Johnny Depp

“On Stranger Tides” is something short of a full series reboot, but Marshall — best known for big-budget musicals like “Chicago” and “Nine” — has shed most of the supporting cast and almost all of the super-duper creature effects of the Verbinski trilogy, and that’s mostly a good thing. (The French subtitle is “The Fountain of Youth,” by the way, which is clearer and better, but I guess the writers are crediting Tim Powers’ novel for inspiration.) Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgård and others have departed for Davy Jones’ locker (well, Nighy was already there) or other exotic ports of call. Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio focus tightly on Depp’s dapper, roguish Capt. Jack Sparrow and his alternately ferocious and respectful rivalry with the scabrous Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), now a pirate-gone-straight commanding a Royal Navy warship in pursuit of Ponce de León’s rumored Fountain of Youth. Arguably there’s not much to see in Depp’s performance this time around. We’ve seen an awful lot of the fey Keith Richards shtick, and he dials it down a little, intermittently allowing himself to be the decent, likable hero.

Even more important, Marshall delivers old-fashioned swashbuckling action-movie thrills more than computer-engineered grotesquerie. He kicks off the film, for instance, with a fast-moving, cleverly constructed (but not confusing!) chase scene through the streets of London — via chandelier and rope and Judi Dench cameo and horse-and-carriage and exploding coal wagon — that might be the best such sequence in the whole series. We certainly get a couple of new characters during the trans-Atlantic race for the mythical Fountain, which of course begins to resemble a video-game quest (you need two silver chalices, a mermaid’s tear and the blood of Donkey Kong) and the results there are “comme ci, comme ça,” as they say over here. I don’t know what it is about Penélope Cruz acting in English; she speaks the language well enough and she’s still plenty attractive, but something’s missing, whether it’s confidence or psychological fire or fundamental Espanish-ness. Anyway we’re supposed to accept her as Angelica, a convent girl Jack seduced and abandoned years ago who also turns out to maybe, possibly, be the long-lost daughter of the infamous pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane).

Yes, I said that Ian McShane, whose character on “Deadwood” may go down as the most profane in the medium’s history, plays “the pirate all other pirates fear,” as Jack puts it, captain of the dreadful black ship called Queen Anne’s Revenge, with its skeleton figurehead and its zombiefied crew. (They aren’t zombies, in the usual movie sense; Elliott and Rossio use the term in its anthropological-historical meaning, which may be a first for this franchise.) Handsome but decayed, evil down to the roots of his soul and a few meters below that, McShane’s Blackbeard is the best special effect in “On Stranger Tides,” which also features a bunch of sexy-scary mermaids with long glistening fishtails and a final MacGuffin-destination at the fabled Fountain of Youth itself, which resembles a Roman ruin from an 18th-century English landscape painting.

Indeed, if there’s a problem with the fact that this movie is marginally more realistic than the preceding three, it’s because it made me think a little bit, and that’s never a good idea in a movie that’s based (OK, at several removes) on a Disneyland ride. So we’re somewhere around the year 1720, and Jack, Blackbeard, Barbossa and the Spanish fleet are all chasing the Fountain of Youth discovered two centuries earlier by the conquistador Juan Ponce de León, right? Great. (Let us note that later chroniclers claimed that Ponce de León was actually seeking a cure for impotence; he was 500 years too early for Viagra and in need of the Fountain of Whoomph, if you know what I mean and I think you do.) But the place the dude actually explored was Florida. Is that where we’re supposed to be when all these characters go trekking through the jungle and climbing over mountains and plunging into canyons? The primeval mountains and canyons and jungles of Florida? Is that closer to Boca or to West Palm?

OK, I’m getting distracted, and if I go on any longer in this vein I’ll start asking whether the Fountain of Youth in this movie, with its Roman Empire bathhouse look, supports some kind of crackpot, hyper-diffusionist archaeological theory. The main point, I guess, is that while a lot of people are predicting a disappointing summer for Hollywood (and I generally concur), “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” injects new vigor into a megabucks franchise and makes for a perfectly acceptable night out. Now, the movie’s too long and you can only watch so much swordfighting and the repartee’s really not that great and if you see it that’s two and a half hours of your life you’ll never get back, just because you wanted to see Ian McShane and some cute mermaids. I report, you decide.

As is customary, this year’s Cannes lineup features the world premieres of enormous Hollywood productions aimed at an audience in the hundreds of millions, intimate personal films that may almost literally never be seen again, and nearly everything in between. Early on Saturday morning, the horde of journalists will pack into the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the legendary main auditorium here, to see “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” with Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz, a movie we could have seen at home with less glitz but a great deal more comfort. A couple of days later we’ll do it again for Terrence Malick’s long-awaited “The Tree of Life,” with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn (which was initially expected at Cannes last year).

Those two films may well be the biggest news events of the next week — but in all honesty it isn’t those movies that make Cannes so great. It’s the fact that I can see those movies and also see, say, the newest film from little-known Japanese director Naomi Kawase (a personal fave) or “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” the debut of young Canadian director Sean Durkin. There seems almost no end to the potential riches on the Riviera beachfront this spring; picking just 10 films to spotlight in advance has been tough. (There, I’ve gone and jinxed it.) I’ve selected five movies with reasonably high star quotients, name directors and obvious audience appeal, and five more that are just as exciting (to me, anyway) but are flying a bit more under the radar, at least from the perspective of ordinary American moviegoers.

