Moderately interesting.



Excellent documentary.



Sequel to the above. Also excellent.

Re: Documentaries
 

Would any of you be interested in any of my short documentaries? I've made six so far.

Very interesting documentary from France. The petite fille, Sasha, was born a boy, but has always felt that she is a girl. Now in the 3rd grade & her mama bear mother has finally convinced Sasha’s school to, essentially, let her be a girl.

Sasha has a difficult road ahead of her as her mother tells us. Her gender dysphoria will need to be addressed in many ways. Prior to the onset of puberty Sasha will need steroids so that she doesn’t begin to physically resemble a boy.

It’s all very complicated, but she has a devoted family to get her through this.

Sasha is a darling little girl who revels in all things girly.

World-famous chef Yotam Ottolenghi teams up with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to showcase desserts from various master chefs. Quite interesting. He’s an interesting guy originally from Israel with British citizenship.

Loved this & will see it again. Housing projects in Motherwell, Scotland & focusing on one particular group of very young teens. (Who act much older than they are.)



Such a weird documentary. I finished it though it was super tiresome.

Im not big into non-historical documentaries (preferring Discovery channel, History channel, scholarly podcasts) but the one that sticks out in the political realm is Super Size Me where the host eats nothing but McDonalds for a month and documents his health decline.

Very weird family.

Re-watch

Really enjoyed this. She’s really a very nice woman.

Loved this powerful documentary.

Very interesting.

Very interesting.

A hot mess. I’m not sufficiently interested in Kilmer so bailed out PDQ.



Weird & weirder. :eek:

Re: Documentaries
 

Bill Walton (parts 3/4 will appear on 6/13 on ESPN)


https://youtu.be/pWkbISsMhSY

So utterly confusing. Couldn’t make heads or tails of it.



Interesting. She’s a nice lady though I can’t recall ever seeing her in anything.

Never seen the I Love Lucy Show, but I enjoyed this documentary.

A father “interviews” his daughter on her 2nd birthday & her following 16 birthdays until she turns 18. Touching & sweet.

Very interesting documentary. A man for many years has been looking for his sister’s murderer.

Very interesting documentary from Netflix. A family’s pain & suffering when their little girl becomes very I’ll with CRPS & eventually the parents are blamed. It’s actually a nightmare & not uncommon in America.

I loved the Brooke Shields documentary too.

@Stirchley your posts on this thread are gold to me.

I have a fascination for NYC, in terms of culture and general mentality, specially from the 80s and 90s... and documentaries and short-stories/films are nowadays the only genera captivating me to spend screen time on.

I'll be watching the following:

• Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan
• Lenox Hill
• Emergency NYC
• Cutie and the Boxer
• Welfare
• The World Before Your Feet

If you know anymore, just fire away.

Are you watching the third season of How to with John Wilson?

Distressing but ultimately hopeful documentary about a troubled woman who was severely bullied by her partner in the USA.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...pg_UX1000_.jpg

A good NYC documentary is "Moments Like This Never Last". One might not be a big fan of the particular artist being profiled (I'm at best on the fence about Dash Snow's work), but it's more about New York street culture pre 911. It's good.

Re: Documentaries
 

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...xMjM@._V1_.jpg

Everyone will always know Robert Englund as "Freddy Krueger" or as the good-natured Willy on "V", but there is more to Robert than meets the eye. This is a great documentary that delves into the professional and personal life of the iconic actor.

American movie (1999)

I am not a huge docu guy but I watch this docu when I am bored and I found out from rotten tomatoes when I finished watching the docu I was inspired to make any short film. It's very inspirational

Becoming Bond (2017) -

This is a funny, touching and inspiring "this is your life" documentary about the man who famously played James Bond only once: George Lazenby. The Australian car salesman turned model turned actor tells his extraordinary story from his humble beginnings to what happened after his 1969 movie came out while performers reenact his words. It results in a movie that is part underdog story, part bittersweet romance and part swinging sex comedy. There is even some Catch Me if You Can-style implausibility thrown in for good measure.

