Horror
Rod Lott
“Paired” — ahem — thematically across six discs are 12 feature films hosted by Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark, on her Mega Movie Marathon. Far from the horror hostess’ only DVD in circulation, this collection offers tremendous value by compiling several previously released double features into one set.

Horror
Rod Lott

Television series
Rod Lott
Currently riding high on the 007 tidal wave known as Skyfall, Daniel Craig enjoys one of his earliest roles in 1997’s The Ice House, a two-part, three-hour BBC murder mystery adapted from Minette Walters’ novel. Luckily for Craig’s legion of fans, he does not play the dead body found putrid, nude and devoured from the abdomen down.

Thriller
Rod Lott
A Destructive Manner
8 p.m. Saturday
The Paramount OKC
701 W. Sheridan
theparamountokc.com
517-0787
$3

Thriller
Rod Lott
Just a decade after starring in Sleuth, Michael Caine returned to similar fare in 1982's Deathtrap. Both are crafty mysteries with a bare minimum of characters and even fewer settings, but many twists to leave viewers with spinning heads.

Drama
Rod Lott
If John Hillcoat is setting out to build a directorial career on downbeat and depressing films, he's doing a fine job. From The Proposition and The Road — especially The Road — and now Lawless, bleakness is his bread and butter.

Television series
Rod Lott
At least not in its initial release, I’m guessing not many saw 2010’s Tiny Furniture, an imperfect but smart and charming comedy that burst Lena Dunham, its star/writer/director, onto the indie-feature scene. On its strength and reception, Dunham scored a series deal at HBO with none other than Judd Apatow (Bridesmaids) producing

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
I'm not of the opinion that remakes are automatically a bad thing. Without them, we wouldn't have David Cronenberg's The Fly or John Carpenter's The Thing. The difference is that examples like those had a different way of telling the established story.

Comedy
Phil Bacharach
Judd Apatow has given us some hilariously raunchy comedies, but This Is 40 finds the writer-director in his grown-up mode, at least in intent, extracting the funny from the advent of middle age. But his understanding of life in the 40s isn’t necessarily the universal kind.

Western
Rod Lott
As he did with 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, superstar filmmaker Quentin Tarantino looked to Italy for primary inspiration for his follow-up. In Django Unchained, he’s cribbed the country’s spaghetti Western genre, shoehorned the all-American slavesploitation film into its center, and rewritten another ugly chapter in world history while filtering it all through his Movies Unlimited catalog lens.