Comedy
Rod Lott
It's been several years since we've gotten a good parody movie. With the release of Supernatural Activity, it's obvious we may have to wait several more. Found-footage horror is ripe for a ripping, but this one isn't it.

Horror
Rod Lott
Boris Karloff plays one of The Sorcerers in an obscure 1967 thriller from Warner Archive. To be more precise, he’s Dr. Marcus Monserrat, “practitioner of medical hypnosis.” Yet what he and his wife (Catherine Lacey, The Lady Vanishes) really itch to try out is something more sinister.

Drama
Rod Lott
In a short career largely dominated with genre films — from Final Destination 3 to this past summer’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter — Mary Elizabeth Winstead always has exuded a certain something. But nothing that ever suggested the level of performance she delivers in Smashed.

Horror
Rod Lott
My problem with most found-footage films is that there's not much to them. Most can be described legitimately as an hour of buildup for one scene of payoff. When you shorten the stories, however, as is done in the horror anthology V/H/S, you have a handful of payoffs without all that pesky incidental padding.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Just six days into his residency, Dr. Martin Blake (Orlando Bloom, The Three Musketeers) already has his share of minor screw-ups: His handwriting is illegible, and he prescribed penicillin for a patient who was allergic to it.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Why Stop Now is a comedy that tries too hard to be a comedy. C’mon, you know the kind: Although grounded in reality, the film presents characters so quirky, they may as well come with signs around their neck to signal their stock roles, i.e. “Precocious Sibling” and “Black Sidekick.” Incidentally, this one fronts both of those examples.

News
Brendan Hoover
The fight to legalize medical marijuana in Oklahoma will continue this year, despite recent setbacks. State Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, the issue’s champion since 2006, has authored two marijuana-related bills this legislative session.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Here's how I knew the Icelandic crime thriller Black’s Game was going to be great:

Documentary
Rod Lott
All the love audiences have for the Oscar-nominated Searching for Sugar Man (which I wasn't crazy about) is what I feel for Paul Williams: Still Alive.

Drama
Phil Bacharach
John Hughes, for all the love people heap on his ’80s teen movies, was far too easy on high school. Maybe your high school experience was different than mine — and, if so, congrats. For many of us, however, those years were a marathon of self-pity, heartache, passion and anything else you’d find on an album by The Smiths.