Thriller
Rod Lott
I like In Their Skin under its international title, Replicas. Even if that makes Jeremy Power Regimbal’s directorial debut sound too sci-fi, it’s more interesting and apt.

Horror
Rod Lott
Eduardo Rodriguez has put three pictures in the can (including the upcoming Fright Night 2) since completing his directorial debut, Curandero: Dawn of the Demon, in 2005. Why, then, has it taken roughly eight years for Curandero to hit DVD? You got me; it’s not as if a lack of quality has stopped any flick before.

Drama
Rod Lott
With magic-themed movies The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and Now You See Me on the way, Hollywood is all about the abracadabra these days. If that exposes more eyeballs to 2011’s The Great Magician, good.

Action
Rod Lott
What an unwieldy title The Tarzan Collection Starring Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry is. Then again, so many actors have donned the loincloth of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ iconic lord of the jungle across nearly 100 movies and counting, so specificity is required. This particular five-flick, five-disc set from Warner Archive rounds up the entire turns of the two men mentioned in the title.

Comedy
Rod Lott
My favorite of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries is easily 2000’s Best in Show. While I think it helps to be a theater nerd to appreciate 1996’s Waiting for Guffman in full or a folk nut to opt for 2003’s A Mighty Wind, “must love dogs” is no requirement here. Love man’s best friend or hate him, the humor in Best in Show is less inside-baseball than its brothers.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Following a half-dozen Perry Mason movies into the Warner Archive store are the half-dozen Philo Vance films that make up his Murder Case Collection. While S.S. Van Dine’s “dilettante detective” is nowhere near as well-known today as Erle Stanley Gardner’s attorney-at-law, this is the better set by bounds.

Thriller
Rod Lott
No matter what you see or hear, don't move a muscle. That’s the advice one very bad man gives to the titular Sushi Girl. Particularly squeamish viewers won’t be able to adhere to such counsel, as this minor crime gem revels in the revolting.

Drama
Rod Lott
In a short career largely dominated with genre films — from Final Destination 3 to this past summer’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter — Mary Elizabeth Winstead always has exuded a certain something. But nothing that ever suggested the level of performance she delivers in Smashed.

Thriller
Rod Lott
And just like that, director Frédéric Jardin leaps onto my ongoing radar for his work on Sleepless Night, a powerhouse French-language thriller. The crime film begins with action and rarely lets up during its 98-minute sprint.

Drama
Rod Lott
It’s curious that the Internet Movie Database (among other sources) has classified The Loneliest Planet as a “thriller,” since the film forgoes not just all that genre’s trappings, but narrative altogether.

Horror
Rod Lott
Hey, kids! Remember the hysteria surrounding Y2K? Ahhh, so quaint ...

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
When I first saw Holy Motors, it was in a way that would make director Leos Carax cry, “Mon dieu!”: on a small window on my computer screen. That’s hardly the proper showcase for a film that set Cannes all abuzz, especially for courting year-end votes from critics’ groups.

Thriller
Rod Lott
File Compliance under “stranger than fiction.” Although not a documentary, it is based on a true story, and one so utterly outrageous that many will refuse to believe it anyway.

Drama
Rod Lott
Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is my least favorite of the director’s half-dozen films. That said, he has yet to make a bad one.

Thriller
Phil Bacharach
Generating suspense from a story that is a matter of historical record is no easy thing. That was the primary challenge facing Ben Affleck and Chris Terrio, the director-star and writer, respectively, of Argo, a thriller inspired by a real-life covert operation that helped rescue six U.S. embassy workers out of Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis.