Angels & Demons

It speaks to the strength of The Burning’s reputation among cult-film fans that what’s most memorable about the 1981 slasher is not that it was written by the Weinstein brothers, nor that it represents early appearances of the likes of Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter and Fisher Stevens. It’s that its Cropsy is just a damned good villain.

Nightfall

As Simon Lam gets older, he gets better. The veteran actor has appeared in such in seminal HK action films of the 1990s as Once Upon a Time in China (opposite Jet Li) and Bullet in the Head (directed by John Woo); in the aughts, he graced audience and critical favorites Election and Ip Man.

Grand Duel

Lee Van Cleef enjoyed a secondary career in Italy cranking out spaghetti Westerns, with little regard to quality. However, 1972’s Grand Duel — aka The Big Showdown — is deserving of its Grand label. No wonder Quentin Tarantino borrowed its sweeping theme song by Luis Bacalov for Kill Bill; you'll recognize it in two notes.

The Last Stand

Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.

People have been coming up to me for days with big grins on their faces to ask me what I thought of "Angels & Demons," director Ron Howard's sequel to the inexplicably successful "The Da Vinci Code" of 2006. I figure they expect an attack on the picture.

Despite its box-office clout, not many of us actually liked "Da Vinci," and the 21st century hasn't been kind to Howard so far " critically, he's two for six since 2000, with an Oscar that generated some disappointed grumbling.

But I'm surprising my inquisitors " if I may use that word in connection with a movie about errors in Catholic Church history " by grinning right back and telling them that I enjoyed the hell out of "Angels & Demons." I don't believe a word of it and it's dumber than a sack full of cut grass, but it's the first crowd-pleaser of the summer for people who couldn't care less for comic books and defunct science-fiction TV series.

Tom Hanks ("Charlie Wilson's War") returns as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. This time, he's called to the Vatican because someone has stolen a container of antimatter and is threatening to destroy Vatican City with it, along the way kidnapping four cardinals, one of whom will surely be elected pope since the last guy who had the job just died. See what I mean? Silly.

EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR
One cardinal will be killed tonight at 8 p.m., and the rest will be murdered every hour on the hour until the antimatter blows everything up at midnight. Suspicion has been cast on the Illuminati, a secret society of scientists and forward-thinkers formed during the Renaissance and persecuted by the Church. Now they're back " and this time it's personal.

So Langdon joins up with the physicist who wants to retrieve the antimatter, which she intends to use for good, and luckily for us, doc is a she, Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer, "Munich"). They gain the blessing of Carmelengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor, "Deception"), who is pretty much in charge of the Vatican until a new pope is selected. The investigative team is made up of the head of the Swiss Guard, Cmdr. Richter (Stellan Skarsg

The Burning

Dexter: The Seventh Season

Nightfall

Grand Duel

The Last Stand

Angels & Demons