Thriller
Rod Lott
Can a bad ending ruin an otherwise OK movie? In the case of The Factory, I believe it can.

Horror
Rod Lott
Horror fanatics making horror movies is the worst thing about today’s horror movies — worse than remakes, The CW casts and the PG-13 rating. And I say that as a critic who loves the genre.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Any cries of nepotism in the case of Rashida Jones officially can be buried, and the dirt above patted with a shovel for good measure.

Documentary
Phil Bacharach
You might not know it, but chances are Diana Vreeland has a great deal to do with what you think when it comes to fashion, style and design. As fashion editor for Harper’s Bazaar and, later, editor of Vogue, she injected post-World War II America with an almost revolutionary sense of, as she put it, “pizzazz.”

Thriller
Rod Lott
Rent’s a bitch. And that is why, six months after her best friend went missing, Amanda (Katie Cassidy, TV’s Arrow) finally gives in to getting another roommate, Hailey (Tracy Spiridakos, TV’s Revolution). The two college students turn out to have something in common, however: abusive men.

Horror
Rod Lott
Lake Placid: The Final Chapter has swam to video shores, losing the numeral “4” somewhere along the way. Haven't seen Lake Placid 2 or 3? Didn't know they existed? Ooh, you are going to be so lost!

Drama
Phil Bacharach
John Hughes, for all the love people heap on his ’80s teen movies, was far too easy on high school. Maybe your high school experience was different than mine — and, if so, congrats. For many of us, however, those years were a marathon of self-pity, heartache, passion and anything else you’d find on an album by The Smiths.

Horror
Rod Lott
When I first heard of Mimesis, I thought it was a great idea: horror fans unwittingly participating in a live role-playing game that plops them into the classic film Night of the Living Dead. Now that I've seen it, however, I realize I was wrong. It's a terrible idea, and one executed poorly by Dark Fields director Douglas Schulze.

Drama
Rod Lott
Vanguard director Takashi Miike is not one to repeat himself, and in Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, he hasn't — not really. Yes, the film is the Japanese filmmaker's follow-up to 2010's 13 Assassins; yes, both are remakes and focused on samurais. But they approach the genre from such varying ways that other than excellence, the similarities end there.

Horror
Rod Lott
Smiley is Candyman for the LOLcat generation.

Action
Rod Lott
Who in the hell hires Jackie Chan and then tells him not to kick a lot? The Exterminator director James Glickenhaus, that’s who.

Television series
Rod Lott
Ed Halligan, you bitter sonofabitch, how I’ve missed you.

Documentary
Rod Lott
All the love audiences have for the Oscar-nominated Searching for Sugar Man (which I wasn't crazy about) is what I feel for Paul Williams: Still Alive.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Here's how I knew the Icelandic crime thriller Black’s Game was going to be great:

Documentary
Rod Lott
There's a long-standing joke about Jerry Lewis being loved by the French, and to paraphrase The Simpsons, it’s funny ’cuz it’s true. We even see the adulation — then, now — in Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, a two-hour documentary about the man whom one celebrity admirer calls “The Beatles of movie comedy.”