In 1982, nearly every kid with an Atari 2600 had one white-hot, new cartridge atop his or her Christmas or Hanukkah list: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. By Dec. 26, I’m guessing they collectively experienced beggars’ remorse, because less than a year later, in September 1983, some 4 million units were dumped in the landfill of the small New Mexico town of Alamogordo.

Or were they?

In the three decades since, the unceremonious mass burial of pop culture’s “worst video game of all time” has been shrouded in enough mystery to morph into urban legend. In the hour-and-some-change documentary Atari: Game Over, director Zak Penn — screenwriter of such Marvel movies as The Incredible Hulk, Elektra and X-Men: The Last Stand — literally goes digging for the truth.

In doing so, we get scoops of gossipy bits (and bytes) from Atari’s heyday in the early 1980s — a workplace of pot, booze, Jacuzzis and, every now and then, games that changed the world one rumpus room at a time. Their blocks-and-bricks graphics are laughable by today’s standards (although I still prefer them to modern games), but they were — and this is no overstatement — revolutionary.

One of those Atari 2600 programmers, Howard Warshaw, pushed the boundaries of game design further with such titles as Yars’ Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark and then the aforementioned E.T. Although ambitious in scope and intent, the cartridge proved a crushing disappointment with the public, thanks to a mix of corporate greed, Warshaw’s hubris and an impossibly compressed development schedule that made for maddening game play. What it did not do, contrary to public belief, is kill Atari.

With no shortage of self-deprecating humor, Penn’s Xbox-funded doc aims to rewrite passages of incorrect history and reverse the scorn that has hounded Warshaw ever since. In giving Warshaw a platform, Penn grants his film an emotional center as warm and winning as E.T.’s heartlight. Who would expect that watching grown men sift through trash could make for gripping viewing? That it does is but one reason Game Over simply cannot lose. —Rod Lott

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Co-produced by James Franco, the documentary Kink goes behind the scenes of Kink.com, purportedly the Internet’s hottest spot for BDSM content. Don’t know what that alphabet-soup of a phrase stands for? Then the movie and the site are not for you.

Director Christina Voros plops us deep in the bowels of a former armory that now serves as the HQ for the XXX provider founded by Peter Acworth, a jolly Brit who initially doubles as our tour guide. He’s unfazed when the tour is halted temporarily because of an in-progress gang bang. Other than tortured moans, we don’t witness the group activity; instead, Voros leapfrogs into darker territory of bound-and-gagged men and women having various orifices violated by terrifying dildos attached to far more terrifying pneumatic machinery of intimidating speeds.

“You ever come that many times in a row?” one dominant asks his hanging-from-her-feet submissive, who manages to form an answer even with all the blood pooling in her head: “Uh … not upside down.”

For 80 cold and clinical minutes, Voros lets the scenes play out without commenting on them or taking a side; her camera simply acts as an all-access observer, à la a fly on the wall — different kind of fly, mind you. The proper color of straitjacket is discussed; a glory hole is constructed; house director Maitresse Madeline teaches the fine art of slapping and stepping on an erect penis without harm. (Nope! Not buying it!)

Another shot-caller preps a fresh piece of talent for the willing punishment about to be unleashed: “You’re not gonna get nailed for four hours straight,” she says. “There are breaks.” (Whew! Praise be, Samuel Gompers!)

Despite Voros’ detachment, one young woman’s screams in Kink’s final scenes register disturbingly higher than volume allows, ringing with sadness, echoing down dungeon-like halls as hollow as, we presume, her soul. —Rod Lott

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So wide is the appeal for Jingle Bell Rocks! that the documentary can be embraced by Christmas-music fanatics and foes alike. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, its subject is virtually inescapable to the ears of America’s shoppers, drivers and diners, yet what tickles the tympanic membrane of one tortures another. While lending credence to both groups, the film unmistakably stands on the side of letting such sounds snow.

Its audience surrogate is also its director and producer, Mitchell Kezin. To say he’s (chest)nuts over holiday harmonies is an understatement; the man collects seasonal slabs of vinyl and polycarbonate plastic like a skid-row prostitute does STDs. In this, his first feature, he travels cross-country to talk with fellow collectors, as well as creators of timeless classics and outright obscurities.

