Sometimes hitting the multiplex just isn’t in the cards. That’s when Netflix steps in to provide a movie fix. But how to separate the wheat from the chaff? I’m happy to help; every week I’ll pick a flick from the Netflix Watch Instantly section and see if it’s worth your time. This week? “Maxed Out”. [...]

Morgan Spurlock goes meta on product-placement’s back end in POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.  In making a documentary about how product placement gets done, he decides to pimp out his movie to the highest bidders.  I’m betting there are hundreds of documentary filmmakers smacking their foreheads, wishing they’d thought of this idea [...]

The Tillman Story is an eye-opening, thought-provoking, and down-right frustrating documentary. If you’re looking for a a feel-good portrait of a war hero, you should definitely look elsewhere. This film is a painfully honest portrayal of one man’s sacrifice and his family’s reaction to the shameful events after the fact that discusses what it means to be a true hero and propaganda in the modern age.

Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim’s documentary film about America’s broken education system, now has a trailer. In Waiting for Superman, Guggenheim, whose previous work includes An Inconvenient Truth and It Might Get Loud, turns his focus toward public education in the United States, examining the fundamental problems that haunt many schools across the country. The film [...]

“The Art of the Steal” is rare in the documentary format in that it succeeds in telling a story. Director Don Argott succeeds in crafting a wonderful tale of political corruption and greed.

If you are a horror fan, you probably already know the pleasures to be found in Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero’s outbreak thriller [REC]. The Spanish-language film took the concept of a zombie infection, ran it through the lens of a first-person, hand-held camera perspective, and then unleashed a ghoulish parade of prickly, low-budget thrills. [...]

After a short period of flux after leaving “The Tonight Show,” Conan O’Brien was back in the spotlight a few weeks ago when he created a Twitter account and announced his upcoming comedy tour. Now, Deadline is reporting that a documentary is going to be made following the comedian on his cross-country tour.

Set to a limited release March 26, 2010 is director Don Hahn’s documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty. See the trailer here. Hahn produced such Disney classics as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Beauty and the Beast, The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Lion King (also The Emperor’s New Groove which is a great buddy movie if you [...]