It was Shana Feste’s Country Strong, and it got a raw deal. Casting Gwyneth Paltrow as a country superstar is either a brave decision or an incredibly timid one — regardless, Paltrow stepped into an outsized role and very nearly filled it out. The supporting cast of Leighton Meester, Tim McGraw, and especially Garrett Hedlund give the celebrity melodrama human ballast, and Feste manages to pace a pretty slick story with moments of believable intimacy and alienation.

When it comes to horror films and especially on-screen gore (I suppose off-screen gore as well), I am — as Justin Timberlake’s character pronounced it in the reasonably surprising Friends With Benefits — a huge pu-ssay. Seeing Final Destination 5 next to my name on the assignment slate was a definite short straw situation, but I fancy myself a professional, and so cleared my schedule and my appetite and headed to midtown. I had never seen a Final Destination, which accounted for the formula’s novelty for me — the villain here is death itself, manifested in the trickle down economics of excruciating coincidence — but the film, shot in 3-D, is also brilliantly choreographed and possessed of the kind of tension — outrageous but not totally gratuitous — that directors rarely bother with anymore, when splatters and shakey cams do just as well. Not that there aren’t — heaven knows — plenty of guts a-squishin’ in Final Destination 5. But it was worth a few pounds of flesh to be reminded how pleasurable it is to be both really and truly scared and perfectly safe in a crowded movie theater.

So a quick check-in on the Friends alumni: Most promising cast member Jennifer Aniston seems resigned to debasing herself in Adam Sandler shitshows like Just Go With It; Matthew Perry, always rebounding in my heart, is as ever poised for a comeback; Lisa Kudrow keeps launching hothouse comic series that feel too cringey to last; Courtney Cox has a network show and yet seems to spend her days fastened to a mirror; Matt LeBlanc came up with something interesting in the meta-TV cable series Episodes; and David Schwimmer pretty much killed it directing his second feature film, the internet predator drama Trust. Clive Owen gives a powerful and difficult performance as a father reckoning with his daughter’s role in her own victimization and Liana Liberato makes a frankly astonishing debut as a young girl drawn into the emotional confusions of abuse. In deploying real emotional toughness against easy accusations of after-school special-dom, it is Schwimmer who emerges as the mature and still-promising talent. I was surprised, anyway.

Though it’s not strictly movie-centric, I feel compelled to note one of the most pleasant surprises of my favorite new television series — the venue, after all, to which so many of our movie stars have migrated. Luke Wilson hit an inexplicable rough patch in the late aughts, his endearing, chronically bedazzled comic presence and magma-deep melancholy wasted on minnow-ish indies like Middle Men and I Melt With You director Mark Pellington’s Henry Poole Was Here. And then his disheartening appearance in the ads that cannot be named. But in playing the innocuous waster Levi Callow in Mike White’s HBO series Enlightened, Wilson seems to have not only returned to form but raised his game. White cast the role perfectly, and dispenses the character of Levi in precise and exact-right doses: Initially seen through the warped lens of Laura Dern’s Amy — a recent inductee into the narcissistic cult of well being — he emerges as more than a pathetic fallback and projection screen for his ex.

In the exquisite Robin Wright episode, by making Levi’s exasperation his own White brings Amy’s desperation into clearer view. In a later confrontation with Amy’s mother (Diane Ladd) Levi is finally unleashed as a whole, seething person. Wilson makes what might be an ordinary role feel risky, and in his fringy yet essential presence sets up the question of whether Levi is a poignant satellite in Amy’s orbit or she is a moon to his Melancholia. I’m really happy to be watching Luke Wilson again, is mostly what I’m saying — on any screen. Happy and a little bit relieved.

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Paris’s transformative powers have been well documented on screen: Audrey Hepburn took the Gallic cure to become a woman (or at least become alluring to men) in Sabrina; in the recent Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson rides a Studebaker back to the halcyon Paris of the 1920s. The young, small-town Texas women who star in Monte Carlo have the kind of grandiose but vaguely defined idea of the city that could only come from the movies. “Something big is about to happen for me,” says Emma (Katie Cassidy), a waitress whose modeling dreams were frozen in the amber of a Clip ‘N Save cover. Her co-worker Grace (Selena Gomez) has similarly overblown expectations for their week in France — something about re-inventing herself after four years of blending into the gym walls of her high school. No one has told them that the perfect pair of espadrilles can only do so much.

Helpfully, there is a third wheel, a buzzkill named Meg (Leighton Meester) along to steady the girls and deflate their dreams. Meg is Grace’s stepsister and Emma’s former classmate; she’s also the film’s best shot at a fully realized character. Meester’s sweet and sour charisma is well deployed as a young woman who has lost her mother (her father, played by Brett Cullen, has married Grace’s mother, played by Andie MacDowell) and has built up a resistance to much of what the world has to offer, including and especially Emma’s bad taste, birthday cake, and basic human bonding. No one is happy about her last-minute, parent-enforced inclusion in the trip Grace and Emma have been planning, and their disappointing acquaintance with Paris — including a perfectly dank pensione and a fast-tracking tour — compounds the discord.