Among them are cult filmmaker John Waters, who shared his love for oddball, tinsel-strewn tunes with the masses via the 2004 compilation album A John Waters Christmas; Run-D.M.C.’s Joseph Simmons, who recounts how he wrote the 1987 charity track “Christmas in Hollis” over a spliff and eggs; and The Flaming Lips ringleader Wayne Coyne, whose mother’s unreliable TV memories led the alt-rock iconoclast to birth the 2008 sci-fi film Christmas on Mars (certainly the only soundtrack album to contain such Yuletide gems as “The Gleaming Armament of Marching Genitalia” and “In Excelsior Vaginalistic”).

Bringing a side dish of gravitas to the party is Kezin’s own narrative about how his Christmas-music obsession is fueled by hole-in-his-heart memories of hearing Nat King Cole’s “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot” as a child pining for his absentee father. His bittersweet recollections culminate in a moment that gives Rocks! a climax that can be forgiven for feeling a little forced, because Kezin has accumulated so much goodwill in the interim. With impressive animated sequences and, ironically, no soundtrack disc of its own, it’s a doc as accomplished as it is infectious. —Rod Lott

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Adjust Your Tracking is not the only VHS-fetish documentary in the neighborhood. The same year’s Rewind This! beat it to the punch — barely — but whereas that one chronicled the history of the home-video format from birth to death, this one dispenses with such lessons in about 12 minutes in order to devote itself to the almighty collector. Rewind covered that ground, too — just not at this length.

Here, although with overlap, the focus is on VHS enthusiasts — not necessarily among the millions who made every weekend night a Blockbuster night in the video-store era, but those who today pursue those clamshell-encases plastic rectangles with the fervor of a dog to strips of bacon. Yes, I’m talking about the collector, who obsessively scours flea markets, thrift shops and garage sales for tapes. Judging by those interviewed by co-directors Dan M. Kinem and Levi Peretic, the titles hardly matter; in many cases, the movies won’t ever be watched much less freed of factory wrapping. The subjects’ fervor appears to be more about the sheer act of acquiring the objects than viewing them.

They’re the guys who bid mercilessly on eBay for the shot at proudly proclaiming they own Chester Turner’s Tales from the Quadead Zone — a legitimately terrible shot-on-video effort, but hey, it’s pink-steak rare! Some of the guys consider themselves historians of sorts or cultural archeologists who “save” such relics from landfills because no one else will, yet I’d hardly compare their mission — as one interviewee does — to that of our World War I and II soldiers.

And therein lies my only problem with the never-dull Tracking: the perpetuation — if not glorification — of a VHS-collector stereotype. Almost always male, the collector is arrogant, bearded, overweight, immature, single, poor, likely OCD and possibly removed from reality. Whether or not that’s a legitimate sketch, it’s the one we’re given. —Rod Lott

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In 2009, I was considering moving to Texas for a job offer. I decided not to pursue it, and Don McLeroy is one reason why — seriously.

His name may not be known to you, but his actions are. He was the Texas State Board of Education member who put his personal ideology before the brains of Lone Star youth, in order to force a number of utterly ridiculous changes to the public school system’s history textbooks. His main target was the theory of evolution, but his beefs didn’t stick to matters best left to the pulpit. For example, whether he realized it or not, his xenophobia was showing in asking to replace a book’s mention of “hip-hop” to “country music.” (Lord forbid the children know the existence of rap! Or colored people!)

Any sane politician would be aghast at what McLeroy proposed; the trouble was, not many of McLeroy’s fellow board members appeared to be. Scott Thurman’s documentary The Revisionaries chronicles the Austin dentist-cum-politician’s crusade — make no mistake; that’s what this was — from inside the board’s meeting rooms. What merely nauseated you on news soundbites in 2009 will sicken you extended to 92 minutes.

I don’t consider Thurman’s film to be an attack on religion — after all, he lets both sides tell their stories — but I do consider it an attack on hypocrisy. Shouldn’t legislators leave the Sunday-school lessons to, you know, church? Time and taxpayer dollars would be better spent working to fix society’s real problems. —Rod Lott

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