favorite documentaries

[LittleFoot]

I'm trying to study documentarties, so if any one is a fan of that genre then could you tell me your personal top 10 or so. This is a pretty broad question since I haven't seen many so I'm open to any suggestions.

[HansMyHedgehog]

i have seen very few documentaries, but of the ones i have seen, my favorites are Bowling for Columbine, Capturing the Friedmans and Supersize Me. The Thin Blue Line is a well-made and well-argued one, but i personally thought it was kinda boring.

[Madhatter]

Some of my favorites are: Mr Death, Weather Underground, Fog of War, Bowling for Columbine, Capturing the Friedmans and Don't Look Back

[Avid_Fan]

1. SPELLBOUND

2. Bowling for Columbine

3. Dogtown and Z-Boys

[MasterCXtreme]

O'course it's not an official documentary, but I always laugh my ass off when watching "Goin Down To South Park."

...Bowling For Columbine is very good, despite what some say... but let's not open a can of worms here.

[UseYourIllusion]

Nobody has mentioned "American Movie" yet? American Movie is without a shadow of a doubt my favorite documentary, and one of my favorite films period.

[A.J. Hakari]

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE
FAHRENHEIT 9/11
THE BIG ONE
ROGER & ME
SPELLBOUND
WINGED MIGRATION
MR. DEATH
DECASIA
THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO
AMERICAN MOVIE

[Kucha]

My two personal favs...

Spellbound - (10/10)
Bowling For Columbine - (9/10)

[bjeggert82]

Lost in LaMancha

[rushmore beauty]

Crumb. Easily my favorite...

[Raoul Duke]

Fahrenheit 9/11 - 9/10
Bowling for Columbine - 9/10
Roger & Me - 8/10
Spellbound - 7/10

Still need to see "Super Size Me".

[MickeyKnox]

Bowling For Columbine
Roger and Me
Capturing the Friedmans
Fahrenheit 9/11
Super Size Me

[LiquidSalt]

Farenheit 9/11 (10/10)
Super Size Me (9.5/10)
Bowling For Columbine (9.5/10)
Spellbound (9/10)
The Fog of War (8.5/10)

In that order.

[Allie]

Nobody's mentioned Hoop Dreams ?!?

Well that and Spellbound are my two favorites. Documentaries are great.

[willem84]

1. Bowling for Columbine
2. Murder on a Sunday Morning
3. Spellbound
4. Winged Migration
5. The Weather Underground
6. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from Robert S. McNamara
7. Strange Fruit
8. Capturing the Freidmans

And that's all I've seen so far because A. I'm cheap and never go to the movies and B. haven't gotten around to seeing any documentaries prior to the year 2000.

However, I've liked all of those and one documentary I saw at a festival I can't really remember the name of.... but it wasn't all that great.

Documentaries RULE!! :)

[Indy in IN]

Endless Summer
Endless Summer 2
Dogtown and Z-Boys
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

[QUENTIN]

I'd say if you're studying docs you should check out South and Nanook of The North, then check out the experimental semi-doc stuff of Dziga Vertov (such as The Man With The Movie Camera). Berlin, Symphony of A Big City and Leni Riefhenstahl's propoganda/doc Triumph of The Will are important pictures as well. Definetly see Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) the defining holocaust documentary, follow with holocaust/WWII themed Shoah and The Sorrow and The Pity. Then move onto the ever-influential Maysles' brothers films, particularly Salesman. Then check out what they were doing in the late 60's with concerts in Woodstock, Gimme Shelter and Monterey Pop. And it's eventual evolution into The Song Remains The Same (concert footage scenes), Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, and Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense. Or with musicians, like D.A. Pennebaker's collaboration with Bob Dylan on the milestone, Don't Look Back, and later working with David Bowie on Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. Pennebaker would go on to direct the behind-the-scenes look at the Clinton campaign, The War Room.

