Thriller
Rod Lott
Stop me if this sounds familiar: a handful of people trapped in an elevator, in a life-or-death situation, and one of them is not who he or she seems to be.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Penumbra is Spanish for "partly in the shadows," which is how we first find the fourth-floor apartment that Margarita Sanchez (Cristina Brondo, Dario Argento's Do You Like Hitchcock?) shows to Jorge Kepler (Berta Muñiz), representative for a prospective renter willing to pay four times the going rate, and for a full year in advance.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Kill List is not your ordinary, average hit-man thriller — it’s an excellent one. The UK film skirts into areas of horror before plunging in at the end, but maintaining an uncompromising level of excellence throughout. It's a strong candidate for that year-end best list. That said, its subject matter will prove to be too much for most to take.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Straight out of South Korea, No Mercy shows exactly that. But too bad it's only for the first act.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Presented as a story in the nonexistent Dark Mystery pulp mag, The Girl from the Naked Eye respectively refers to a call girl and the club where she worked.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Among independents, a recent movement has proven you can do an awful lot with very little — especially when limited to one set, as ATM and Brake nearly do.

Thriller
Rod Lott
You hear a title like Some Guy Who Kills People and think, "Is that all the energy and enthusiasm they can muster?" Well, this little thriller is a surprise, all underpromising and overdelivering, mostly due to a deft performance by '90s indie-film mainstay Kevin Corrigan (The Dictator).

Thriller
Rod Lott
Despite Inspector Morse enjoying a dozen-season run on TV, I’ve never seen an episode of the mystery series spawned from Colin Dexter’s novels. In no way did this detract from my enjoyment of Endeavour, a feature-length prequel, and is indeed enjoyable.

Thriller
Rod Lott
It's both a blessing and a shame that Zoom In: Sex Apartments carries such an exploitative title: a blessing because it may trick some horny guys into watching a better movie than they'd expect, and a shame because, well, Sex Apartments. (Hey, it could be worse: The original subtitle was Rape Apartments.)

Thriller
Rod Lott
With little exception (National Treasure, Kick-Ass, about one minute of Grindhouse), there’s no denying that Nicolas Cage has spent the better part of the past decade in a career slump. Witness such critically lambasted underperformers as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Season of the Witch, Bangkok Dangerous and, most recently, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

Thriller
Rod Lott
A guy walks into a police station to report a murder: himself! With that setup, one could make a tight, terrific crime film — and D.O.A. is that movie ... in 1950. The 1988 remake doesn't fare as well, but at least it's been preserved on Blu-ray by Mill Creek Entertainment.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Assassins are given a twist in Accident, a unique and superior Hong Kong thriller directed by Soi Cheang and produced by one of the best in the biz, Johnnie To (Mad Detective, Vengeance).

Thriller
Rod Lott
From 1932, the mystery The Phantom of Crestwood may be one of Hollywood’s first gimmick flicks. That doesn’t make it any good, however.

Thriller
Rod Lott
True to its title, The Aggression Scale begins quite aggressively: A woman just done with her daytime jog enters her home, whereupon a gunshot blasts her back out to her front yard. A hit man emerges and snaps a Polaroid for proof.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Mill Creek Entertainment’s budget pack of noir, Dark Crimes, strongly goes against the notion that films in the public domain are there because they aren't any good. That’s nonsense.