MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

The overall experience of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, at least for me, can be effectively visualized in one sequence - one shot, really - in this jubilant, intoxicating comedy.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

If you had told the 10-year-old me that Hollywood would one day release a series of big-budgeted, serious-minded films based on the X-Men comic books, he probably would've done cartwheels for about a week. And if you told that same mini-me that he'd one day grow almost completely apathetic toward this film series, he probably would've laughed in your face.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES

During the first hour of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the third sequel in Disney's hugely successful franchise, characters are routinely told to beware of the mermaids - half-woman/half-fish beings who use their comely looks and tranquil siren songs to drag seafaring men to their deaths. Our adventurers take note of the warnings but pay them little mind, and really, why should they? Disney, after all, is the studio that gave us the benign cutie-pies of The Little Mermaid and (through its Touchstone Pictures label) Splash. Just how nasty can these things be?

We eventually find out, and as a result, I'll likely never look at Ariel or Daryl Hannah the same way again.

BRIDESMAIDS

You wouldn't necessarily think that exhaustion and depression would be fertile subjects for a big-screen slapstick - at least, for a big-screen slapstick that didn't star Paul Giamatti. Yet in director Paul Feig's buoyant and brainy Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a sad, discouraged, frequently humiliated maid of honor with such inventiveness and style that she seems to be creating a new comic archetype right before your eyes. Hiding her misery behind a thinly veiled mask of courtesy and good cheer, and letting her anger and resentment spill out in sarcastic asides and messy, chaotic bursts, Wiig's Annie - like many of the brilliantly talented performer's most memorable characters - is a singular creation. And so, too, is Bridesmaids, a female-driven Judd Apatow comedy (he's a co-producer) with the rare distinction of being smarter than it is funny, though it's still plenty funny.