Of course this is all guesswork. Here’s what we actually know, so far: 1) It might sound lame to open Cannes with a 21st-century Woody Allen movie. OK, it actually is lame, but one of the most inexplicable things about Europe is how much people here love them some Woody. I guess it’s part of the love-hate relationship with America that plays such an enormous role in this continent’s cultural life, but even in those terms it doesn’t make much sense. Anyway, good, bad or indifferent, the Woodman’s cinematic postcard to the French capital will be a huge deal here. 2) Some things proclaimed here as masterpieces will be ignored by the world, while other things mocked by the Cannes critics will make zillions. 3) When you hear about a movie here that provokes booing and widespread walkouts? Seek it out and see it, when you get the chance; it’s probably good. 4) I will spend almost two weeks in a beach resort adjacent to one of the world’s great food and wine regions, and will dine largely on sandwiches and pizza and come home without a tan. The suffering! It’s hard to bear sometimes.

BIG NAMES

The Tree of Life A personal, family-based film that stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn and is also, somehow, about the evolutionary history of life on earth. A beautiful if utterly inscrutable trailer. A legendary director (Malick, still best known for “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven”) viewed by some as a visionary master and by others as a pretentious ass, whose filmmaking career appears half-paralyzed by indecision and procrastination. These are the mysterious ingredients of “Tree of Life,” which is almost guaranteed to be a major debate topic here.

Melancholia Any Lars von Trier film is guaranteed to be a media circus at Cannes, and whether you like the guy or hate him, give him credit: He gets people to pay attention to small-audience art-house movies, and that’s not easy. “Melancholia” appears to be an odd, Trier-ian blend of the country-house wedding movie with a “Donnie Darko”-style story about the end of the world, and presumably won’t horrify and galvanize audiences quite the way “Antichrist” did two years ago. No genital mutilation! A box-office plus but a P.R. minus! An intriguing transatlantic ensemble includes Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Charlotte Rampling.

Drive Take cult director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose last two movies (“Bronson” and “Valhalla Rising”) established him as a prodigious, visionary, almost uncontrolled talent while barely making a nickel. Add rising star Ryan Gosling of “Half Nelson” and “Blue Valentine.” Mix with an implausibly large budget and some fast cars and you have an action-adventure movie that’s almost certainly the most unlikely competition entry at Cannes this year, and an object of worldwide yearning by film geeks. There doesn’t seem to be an embeddable online trailer yet, but here are the first two minutes. Sold!

The Skin I Live In Longtime art-house fave Pedro Almodóvar returns to Cannes without recent muse Penélope Cruz — but with Antonio Banderas, star of several of his groundbreaking ’80s flicks. Banderas plays a plastic surgeon with a bizarre Frankensteinian obsession in what’s described as a 1940s-flavored horror melodrama. Despite numerous premieres here, Almodóvar has still never won the Palme d’Or, and yes, that’s a hint and a hunch.

Restless Gus Van Sant’s latest is an intriguing-looking outsider love story, starring Mia Wasikowska as a cancer patient and Henry Hopper (son of Dennis) as an alienated young man whose best friend is a WWII Japanese ghost. But is it a commercial Van Sant movie in the “Good Will Hunting”/”Finding Forrester” vein, or a Euro-friendly art-house oddity in the “Elephant”/”Paranoid Park” vein? Either way, it’s the opener in Un Certain Regard, Cannes’ slightly artier second-string competition, which is often where the most exciting films are found. And Van Sant is a contender for the Jerry Lewis-Woody Allen awards, which convey the undying loyalty of European culture-vultures upon American filmmakers who are all but forgotten at home. (Other recent nominees: Jim Jarmusch, James Gray, Abel Ferrara, Lodge Kerrigan.)

MIDSIZE AND BELOW

We Need to Talk About Kevin It’s taken a long time for Scottish director Lynne Ramsay (“Morvern Callar”) to bring Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed novel about a troubled teen and the aftermath of a school shooting to the screen, but Ramsay has a rep as Britain’s undiscovered secret and expectations are huge. Indie heroes Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly — an unlikely but irresistible pairing — star as the estranged parents of the titular Kevin (Ezra Miller).

Hara-Kiri: The Death of a Samurai Coming hard on the heels of ultra-prolific Japanese genre maniac Takashi Miike’s samurai opus “13 Assassins” comes his next samurai movie — and it’s the first 3-D film ever included in the Cannes competition! (To be clear: Other 3-D films have been shown at Cannes in non-competition slots, including the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” entry this year.)

This Must Be the Place Hardly anyone in America saw Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s dazzling “Il Divo,” an Oliver Stone-meets-Scorsese political phantasmagoria that was one of the genuine cinematic breakthroughs of recent years. Now Sorrentino turns to English-language film with this eagerly anticipated fable about an aging rock star (Sean Penn) who’s hunting for a Nazi war criminal. We definitely haven’t seen that movie before. Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch and Harry Dean Stanton co-star.

Oslo, August 31st Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s “Reprise” is one of the terrific undiscovered movies of the last decade, an exhilarating comic fable about art and life that splits the difference between Godard and, say, “High Fidelity” with tremendous cinematic craft, an irrepressible sense of humor and genuine heart. (Fun fact: Trier is indeed a cousin of Lars von Trier.) Trier’s new film “Oslo, August 31st” — that’s when and where the main character intends to kill himself — screens in the lower-wattage Certain Regard competition, and I will happily skip other things to catch it.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia He has a subzero commercial profile in the United States, but Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (“Climates,” “Three Monkeys”) has developed a modest but intense international following for his brooding, Bergmanesque urban dramas. (Which are never officially even a little bit about such “Turkish” questions as the role of Islam or the ambiguous, intercontinental status of his country, by the way, but may indirectly wind up being about those things after all.) If this story about a doctor living on the rural steppes (I’m guessing it’s meant to recall Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”) is the masterpiece Ceylan hasn’t quite made yet — well, OK, no, it won’t change much of anything. But people in Cannes and in Turkey will sure be excited, and you’ll be able to watch the movie on VOD in like six months.