When “Elysium” opens on a dirty, overpopulated Los Angeles circa 2154, it looks a whole lot like the dirty slums of Johannesburg in “District 9,” director Neill Blomkamp’s previous film. But that’s not the only similarity. The films share progressive social commentary, distractingly bloody violence and the comforting presence of actor Sharlto Copley.

But, while “District 9” was an intimate film with some grand ideas made on a relatively small budget, “Elysium” is about as ambitious as they come. Blomkamp has a larger budget, A-list actors and an obvious commentary on the 99 percent. While larger in scope, the film gets lost between its idealism and its desire to be a crowd-pleasing popcorn movie.

The aforementioned slum known as L.A. is occupied by ex-convict Max (Matt Damon), who is trying to live his life straight while working as a mechanic for a robotics company. He and the rest of the world’s poor live on Earth, while the privileged have abandoned the planet for Elysium, a spherical structure filled with immaculate lawns and machines that can instantly cure all diseases and ailments.

Elysium is run by the menacing Secretary Delacourt (an icy Jodie Foster), who makes it her mission to assure any outsiders are immediately detained or killed. And, with desperate residents of Earth looking to cure their diseases, that happens pretty often.

But after a work accident leaves him with radiation poisoning, Max is determined to make his way to Elysium to be cured. Once there, he may have a chance to liberate Elysium and bring quality healthcare to the rest of the world.

“Elysium” sets its overtly political conflict (99ers vs. 1 percenters, healthcare reform) front and center, before diving straight in to an intense chase film, with Max being pursued by Delacour, who hires a bounty hunter named Kruger (played with positively medieval menace by Sharlto Copley) to hunt him down. The film moves so quickly it almost feels rushed; much of Max’s character development comes through a repetitive and obvious framing device involving flashbacks to his childhood. Kruger and Delacour, despite excellent performances from Foster and Copley, never come off as much more than manufactured menace.

Trent Opaloch’s gritty cinematography helps to sell the film’s version of Earth not as speculative science fiction, but as an almost-inevitable look at our planet 150 years from now. The film’s violent action scenes recall the best moments of “District 9,” especially in its handheld camera shots that lend the film a faux-documentary aesthetic. Unfortunately, these scenes also feature distracting slow motion, an overused trope that is always a sign of a filmmaker’s more grand, crowd-pleasing tendencies. By the end, the numbing action overrides most of Blomkamp’s on-the-nose political commentary.

As a writer, Blomkamp brings something unique to the table beyond his politics. Raised in Johannesburg, South Africa and now living in Vancouver, the filmmaker has never considered himself an “American.” You can almost feel his glee as he turns L.A., a city that, in our world, can sometimes look more like Elysium, into the crowded, multicultural Johannesburg slum he knows so well. In the film, you’ll hear English, Spanish, French and German spoken. Much like “The Wolverine,” it’s the rare action film with a true international focus beyond exotic locales.

While the film looks great, I would have loved to have seen more of Elysium itself. While everyone on Earth seems to want to go there, all Elysians seem to do is lounge in pools and eat exotic desserts. But, when Max and crew arrive, we’re left to looking mostly at dark corridors.

Thank God for Matt Damon. He effectively sells Max as a sympathetic everyman. He’s one of a select few who can look convincing running and gunning or sobbing quietly in pain. And man, that guy can take a beating. It’s easy to get used to him because he’s in so many movies, but he consistently reminds why he is one of the best actors in the business.

“Elysium” is one heck of a ride. But, unlike “District 9,” it doesn’t sear in the memory. In its best moments, it recalls the magnificence of Blomkamp’s previous effort. In its worst, it’s almost laughably silly. That doesn’t stop it from being a tense, sometimes brainy roller-coaster.

“Elysium” is living proof that it’s better for a film to shoot for the stars and come up a bit short than to never even try. And, in a summer movie season of playing it safe, such ambition is worth celebrating.

After the relative disaster that was “X-Men Origins,” the world really needs Wolverine to kick ass again. Hugh Jackman, who has been playing the clawed mutant since 2000’s original “X-Men,” is certainly game. The actor has aged as well as the regenerative character he made famous. But having Wolverine in a movie isn’t enough. He needs to be surrounded by interesting characters to complement his inner and external struggles, as well as a guiding filmmaker and screenwriters who can play to the character’s strengths.

Cue “The Wolverine” and director James Mangold (“3:10 to Yuma,” “Walk the Line.” Mangold and company have crafted a film that, in all the important ways at least, gives us everything we want in a Wolverine movie, while cutting away the many, many things we don’t. The result is a refreshing return to form for the mutton chopped mutant.