Beautiful, picturesque nature-centric documentaries by Godfrey Reggio like Koyaanisqatsi, Powwaqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi are mesmerizing. Chris Marker is a very experimental documentarian whose Sans Soliel is a highly regarded semi-documentary and whose La Jetee was the basis for 12 Monkeys. Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, U.S.A, like Salesman is a landmark in the genre and her American Dream won best documentary at the Oscars years later. Ken Burns epic The Civil War is probably the most seen documentary pre-Fahrenheit, it was something of a phenomenon when it aired on PBS. Burns invented a style of illusory cinematography by panning across pictures slowly that is used often in docs ever since.

If you're a fan of Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a fascinating look at how that may have been the hardest movie to make, ever...unless it was Fitzcarraldo, the perilous making of which is wonderfully chronicled in Les Blank's Burden of Dreams. These were the pre-cursors to all the making-of docs found on DVDs today, but they were actually great pictures rather than essentially a sales pitch. A great look at the making of a movie still not made is American Movie, which tells the story of a movie geek with a dead-end life trying to make his masterpiece and getting it funded by making a cheap quickie horror flick. Lost in La Mancha is an account, planned like one of those DVD docs, of how Terry Gilliam's attempt to make Don Quixote, like Orson Welles before him, was doomed.

Investigative documentaries, particularly of crimes, can be traced at their peaks by watching The Thin Blue Line, Brother's Keeper, and the Paradise Lost films. All show a corrupt judicial system, as does the great On The Ropes. Sad but probing looks at terrible events can be found by watching Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls and the documentary that inspired Boys Don't Cry, The Brandon Teena Story. Nick Broomfeld's films are more inflammatory and he gets some flack for it, but he's one of the ballsiest documentarians. His Kurt & Courtney, Biggie & Tupac, and Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madame are all worthwhile. Even more controversial is Michael Moore, whose Roger & Me, The Big One, Bowling for Columbine, and Fahrenheit 9/11 are pointed attacks of big business and bad government.

Then check out simple, moving, intimate portraits of interesting people, such as the Errol Morris (my favorite documentary filmmaker) pictures A Brief History of Time, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, Mr. Death, and The Fog of War, Terry Zwigoff's Crumb, and Steve James's Hoop Dreams and Stevie. Also from Morris is Gates of Heaven, a film routinely hailed as one of the best documentaries of all time (and a movie Roger Ebert names as one of his top ten flicks of all-time), that is unfortunately unseen by me. But if you can get your hands on it, I'm sure it's worth your time. From director Michael Apted comes perhaps the best idea for a documentary, he follows the lives of a group of people, interviewing them about life once every seven years. It started with 7 Up and has continued on to 42 Up. I've only seen 28 and 35 but they left an indelible impression on me. They're time-capsule movies.

As many schmoes lists suggest, documentaries have become much more mainstream and popular recently. Thanks in part to Michael Moore and also distributors trusting that audiences may want non-fiction, recent films like Supersize Me, Spellbound, Capturing The Friedmans, Winged Migration, and Touching The Void all found decent-sized audiences and are a good way to see the current stage of evolution for documentaries. While you're studying all this, you might as well check out This Is Spinal Tap, Bob Roberts, and The Blair Witch Project too, effective mockumentaries parodying and playing off the effect of real documentaries. Enjoy.

[ColinM]

If this one counts...

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000021Y7X.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

If not, I’d probably go with this one (although there are tons I still want to see)...

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000CABBT.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

For both, the beauty of them is in their simplicity. Demme’s direction in Stop Making Sense is excellent in that there is no distracting, MTV-like flashiness to it; he simply keeps the focus on the great musicians and their music. He almost never cuts to the audience, and thus never reminds us that we are not actually there ourselves. At the same time, as David Byrne points out on the DVD commentary, he films the musicians not just when they have a solo, but when they show some character attribute – that thing Steve Scales does with his tongue, for example – that makes you feel like you know them as a person. The music is incredible, of course, but Demme’s direction is just as much a key to its success.

