Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

It’s another Turner’s turn to cage Sparrow into fighting a bigger baddy. Chaotic whirlpool of a plot plays broken compass so aggressively that Depp nearly loses his head. Silva’s stint in No Ocean for Living Men is predictably entrancing, but excessive parent-child cheese drops an anchor into otherwise surfable wave.

Green Lantern

Reynolds is green with envy for all the decent superhero scripts as he fails to light a spark of enjoyability in this dim lantern. Effects unworthy of Pixar, and the dialogue makes Star Wars look like Shakespeare ensure that a film about manifesting the imagination completely fails to do so.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Pirates sells smoothly on after dumping Bloom baggage. Depp continues to justify the franchise but Barbosa gets a bigger role in this scaled down sequel. Brilliantly censored mermaids, Penelope’s other cruise, and an appropriately ludicrous fountain plot round out this small seas adventure. But why are the rum references gone?

The King's Speech

Geoffrey rushes in to prevent Firth from st-st-stealing the show in poignant and clever, if somewhat conventional story of a man overcoming himself. Pleasant to see Carter in non-Burton role, and Pearce’s snarkiness somehow makes him biggest bad guy in film that contains Hitler. Perfect parts funny, compassionate, and p-p-powerful.