Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Tobe Hooper got a raw deal. The director of horror hits The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist didn't deserve to be sent to movie jail for 1985's Lifeforce. It's a well-crafted, well-intentioned work that was mismarketed and misunderstood, losing a bundle of money and soon sending Hooper into the lands of episodic television and direct-to-video features.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
There's a theory about remakes that perhaps Hollywood should stop remaking good movies and instead remake the bad ones, so that they may be improved. The problem with that theory is one runs the risk of the remake being bad, too. Case in point: The Philadelphia Experiment.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Thanks to examples like The Others and Sinister, moviegoers know that whenever a kids' crayon drawing pops up, it's never a good sign for the protagonists. Add Dark Skies to that list.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Ignore the grim, apocalyptic cover of this DVD, which depicts the flick’s vibe so inaccurately, it even drops the title’s exclamation point. Make no mistake: Mold! has mirth on its mind ... even if those brains have spilled onto the floor.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Quoth the cyborg, “I’ll be back.” And he was. And now again, this time in the form of Terminator Anthology, Warner Home Video’s Blu-ray box set of the four franchise films to date. It could be argued that the movies stopped being good when James Cameron stopped directing them. After revisiting the quartet, I don't agree — I strongly agree.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Britain’s on high alert after a plane falls from the sky from unknown causes. Terrorist attack, perhaps? At a 24-hour storage facility — hence the film’s title, Storage 24 — the ensuing crash has locked down its security system, effectively trapping people inside. Oh, and one gnarly alien.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
When I first saw Holy Motors, it was in a way that would make director Leos Carax cry, “Mon dieu!”: on a small window on my computer screen. That’s hardly the proper showcase for a film that set Cannes all abuzz, especially for courting year-end votes from critics’ groups.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
At least at press time, Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft is the latest shameless coattails rider of the big-budget Jeremy Renner vehicle Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which hits theaters next weekend. By contrast, this DVD premiere stars someone named Booboo Stewart, and that alone should tell you everything.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Like The Punisher, Judge Dredd serves as judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one. Like The Punisher, Judge Dredd also received a cinematic reboot in an attempt to right precious filmmakers’ wrongs.

Sci-Fi
Phil Bacharach
Hooray for movies with ideas!

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
I'm not of the opinion that remakes are automatically a bad thing. Without them, we wouldn't have David Cronenberg's The Fly or John Carpenter's The Thing. The difference is that examples like those had a different way of telling the established story.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
Not based on Connie Willis' seminal sci-fi novel of the same name, Doomsday Book is preoccupied not with time travel, but the world's end. Telling three separate stories, the Korean film comes from acclaimed directors Kim Jee-woon (I Saw the Devil) and Yim Pil-sung (Hansel & Gretel). As with all anthologies, results vary; ultimately, this one ends up as two-thirds great.

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.

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.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
At least Bigfoot does not waste viewers’ time in showing them Bigfoot. They have to wait one minute, tops, so if that’s all you ask of this Asylum release that premiered recently on Syfy, you’re golden.