ARTHUR: DRUNKS NOT AS FUNNY AS THEY USED TO BE

Alcoholism just doesn't pack the same amusing punch. This remake by the same name doesn't mean the same thing as it did in the original. Hobson is now a woman (Helen Mirren) and Arthur is a young party boy (Russell Brand) who has  "savant-ish gift for defying death with fun." His overbearing mother pushes for his marriage to Jennifer Garner, another overbearing woman with dollar signs in her eyes. Brand has some funny one-liners and scenes (boxing with Evander Holyfield, bidding in an auction against himself) but then he tries to fall in "real" love with Greta Gerwig (???) who has the opposite of funny one-liners and whose performance falls worse than flat. The funny just isn't consistent and then at the end it gets all serious and dramatic. No one wants to see Arthur in rehab. This was not a brilliant remake AT ALL. I like Brand but he isn't enough to carry the movie. Mirren is lovely, but not enough to save the movie. Garner is nice but doesn't belong in this movie. Gerwig... she was in this movie??? Sorry, I forgot.

ALL GOOD THINGS... include Ryan Gosling
Yes, even when his character is a pathological unstable jerk. It didn't start out that way (it never does). Based on a real-life story, Gosling is David Marks, son of a wealthy controlling and over-critical father and absent mother. He falls in love with a "commoner" Katie, Kirsten Dunst, who falls right back in love with him despite his oddities. The marriage turns abusive and Marks keeps getting creepier and creepier. Dunst is lovely and grounded as an abused wife growing more concerned as she runs out of options. It is sad that this film wasn't more of a success so that her performance could have been better acknowledged. The end is a theorized twist, based on the real case from court transcripts. A disturbing movie, well acted and sadly too common.    

BEASTLY: TRITE, BUT NOT BEASTLY
Sometimes I like just watching movies that I usually never watch, and usually never admit to watching and this was one of them. It isn't a good movie, but it also wasn't so bad I turned it off before the ending. Basically, pretty people are bad. Popular high school guy Kyle (Alex Pettyfur) is supposed to be such a jerk and full of himself that school goth-witch Mary-Kate Olsen decides to turn him into a "beast" and will stay that way until he gets someone to love him as he is. Nice concept, but his "ugly" looks more like Mike Tyson's now infamous face tattoo. So sent to live alone and roam the streets only at night, somehow semi-believably the ONE girl from school that thought Kyle was a good guy (Vanessa Hudgens) ends up having to stay with Kyle and his entourage; witty tutor Neil Patrick Harris and wise Jamaican nanny/housekeeper. Do I really have to tell you how it ends? Certainly trite and been done before but not terrible, close though.  

JUST GO WITH IT: MORE LIKE, JUST GO AWAY WITH IT

Seeing reality TV icon Heidi Montague the first 10 minutes of this movie was a sad indicator of what to expect from the rest of it. This was of course one of those typical Adam Sandler everybody gets the truth mixed up kind of movie. Sandler is a tricky bachelor who uses a fake wedding ring to attract women. He isn't actually married, but the catch is that he pretends to be very unhappily married and on the brink of divorce. This setup alone is quite lame. To think that there are actually men out there who do this is also quite lame. So of course he has a meaningful encounter blond bombshell, Brooklyn Decker, and when she finds the ring he has to come up with some big story rather than sounding like the tool that he actually is about why he wears a ring. Enter comes Jennifer Aniston. My favorite. She is a coworker of Sandler's, the plain, unattractive, assistant who of course he has never thought about" that way". So she comes into the story as his soon-to-be ex-wife and of course this involves a makeover. Yes, we need to work that hard to make Jennifer Aniston look hot. So Decker wants to meet his soon to be pretend ex to make sure he isn't lying. Oh no, not lying in here! So hot new Aniston puts on a show and the jokes just fall flat. As if that weren't enough, we drag her children into the lie as well. This movie comes off like a bad Three's Company episode. I begrudgingly will admit to finding enough interest in this movie to watch it to the end There were moments that made it okay, like Nicole Kidman's small part as a past competitive rival to Aniston's character. Overall, if you miss this movie I think you will be able to get on with your life just fine. Spoiler alert, of course you know that Aniston and Sandler get together by the end of the movie don't you? I mean, you just have to see that one coming from a mile away.