"We always had to make a conscious decision to make the same movie over again, only each one would be slightly different," says Steve Miner, the director of the second and third Friday the 13th installments (and associate producer of the first), in the franchise's oral history, Crystal Lake Memories. Indeed, by 1982's Friday the 13th Part III, the series was already repeating itself: once again, we watched a formerly bullied giant mama's boy stalking dumb kids in a rural setting, killing some in ways he had killed their predecessors (through-the-bed stabbing from below got a reprise). The climax virtually repeated that of the first film's except it was Jason who was doing the slaying and his now-decomposing mother who did the final-scare popping out of the water. They just traded roles, of course — shifting bodies around was business as usual.

Roman Polanski's 1968 film Rosemary's Baby was among the earliest examples of the modern, post-Universal monsters phase of horror cinema, and yet it remains among the genre's most mature, least conventional offerings. A key factor in its endurance is described in David Konow's recent chronicle of horror's history, Reel Terror:

The walls rot like flesh. A man in an engraved triangular iron helmet is the protagonist's guardian-slash-executioner. He manually operates a carousel where people suspended by chains through their pierced bodies are the horses. A princess party in a mall led by a creepy clown disintegrates to snarling children with faces painted like cats feasting on raw, probably human meat. A spider configuration of heads and arms that look like they came out of the manufacturing plant in Björk's "All is Full of Love" video swiftly attacks.

The clip above comes from How's Your News: Election 2012, the latest film from this traveling group of people with disabilities who report on various events. We posted about the movie last week, but this scene bears its own examination as it is a literal illustration of the way that people with disabilities are ignored in this country, especially by grandstanding politicians. It's particularly important for showing the resulting frustration: Jeremy Vest (who has Williams Syndrome) actually calls out to Bachmann, "What's your problem?"

Every subgenre needs its classic, and so Spike Lee's Bad 25 is what amounts to the greatest Behind the Music episode of all time. Frenetically paced, ingeniously constructed and brimming with hilarious anecdotes, the look back on the creation of 1987's Bad (the one that had the enormous task of following Thriller), elevates the rock doc to an art form. At over two hours in length, what could have felt like a bloated obituary is unmistakably alive. Although it's unlikely that it would have been assembled were it not for the death of its primary subject, Bad 25 proves that Jackson's legacy has nearly made him immortal.

Paranormal Activity 4 runs on cheap thrills. After some time set aside for exposition that can be summed up as, "Something weird is going on in a house inhabited by at least one person who is tech-savvy enough to set up surveillance," the movie starts pummeling us with jump scares. If you've ever seen a horror movie, you should be familiar with the jump scare, the trick of a simultaneous on-screen surprise accompanied by a loud sound. These are effective (if always annoying) when used sparsely; in Paranormal Activity 4 they make for a monotonous rhythm.

Argo is Sesame Street for grownups. It's a history lesson that goes down like candy, a recreation of a little-known component of the Iran hostage crisis rendered into a breathless two-hour thriller. It's brilliant and clear, intense and hysterical and its moments of profundity are there for the consuming, should you be interested in that sort of thing. It also offers more of a visceral thrill than anything else I've seen this year or during most years. It's diabolical infotainment.

This weekend sees the release of adaptations of two cherished favorites featuring black actors playing characters previously portrayed as white. Andrea Arnold's gorgeous and raw spin on Wuthering Heights opens in limited release and features a black Heathcliff (via Solomon Glave, who plays him as a teen and James Howson, who handles the grown-up portion of the film, which covers only about the first half of Emily Brontë's novel). Meanwhile, Kenny Leon's adaptation of Steel Magnolias features the likes of Queen Latifah, Phylicia Rashād and a show-stealing Alfre Woodard among its entirely black principle cast. It airs Sunday on Lifetime.

Taken 2 is where crap becomes unwatchable crap. Its 2008 predecessor was garbage, too, but at least it was well-paced garbage. For a while, Taken 2 is one of those cookie-cutter sequels that goes beat-for-beat with what came before it, a la Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The plot-point repetition alone makes for an over-the-top experience that actually seems to be owning up to its junkiness. It's just too ridiculous.

