We're living in a time when the documentary is undergoing a startling renaissance as a mass-entertainment product. Perhaps the deluge of so-called "reality television" programs (most of which have as much relationship to reality as that of a three-toed sloth to a slab of drywall) has created a shift in the cultural zeitgeist that's both inspired viewers to take a chance on non-fiction films and encouraged documentarians to create lighter, more accessible fare. Many of these crossover documentaries, like March of the Penguins, Hoop Dreams and Bowling for Columbine, offer both entertainment and enlightenment. The downside to the trend -- or upside, depending on your perspective -- is that more and more documentaries are being produced, and most of them err on the side of palatability rather than intellectualism.

The IFC television production Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema ...Read the entire review

The kitschtastic cartoon series "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" was first born as a line of action figures in 1982, made by the toy giant, Mattel. The company originally wanted to build a line around the character Conan the Barbarian, but eventually somebody at Mattel noticed that there was a tad too much sex and violence associated with Conan to make an appropriate children's toy. So Mattel created their own barbarian -- a nice, blond, good-guy barbarian with magical powers named He-Man.

The animation company Filmation was hired to do animated ads for the toy line, and then to create 85 episodes for a Saturday morning cartoon show. All Mattel wanted was simple, cheap cartoons that would promote the toys, but with a number of talented writers penning scripts for "He-Man" -- including science fiction author Paul Dini and "Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Straczynski the plots for the episo...Read the entire review

Jessica Bendiger, who wrote the smarter-than-it-should-have-been script for Peyton Reed's cheerleader comedy Bring It On, attempts a two-fer with her directorial effort and, well, she gets points for difficulty but chokes on the dismount.

This time, it's all about gymnastics. The girl-centric, Karate Kid-wannabe plot just begs the question, hasn't there already been a girl Karate Kid movie? Didn't it star Hilary Swank and, you know, suck? The answer is yes, yes and yes, but apparently someone at Buena Vista forgot and made another one.

Missy Peregrym, a graduate of the same genetic research lab that spat out Piper Perabo and Amanda Peet, stars as Haley Graham, a rebellious teen facing time in either a juvenile facility or military school unless she ... trains in gymnastics. Huh? Is this common in the juvenile courts? Are ne'er-so-well youths being sent to cooking...Read the entire review

When you've had a few drinks, yapping with your pals about bad 80's TV shows, and you search your memory for a title that evokes everything that was cheesy, tacky and just plain dumb about that era's television entertainment ... well, you probably say "The A-Team." And you'd be right. But you'd be even more right if you said "Riptide." Both were created by Stephen J. Cannell, both starred an ensemble cast of one-dimensional types, but "Riptide" was so awful that it actually made "The A-Team" look good by comparison.

Cannell practically invented the modern sexy-but-flawed TV private eye, from the heights of "Wiseguy," "The Rockford Files" and "The Commish" to the dregs of "Hardcastle & McCormick," "Hunter" and "Silk Stalkings." Some of his work has bordered on genius and much of it was crap, partly because of Cannell's habit in the 80's and 90's of pitching so many shows that he'd get...Read the entire review

Movie Fact: Unhelpful small-town folk are always a sign that something sinister is going on. And yet, people in movies never seem to figure it out until it's too late. Despite dirty looks from gas station proprietors and weirdly guilty local lawmen, Steve Cady (Jeremy Sisto, wonderful in May and HBO's "Six Feet Under") is a big city fella who works for the Census Bureau, sent to tiny Rockwell Falls to do some rather vague business involving computer records. Haunted by the death of his wife and daughter in an accident, he shows up just in time for the town's Harvest Festival, flirts with the pretty daughter of his landlady, and puzzles over the odd fact that the town's population has held at exactly 436 for decades. Then a local with an ailing wife comes after Cady with a shotgun, shouting, "It's the prophecy, I tells ya!" and Cady gets a little curious. But only a little frankly...Read the entire review