Given that it released on May 7, seventh grade probably wasn’t quite out when my 13-year-old buddies Bryan and John and I piled into a local theater for a screening of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element. But The Fifth Element practically is summer for me: loud, exciting, breathless, stupid, and sexy. (I’m reasonably sure the few background glimpses the movie offers of a topless Milla Jovovich were the first actual female nudity I’d ever seen.) And, like summer, it was also a little disappointing: My feelings on The Fifth Element will always be affected by that first viewing, when the film ripped during the big “activate the pillars” sequence at the end, leaving me and my friends sitting there for like 10 minutes, wondering what the fifth element could possibly be. (It was love, by the way.) That’s summer, too: a lot of shouting and nonsense, and then it’s over sooner than you expect, or want. [William Hughes]