  We study charged dilaton black branes in $AdS_4$. Our system involves a
dilaton $\phi$ coupled to a Maxwell field $F_{\mu\nu}$ with dilaton-dependent
gauge coupling, ${1\over g^2} = f^2(\phi)$. First, we find the solutions for
extremal and near extremal branes through a combination of analytical and
numerical techniques. The near horizon geometries in the simplest cases, where
$f(\phi) = e^{\alpha\phi}$, are Lifshitz-like, with a dynamical exponent $z$
determined by $\alpha$. The black hole thermodynamics varies in an interesting
way with $\alpha$, but in all cases the entropy is vanishing and the specific
heat is positive for the near extremal solutions. We then compute conductivity
in these backgrounds. We find that somewhat surprisingly, the AC conductivity
vanishes like $\omega^2$ at T=0 independent of $\alpha$. We also explore the
charged black brane physics of several other classes of gauge-coupling
functions $f(\phi)$. In addition to possible applications in AdS/CMT, the
extremal black branes are of interest from the point of view of the attractor
mechanism. The near horizon geometries for these branes are universal,
independent of the asymptotic values of the moduli, and describe generic
classes of endpoints for attractor flows which are different from $AdS_2\times
R^2$.
