Thriller
Rod Lott
I should have listened to Ron Backer. In his new book, Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood, he more or less warns would-be audiences away from trying any of the early 1930s’ half-dozen movies based on Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason character.

Thriller
Rod Lott
London, jazz, neon-lit nights, a posh hotel, a heist, Imogen Poots: Comes a Bright Day has so many elements I love to see in the movies, yet they add up to such a minuscule amount of pleasure. It's like pouring your favorite bubbly beverage all the way to the top of a frosty glass, only to see that once the head has subsided, you're left with so little.

Thriller
Michael Robertson
Being re-released on DVD and Blu-ray from Music Box Films is Tell No One, a genre-bending movie that manages to compound romance, drama and true-crime thriller into one muscular, fast-moving package.

Thriller
Rod Lott
So many Republicans took the news of President Obama’s re-election to such an illogical extreme, they took to Facebook and Twitter to warn the apocalypse was nigh, and you’d better grab all the guns you can. It’s almost as if they want societal collapse to happen. If they view The Day, however, they may rethink their stance, because the movie makes post-apocalyptic life look deathly boring.

Thriller
Rod Lott
To refresh your memory, 3 x 7 = 21. What’s this have to do with movies?

Thriller
Rod Lott
Rites of Passage's box art of boring actors’ faces should switch with the illustration adorning the actual disc: a play on the ol' skull and crossbones logo, but using a sock monkey and shotguns. That's what convinced me the film might be worth its 102 minutes. Ultimately, it's not, but its first half makes for an interesting mess.

Thriller
Rod Lott
For very different reasons, I'll watch any movie with Vincent Price, Bill Murray, Jackie Chan or Carla Gugino. Falling into the first category is 1962's Confessions of an Opium Eater, a rare Price vehicle rare no more, thanks to a DVD debut from Warner Archive.

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.

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.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Forced to take a vacation from her bank job after a series of stressful blow-ups, Hae-won (Seong-won Ji) leaves Seoul for a week's stay on a farming island where her childhood friend, Bok-wan (Yeong-hie Seo, The Chaser), lives with her extended family.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Considered the granddaddy — er, make that grandmama — of psycho-biddy flicks, 1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? pits two old-Hollywood legends against one another, with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as the snarling Hudson sisters.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Of the six films that compose the double-disc Weird-Noir set, exactly zero may qualify as truly weird. The adjective likely is applied just as a tie to its label, Something Weird Video. Whatever the case, I don't care. The point is, all six films are a blast, and I'm just happy to have them — weird, plain, odd, milquetoast, legitimate, what have you.

Thriller
Rod Lott
According to some fun facts that open The Tall Man, some 1,000 children vanish each year who never are found. In the near-dead mining town of Cold Rock, that's because they're taken by the mysterious titular figure who's cloaked in black and darts in and out of the woods.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Michael Biehn was so inspired by appearing in Grindhouse that he wrote and directed his own grindhouse tribute, The Victim.