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Classic Coke

By Robert Wilonsky  ,  Jordan Harper ,  and  Jim Ridley

Cocaine Cowboys (Magnolia)

Slam! Bang! Pow! Snort! This tawdry and giddy documentary tells the story of Miami's transformation from a place where old people go to die to a place with so much drug money that the Mercedes dealers were constantly out of stock, where the hit men would rather throw a gun away than reload it. It tells as much as it can, anyway, through the eyes of two American coke runners and one cartel goon; the full story of 1980s Miami would require an epic novel or HBO mini-series. Made up of interviews, stock footage, crime-scene photos, and grainy reenactments, Cocaine Cowboys is as wired as its subjects. From the lawyers to the cops who toiled through the cocaine wars, everyone seems just a little too pleased to be part of something so thoroughly fucked up. -- Jordan Harper

The Invincible Iron Man (Lions Gate)

Marvel Comics -- already printing bills like they were comics, with the Spidey franchise and other lesser live-action films -- keeps cranking out the direct-to-vid releases. So far, so-so: Iron Man, like the Ultimate Avengers series, offers above-average animation in service of a below-average story that finds billionaire Tony Stark raising an ancient Chinese city, only to incur the wrath of the Jade Dragons and Mandarin and his Elementals before he's forced to don a series of supersuits, lest his injured heart peter out. Yup, sounds totally ridiculous, and it is; if you ain't an 8-year-old boy (or a 32-year-old boy still living with Mom), this is so not for you. Iron Man fetishists will be disappointed that Stark's not an alcoholic, and those who actually buy this will spend an hour on the extras: Ooooh, a gallery of Iron Man suits! Seriously, don't bother waking Mom. -- Robert Wilonsky

Sherrybaby (Screen Media)

Maggie Gyllenhaal is delicious frosting on this half-baked cake. She plays the titular Sherry -- a recently sprung addict trying to get her daughter back -- with such skill and fearlessness that you might not even notice how everything else is a gloppy mess of tired ideas. Sherry cleans up and dirts down in that way we've seen junkies do before, while exuding the kind of unapologetic sexuality that ensures that your film will never get mainstream distribution -- though it did get Gyllenhaal a Golden Globe nomination. She lays herself bare, often literally, and it's a shame that the movie can't back her up with a real plot or insights beyond "drugs are bad." -- Harper

The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume One (Fantoma)

This is where Madison Avenue and MTV learned to fetishize pop, where the young Scorsese and John Waters got the go-ahead to blast their record collection as counterpoint to what's on-screen, where golden-age Hollywood glitz cruised the experimental waterfront looking for glory holes -- in the films of American underground pioneer Kenneth Anger, a man who changed the movies in just nine short films over 25 years. Even if you can't run them without mentally adding the ratteta-tatteta of a rickety 16mm projector, they look more psychedelically bewitching than ever on this spectacular five-film DVD, from 1947's homoerotic fever dream "Fireworks" to 1954's candy-colored absinthe freakout "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome." Extras include somewhat sparse commentary by Anger and a Scorsese intro that honors a filmmaker whose work still seems "totemic, talismanic." Bring on Volume Two! -- Jim Ridley