It is a rough time of year for television. U.S. or foreign, back in the States or the astonishingly varied (and multicultural) offerings on cable, here in the UAE. Re-runs of bad TV, mostly.

So, we have been buying movies online from iTunes.

Two new releases purchased, in recent days … both of them with at least a couple of actors we like, which was a key factor in spending the money.

The verdicts?

One good, one bad.

The thumbs up goes to Admission, the Tina Fey movie with Paul Rudd and Lily Tomlin. Fey gave us the brilliant 30 Rock, which will be appearing in reruns for decades … and Rudd is an always likable comic co-star.

Fey plays an admissions officer at Princeton, one of the hardest schools to get into in the world, and she has issues with trust and relationships. Rudd is a child of privilege who feels compelled to travel the Earth looking for do-gooder opportunities and, as the movie begins, is running a non-traditional school in New Hampshire.

Critics have suggested the screenplay is a mess, and Fey and Rudd are wasted, but we chose to see it as a breakout film for Fey, who for the first time plays a character who is willing to kiss someone on screen! (She has been mostly gender neutral throughout her career.) OK, her handful of kissing scenes, with Rudd, are a bit hard to watch — because it seems strange to see Fey involved in that. And watching her attempt, with limited success, to weep … also an interesting experience.

But she pulls it off. If Meg Ryan could do it so, by God, can Tina Fey — who is less relentlessly cute, but more interesting.

Rudd deftly stays on the perimeter, as he always does aside, perhaps, from I Love You, Man — and a handful of other flicks. As they say in comedy, a good straight man is hard to find.

The movie seems to suggest 40 is not too late to make some important life choices … and that “family” is what you make of it. Nothing earth-shaking there.

The strongest part of this is Fey and Rudd, and being pretty sure a movie cannot be terrible — and probably will be pretty good — if they are in it. So it is.

The second movie was Drinking Buddies, with Jake Johnson of (“Nick” of New Girl) and Olivia Wilde.

We again appear to be in disagreement with critics, who have been fairly kind to this plodding series of observations on unappealing and often drunk characters, who seem to be on their third or fourth or 10th beer whenever they interact with each other.

(It helps/hurts that they work together in the same micro-brewery in, perhaps, Chicago.)

You know a movie is in trouble when the most memorable part of it, by far, is Jake Johnson’s out-of-control beard. Like Stonewall Jackson’s … maybe after he got shot.

The Beard takes over the proceedings, leading to deep thoughts like: “Can thing possibly not be filthy? … What sort of discussion went on inside his head that ended with ‘this beard is flattering’? … What is more disgusting, Olivia Wilde sticking her finger in Jake Johnson’s beard — which the character finds disgusting — or wanting to touch a glass of anything that has been dragged through the upper reaches of Jake Johnson’s face bush?”

Another annoying aspect of the film is that Johnson and Wilde (who, inexplicably, doesn’t seem to hate the beard) could/should be together, because neither has any real expectations from life aside from drinking a lot of beer. And each likes beards.

But (spoiler alert), in a “daring” attempt to break out of the rom-com mold, a bright and ambitious young teacher (Anna Kendrick) sticks with the shiftless Johnson character, who is willing to get married “but not now” … and the Wilde character decides she wants to remain “only a friend” to Johnson.

Apparently, a lot of the dialog was improvised, which could explain why so much of it pointless.

Give it a miss.

The bigger point of all this is … that technology allows us to watch new films for a fee significantly less than two people would pay at a movie theater.

I like big screens and advanced sound systems, but I don’t like many of the distractions presented by fellow movie-goers.

Sometimes, choosing a movie works out well. Sometimes it does not. At least it didn’t cost us $30, and a trip to a theater, to find out.