Drama
Rod Lott
Its plot may stretch the boundaries of believability, but damn it, feature-debuting director Brian Crano nails the alternately comedic and dramatic tone of the appealing A Bag of Hammers.

Drama
Rod Lott
It's fun to compare Lucky Devils — a 1933 RKO Picture about stuntmen — to something more contemporary, like 1980's The Stunt Man or even last year's Drive. According to this fun flick, safety was like an afterthought, with the guys who were risking their lives getting the scene explained to them once, quickly and just before the director called, “Action!”

Drama
Rod Lott
Gilbert Toma had an original, envelope-pushing idea for his film school thesis project: Document the final days of someone who has decided to end his or her life, including the actual act of suicide. One Craigslist ad seeking such a subject later, 142 tapes were shot, and the end result is A Necessary Death.

Drama
Rod Lott
In 1971, the all-American, Nixon-loving clan known as the Loud family made history without even trying. They just allowed cameras into their lives for six months, and the result was PBS' An American Family, television's first reality series.

Drama
Rod Lott
From 1953, Knights of the Round Table proudly boasts the CinemaScope logo as it opens, trumpeting itself as an epic Hollywood costumed drama on a massive scale: no expense spared, no detail ignored. And no story engagement.

Drama
Rod Lott
Our daily life is defined by rituals. For you, that may mean a morning cup of coffee or a quick jog before bed. For Brandon Sullivan, the New York City-based protagonist of Shame, it means masturbating at work.

Drama
Rod Lott

Conceptually, Miss Bala shares much in common with 2004's Maria Full of Grace. In that film, a young Colombian girl became a drug mule in order to save her family. Here, a young Mexican woman becomes a criminal accessory in order to save her friend.

Drama
Rod Lott
A father buys a zoo after his wife buys the farm, in Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo, a well-meaning but emotionally hollow film, despite extreme evidence to the contrary.

Drama
Rod Lott
Definitely not to be confused with the Disney cartoon — or any adaptation of the fairy tale, for that matter — this Sleeping Beauty is kind of like if you chose one of the masked women from the orgy scene of Eyes Wide Shut, then were told her backstory for 101 minutes.

Drama
Rod Lott

Amid this nation's debate over the so-called "Obamacare" plan, one question has been unanswered, until now: "When are Roger Corman's nurse movies going to get a proper DVD release?" As we say regularly on these digital pages, Shout! Factory to the rescue.

Drama
Rod Lott
A Dangerous Method represents a first for maverick auteur David Cronenberg: It's the one movie of his that you cannot tell is his. And yet it opens with a moment of madness and focuses on "unruly sexual desire."

Drama
Rod Lott
How? Of all the films that could have filled that ninth Best Picture slot at this year's Academy Awards, how did Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close get there? Manipulation is one thing; manipulation soaked in implausibility is another entirely: Oscar bait of the worst, most despicable order.

Drama
Rod Lott
Once the Oscar contender to beat — until The Artist swooped in and did just that — The Descendants is the oddest kind of road movie: one in which the roads don’t exist at all. The travels undertaken by George Clooney’s harried, married Matt King character in this dramedy are done so mostly via plane, as he criss-crosses three of Hawaii’s eight islands in search of a stranger he doesn’t want to face, but stalks with great determination nonetheless.

Drama
Rod Lott
Because one usually has to enjoy the stature of a Johnny Cash, here are two musicians I never dreamed would get biopics: Serge Gainsbourg and Joe Meek.

Drama
Kathryn Jenson White
Community ranks as key on the list of basic human needs. After water, food and shelter, our need to connect with others drives and defines us.