PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES

Do you recall how, in the first Paranormal Activity, Katie and Micah attempted to communicate with the malevolent spirit haunting their home through a Ouija board that, later, spontaneously burst into flames? So-o-o 2009. In the new Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones - the fifth installment in this apparently unkillable scare-flick series - our teenage protagonists aren't about to use anything as passé as a board game to connect with their unseen house guest. Not when they have access to ... Simon.

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, and GRUDGE MATCH

With apologies to Keanu Reeves fans and the true Beliebers among you, I still haven't gotten around to 47 Ronin or Justin Bieber's Believe. (In the case of the latter, I'm not sure I ever will, although stranger things have happened, I guess ... .) But among the numerous titles that opened opposite The Wolf of Wall Street on Christmas Day, I did manage to catch a few of 'em ... .

Another year of area stage productions has come and gone, and wanting to try something different this December, Reader theatre reviewer Thom White and I thought we'd bypass our traditional, end-of-year postmortem in favor of an alternate approach: requesting 100-words-or-fewer submissions from our readers on what people found particularly memorable about the 2013 stage scene. "It'll be something new!" we thought. "It'll be exciting! It'll be filled with fresh voices that aren't ours!" And, I must admit, we were dazzled with the overall response.

Well, "dazzled" may be overstating it.

Hmmm ... what's the word I'm looking for ... ?

"Mortified," maybe ... ?

SAVING MR. BANKS

Saving Mr. Banks concerns the efforts of the crinkly-eyed Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) in getting the persnickety, Hollywood-averse British author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to sign over the book rights to Mary Poppins. (Spoiler Alert: He does.) And as it's a Disney movie about a Disney movie with Disney products and Disney people - including Uncle Walt himself - popping up nearly every time you blink, the cynic in me resisted director John Lee Hancock's dramatic comedy for as long as humanly possible. Then Thompson's seemingly impenetrable Travers broke down while watching the Banks family sing "Let's Go Fly a Kite" at Mary Poppins' first public screening, and I was a goner. Aw crap, I thought while wiping away tears. Two more minutes and I would've been fine.