Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
No matter in what capacity, if Luc Besson's name is on a movie, I will not hesitate to watch. Why? The Transporter, District 13, Kiss of the Dragon, Taken, Unleashed, Ong-Bak, The Professional, La Femme Nikita and most sequels that spawned from those, that's why. (I'll forgive and forget From Paris with Love.)

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
One of the hotter tickets at last fall's Fantastic Fest was Extraterrestrial. I couldn't get in. I understood why at the time: It's the new film from Timecrimes director Nacho Vigalondo! Now that I've seen it, I wonder how many who did get in wish they hadn't. It's a huge disappointment.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Alien has no shortage of rip-offs, but Sector 7 has the distinction of hitting video while Prometheus is in theaters. While Prometheus isn't great, it's better than Sector 7. Heck, even the much-maligned Alien vs. Predator is better than Sector 7.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
You won't find Jules Verne's name in the credits of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, but so integral is he to the surprise-hit sequel that the classic author is practically a supporting character, despite being dead since 1905.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
If Contagion were exported to Scotland — and injected with a dose of speculative fiction in customs — the result might make Perfect Sense. The film fails only to fit snugly into one genre, being a thriller, a romance and sci-fi, but sci-fi only in the sense that Children of Men and Never Let Me Go were. This is equally brainy, and maybe just a smidge less bleak.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
With an abusive, alcoholic dad and a dying mom, high schooler Andrew (Dane DeHaan, TV's In Treatment) has bought a secondhand video camera to record his life. This decision proves most convenient when he and two classmates are imbued with superpowers after running across an alien life force deep within a pit.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Assuming you’ve yet to acquire the director’s cut of Mimic that Lionsgate unleashed to Blu-ray last fall, I’d suggest opting for its new, franchise complete 3 Film Set. Only Guillermo del Toro’s 1997 original played theaters, while the two sequels went the direct-to-DVD route, on purpose.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Two American entrepreneurs (Speed Racer's Emile Hirsch and The Social Network's Max Minghella) travel to Moscow in the hopes of turning their Globe Trot social network into a $10 million company with one meeting. Instead, they're ripped off by a Russian colleague and, to make matters worse, are at ground zero of an alien invasion. At least they get to meet some babes first.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Judging by the stupidity of Alien Opponent, Roddy Piper has plenty of bubble gum. —Rod Lott

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Camel Spiders is no Arachnophobia, but it does try to be anything but the cheap creature feature that it is. Like the recent Sharktopus and Dinoshark, it’s another science-gone-wrong pic from producer Roger Corman, and even my 6-year-old son was able to recognize one of the man’s filmmaking tenets from scene one: "Already action already!"

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Ralph Bakshi's Wizards is an imperfect animated feature in script, but told with such imagination and artistry that it's a winner nonetheless. Like much of the writer/director's work, if not all, the 1977 film has survived on cult following alone. Why else would it be getting a 35th-anniversary edition?

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
In an abandoned lab in Jackson, Fla., one Dr. Leopold (Marshall Grauer) completes a seven-year project to mutate and transform himself from a mild-mannered, dumpy-looking mad scientist to an upright, green-scaled creature (Wade Popwell) who retains all of the doc's mental functions and artistic abilities.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
From 1983, “Deadly Spawn” clearly is rooted in the style of the 1950s sci-fi monster movies whose posters bedeck one of the character’s walls, from Bert I. Gordon's "The Spider" to Jack Arnold’s “Monster on the Campus” — films in which severe deficiencies in budget are mitigated by ingenuity and charm.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Originally broadcast on Syfy as "Iron Invader," "Metal Shifters" examines an heretofore unknown problem related to our nation's housing crisis: a 17-feet-tall, 1-ton, killer-robot statue made of junk.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Say what you will about Tim Burton’s widely despised 2001 remake of “Planet of the Apes,” but if it hadn't made serious bank, this prequel would not exist.