Lionsgate

The wildly popular Bratz line of dolls comes to life in this feature-length straight-to-video adventure that finds the girls flashing back to their tween years. When Ginger moves into the neighborhood, she decides to break the ice with a slumber party. She invites Cloe, Sasha, Jade, Yasmin, and Meygan and the whole gang takes turns telling spooky and silly stories while carving out new friendships. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

If police lieutenant Harvey Keitel's life could get any more sordid, he could probably sell tickets. The least of his vices is gambling, which has gotten him in Dutch with the mob. He abuses his body with drugs and his soul with hookers, and now he's turned to exploiting teenage girls for sex. Keitel is forced to reassess his life while investigating the rape of a nun. Director Abel Ferrara co-wrote the screenplay with Zoe Lund, who as Zoe Tamerlis starred in Ferrara's cult classic Ms. 45. A soundtrack tune by rapper Schoolly D, which was included in the initial release of Bad Lieutenant, featured a sample from Led Zeppelin which was used without permission; the song has since been excised from the soundtrack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Doug Pray's entertaining and opinionated documentary on the Seattle music scene takes the (admittedly unusual) position that the Grunge Explosion of the mid-1990s was the worst thing to happen to rock music in the Pacific Northwest. Hype! depicts Seattle as a town where a fertile musical community with a distinctive sound and style grew largely because it was ignored by the rest of the world. Once the unexpected success of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden made Seattle the rock capital of the world, drugs took hold, opportunists scrambled for the spotlight, and cheap flannel shirts became "grunge fashion." The movie features revealing (and often hilarious) interviews with members of such groups as Mudhoney, the Mono Men, the Fastbacks, Seven Year Bitch, Tad, Girl Trouble, Gas Huffer, Dead Moon, and the Supersuckers, as well as performance footage of all these bands and informed perspectives from a number of behind-the-scenes figures. It also features a technically shaky but historically priceless clip of Nirvana's first public performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Differentiating this TV-movie version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol from the hundreds of other adaptations of the same Yuletide classic is its tongue-in-cheek ambience and a bundle of memorable tunes by perennial Disney composer Alan Menken and former Schoolhouse Rock lyricist Lynn Ahrens. Inspired by a stage musical which used to be presented annually at New York's Madison Square Garden, this Christmas Carol stars Kelsey Grammer as tight-fisted Ebenezer Scrooge, who sees the errors of his ways just in time to oversee the "best Christmas ever" for his long-suffering clerk Bob Cratchit (Edward Gower) and "God Bless Us Everyone" Tiny Tim (Jacob Moriarty). On this occasion, the spirits materializing for Scrooge's benefit include Jason Alexander as a neurotic Jacob Marley, Jesse L. Martin as a laid-back Ghost of Christmas Present, Jane Krakowski as a sexy Ghost of Christmas Past, and Geraldine Chaplin as a spooky Ghost of Christmas Future (in Wizard of Oz tradition, three of these four actors also appear as "real" people in Scrooge's everyday life). Highlights include the song "Link by Link," wherein the ghostly Marley and a chorus of wraiths perform a lively ball-and-chain dance number, and the outsized Christmas celebration in the home of Scrooge's first boss, Mr. Fezziwig (Brian Bedford), which features among other things a "pole dance" by the Ghost of Christmas Past! Filmed on-location in Budapest (which sort of looks like Dickensian London if you squint real hard), A Christmas Carol: The Musical won an Emmy award for musical director Michael Kosarin -- and, alas, tanked in the ratings when first telecast by NBC on November 28, 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the fourth go-round in the Bloodsport series (with Daniel Bernhardt once again tackling the role created by Jean-Claude VanDamme), a cop ends up in prison while trying to avenge the death of his partner, where he's drawn into a savage martial arts battle to the death. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide