Action
Rod Lott
It wasn't too long ago you could find crap copies of 1975's Zorro in the dollar-store DVD bins. For a Blu-ray release, Somerville House has cleaned it all up digitally, improving everything but how dull it sometimes is.

Thriller
Michael Robertson
Being re-released on DVD and Blu-ray from Music Box Films is Tell No One, a genre-bending movie that manages to compound romance, drama and true-crime thriller into one muscular, fast-moving package.

Thriller
Rod Lott
So many Republicans took the news of President Obama’s re-election to such an illogical extreme, they took to Facebook and Twitter to warn the apocalypse was nigh, and you’d better grab all the guns you can. It’s almost as if they want societal collapse to happen. If they view The Day, however, they may rethink their stance, because the movie makes post-apocalyptic life look deathly boring.

Action
Rod Lott
Preceding the start of The Expendables 2 is an ad for its tie-in video game. Why bother playing such a thing when so many sequences of the the movie make you feel like you're doing so already? I mean that as a compliment, because as directed by Simon West (The Mechanic), the sequel’s 15-minute prologue is so unrelenting in nonstop action that it’s likely to turn you giddy.

Drama
Rod Lott
Please believe me when I say that my dislike for Magic Mike has nothing to do with being heterosexual. It has everything to do with mediocre acting and a mess of a script. And I say this as one of the civilized nation’s biggest Steven Soderbergh’s apologists who will defend the goodness of Haywire and Contagion to the point of fisticuffs if we must.

Horror
Rod Lott
Perhaps best known for being the bad guy of the early '90s blockbusters Patriot Games and Sleeping with the Enemy, Patrick Bergin must be the king of literary adaptation also-rans. He played Robin Hood in 1991 film that was denied a theatrical release because Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves sewed that all up. He's played Dracula … but in a made-for-TV movie, not a Francis Ford Coppola spectacle.

Horror
Rod Lott
Rudyard Kipling's Mark of the Beast is unlike any film I’ve ever seen. Before that works you into frenzied anticipation, please note that’s only because it has the most convoluted DVD menu in history.

Action
Rod Lott
In the heyday of DVD, 20th Century Fox brought a lot of contemporary Asian actioners to disc in affordable, collectible editions under the “Hong Kong Legends” banner: Eastern Condors, Magnificent Butchers, Knockabout, In the Line of Duty 4, City Hunter, Naked Killer, My Lucky Stars. Watching The Outlaw Brothers reminded me of those glorious times.

Horror
Rod Lott
While cleaning a widow’s basement, college student Kyle (Aaron Dean Eisenberg) finds a dusty coffin. Smelling a big eBay sale, he takes it home to clean it up and finds that’s it no ordinary box for bones, but a padded that conceals an intricate system of gears and a built-in music box, not to mention a key dated 1452.

Action
Rod Lott
I still don’t know why Hollywood felt that Spider-Man, all of 10 years young, needed to be remade — I suspect it has to do with selling toys. Enough of calling The Amazing Spider-Man a “reboot,” too; this is a remake through and through.

Documentary
Rod Lott
Granted only a limited theatrical release this summer, Nitro Circus: The Movie is like Jackass with more athleticism, more engineering know-how, more maturity, more corporate sponsors, and much less testicular trauma.

Television series
Rod Lott
IFC's sketch series of Portlandia is no longer the "OMG, this is amazing!" surprise of its initial season. With season two, we simply expect it to be, and it does not disappoint.

Horror
Rod Lott
After four previous films (when you factor in the American Quarantine versions), is there life left in Spain's zombie found-footage franchise? [REC] 3: Genesis responds with a festive "¡Si!"

Comedy
Rod Lott
If movies could be drug-tested, The Phynx would be in big trouble. The 1970 comedy is not just an obscurity, but an oddity, like a hallucinogenic brew mixed by Peter Max and Hanna-Barbera. Newly rescued from Nowheresville by Warner Archive, the film is a spy spoof on the goofball level of Get Smart — in spirit, that is, not creatively.

Drama
Phil Bacharach
In an age of cinema jammed with reboots, remakes and raunch, it's a welcome revelation to come across the heartfelt Your Sister's Sister on Blu-ray and DVD, in which low-budget indie meets comedy of manners.