Thriller
Rod Lott
You can keep Coming Home, Forrest Gump and Born on the Fourth of July, multiple Oscar winners all. For my money, the seminal disabled-Vietnam-vet film is 1977's Rolling Thunder.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Thanks to examples like The Others and Sinister, moviegoers know that whenever a kids' crayon drawing pops up, it's never a good sign for the protagonists. Add Dark Skies to that list.

Horror
Rod Lott
Japan's Sadako 3D purports to be the final chapter of the Ringu films (remade as The Ring on these shores). If you believe this is truly the end, you're adorable in your gullibility. Even the movie's final moments contradict any semblance of closure.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Hate not Identity Thief, as so many have for its ridiculous, unbelievable, utterly preposterous plot. Accept that it's a big-budget screwball comedy and you may find yourself — gasp! — enjoying it.

Drama
Rod Lott
James William Guercio has one of the finest track records in cinema history, because each and every film he directed not only has been great, but became a cult classic. It is titled 1973's Electra Glide in Blue.

Horror
Rod Lott
One of at least four werewolf films to be released in 1981, The Howling remains a distant second to John Landis' An American Werewolf in London, but only because Joe Dante wasn't able to enjoy the competition's deep coffers. Sacrilege alert: I find Dante's to be the better movie.

Horror
Rod Lott
It speaks to the strength of The Burning’s reputation among cult-film fans that what’s most memorable about the 1981 slasher is not that it was written by the Weinstein brothers, nor that it represents early appearances of the likes of Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter and Fisher Stevens. It’s that its Cropsy is just a damned good villain.

Television series
Rod Lott
There's no way to discuss the seventh and penultimate season of Showtime's hit Dexter without acknowledging how the previous year ended. Therefore, if you haven't finished the sixth season, stop reading now. You've got work to do.

Western
Rod Lott
Lee Van Cleef enjoyed a secondary career in Italy cranking out spaghetti Westerns, with little regard to quality. However, 1972’s Grand Duel — aka The Big Showdown — is deserving of its Grand label. No wonder Quentin Tarantino borrowed its sweeping theme song by Luis Bacalov for Kill Bill; you'll recognize it in two notes.

Thriller
Rod Lott
As Simon Lam gets older, he gets better. The veteran actor has appeared in such in seminal HK action films of the 1990s as Once Upon a Time in China (opposite Jet Li) and Bullet in the Head (directed by John Woo); in the aughts, he graced audience and critical favorites Election and Ip Man.

Horror
Rod Lott
One of the most inconsistent franchises in movie history is the one beget by Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does one follow all those less-than-beloved sequels? Lionsgate's latest in the series — the seventh — has a solution: Ignore 'em.

Action
Rod Lott
Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.

Horror
Rod Lott
With the Broken Lizard comedy troupe becoming increasingly broken, member Paul Soter has branched off to write and direct something about as far away as one can get from the likes of Super Troopers and Beerfest: a horror film. Now that I've seen it, I'm thinking maybe he should stay on his own.

Action
Rod Lott
Not long after Batman changed Hollywood in the summer of 1989, every studio wanted to have the next comics-based blockbuster. I remember visiting Penn Square Mall’s multiplex (as I did often back then) and seeing a poster for Captain America. The one-sheet was comprised of little more than a close-up of Cap’s iconic shield and a promise to arrive next summer.

Television series
Rod Lott
Nearly a decade after World War II ends, four British women who performed a valuable (albeit hush-hush) service breaking codes for their country find themselves restless and feeling useless in the era’s expected roles of barefoot-and-pregnant subservience.