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.

Comedy
Rod Lott
How long has it been since you've seen 1986's Little Shop of Horrors, the Oscar-nominated musical comedy produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Martin Scorsese? No, I haven't erred; according to producer David Geffen in a half-hour special on this definitive Blu-ray edition, those Hollywood heavyweights were part of his original plan.

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.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
It's 2018, and a U.S. president who looks uncannily like Sarah Palin sends a black man to the moon in a bid for re-election. The American lunar module lands on the dark side of the moon — you know, where the Transformers live — and finds an enormous Nazi outpost that's been there since Hitler's plan for world domination failed.

Action
Rod Lott
To my knowledge, no one ever said, “I can’t wait for the new Robert Conrad movie!” That could be because so few knew he made movies. After all, Conrad spent the bulk of his long career on the small screen, in the likes of The Wild Wild West, Black Sheep Squadron and a highly memorable ad campaign for Eveready batteries.

Horror
Rod Lott
In a post-Saw world, Darren Lynn Bousman quietly has been making a series of horror films more in line with scary movies of the 1970s than the torture-porn genre he helped usher in. Already this year, DVD has brought us his superlative Mother's Day remake and the low-key demonic pic 11-11-11, and now The Barrens. It's just too bad they've all been denied wide theatrical releases.

Drama
Phil Bacharach
Nothing can bring out one’s inner Richard Nixon like a flight of baby-boomer whimsy that rubs your nose in 1960s nostalgia. Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, a gentle-minded paean to the Woodstock generation, might just make you want to punch a hippie.

Horror
Rod Lott
Few critics are unable to see through the violence and admit there's a real artfulness at work in Eli Roth's pair of Hostel films, both now available in their unrated director's cuts on a single, budget-priced Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment.

Western
Rod Lott
What a kick it is to see Robert Mitchum biting into a stogie and laying waste to a room with a machine gun. Because, really, how often does a man of the cloth do that? No wonder the 1972 quasi-Western is titled The Wrath of God. The film takes place in a South American town so brutal and dismal that, as one character reasons, "If God had wanted to give the world an enema, he'd've stuck the nozzle in here."

Action
Rod Lott
In 1986, writer and artist Frank Miller changed the comic-book industry forever with the four-issue series that became the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. Its sour disposition and gritty attitude was arguably the darkest depiction of Batman the world had seen, paving the way for the caped crusader’s move to big-screen blockbuster three years later.

Documentary
Rod Lott
Is it art?

Comedy
Rod Lott
That The Hangover director Todd Phillips has plans to helm an Americanization of the Danish comedy Klown (or Klovn) comes as neither a surprise nor a shock. I'd only be surprised if the remake can get within arm's length of equaling it.

Western
Rod Lott
Before he became Itay’s master of horror, Dario Argento knocked out a few screenplays, including one of Sergio Leone's legendary Western epics, Once Upon a Time in the West. Lesser-known is 1969's The Five Man Army. That's too bad, because it brings an “international all-star team” approach to the spaghetti Western, and doesn’t forget the all-aces Ennio Morricone score!

Comedy
Rod Lott
If Ferris Bueller's Day Off were directed by Wes Anderson, it might resemble the coming-of-age comedy General Education.

Comedy
Rod Lott
I recently had a discussion with friends about the increasing trend of self-aggrandizing Twitter bios of locals who think so mighty highly of themselves, they must brag to the Internet about their amazing awesomeness! Our theory is, if you have to tell the world you're a "creative genius" or "master of [fill in the blank]," you're more than likely not. Real genius speaks for itself.