A number of names are bandied about in this documentary: heels, babyfaces, bullies. If a guy was an asshole, he’s called an asshole, and that no-holds-barred, candid nature is what makes Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin’ so watchable, even for those of us who don’t give a squat about the sport.

For the newbies among us, the Memphis style of wrestling, we’re told, is all about “fire and action,” thereby turning the goings-on within the ring into a meld of athleticism and circus acts (and sometimes a freak show). As the decades progress and the gimmicks are introduced, we see how a two-bit, traveling circuit eventually birthed a billion-dollar business, once Vince McMahon noticed the light bulb hovering above his noggin.

It’s a colorful history of pioneers like Gorgeous George, Sputnik Monroe (“He was the only person I know who could get run over by a Greyhound bus and not get hurt”), karate-chopping Tojo, black masked wrestler Sweet Ebony Diamond, arrogant Jackie Fargo (“I was meaner than a damn rattlesnake and tougher than a two-dollar steak”), the infamous Jerry Lawler and celebrity opponent Andy Kaufman, not to mention matches against bears and with midgets (“You could put midgets on your card, and your house would double. … I liked a lot of those midgets”).

These fine fellows are interviewed on camera by debuting director Chad Schaffler, and they mostly seem to pine for the days when they annually averaged 100,000 miles on the road and outdrew the World Series on local TV, and yet barely made a buck (with exceptions, of course). Because they’re not bitter and because they’re chock full of hysterical soundbites, Memphis Heat emerges as a winner, with very little bruising. —Rod Lott

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Back in 1981, filmmaker Penelope Spheeris released a searing, exciting and sometimes frightening documentary about L.A’s then-burgeoning punk-rock movement. The Decline of Western Civilization told the tales of the bands responsible for that music’s rise to infamy, most memorably including a pre-Henry Rollins Black Flag and The Germs.

Seven years later, a new kind of music dominated L.A’s scene, inspiring Spheeris to once again pick up her camera, but what she found resulted in a completely different kind of film. If the first Decline was a dramatic look at a movement filled with disaffected youth producing the sonic equivalent of their own dissatisfaction and inner torment, Part II: The Metal Years turned out to be a comedy about a bunch of shiftless douchebags who liked to wear makeup and get laid.

Its subtitle is somewhat misleading, since the bulk of the acts under view here are of the glam variety, leaving just Megadeth for those who take their metal seriously. A few legends pop in and out during the interviews (including Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Lemmy, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons), but for the most part, we’re left with clueless wannabes (like the members of Odin, who insist they’ll only be satisfied until they’re as big as Led Zeppelin or The Beatles. I wonder how that worked out for them?), along with a few almost-weres (London, Faster Pussycat) and Poison (who almost inexplicably come of as sweet, self-aware dudes).

At some point, Spheeris clearly grasped the absurdity of the culture she was documenting and went with it. She films her interview with Stanley with him in bed with three centerfolds, while Simmons’ is conducted in a lingerie shop filled with browsing Playmates. She interviews Ozzy while he makes breakfast (!) and even if he comes off far more coherent and cogent than you’d expect, she still gets away with inserting a fake shot of him spilling orange juice to depict his obvious brain damage.

It’s all very entertaining, but — just like the culture being documented — it’s essentially pointless: what happens when a filmmaker shines a spotlight and finds out that there’s truly nothing there. But then again, The Metal Years was directly responsible for Spheeris being hired to make Wayne’s World, so it at least has one good reason to exist. —Allan Mott

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Oh, I assume World Trade Organization execs may hate it, but I find it difficult to believe that most people who can think for themselves would fail to get — at the very least — a chuckle out of The Yes Men, a documentary about a pair of political pranksters. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno comprise the titular twosome, who use a grant from musician Herb Alpert to help them travel the globe to speak about anti-globalization in the most outlandish ways.

It all begins when visitors to their WTO parody website don’t even read the print — fine or otherwise — and extend invitations to lectures at international conferences as WTO reps. The Yes Men are all too eager to accept, and the film follows them hatching their (mostly) harmless plots and executing them in public.