The film takes place after the events of “X-Men: The Last Stand,” with Logan aka Wolverine experiencing haunting visions of the woman he loved and lost, Jean Grey. While drifting through an Alaskan village, he is tracked by the mysterious Yukio (Rila Fukushima), who convinces him to travel to Japan to pay last respects to a man he saved from the bombing of Nagasaki during WWII.

This man, Shingen Yashida (Hiroyuki Sanada), is the wealthy owner of a tech corporation. When Logan arrives, Yashida offers him more than just a goodbye. He claims he can make Logan immortal. And when a man has experienced as much pain (both physical and emotional) as Logan has, it’s an enticing offer. Yashida is also afraid for his granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), who is being threatened by Yakuza assassins.

The plot sets up several enticing scenarios but devolves by the end into generic sci-fi/action tropes. Until then, it’s a pretty engaging ride. But we’re not really here for the story. We’re here to see Wolverine stab dudes with those glorious adamantium claws, something he gets to do plenty of here. “X-Men Origins” couldn’t even get that right, but here we get some pretty great action set pieces that let Wolverine be the Wolverine.

The problem with Wolverine as a character, much like Superman, is that he’s, well, invincible. Although Wolverine still feels pain, he can’t really die. This film is smart enough to find a way to rob him of his regenerative powers for a good portion of the movie, giving a weight to the action that has been sorely missing from Logan’s encounters in previous films. Also, Wolverine fighting ninja assassins? Yes, please.

Don’t let that fool you into thinking this is an all-out action film, though. It’s quite talky (in both English and Japanese), and Logan has a lot of emotional baggage to carry. That’s a very good thing: “Wolverine” is one of the more intimate comic book movies in memory, which also makes it one of the more engaging. Logan’s growing emotional attachment to Mariko, as both protector and potential lover, is sidelined by his inability to detach from the memory of Jean, and its easy to see that, even for a mutant, some scars will never heal.

Director James Mangold, always a consummate visual stylist, directs with a sure hand, allowing emotional scenes and dialogue to play out without the desire to gum up the works with needless extraneous characters or villains to fight. The breathtaking Japanese vistas and emphasis on Japanese culture are a welcome change of pace for a comic-based film.

That is, until the last half hour, where things get rather silly (and convoluted) rather quickly. It’s also a total “Iron Man” rip-off. Still, nothing here comes close to the cheesiness of Logan’s last outing, and most of the film feels solidly grounded in the real world.

That’s truly the strength of the “X-Men” franchise; no matter how outlandish its characters’ powers may be, we can see them fitting into our everyday society. We can identify with their ostracized, outcast nature because we ourselves can sometimes feel ostracized or “different.” It makes it, in my mind, the most engaging of the Marvel film universes.

Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine for a long time, and I’m so glad to see he isn’t done with the character quite yet (stay after the credits for an awesome tease of what’s to come). Until the whole gang is rounded up for 2014’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” this is a pretty darn good holdover, and certainly the most engaging superhero film we’ll see this summer.

The formula for a film like “Pacific Rim” is not complicated. Take giant aliens who come from the ocean, add giant man-made robots to fight the global threat, add in a little Guillermo del Toro-inspired madness, and voila.

In truth, formula alone does not make a movie, but it is in its simple structure and stick-to-your-ribs genre purity that “Pacific Rim” stands out as the best big-budget release of the summer.

When the menacing Kaiju emerge from the sea and start wreaking havoc on not-too-distant-future humanity, we decide to create Jeagers, giant robots controlled by top military combat personnel around the world. The humans’ resistance seems to be working, but the Kaiju are getting stronger, and the UN decides to shut the Jaeger program down after too many soldiers (and their pricy machines) are killed.

Our main character, the impossibly good-looking soldier Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam), disappears after his brother Yancy is killed during a Kaiju attack. Jaeger pilots work in pairs of two via a “mind meld” (each controlling one hemisphere of the Jaeger’s “brain,” and the team works in tandem to control every aspect of the Jaeger’s movements. But the mind meld allows each pilot to see the other’s memories, and Raleigh hasn’t gotten over his severed mental connection to his brother.

Meanwhile, world governments have resorted to building large walls to keep the Kaiju out, but they don’t seem to be working. The Jaeger program has turned into an underground resistance movement, led by the intimidating Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba, and yes, all the names in this movie are ridiculous), who tracks Raleigh down, Raleigh, one of the last living Jaeger pilots, in hopes of recruiting him to help carry a nuclear bomb to the Kaiju’s dimensional rift and closing the portal once and for all.

