Johnny Depp in MortdecaiMORTDECAI

Mortdecai, a Clouseau-esque slapstick about a bumbling art dealer and a missing Goya, isn't so much a movie as it is a test, and one with a single question: Just how much Johnny Depp can you still stomach? For me, the answer turned out to be "more than I expected," because while director David Koepp's comedy is crummy in many ways, it did crack me up a good dozen times, and every time because its generally overexposed star did or said something that caught me completely, joyously off-guard.

Angelina Jolie in SaltSALT

Leaving a recent screening of Cyrus, my friends and I noted how refreshing it was to see a movie in which, right up until its final seconds, you had no idea where events were going to lead; the creepy indie comedy could've ended with either a Happily Ever After or a vicious display of bloodletting, and neither finale would've seemed unjustified. (No spoilers here. You've still got a few days to catch it locally.) And the best I can say about director Phillip Noyce's Salt - and it's a considerable compliment - is that it, too, is totally unpredictable, a gripping, over-the-top action flick that makes you gasp and then giggle, and then giggle at yourself for gasping. Audiences seeking loud, defiantly ridiculous escapist fare should have a blast. Speaking as someone with a low tolerance for spy thrillers, stunt-heavy summer blockbusters, and (more often than not these days) Angelina Jolie, I had a pretty fantastic time myself.

Kim Cattrall, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis in Sex & the City 2SEX & THE CITY 2

Sex & the City 2 begins with a multi-million-dollar gay wedding at which Liza Minnelli serves as officiator and headliner, and somehow manages to grow even more over-the-top, garish, and belief-defying over its next two hours and 20 minutes. It should be said that writer/director Michael Patrick King's follow-up is only rarely dull, mainly because the act of repeatedly lifting your jaw up off the floor can't help but keep you awake. Yet S&TC2 is still an obscene and desperately unfunny ordeal, even if - maybe especially if - you derived occasional or continual pleasure from its six-season HBO forbear or King's 2008 big-screen offshoot.