The Final Destination movies are not very good. In fact, it can be safely argued that they’re not good at all. If you’re only interested in quality filmatism when you dish out $15 for a ticket at the movie house, then a series of films about inanimate objects being manipulated by death (not the Brad Pitt character in Meet Joe Black, the, errrr... force of nature?) to kill hot young actors is not for you.

Taken on their own terms, the Final Destination films probably deserve some recognition for, if nothing else, having a lot of fun killing their beautiful stars in increasingly elaborate ways. No, it’s not The Godfather series — hell, it’s not even the Fast and the Furious series — but if you’re a fan of gruesome murder, there have been few series that pull it off so consistently.

So far, they’ve all had big-budget opening set pieces in which we see every character die tragically and horrifically. Then, one of the characters (it was Devon Sawa in the original, which gives me a reason for a shout out to Idle Hands, and I never turn down a chance to drop Idle Hands shout outs) realizes what’s going to happen and saves their friends’ lives.

From there, death gets pissed — as death is known to do ­— and spends the next hour killing off all the survivors. What makes the franchise notable is the complete absence of a bad guy. Technically, I guess it’s death, but I hesitate to call death the bad guy because (a) I don’t have enough evidence to prove death is a dude, and (b) it’s all in the game, and death’s just trying to get paid y’all.

Each of the films in the franchise may be carbon-copies of the first one but the absence of a bad guy still makes them relatively original within the modern horror landscape. Nobody gets possessed, there are no ghosts or angsty masked murderers with mommy issues. The threat to the characters is simply death — an inevitable reality for anyone who is alive, made more intense for these particular characters.

Still, despite that single speck of originality Final Destination 5 will almost certainly be awful. I’ve done my best to make a case for why the series as a whole hasn’t been as terrible as it’s commonly perceived to be, but really, it’s the fucking Final Destination.

Elsewhere, three of the next generation of movie superstars are anchoring new releases. First up, Emma Stone’s invasion of the world’s hearts and minds continues with the release of The Help. She won over boys in Superbad, girls in Easy A and genre-fans with Zombieland. Now, between The Help and Crazy, Stupid, Love she’s on the verge of winning over the middle-aged married audience and finding herself in Tom Hanks or Angelina Jolie A-list territory.

And as far as I can tell, there’s no reason not to be happy for our latest it-girl. The Help sure as hell looks like it’ll push her over the edge as middle-aged women supposedly went nuts for the book. It appears to be about inter-racial harmonizing in the deepest of the Deep South, so it’s going to be hard to hate. Unless you’re a racist, in which case you’d also loathe the Final Destination movies because they kill a shit-ton of white people.

Speaking of “it-people,” 30 Minutes Or Less stars Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari. All rational, thinking human beings loved The Social Network, but it’s nice to see Eisenberg’s sticking with his guns and going back to comedy. As Mark Zuckerberg, he proved he was very good at talking fast, looking smart and being an ass-hat, but Eisenberg had killed it previously as a funny man in Zombieland and as an adorably lonesome sweetheart in Adventureland. Dude loves movies about lands, and getting typecast as the guy who’s really good at playing multi-billionaire computer prodigies is likely worth avoiding if you want to get regular work.

As for Ansari, he’s been murdering it on the stand-up circuit and as Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation, the best comedy on TV today — sorry Community. It’s time for him to make the step up to movie screens and ascend to his rightful place on the comedy throne. I have no idea if this is the movie that does it, but he’ll get there some day. Just don’t stop believing, man.

That last line was meant to be a segue into my discussion of Glee: The 3D Concert Movie. But I don’t watch Glee, so instead it’s just a segue into two sentences about how I have nothing to say about Glee: The 3D Concert Movie.