Despite the title and poster, only the last third of the movie has much to do with the James Bond franchise. Even so, I can't imagine even die-hard Bond fans being disappointed with this story of how an unknown landed such a plum role. It's one that defies the odds so much, you will wonder if it was made up (and so does the interviewer, I might add, who interrupts the movie to ask George, "is that true?") You see it in baby George’s fight with a rare kidney condition that causes most sufferers to not live past their teens, becoming a successful car salesman despite not graduating high school, and especially the centerpiece of the movie, his tumultuous romance with the way above his station Belinda. Josh Lawson amusingly plays the adult Lazenby as the charmed man his story makes him out to be, and there are some inspired and well-timed cameos. You even get to experience the free love '60s secondhand in a way that...let's just say makes the movie only for adults in the best way.

So, why did George only play James Bond once? I'll just say the reason is true to his character, the movie leaves room for debate about it, and most importantly, it makes you understand why. You also get living proof that you should not consider your birthplace, past, social class, etc. as roadblocks in the way of getting what you want out of life. Did George have advantages many of us do not have, and if everything he says is accurate, did he take the left hand path here and there? Perhaps, but what he demonstrates still holds true. The movie also proves that he deserves to be treated as more than just a punchline.

I’ve seen all the documentaries you list. All very good.

Never got into the John Wilson stuff.

Lordy, cheerful, what? Have put this in my watchlist.

Pivoting: I suppose you know that the Eternal Daughter was shot in Wales? Excellent movie.

I promise not to post another OxyContin documentary. Very interesting though.



Interesting documentary.



Lordy, these people are cray cray. I’m terrified of water & cannot believe what these people do. Loved this.

Looks a lot like "The Florida Project".

Similar, but both are worth watching.

Yeah not seen it yet. Will try and get round to it.

Do we see footage of her burns? Because I don’t want to see anything like that before I watch it.

Yes. It's not for the faint hearted.

Glad I asked. I’ll pass on this.

When I lived in Manhattan, my biggest desire was to be photographed by this man. Never happened, but I liked the documentary.

Interesting documentary. Very sad that he took his own life.

Tragic & very disturbing. Tragic for humans as well as the killer whales themselves.

Scary as hell. Alex Honnold is either brave or nuts.



Interesting documentary that tells the story of Hipgnosis, the company behind so many iconic album covers, including the one pictured here from Dark Side of the Moon.

Re: Documentaries
 

In The Court of the King Crimson
(Fripp didn't mention Greg Lake once)


https://youtu.be/Kg3osMG5yK4

Re: Documentaries
 

Irwin and Fran (2013)

https://youtu.be/v80Ahyard24

The Fake Sheikh (2023) Watched a good biographical documentary miniseries re Mazher Mahmood, the cutthroat investigative journalist who was widely popular in the Brit "News of the World" tabloid newspaper. For a number of years he had oodles of sensational prurient stories that resulted in ruined careers and convictions, along with journalistic awards for himself. He finally got taken to task...

Available on Amazon Prime.

Brutal to watch. If bombing hospitals & maternity wards is not a war crime, I don’t know what is.

Every member of the foreign press left Mariupol except this guy & his photographer. Twenty days in they managed to leave with their precious video & sound footage.

Re-watch of this very grim documentary. This guy murders his wife & throws his two little girls into the oil tanks at his workplace. All to start a new life with a younger thinner version of his wife.

Piece of work. :eek:

Moderately interesting.

AppleTVPlus is such a clunky website. Been looking for “My Stuff” for several days now. :mad:

Should be in up next on your watch tab.

Don’t know what this means.

Currently watching this miniseries. It's pretty good but extremely upsetting.

https://i.imgur.com/D29eDzC.jpg

Right, I did see this.

Never heard of this documentary. Will look for it here.

Cinéma vérité. Youngest daughter films her somewhat dysfunctional family in NYC. If one can look past the filthy state of the house (I couldn’t) it’s a fascinating project. I watched it twice in a row.

A good documentary on Harrison Ford, his acting career and his Indiana Jones movies.

