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.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Hobbit: Worst of Six Movies has pacing problems of a battle where everyone has different length legs.  Overly simple de-Smaugging followed by over-complex and under-featured impromptu battle over nothing.  Jackson forgets most series characters (and G-rated tone) and executes the others.  Meanwhile a bearatrooper drops in while Legolas gets stoned/high.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Next 90 pages gains Legolas, love story, and load of steaming gold garbage.  Peter Rabbit eats carrot and strikes perfect blend between barrel-riding book’s cartoonishness and Laketown’s Lord-of-the-Ringsy epicness, but gets greedy for gold with bloated, ridiculous last act.  Also suffers trippy Necrosauron zoom and go-pro shots of orcish hideousness.

New York, I Love You

Vastly inferior to Parisian predecessor. Portrays the whitest, most uninteresting New York imaginable. Features a phenomenal performance from first time actor, Shia LaBeouf, and an out-of-place mainstream segment from Brett Ratner. Portman directs better than she acts in this one. Mostly destroyed by ill-conceived attempt to intertwine tonally disparate storylines.