This includes demonstrating a prototype of the “future leisure suit,” which contains an inflatable, phallic appendage containing a screen on which corporate heads can monitor their workforce remotely. This outfit and accompanying suggestion that slavery was a good thing aren’t questioned by anyone. At least a classroom of collegians is sharp enough to turn on a supposed WTO/McDonald’s partnership presentation in which Americans’ feces would be piped to Third World countries and recycled into “reBurgers.”

My only complaint about The Yes Men is that 83 minutes just wasn’t enough to satisfy me. I laughed out loud too many times to allow the culture-jamming fun to end so soon. It’s directed by the geniuses behind American Movie, perhaps the greatest documentary ever made, so you know you’re in good hands with this one. —Rod Lott

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Just like it sounds, Growin’ a Beard is a documentary about a beard-growing contest. In particular, the annual St. Patrick’s Day Donegal beard-growing contest in dinky Shamrock, Texas. The Donegal beard is a mustache-less style — think leprechauns and the Amish. Starting just before New Year’s Day in 1997, director Mike Woolf focuses his camera on four longtime residents (and oft-winners), asking their strategies and secrets. A monkey wrench is thrown into the tradition when a young art director from Austin enters on a lark and threatens to usurp the regulars, even though an outsider has never won.

That man, Scotty McAfee, is the subject of the film’s funniest moment, when people who know him compare the ad man to a series of hirsute pop icons, including Grizzly Adams, the original G.I. Joe doll and Jonny Quest guardian Race Bannon.

Thirty minutes is plenty long for this doc. Although pleasant and unthreatening, its numerous shaving scenes grow tiresome and could have been, um, trimmed. The video is jerky at times, but such is to be expected for a no-budget, handheld effort — and Woolf deserves props for not making fun of his subjects. He shows them as they are, which unintentionally depressed me, because I get easily bummed out thinking about small-town life.

The real reason to check out this DVD is for a bonus short titled The 72 Oz. Steak, which packs three times the laughs and suspense in a third of the time. At the famed Big Texan in Amarillo, a friend of Woolf’s attempts to eat the titular object — plus potato, salad, shrimp cocktail and dinner roll — in an hour in order to avoid paying $50 for it. Who knew four pounds of meat could be so enthralling? —Rod Lott

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Many things of beauty exist that man simply was not meant to fuck with: thunderstorms, fire, waterfalls, Jennifer Lopez, grizzly bears. The latter proved the last of Timothy Treadwell. As Werner Herzog’s wildly acclaimed documentary Grizzly Man proves, the self-appointed bear protector/failed actor knew this — absolutely knew he could be bitten, decapitated, eaten, shish-kabobbed, what have you — and yet put himself in harm’s way, on purpose, for 13 years, until one of the bears finally got tired of him being around.

Sporting a haircut that screams “Jeff Daniels in Dumb & Dumber,” Treadwell shot his own field movies, which show the drama queen hanging out with the bears in a proximity that humans should do only when friggin’ zoo bars exist between the two. He talks to the bears like a would-be Dr. Dolittle, granting them them cutesie names: Grinch, Aunt Melissa, Mr. Chocolate, Freckles. (Ditto for foxes, i.e. Banjo.) I can guess how Sgt. Brown got his moniker; he’s the bear that defecates a lot while fighting with one Mickey Bear.

Speaking of poop, Treadwell is shown touching a fresh, steaming pile because he thinks it’s beautiful it came from the butt of his beloved Wendy. If you think that’s weird, wait until he sheds tears over a dead bee. Yes, there’s something that wasn’t right with the man; apparently, he drank too many brain cells away to think he had forged some relationship with them that they understood his words. He’s like The Crocodile Hunter without the cable contract.

That makes Herzog’s doc fascinating and infuriating. If you’re looking to get off on grizzly footage of Treadwell’s death by furry creature, you’ll be disappointed; seek solace in your Faces of Death collection, perv. (You will, however, find an extended story about exploding soup, if you’re into that sort of thing.) Still, the movie is unsettling, and not just because of an unblinking mortician. Moral of the story? Please do not feed the bears. —Rod Lott

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