Let's be honest: once you got past the vicarious thrill of seeing all of the major action icons from your '80s and early '90s childhood sharing the screen, The Expendables was a lousy movie. A passion project for writer/director/star Sylvester Stallone -- who threw his body, soul and bank account into the film, even severely injuring himself in the line of duty (check out the pretty good feature-length making-of documentary Inferno, available on Netflix Instant, for the full story) -- the finished film turned out to be monotonous, poorly choreographed and self-serious to the point of parody. Still, the tug of nostalgia proved too strong for most moviegoers and The Expendables became a legitimate late-summer hit, making a sequel inevitable if not exactly demanded. So here comes The Expendables 2, which, if you're judging a movie by its plot, characterizations and internal logic (you know, the little things), is also pretty lousy. Unlike its predecessor though, this one recognizes its inherent stupidity and goes all-in on being the loudest, dumbest and most comically preposterous action movie of the summer. It's even more of a cartoon than that mid-'80s Rambo animated series... and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The Bourne Legacy belongs to that class of franchise installments that's a combination of a sequel and a reboot. Other examples of this peculiar subgenre -- which is still in need of a name, by the way; requels, maybe? Seqboots? Let's get our top linguists on it -- include those post-Peter Sellers Pink Panther comedies, the Van Damme free Kickboxer movies and the immortal The Rage: Carrie 2. Although all these films are technically sequels in that they take place in the same world and chronologically occur after the events of their predecessors, the fact that they follow all-new characters and storylines provides the sense that they're starting the series over from scratch. It's an awkward, tricky act to pull off and none of these movies have done it successfully... including, I'm sorry to say, The Bourne Legacy.

As I write this, it's been roughly 24 hours since I walked out of the Total Recall remake and damned if I can remember a thing about it. Actually, my memory started to fail me before the movie was even over; after a decent first half-hour, the Len Wiseman-update of Paul Verhoeven's enjoyably silly 1990 original grew less and less interesting. By the final act, I was so bored that I could barely remember what movie I was watching; based on what was happening onscreen, it may as well have been called Generic Sci- Fi Action Movie Starring Colin Farrell instead of Total Recall.

At the end of Christopher Nolan's first Batman adventure, Batman Begins, Gotham cop (and future commissioner) James Gordon warned his new masked vigilante pal about the potential for "escalation" amongst the city's criminal element in the wake of the costumed crime-fighter's arrival. In the moment, that scene existed to set the stage for the arrival of more challenging villains like the Joker, whose flair for anarchy would baffle and befuddle Batman through the course of The Dark Knight. But in hindsight, that scene was really Nolan's warning to us the audience that he was planning on escalating the franchise, not to mention the entire comic book movie genre, far beyond its expected conventions.

The Dark Knight was the initial shot across the bow and now here comes Nolan's third and supposed final chapter, The Dark Knight Rises, which pushes the director's specific vision to its breaking point. With its super-sized three-hour runtime, expansive storytelling and enormous action set-pieces (many of which were filmed in the IMAX format, which is the ideal way to see the movie), Rises is the fulfillment of that seven-year old pledge from Nolan to moviegoers. When the title card finally appears onscreen at the end of the movie, it's his equivalent of dropping the mic and walking offstage. (WARNING: Spoilers Will Rise Beyond This Point)

It's not a popular opinion, but one of my favorite Oliver Stone movies is U-Turn, his little-seen 1997 crime picture starring Sean Penn that begins with a classic "man-walks-into-a-small-town" scenario before spinning off into some pretty bizarre territory. While it's not as consistent -- or even as coherent -- a film as Stone's best work (a list that, for me, includes Platoon, Wall Street and Nixon) what I enjoy about the movie is the lack of pretension and self-seriousness that often dooms his more "respectable" (i.e. awards-baiting) efforts. Based on a book by author and screenwriter John Ridley, U-Turn is an enjoyably sleazy and sultry thriller packed with great actors (Billy Bob Thornton, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe and Jennifer Lopez back when she actually seemed interested in playing a character and not J.Lo) and told with a showman's visual brio. One can see the reflection of U-Turn in Stone's latest movie Savages and that connection may be why this was the best time I've had at an Oliver Stone joint since Al Pacino ranted and raved his way through Any Given Sunday, one of the all-time great guilty pleasure pictures.

Before Prometheus arrives in theaters tomorrow, let's celebrate the anniversaries of the last two films in the original Alien cycle.

Every summer there's that wild card big-budget studio picture that catches you off guard by being better than you could have predicted. Last year, that film was the Hail Mary franchise reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which made up for the terrible performances of its human cast with a compelling simian hero (Andy Serkis's Caesar) and some entertaining ape-driven action sequences. And while 2012's summer movie season is just getting started, Snow White and the Huntsman is the current favorite to be its most unexpected surprise. That's not to say it's perfect, by the way; first-time director Rupert Sanders and screenwriters Evan Draugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini make a number of major and minor mistakes in the process of bringing the age-old fairy tale back to the big screen. But the movie ultimately gets more right than wrong, finding the proper balance between spectacle and storytelling -- a trick that certain other recent blockbusters (looking at you Men in Black 3 and Battleship) failed to achieve.

A prime example of a franchise sequel that exists purely because it can, rather than because it should, Men in Black 3 arrives in theaters feeling like a relic from a distant past when Will Smith was the biggest movie star in the world. And it's possible that he still is, in which case it's the picture that's real small. Even though it affords its lead plenty of opportunities to flash that mega-watt smile and sharp comic timing and piles effects-heavy set piece on top of effects-heavy set piece, MiB3 can't mask its fundamental pointlessness. It's so instantly forgettable that even though I saw it in the theater in all its 3D-enhanced glory, I felt as though I was watching it at home during the late-night cable run it'll receive a few years hence. You know, one of those experiences where you randomly stumble upon a sequel while surfing the movie networks and go, "Oh right -- they made a third one" before changing the channel.

Everything you wanted to know about Battleship but didn't bother asking.

There comes a point in the life cycle of every muscle-bound male action hero when he feels compelled to make a movie where he plays protector to one or more young kids. Harrison Ford did it in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Chuck Norris did it in Missing in Action III, Arnold Schwarzenegger did it in Terminator 2 (and, to a lesser extent, in Kindergarten Cop) and Jean-Claude Van Damme did it in Nowhere to Run. Heck, even Jason Statham did it once before in The Transporter 2 and that went over so well, now he's back for a second round.