In fact the scenes in Paris are among the funniest and most inventive in a film that begins to unravel when the plotty princess mechanisms kick in. A speedwalk through the Louvre, a speed-eat in a tourist trap, and a race down the stairs of the Eiffel Tower to catch that much-loathed tour bus are a witty retort to the city’s heavily packaged charms. The trio is just developing a rapport when the least vivid among them — that would be Grace — is mistaken for a British socialite and whisked, along with her coterie, into a posh hotel suite. To those unfamiliar with her popularity among the Silly Bandz set, Gomez seems an unlikely choice for the lead. Grace feels underwritten and ill defined (the script was co-written by director Thomas Bezucha and based on a novel by Jules Bass), but the bigger problem is that Gomez doesn’t really register on the big screen. Her scrunchy-puss cuteness is a poor match for a role that relies so heavily on personality (though her broader turn as alter ego Cordelia has exquisitely bitchy moments), and especially in terms of the innate vivaciousness of her co-stars, Grace is convincing mainly in being mistakable.

But then this is about clothes, jewels, and boys — not characters — and when the story moves to Monte Carlo, of all retro Xanadus, the pretenses are dropped along with a lot of high-end names. Grace pretends she is the errant Cordelia, supposedly out of obligation to the auction of a Bulgari monstrosity for Romanian schoolchildren (!), and is wooed by a French oligarch with a Menudo haircut. Emma’s focus on material aspiration sends her into a luxurious tailspin, worrying her hometown boyfriend (played by Chris Klein — I mean Cory Monteith) enough to catch a flight and find her. And Meg keeps bumping into a scorching Aussie (Luke Bracey) on a world tour; eventually she’s inspired to cut a little loose and let go of her grief. Hers are by far the sweetest scenes. As in Country Strong, Meester’s crack timing and irresistible poignancy illuminate a part that would leave other actresses simpering themselves off the screen.

Bezucha (The Family Stone) adds a little old-school zip to his direction, offsetting some perplexingly limp moments (Grace’s awkward performance in a polo game is a widely missed opportunity) with a style happily reminiscent of European, headscarf capers of the past. (A clip from To Catch a Thief is wedged in for reference.) There are slapstick reveals, characters passing like convertibles in the Monte Carlo sun, and apples that function as plausible gags. Inevitably, much depends on the elevator. A bit at the end involving the French police and their squat, degage inspector (Bruno Abraham-Kremer) is a highlight, along with Michael Giacchino’s swinging, big band score. All is ultimately and bizarrely forgiven, but the dialed-back happy endings are at least a gesture against total preposterousness. I left wondering if the theater full of sated little girls would begin plotting their own overseas transformations, and setting them in this city whose charms seem more willed than genuine.

Remember when you went slack-jawed at the news that Vanilla Ice was playing a “gay wedding coordinator” in the upcoming Adam Sandler comedy I Hate You Dad? It gets better: former 90210 star Ian Ziering has also been added to the cast. Dad tells the story of a man (Sandler) who fathered a son (Andy Samberg) with his schoolteacher when he was a boy. Ziering will play Sandler’s character in a fictionalized TV version of the story. James Caan and Leighton Meester co-star. Of course. [Variety]

The Olsen twins were busy making ironic kerchiefs out of hundred-dollar bills, so the new teen romp Monte Carlo is forced to star Selena Gomez, Katie Cassidy, Leighton Meester, and Cory Monte(carlo)ith. Let’s take a glamorous trip to Paris!

Who knew movies like this were made anymore? Why isn’t it just called Winning Paris? And who knew mid-20somethings Katie Cassidy and Leighton Meester were game to topline this kind of stuff? Those two represent the finest in post-elementary school melodrama, and Monte Carlo’s obviously middling summer fare for kids. I’m confused. Ah, wait: Nicole Kidman is an executive producer. That’s a big deal. I’d shut up and dance on the Champs-Élysées too.

Of course, this script used to be something much different. Originally, the story centered on middle-aged women (Kidman was set to play a leading role) who go to Paris and meet a quartet of gigolos posing as wealthy playboys. That might’ve been too interesting, so I’m glad the movie found its true potential as a bizarre time capsule of ’90s Disney Channel cinema. So strange. At any rate: Andie MacDowell’s in this! I’m always hoping she’ll gain back the Francophile cred she forfeited in Green Card.

Verdict: Paris is burning with shame.

Chace Crawford is as fragile as a baby unicorn's first coo and as precious as a bunny in a bubble bath, so you can't expect him to hold his own umbrella! Besides, it's impossible for Chace to hold his own umbrella. He might smudge his freshly polished nails or smear the foundation on his palms. Blake Lively and Leighton Meester can hold their own umbrellas, because their ancestors were vikings or miners or some shit. They are built for hard labor, but not Chace.

Fun Fact: Chace's umbrella was originally white, but he accidentally farted and his multicolored butt fumes waltzed through the air before landing on it.