As for Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary, the camera simply stays on Traudl Junge the entire time and lets her tell her story; there are no dramatic reenactments or anything remotely like that. It is just a woman talking for ninety minutes, telling a fascinating but never-before-told story, and shedding a new light on one of the most discussed historical figures of all-time.

[Meatwad]

The Smashing Machine: the Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000C52JT.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

This document follows the life of Mark Kerr as he prepares to fight in a tournament in Japan, but also features his personal life and battles with drug problems. It personally made me a fan of mma (mixed martial arts) but I think everyone should give this film a chance.

[Tayzlor]

Wow, thank you for that wonderful writeup QUENTIN.

I don't have a favorite documentary myself, but a good recent one I saw was The Fog of War, which I gave a ten.

Does anyone know where I could acquire any of those Michael Apted UP movies? Roger Ebert also has those listed among his great movies, and they look pretty damn interesting.

[Gian-Sergio]

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE
THE LAST WALTZ
HOOP DREAMS
CONTROL ROOM
FULL TILT BOOGIE

[shawn-o]

Bowling For Columbine
Hoop Dreams
Fahrenheit 9/11
Super Size me

havent seen very many documentaries

[jaw2929]

-Fahrenheit 9/11

-Bowling for Columbine

-Roger and Me

-The Big One

-Beyond the Mat

-Super Size Me

-Wrestling With Shadows

[LukeLovesMovies]

Beyond the Mat

[morricone]

Bowling for Columbine
Fahrenheit 9/11
Roger & Me
Super Size Me
Beyond the Mat

I haven't seen too many documentaries. I have The Fog of War in my DVD collection. I need to watch that sometime.

[ShaggyLpool]

I would say capturing the Friedmans. Not that you can actually enjoy the film, what with the subject matter etc, but you cant look away. The whole back story of how the film got made just adds to the whole effect

[bluesbrother965]

The Kids Are Alright is my favorite, followed by a bunch of other concert docs (Woodstock, Last Waltz, etc.). Thin Blue Line is alright and definitely important, but I thought it was really boring. Spellbound I didn't like very much at all, I know it's supposed to be about the American dream, which I understood, but in the end it seemed to me like much ado about nothing, much like the spelling bee itself. I really want to see Hoop Dreams, can't wait for the criterion release.

[zeppelin]

Crumb is not only my favorite documentary, but one of my favorite movies period. Hoop Dreams isn't far behind.

[Joshmo]

Favorites:

F 9/11
Roger & Me
The Big One
Jefftowne
Jupiters Wife
Crumb
Stevie
American Movie
Wadd
Festival Express
The Last Waltz
The Yes Men

Most pretentious: Madonna: Truth or Dare

Most Boring: Winged Migration

Most repetively stupid: Naked States

Most Inane: Legend of Ron Jeremy

Most Pathetic: Mayor of Sunset Strip

[markuskorpela]

Bowling for Columbine
Fahrenheit 9/11
Roger & Me
Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope
Super Size Me

[Joshmo]

Man! I forgot to add what is perhaps the most socially relevant and important set documentaries ever committed to film:


The Up Series by Michael Apted

Another interesting one is The Same River Twice.

[Danny L]

LOST IN LA MANCHA
CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS
PORNSTAR
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE
FAHRENHEIT 911
MARTIN SCORSESE: A PERSONAL JOURNEY...

[Briare Rabbit]

The Kid Stays in the Picture is a funny and fascinating account of that sleazy era of hollywood known as the early 1970's, as told by the big man himself, Robert Evans. Follow up with some information, it's great. And Evans is a wonderful story teller.

Also, if you have Netflix, get the Disney treasures set On the Frontline which has one of my favorite films on it; the propaganda documentary Victory Through Air Power.

[Pulp_Joker]

Any Michael Moore documentary
Super Size Me
Beyond the Mat
Hoop Dreams
The Fog of War
Spellbound

[Sigur509]

When We Were Kings.

[martyds761]

Super Size Me
Bowling for Columbine

[Cronos]

Bowling For Columbine - 10/10
Farenheit 9/11 - 10/10