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 HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

My unfamiliarity with its source material was, I'm convinced, a large part of why I enjoyed last year's The Hunger Games movie so much. To be sure, I dug the film itself, with its exciting and moving survival-of-the-fittest encounters, and its fierce Jennifer Lawrence performance, and its bevy of grandly outré supporting figures (and, in the Capitol sequences, beyond-outré production design). But not having read any of the three books in Suzanne Collins' seminal young-adult adventure series, what I was most taken with was the surprise of the experience. Hunger Games newbies such as myself were allowed to take in Collins' richly imagined dystopian saga with gradual understanding and horror, much the way (I'm presuming) the books' readers did, and while we had every reason to expect Lawrence's teen warrior Katniss Everdeen to survive, the storyline was just spiky and unpredictable enough to make us wonder how, exactly, she ever would.

THE SMURFS 2

Upon returning from my screening of The Smurfs 2, a buddy asked what I thought of the film, and I told him that Hank Azaria - the comic genius who plays the nefarious, Smurf-loathing wizard Gargamel - was awfully funny in it. My friend asked, "When isn't he?", and beyond the TV-movie tearjerker Tuesdays with Morrie, I couldn't provide an example. (And in truth, at appropriate moments in his Emmy-winning dramatic turn, the actor is awfully funny in Tuesdays with Morrie.) Consequently, as he's nearly always this inspired on-screen, Azaria's hilariously outlandish performance probably isn't reason enough to see director Raja Gosnell's blue-hued sequel, at least if you don't have small children pressuring you to do so.

If, however, you're a childless adult who chooses to attend The Smurfs 2 anyway, your secret's totally safe with me, because Azaria actually does make this kiddie comedy worth sitting through - though perhaps only if you catch it during bargain-matinée hours, or have a cineplex gift card that you were just gonna throw out otherwise.

GROWN UPS 2

I'm presuming that you're reading this while seated. But just in case you aren't, you might want to grab the nearest chair, because in Grown Ups 2, the strongest, funniest, and damn near only performance in the movie is given by Taylor Lautner.

Yes. Taylor Lautner.

And the apocalypse just got a little bit closer.