ALOHA

On three separate occasions this past weekend, after mentioning that I'd seen Cameron Crowe's Aloha, I had friends or family members reply with some variant on "Ugh, how bad was it?" That's usually the response I get after telling people I just came back from the latest Happy Madison flick or Paranormal Activity: Yup, We're Still Churning These Out. But to hear that kind of pitying condolence regarding a new Crowe endeavor was troubling. Sure, the reviews were largely dreadful, and the previews leaned toward the achingly twee, and the movie's reputation in the hacked Sony e-mails ("the script is ridiculous") didn't help matters. Beyond all that, though, is the collective disappointment of Vanilla Sky, Elizabethtown, and We Bought a Zoo so pervasive and infuriating that it overwhelms the memory of Say Anything ... , Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous?

CARRIE

(Author's note: Spoilers will abound. Given that the movie under consideration is an oftentimes word-for-word updating of a 37-year-old work, I hope I'll be forgiven for them.)

As remakes of beloved genre classics go, I suppose there's little point in being bothered by the new Carrie. Director Kimberly Peirce's outing, after all, is easy to sit through, smartly staged, generally well-acted, and, in most regards, incredibly faithful to Brian De Palma's 1976 original (which was, itself, reasonably faithful to Stephen King's debut novel of 1974). The CGI effects are pretty weak, and the movie isn't even slightly scary, and considering that nearly all sentient beings know what happens to poor Carrie White at the prom - with the movie's entire advertising campaign based on post-prom imagery - there's almost nothing in the way of storyline surprise, but whatever. It's fine.