This week, two relics of ‘90s alternaculture are openly revisiting their pasts with what are essentially reissues of their earlier work. Tori Amos has released Gold Dust, a collection of 14 (or 15, depending on which version you have) songs from her back catalog that she's rerecorded with the Metropole Orchestra. Meanwhile, Tim Burton has converted his pre-Pee Wee's Big Adventure short film Frankenweenie into a full-length stop-motion feature. It's out Friday.

Sinister, which opens wide on Oct. 12, has a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this posting. Granted, it's early still, and only 20 reviews are in (notorious horror hater Roger Ebert has yet to weigh in), but the film is inspiring gushing notices. There's no question that Scott Derrickson's film is among the best horror films of the year, but that is faint praise because it's been a really shitty year for the genre.

Looper, a futuristic movie about time travel, believes that children are our future and openly shares that old-fashioned sentiment. That may be the funniest paradox in Rian Johnson's new film. Others are less amusing.

The most satisfying cinematic moment I've experienced all year occurs during the last 15 minutes of David France's documentary How To Survive a Plague. I don't even want to hint at what it is because it could risk depriving you of the rush it gave me. What works like a movie twist feels like an epiphany in this chronicle of the first nine years of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. Just know that if you care about social justice and gay rights, you should see this film. And if you don't know much about ACT UP's history, you will be wowed.

If you ever wanted to watch Joaquin Phoenix fling himself from one side of a room to touch a wall and fling himself back to touch a window, describing how both feel in alternately concrete and abstract terms, over and over and over again, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master is the movie for you.

For whatever reason, August tends to be a big month for horror movies. This week finds three of them landing in theaters: Ole Bornedal's The Possession, Doug Aarniokoski's The Day and Pascal Laugier's The Tall Man. All seem like straightforward genre exercises at first glance; none actually are. They're fucked up. Maybe not in the sick, fun this-so-fucked-up-that-it's-gonna-make-me-throw-up way, but fucked up all the same. Here's a breakdown of these deviants of deviant cinema.

Whitney Houston's role in Sparkle, Salim Akil's sturdy and enjoyable remake of Sam O'Steen's nearly unwatchable 1976 film of the same name, is tailored to the late diva. As Emma, Houston plays the surly matriarch of a trio of singing sisters – Sister, Delores and Sparkle – and a former singer herself who was "almost killed" by the business. Houston, who co-produced the film, plays the role with the world-weary hoarseness apparent in virtually every public appearance she did in the 10 years before her death. Despite some moments of poignancy, this is mostly light fare and Whitney camps it up with bitchily dignified flair. It is her best acting role, which is not saying very much given that she never suggested she was anything more than competent on screen while alive, but nevertheless, it is a lovely swan song.

"I came here to hide but there was so much beauty it didn't seem like a punishment," explains Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters) deep into Spike Lee's latest, Red Hook Summer. Much of the film reads like an argument Lee is having with himself regarding a number of topics: religion versus atheism, progress versus tradition, redemption versus accountability, black Jesus versus white Jesus, fatherhood versus spiritual advisement. However, this moment is clear, direct and confirmed by much of what precedes it aesthetically. Red Hook Summer glows in a saturated glory, its succession of shots of the Brooklyn neighborhood where it's set unfurling like a slow-moving fireworks display. Perhaps it goes without saying, but Red Hook Summer is Lee's latest love letter to the borough he calls home.

In William Friedkin's Killer Joe, Gina Gershon's character Sharla is forced to give head to a chicken leg, a penis stand-in held at the crotch of Matthew McConaughey's anti-hero Killer Joe Cooper. Like the peeing scene in Last House on the Left, the marathon gang rape of I Spit on Your Grave, the wire torture that caps Audition and the turtle (and everything else) in Cannibal Holocaust, it is one of those scenes – a bit of celluloid that will define the film's legacy. The image of Gershon's bee-stung lips wrapped around a chicken leg is not something you see everyday or any other day, for that matter, and if you remove yourself from any emotional connection, you can appreciate this as a minor innovation in the catalog of things movies have done to freak people out, a stand-out in the canon of cinematic depravity.

Anticipation for the return of Batman will pack theaters until they are unbearable during this and the next several weekends — and The Dark Knight Rises knows it.

To love horror movies is to live a life searching for a fix like your first highs and rarely getting it. For me, those first loves were slashers like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. Since I saw those movies, I've had hopes for every over-hyped horror film, and those hopes are almost always dashed. Then I saw V/H/S.