Drama
Rod Lott
In a short career largely dominated with genre films — from Final Destination 3 to this past summer’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter — Mary Elizabeth Winstead always has exuded a certain something. But nothing that ever suggested the level of performance she delivers in Smashed.

Thriller
Rod Lott
No matter what you see or hear, don't move a muscle. That’s the advice one very bad man gives to the titular Sushi Girl. Particularly squeamish viewers won’t be able to adhere to such counsel, as this minor crime gem revels in the revolting.

Horror
Rod Lott
The Frankenstein Theory is like no other Frankenstein film you've seen: rendered in found footage.

Wait, wait! Don’t run off! This one’s better than the average entry, even if it’s not so revolutionary to change the minds of those who despise the delivery system. The picture’s snowy setting is reason enough to justify a viewing on DVD (a woefully bare-bones one) if you missed it on the big screen — and you likely did, since it played in only about 15 theaters nationwide earlier this month.

Comedy
Rod Lott
My favorite of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries is easily 2000’s Best in Show. While I think it helps to be a theater nerd to appreciate 1996’s Waiting for Guffman in full or a folk nut to opt for 2003’s A Mighty Wind, “must love dogs” is no requirement here. Love man’s best friend or hate him, the humor in Best in Show is less inside-baseball than its brothers.

Documentary
Rod Lott
I first heard of The Pirate Bay when a friend told me about this site where he had just downloaded and watched Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle — then in theaters — at the comfort of his own home.

It hardly seemed worth the trouble. Obviously, I’m in the minority, as the site claims more than 25 million active users worldwide, who share movies, music, video games and other copyrighted works via torrent files.

Horror
Rod Lott
Eduardo Rodriguez has put three pictures in the can (including the upcoming Fright Night 2) since completing his directorial debut, Curandero: Dawn of the Demon, in 2005. Why, then, has it taken roughly eight years for Curandero to hit DVD? You got me; it’s not as if a lack of quality has stopped any flick before.

Thriller
Rod Lott
I like In Their Skin under its international title, Replicas. Even if that makes Jeremy Power Regimbal’s directorial debut sound too sci-fi, it’s more interesting and apt.

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.

Drama
Rod Lott
With magic-themed movies The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and Now You See Me on the way, Hollywood is all about the abracadabra these days. If that exposes more eyeballs to 2011’s The Great Magician, good.

Drama
Phil Bacharach
Don’t trust the viewers.

Trusting them appears to be the cardinal sin of Zero Dark Thirty, a masterful, absorbing film dramatizing the CIA's 10-year hunt for Osama bin Laden. It has been at the center of controversy for its depiction of U.S. intelligence agents using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” otherwise known as torture.