Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger TidesPIRATES 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.

2004 in Movies

Was I feeling especially sensitive in 2004, or were the year's most memorable cinematic works, coincidentally, the most unabashedly romantic ones? It could certainly be me - the only (fictional) televised event that moved me to tears was the unlikely but enormously satisfying kiss between Martin Freeman's Tim and Lucy Davis' Dawn on The Office Special.

David Carradine and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill: Volume 2KILL BILL: VOLUME 2

Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 2 is everything I hoped last autumn's predecessor would be (and, for me, wasn't): thrilling, surprising, deeply emotional, and very, very funny.