'Star Trek Into Darkness' (Photo: Paramount Pictures)

When it comes to summer movies, I'm basically a counterprogramming queen. I'm the one who called out "The Help" as a hit when it was still in production, and the noise assault of the "Transformers" movies makes me bad crazy.

While I'm enough of a fan-girl that I can't ignore "Star Trek Into Darkness," you don't need me to guide you through every obvious Hollywood movie that inspires a McDonald's collectible cup. Here are my must-sees:

Focus FeaturesRyan Gosling is having a fame hiccup. The 32-year-old Canadian native recently told reporter Jake Coyle, "I've been doing too much."

While Gosling may plan to take a break from the burdens of celebrity, he still has three upcoming films in the pipeline: "Only God Forgives," with his "Drive" director, Nicolas Winding Refn; that little "Untitled Terrence Malick Project" with Christian Bale; and "The Place Beyond the Pines," which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September to screaming crowds of Canadian fans and opens Friday.

"Pines" reunites Gosling with his "Blue Valentine" director, Derek Cianfrance. This time around, Gosling gets his Steve McQueen on as a motorcycle-riding bank bandit. His character, Luke, tries to make crime pay and then collides with a policeman named Avery (Bradley Cooper). But that's only the adrenaline-rush setup of an upstate New York family drama that dwells on the conflicts between fathers and sons and also stars Eva Mendes as Luke's baby mama.

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

The folks over at Huffington Post today raised a titillating question: "Action Movie Butt Shots: Why Must Fighting Females Assume the Same Pose?" Or, more simply, why are chicks in action movie posters always posed backsides-forward?

The simple answer: the butt-thrust pose sells tickets. The tactic gets average-Joes in seats. Action movies favor female back-views because they're marketing tools aimed largely at young males, not females.

The Meta answer: raising the question is a good way to prompt a juicy gallery of poster art. Here is ours:

Max Irons and Saoirse Ronan in 'The Host' (Photo: Alan Markfield/Open Road Films)

Team Edward vs. Team Jacob is so last year. With "Twilight" faded into the twilight, fans of the Stephanie Meyer sparkly vampires need a new fix. And Meyer herself is stepping up with what she hopes will fill that need in the form of the new sci-fi soap "The Host."

Photo: Derek Watson

In honor of World Water Day, we talked to Derek Watson, the director of "This Is Normal," an informative short film about waterborne diseases that fell up to 2 million children a year. Watson clued Yahoo! Movies in on an appalling fact: One in five children in the developing world dies from contaminated water, and it's completely preventable.

What inspired Watson to make this particular film? "As a storyteller, as a human being, we want to make a difference and to eradicate the world water crisis and literally change history," he replied. "We have the opportunity to do it in our lifetime. We just need to act."

While global activism can be daunting, and a single domestic action can feel like a drop in the bucket, that's not the case here. One of the film's three subjects is Oklahoma-based businessman and Water 4 Foundation founder Dick Greenly. The owner of Pumps of Oklahoma has developed a low-tech water drilling system that allows locals in Haiti, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Uganda, and

Samantha Barks in 'Les Miserables' (Photo: Universal Pictures)

During the 2013 awards season, Anne Hathaway's Oscar-bound sweep as Fantine in "Les Misérables" sadly overshadowed one of the movie musical's biggest break-through performances -- that of Samantha Barks as Eponine. With the release of the movie on Blu-ray and DVD this Friday, audiences will have another chance to check out the pipes on the Isle of Man native who made her film debut alongside Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, and Eddie Redmayne.

Barks definitely comes from the glass-slipper, Cinderella-story school of show business: She was named Best Foreign Singer at the Maltese International Song Competition in 2007. The next year, at 17, she came in third on the BBC talent show "I'd Do Anything." Next up were "Aladdin" at the Theatre Royal Windsor and Sally Bowles in "Cabaret" at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and then she entered "Les Mis" territory playing Eponine, a tragic love-struck urchin, in London's West End.

Famed producer Cameron Mackintosh caught Barks at the West End and cast her opposite Nick Jonas in "Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary" in 2010. From there, she was just a song away from her film debut in Tom Hooper's Oscar-winning musical. We caught up with the dark-haired, dimpled star, 22, who was as surprised as anybody that she made the cut alongside the Hollywood A-list: "I never for a second thought I would be considered. It was a new experience for me after the West End. On film, you have to really play to a camera instead of trying to fill a 2,000-seat auditorium. To bring it into such an intimate place is very exciting."