Thriller
Rod Lott
Pick a revenge movie. Any revenge movie.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Why Stop Now is a comedy that tries too hard to be a comedy. C’mon, you know the kind: Although grounded in reality, the film presents characters so quirky, they may as well come with signs around their neck to signal their stock roles, i.e. “Precocious Sibling” and “Black Sidekick.” Incidentally, this one fronts both of those examples.

Horror
Rod Lott
Brian Keene is a reliable horror author whose early-aughts novels The Rising and City of the Dead helped usher the current zombie resurgence across all media. As such, the man deserves a good adaptation of his work.

Horror
Rod Lott
One need not have seen 2006’s The Hamiltons before seeing its new sequel, The Thompsons. Heck, one need not even have heard of it, as I suspect many haven't.

Horror
Rod Lott
Certainly I’m not the only one who confused The Possession and The Apparition when they played theaters late this summer. After all, the two horror films not only had soundalike titles and shared similar premises, but opened within seven days of one another.

Thriller
Rod Lott
From 1971, Wake in Fright is a lost film recently and literally rescued from near-oblivion. While I can’t say I was familiar with it before its Drafthouse Films re-release, I’m glad it was saved. To have lost a work this good would have been a blow.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
At least at press time, Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft is the latest shameless coattails rider of the big-budget Jeremy Renner vehicle Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which hits theaters next weekend. By contrast, this DVD premiere stars someone named Booboo Stewart, and that alone should tell you everything.

Documentary
Phil Bacharach
This is a golden age of documentaries, and I don’t mean the propagandistic variety via Michael Moore or 2016: Obama’s America. Given the pervasive timidity and lack of imagination in Hollywood today, film buffs are well advised to take stock of documentaries, where the most gripping stories are being told.

Comedy
Rod Lott
If there's one thing I love more than a good Sherlock Holmes movie, it's a vintage Alan Arkin performance, and 1976's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution provides both. Widely acclaimed upon its release, the film has become somewhat forgotten — here's hoping Shout! Factory's Blu-ray/DVD combo release will help reverse that.

Comedy
Rod Lott
I'm drafting a new Movie Rule: If a seemingly innocuous word in a title turns out to double as a character's name, whether used ironically or not, then buyer (or renter) beware. Case in point: The Trouble with Bliss and its questionably named protagonist of Morris Bliss.

Action
Rod Lott
Here's the first great Blu-ray surprise of 2013: Tai Chi Zero, a Hong Kong martial-arts spectacle that's inventive and invigorating.

Thriller
Rod Lott
From 1954, Suddenly is the lesser-known of Frank Sinatra’s two films centered on a presidential assassination. Cry “sacrilege” if you wish, but I actually prefer it to the later, more polished, highly revered The Manchurian Candidate. Yes, Suddenly is a B-noir treatment of the same theme, but the underdog proves ridiculously effective.

Action
Rod Lott
Premium Rush is the Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie from 2012 that didn't have him playing a Gotham City rookie, a time-traveling hit man or a POTUS' son. (Damn, was this kid busy!) It's the only one of those four that ended the year without any hint of Oscar buzz, yet I'd argue it's the most purely entertaining.

Drama
Rod Lott
Nearly every scene of the made-for-HBO Game Change, I recall from John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's excellent nonfiction book of the same name. But the movie directed by Jay Roach (of the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents franchises) tells only half — maybe even just one-quarter — of the story, ignoring the 2008 presidential-campaign narratives of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards for the one it finds most compelling: that of Sarah Palin and John McCain, and not the other way around.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Meryl Streep is in a rut — not the actress, who's arguably still atop her game in her fifth decade of screen stardom, but the character she plays in Hope Springs. Long married to frowny sad sack Arnold (Lincoln's Tommy Lee Jones, not exactly stretching), Kay feels more like a roommate than a wife. They don't even share a bedroom any more.