July Fourth weekend has come and gone, and one thing has become clear: 2006 is a summer movie dud. This weekend's so-called blockbusters You, Me and Dupree and Little Man -- two of the year's worst stinkbombs -- only comfirm it.

Sure, last year was no prize either, except that George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (one of the year's best films) eventually reared its head, and if you were like me, you got a huge kick out of the final Star Wars (Revenge of the Sith). But take a look at the soulful, rich, clever, snappy cornerstones of summers past: Spider-Man 2 (2004), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Minority Report (2002), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Mission: Impossible II (2000), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Bulworth and/or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Face/Off and/or Men in Black (1997), Mission: Impossible (1996), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Speed (1994), The Fugitive and/or In the Line of Fire (1993), etc.

This year the usual sequels and remakes are suffering from a lack of imagination, or at least a bad sense of casting (Brandon Routh) and direction (Brett Ratner). It's clear that the mainstream just isn't going to deliver the thrills this summer. So what about the nether-regions of 400 screens or less? In years past, there were thrills-a-plenty to be had from the lower depths, most notably Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run in 1999, which, for my money out-played any Phantom Menace or Blair Witch Hollywood could throw out. (I saw it three times.)

This year, we're not doing so badly. Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly debuted this week on 17 screens, and it's easily the event movie of the summer. Although I found it a bit denser than I expected, and difficult to decipher upon only one viewing (the nice weekend weather made it doubly hard to concentrate). I hope to revisit it sometime soon...

Wolfgang Petersen, who used to deliver the big screen summer thrills with smart films like In the Line of Fire and Air Force One (1997) before he got waterlogged with sludge like The Perfect Storm (2000) and Troy (2004), returned this year with Poseidon (now playing on 180 screens). It's a relative flop, with only a $59 million gross, and though I hate both the disaster genre and the remake genre, it actually scored a few good reviews -- enough that I may want to check it out if I can find it playing in a dollar theater somewhere. And let's not forget that Petersen kick-started his career on less than 400 screens with his 1981 German thriller Das Boot.

For my money, Akeelah and the Bee (152 screens) actually delivers a few thrills, or at least as many as any other sports movie in recent years. I missed District 13 (18 screens), but Luc Besson's other B-level action movies (Unleashed, The Transporter 1 and 2, Wasabi, etc.) have all been slick, mindless fun.

Definitely the closest thing to a return-viewing experience (like Run Lola Run or Spider-Man 2) is Rian Johnson's Brick (29 screens), which, after a rip-roaring start, has rather sunk in the box-office mire. I can only attribute this to its uncommon intelligence, which probably doesn't translate into a "big numbers" kind of payoff. Composed in its own high school gumshoe-speak, the film unfolds a terrific mystery told in sharp, snappy tones and a cool, cool center occupied by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Even if it didn't rake in the big bucks now, I guarantee it will be around for a long time.

Some of this summer's best flat-out action has been in Park Chan-wook's Lady Vengeance (6 screens), the third and best of his "revenge trilogy." It's a crafty, spiraling tale of revenge plotted over the long term. Its most impressive asset is not its cinematic violence, but its potent sense of the repercussions thereof.

Sometimes summer is defined by its comedies, like National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Ghostbusters (1984) or Men in Black (1997). This summer, it's Terry Zwigoff's brilliant and misunderstood Art School Confidential (8 screens). Though it starts out like a kind of Animal House-style spoof of art school personality types, it quickly swings into a discourse on what makes art? Can it be taught? Can anyone be an artist? What happens if you don't have what it takes? These are questions that most critics don't like to think about, and so the film received lukewarm notices, but it's a definite classic and nearly on par with Zwigoff and Dan Clowes' Ghost World (2001).

That's about it, really. There's Lucky Number Slevin (7 screens), which is a guilty pleasure at best, given the amazing talent involved (Morgan Freeman, Sir Ben Kinglsley, Lucy Liu, etc.) and the fun they're clearly having. And there's The Hidden Blade (4 screens), which sounds like a cool samurai flick, but which is really a long, slow blue-ribbon affair with a kind of distant, proper tone. It does have one decent fight, but it's a long slog before we get to it.

There's a distant possibility that August could bring some surprise gem. It's happened before. (Think Unforgiven in 1992.) However, normally August is what critics call "the dumping ground" for unwanted garbage. But if Little Man is opening in July, just imagine what awaits us next month...