As Raleigh agrees, he comes across a refreshingly diverse set of supporting characters in the form of fellow Jaeger pilots, including a father-son Australian team and a mysterious Japanese recruit named Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), who senses an immediate connection to Raleigh she can’t quite explain.

I couldn’t imagine a movie like this being made by someone other than Guillermo del Toro. The dude can shoot an action scene. The towering Jaegers are impressive digital creations, and the imposing Kaiju even more so. This is a filmmaker who has staked a career on boundless visual creativity, and it holds true here. The combat sequences are truly something to behold. I suppose some might find some of the environments and cityscapes a bit derivative, but it’s hard to argue when there are so many things for your eye to catch in every scene.

As far as plot is concerned, mostly everything is predictable, but one advantage del Toro has over the monster movies he so clearly pays tribute to is smart dialogue and surprisingly three-dimensional characters. In particular, Idris Elba as Stacker manages the tricky feat of having a sympathetic backstory while still being a complete badass (even when half his dialogue is reduced to grand speechifying). The evolving relationship between Raleigh and Mako is also refreshing in its unpredictability. There’s even some tremendous comic relief in the form of a scene-stealing Ron Perlman (who else) as a shady black-market Kaiju organ dealer.

As the film’s conflicts ratchet up, it thankfully avoids the curse of “science-ese” that has plagued movies like “Man of Steel.” Just because things get more complicated doesn’t mean we have to stop understanding why, and “Pacific Rim” strikes that tricky balance by keeping things light and allowing the audience to keep pace in understanding all the plot’s technological developments as they happen.

On that subject, thank God for a summer blockbuster that doesn’t talk down to its audience. Del Toro is that rare director who is aware of what his audience wants, and is intent to give it to them. It’s a modern monster movie; not a revision, not an interpretation; not a re-boot. Instead of trying to bog his film down with grand messages and morals, he decided to go all the way in making the most kick-ass action movie of the summer. And honestly, why do we need more than that? It’s del Toro’s playground, and I want to see him play. And does he ever.

Hollywood seems to think audiences crave summer movies with brooding anti-heroes, dark themes, and grand statements about the human condition. We don’t; that’s for Oscar season. We want stuff to blow up, but we also want to remember why it did. We also want to laugh in-between the carnage. In that regard, “Pacific Rim” is one of the few truly successful movies of the summer. At a (relatively) brisk 131 minutes, it has a good balance between action and story, and, most importantly, doesn’t overstay its welcome (unlike another metal man I can think of).

In terms of a film delivering on its formidable-yet-gleefully-juvenile promise, “Pacific Rim” is the movie of the summer.

Or 7-11, maybe?

I don’t envy director Zack Snyder for rebooting a franchise like Superman. The character of Superman, after all, has always been a bit of a bore; due to his generally invincible status, it’s difficult to create a palpable sense of danger. And thus, the challenge of any Superman film is multifaceted: how to make Kal-El more human by allowing him to experience real struggles, and how to make the characters and conflicts around him more interesting in order to make up for the mostly static nature of this particular hero.

The original Christopher Reeve Superman films (one and two, that is), cheesy as they were, solved this by giving the hero a warm persona and a sharp wit. They also gave us a timeless romance with the Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane. Superman seemed human because he was likeable and relatable, especially as Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent.

Snyder’s solution (along with screenwriter David S. Goyer and producer Christopher Nolan, of “Dark Knight” fame), has been to give us an exceedingly generic and perfunctory sci-fi blockbuster complete with a “gritty” and “edgy” version of the hero that absolutely no one asked for. It is, for many reasons, a film that is hard to love, and one that shows how difficult it is to make a truly great superhero movie.

The film starts out interestingly enough, chronicling the downfall of Kal-El’s homeplanet Krypton and his father Jor-El’s (Russel Crowe) decision to send him as the last of his race to earth to carry on the survival of the species. You see, Kryptonians have mined the planet to the point of destruction, and it is too late for their race. This first sequence on Krypton drags on much too long and introduces a freighter’s worth of plot elements, characters and situations that the audience is expected to carry through the rest of the nearly 2.5 hour running time. It’s an exhausting introduction both visually and mentally, and a good indicator of what the rest of the film will be like.

We’re also introduced to General Zod (played by an absolutely incredible Michael Shannon), who plans a military coup to take over the planet (which is doomed anyway, so…) but is captured. He and his cronies (including Antje Traue as the cold and calculating Faora) are doomed to the Phantom Zone, a region of space where bad things…happen. But when Krypton is destroyed, Zod is released form the Phantom Zone (oops) and vows to hunt down Kal-El so that he can help him carry on the Kryptonian race on Earth.

The rest of the film follows Kal-El’s (now known as Clark Kent, of course) exploits on earth, via the present time as well as in flashback, where we see his struggles to come to terms with his powers and his loving earth parents (Diana Lane and Kevin Costner, who is criminally underused) attempts to help him find his true identity.

British actor Henry Cavill certainly looks the part of Clark Kent, but displays little of the warmth and charm of the iconic Christopher Reeve. His character is played as a mystery to the people of earth, and to the audience as well. And yet, the conflict at the core of his character is still compelling: is he a citizen of earth or a citizen of Krypton? How does he strike the balance between helping people from keeping his identity hidden? And yet, the fundamental flaw of the character is the face that he doesn’t have one. Superman can’t be hurt by anything other than Kryptonite, shards of crystal from his home planet. And yet, Kryptonite is nowhere to be found in this movie.

The film’s motif of “don’t worry, we’ve got really cool things planned for the sequel but not now” carries over to other characters as well. Lois Lane (played unconvincingly by Amy Adams) is completely wasted in this movie. In this version, she’s a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter. How do I know that? Because she says, “I’m a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter.” If you say so, lady. There is just the barest hint of a romance between her and Superman teased here, but the joy of discovery so clever in the original films is gone, since Lois knows almost immediately that Clark is Superman. Is she just automatically okay with dating an alien? I guess so. There’s also Perry White, the Daily Planet editor played here by Lawrence Fishburne, who is a great character that unfortunately only gets a couple of scenes in the entire movie. If you’ve got Lawrence Fishburne, you’d better use him, movie.

I was surprised at how thick the spiritual symbolism is layed on here. Superman has always been a Christ-like figure, but here he is Jesus. The movie told me so in an out-of-nowhere scene where Clark reveals all his secrets to a random priest while a stained glass window of Jesus sits in the background. There’s also Jor-El’s heavy-handed narration (“one day they will join you in the sun”), just in case you didn’t get it.

Speaking of lack of subtlety, the product placement in this movie is ridiculous, especially during the epic, climactic fight scenes. Did you know Lois Lane likes Nikon cameras instead of Canon? Was that a 7/11 that just blew up? Man, it’s going to cost a lot of money to replace all those nice Sears washing machines Superman just got punched through! It’s incredibly distracting and takes the audience out of the movie entirely. I understand Snyder’s desire to ground Superman in the real world, but I don’t remember Batman whizzing past a McDonald’s on his way to beat up some thugs in “The Dark Knight.” And that movie felt pretty realistic to me.

I enjoyed the film’s chronologically disjointed flashback structure for the most part, but the last third of the movie falls into the unfortunate trap of blowing up lots of stuff real good while throwing tons of technical jargon and pseudo-scientific explanations for things that don’t make a lot of sense while expecting the audience to keep pace. It’s a confusing climax, but when Zod confronts Superman, the results are indeed epic. Zod has always been a truly great villain, and remains so. I love how his noble motivations; the desire to ensure the survival of his race; are at odds with his tactics, which don’t care a wink for the sanctity of life outside of the Kryptonian race. And the aerial battle between Zod and Superman is a pretty darn impressive technical feat to boot.

There is a decision that Superman makes at the end of the film that has the internet abuzz. I imagine Superman fans see it as a betrayal of the character, and they would be right. Superman would never, ever do what he does to defeat Zod here. And yet, I kind of liked the way the movie handled it. At the very least, it was a welcome surprise in a movie that had few, and for that reason, I’m willing to let it slide.

One last point. The true strength of the film lies in the fact that many of the heroic actions in the movie are not perpetrated by Superman, but rather by ordinary people. Superman did not save the day alone. He had the help of the people he swore to protect, from Lois Lane to that scientist with the glasses whose name the movie doesn’t give us. The film’s message that anyone can be super is beautifully conveyed, better in this regard than any other superhero movie I’ve seen. It’s a message we all need to hear.

Alas, it is a bright spot in a sea of wasted opportunity. I really wanted to love “Man of Steel.” I really did. I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted to love a movie more. But the film really makes it so hard to feel anything other than numbness. This is not a movie you watch so much as a movie you’re bludgeoned by. It definitely has moments of greatness, but those are overwhelmed by plot holes, a lack of subtlety and a sense of delayed gratification that keeps delaying. The film sets itself up perfectly for a sequel, and all I can say is that “Man of Steel” displays a lot of promise for what the future of the franchise could potentially hold. A great Superman movie? Maybe next time.