Documentary
Rod Lott
Susan Marks' Of Dolls & Murder is a rather straightforward documentary on an oddball subject: forensic pathologists teaching medical investigation skills to police officers via "nutshell studies."

Thriller
Rod Lott
Straight out of South Korea, No Mercy shows exactly that. But too bad it's only for the first act.

Television series
Rod Lott
As beloved as Lynda La Plante’s long-running crime series Prime Suspect is, her Above Suspicion deserves equal adoration. It’s another example of how the British leave viewers wanting more, rather than taking the American approach of burning them out, because the first two seasons — all seven episodes between them — come collected on Acorn Media’s two-disc Set 1. This leaves two more seasons as yet unreleased, so I pray we see a Set 2 soon down the pipe.

Television series
Rod Lott
Currently riding high on the 007 tidal wave known as Skyfall, Daniel Craig enjoys one of his earliest roles in 1997’s The Ice House, a two-part, three-hour BBC murder mystery adapted from Minette Walters’ novel. Luckily for Craig’s legion of fans, he does not play the dead body found putrid, nude and devoured from the abdomen down.

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.

Action
Rod Lott
Ignore the Weinsteins’ needless re-christening of the Hong Kong film Wu Xia as the ever-generic Dragon. The important thing is that director Peter Chan (The Love Letter) has made not only one of the better martial-arts pictures of the new millennium thus far, but one that holds appeal to audiences not attuned to the genre.