisfying Parker clearly loves the '80s.

Sure, The Last Stand may look like a brainless, pumped-up action movie that only exists because ex-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger decided he wanted to be a movie star again. But in actuality, the film -- which casts Arnie as a border town sheriff tasked with preventing an escaped drug kingpin (Eduardo Noriega) from crossing back into Mexico -- has a number of valuable lessons to teach audiences. Here are just a few of the things I learned from this contemporary treatise on heroism, honor and killing bad guys real good: