Horror
Rod Lott
Despite being unleashed from Twisted Pictures, those people who brought us all those Saws, The Tortured has sat in the shelf now for about two years, skipping a wide release on its way to DVD. It's easy to see why: It's strong, sick stuff that delights in punching and kicking its audience as its vengeful characters do their prey.

Horror
Rod Lott
Famously, tragedy plus time equals comedy. Do they also equal horror? Up to you, but Chernobyl Diaries goes for it anyway.

Thriller
Rod Lott
247˚F is as compelling as you'd think about a movie set almost entirely in a sauna would be: not at all, once you think about it. I'm all for films set in single and/or small spaces, but this one has nowhere to go.

Drama
Rod Lott
Sienna Miller looks every bit the Hitchcock blonde she plays in The Girl, an HBO original film about the relationship between actress Tippi Hedren and the director who gave her not only her big break, but big trouble.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Prepare to have your mind violated. Beyond the Black Rainbow hardly represents conventional storytelling, but the film is an absolute visual feast. Expect sensuous rather than sense, and open-minded movie lovers will be well-rewarded.

Horror
Rod Lott
Although horror movies rarely scare me, I love them. The most I can hope for is to be creeped out sufficiently, and Sinister satisfies that bill.

Horror
Rod Lott
If I thought of AnnaLynne McCord at all, it was as a rail-thin starlet known more for being a paparazzi magnet than for her role on Fox's ill-fated 90210 reboot. Now, after watching her in Excision, I won't be able to think of her without picturing the awkward, near-Neanderthal teenage misfit she plays so ably, willingly and impressively here.

Performing Arts
Rod Lott
Batman Live
7 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 11:30 a.m. Saturday, 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday
Chesapeake Energy Arena
100 W. Reno
chesapeakearena.com
800-745-3000
$19.50-$69.50

Comedy
Rod Lott
In the opening scene of Rock of Ages, the lead character of Sherrie (Julianna Hough, Footloose) leaves Oklahoma for California, and quite frankly, we're better off without her. Good riddance, girl.

Children's
Rod Lott
One imagines Frankenweenie is the movie director Tim Burton has been waiting to make his entire life.

Horror
Rod Lott
This being the Halloween season, odds are many a found-footage film will be watched over the next several weeks. How to choose between so many? Allow me to help ever so slightly: Steer clear of Back from Hell.

Horror
Rod Lott
There's a lot to be said for horror films that use their low budgets as a positive thing. Hypothermia, however, isn't one of them — a shame, because its producers have excelled elsewhere, with Stake Land, The House of the Devil and especially The Innkeepers.

Action
Rod Lott
Although my bank account thinks otherwise, I miss the early-aughts craze of DVDs, in which one count upon pristine prints of one martial-arts film or another hitting store shelves. Many of them starred Jackie Chan or Jet Li.

Thriller
Rod Lott
I'll be a lifelong Boxing Helena cheerleader, so it was with tempered enthusiasm that I greeted Jennifer Lynch's Chained.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Eighteen years after her twin sister, Margaret, unforgivably stole her beau, Edith reunites with her at the man's funeral. Margaret's a globetrotting socialite who skipped their own father's services; Edith is a financially strapped owner of a dingy L.A. cocktail lounge; both sibs are played by Bette Davis in the new-to-Blu 1964 thriller Dead Ringer — a remake of a Mexican film from the '40s, as you'll learn in the disc's featurette.