Kirk Cameron is worried about where this country’s headed. Not only is our president a part-negroid socialist who burns bibles to keep pagan babies warm, hardly anyone came to Kirk’s birthday party (except Belinda- GO OUTSIDE BELINDA! Sandwiches aren’t for sinners! I heard you humming that Dixie Chicks song!). That’s why Kirk is on a journey through history to find out what made America great once. Specifically, he tours the alternate history version of the 80s as envisioned by Ronald Reagan fan-fiction, and the part of the Founding Father story that doesn’t mention that almost none of them were Christians. This journey is chronicled in Kirk’s new documentary, Monumental, the trailer for which you can watch below.

But who am I kidding? The real draw is Kirk Cameron and his incredible reaction shots. No one wordlessly conveys humility before Christ like Kirk Cameron. He should become the Andy Serkis of Christian movies, where WETA uses Kirk Cameron covered in performance-capture censors to imbue each performer with the spirit of Jesus. It’s just too bad those black tights are a sin. Not to mention pre-marital mo-cap.

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I’ve said this a million times before, but if there’s one type of film I wish we could see more of at the local theater, it’s documentary shorts. Narrative features are crappy 80 percent of the time, while documentary shorts waste half your time and are almost never bad. This one, called “The Meaning of Robots,” premieres this Friday at Sundance, and – and I swear to God this isn’t unearned hyperbole – it looks amazing. AMAZING, I TELL YOU! (*puts cigar out in scotch, rushes off to stop the presses*)

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If you’re unfamiliar with Roger Corman, you need to stop what you’re doing because I’m about to ruin and jump on Netflix to find anything that he’s done and watch it twice. He’s the Academy Award-winning king of low budget B-films and possibly the hardest working man in show business history. He has produced nearly 400 films since 1954, and he directed another 56 between 1955 and 1980. And you can learn all about his career in Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, which is being released today by Anchor Bay Films after it debuted at Sundance earlier this year to rave reviews.

Corman’s World covers Roger’s glory years and features exclusive interviews with not just the usual suspects Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, and Ron Howard, but also Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Paul W.S. Anderson, and Brett Ratner, to name a few.

(Via Deadline)

Corman’s most important films (The Wild Angels, The Trip, Big Bad Mama, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, etc.) were made decades ago, but he has managed to remain relevant not only through his iconic cult status, but also the fact that the dude doesn’t stop making movies. He produces 2-3 movies per year these days, and his latest efforts include the best movies ever shown on TV – Piranhaconda, Dinoshark, Dinocroc vs. Supergator and, of course, Sharktopus.

Between Corman’s World and Worst in Show, this could be the greatest year ever for documentary films.

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Today is the 48th anniversary of the JFK assassination, and while I think it’s pretty obvious that the mob did it, conspiracy theories still abound (I don’t really consider the mob a “conspiracy theory” per se). With the number of theories increasing every year, acclaimed documentarian Errol Morris took a different approach this short (which you can watch below), choosing instead to focus on the idea that the more you focus on one strange aspect of a story, the more sinister it can become as you get further removed from the event. He uses as an example of this phenomenon the “Umbrella Man,” a man standing along the parade route on November 22nd, 1963 who was photographed from a few different angles holding a big, black umbrella, even though it was clearly a sunny day. WHAT’S WITH THE UMBRELLA, FREAKSHOW? ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO AWESOME TANS?

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If I were evaluating Werner Herzog’s new documentary Into the Abyss solely on the basis of entertainment value, I could tell you that it’s great. It’s not an instant classic like Grizzly Man, but it’s a fascinating story told in Herzog’s frustrating, entertaining style. (And as long as we’re ranking Herzog docs, it’s more entertaining than Encounters at the End of the World, but less Herzoggy — less voiceover, fewer misanthropic one-liners about his love of cold indifference and hatred of sunlight).

But I have a hard time not seeing it at least partially as a piece of advocacy. Herzog wanted it, as the film’s producer says, released early, so that it could become part of the death penalty debate. He’s said in interviews that it’s not meant as a “crusading doc,” and he doesn’t intend it as anti-capital punishment piece, even though he states a few times throughout the movie that he doesn’t believe in the death penalty. If I give him the benefit of the doubt on not taking a particular position, I’d say the film’s last act, at best, still betrays a certain blind spot in his storytelling. At worst, it’s the least-successful anti-death penalty film I’ve ever seen.

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