Capturing the Killer Nurse

Watched the documentary after seeing The Good Nurse with Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne. Recommended.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w780/4oPj...glhneU869X.jpg

'Preciate the tip. Watched it last night, and enjoyed it. I was a Ford fan from the beginning. He had a stand-out, if small part in The Conversation (1974), which is one of my favorite movies. The SW and IJ movies made him a mega star, but I enjoyed him in other pictures as well, e.g. Witness (1985) and Presumed Innocent (1990), among others.

He's had a great, long career, and he's not done yet!

He's able to continue working because he's in good shape as he works out regularly and diets on fish and vegetables. Definitely a top notch actor.

A Disturbance in the Force -

This is a pretty good talking heads documentary that explains how, ahem...how the hell the Star Wars Holiday Special happened. Thanks to the commentary of the surviving production staff, those who were around while they were making it and famous Star Wars fans who were lucky (or unlucky) enough to see it like Patton Oswalt, Paul Scheer, Weird Al Yankovic and Kevin Smith, you get a comprehensive answer. There are also interview recordings of those who are no longer with us like Carrie Fisher (R.I.P.) and who would rather not talk about it such as George Lucas (of course; I mean, he claimed he would destroy every copy if he could) and Harrison Ford.

I like how the documentary explains that the special is very much a product of the variety-show obsessed '70s TV landscape, which is especially interesting to me since I don't know much about what TV was like at that time. Howard Cosell, of all people, had his own variety show, for instance. It is also illuminating and not surprising that not only were most of the people who worked on it unfamiliar with Star Wars or science fiction in general, the production was plagued with problems like budget overruns, staff shakeups, you name it. As for the commentary about the most outrageous moments, it's funny even though their cringiness and unintentional comedy speak for themselves. I mean, what really is there to say about the moment when the wookie grandfather watches VR porn? I also appreciate that it mentions all the times other Star Wars programming references it and how it has influenced other holiday specials like the Guardians of the Galaxy one. Don't expect great filmmaking from this - again, it uses a standard talking heads format that it does not deviate from much - but whether or not you have seen the special (I have not, for what it's worth), you're bound to become even more fascinated by it as well as even more of a Star Wars fan than you were before. Oh, and it was nice to see Gilbert Gottfried (R.I.P.) and to see him be funny one more time.

Re: Documentaries
 

United Artists (who wouldn't buckle and cave in to be approved by MPAA)


https://youtu.be/ri0ln17jaD4

Wham! -

This documentary succeeds at telling the Wham! story and at showing the power of friendship. Besides some new commentary from Andrew Ridgely here and there, most of the interviews and conversations are from the band's heyday. It is a work of art how director Chris Smith and crew weave old and new together to tell the band's entire story and without using a narrator. The quality of the footage is also a testament to how far we've come with film restoration. The clips from their tour in China, for instance, look like they could have been filmed this year.

I like that the documentary starts from the very beginning with a friendly gesture many of us would hesitate to do: volunteer to show the new kid around. Andrew did this for George, the result being a friendship as unbreakable as Ferris Bueller and Cameron's and maybe just as similar. The way it explores Andrew's outgoing, daring nature as opposed to George's shy and insecure one is revealing, especially considering how different their stage personas were. I was also moved by how it explores that George Michael would not have been possible without Andrew, not only by how he gave George wings, but also that Wham! ended mainly because Andrew wanted him to keep flying. That George came out to him so early in the band's lifespan was surprising and I was moved that Andrew was just as frustrated as George was that he had to hide it and intrigued by how many Wham! songs reference his struggle. I also liked seeing how much work goes into making what too many dismiss as boy band pop as well as how evil the recording industry can be (the pair barely saw any money and had to live at home even after their big breakthrough, for instance). It ends up being a tribute to all the good friends out there for how it shows that being one can make dreams come true. It also proves that Ridgely deserves a lot more respect than just being labeled as "that other guy in Wham!"

Loved this on hulu.

Re-watch. This platoon spends 15 months in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan in 2007. Excellent documentary.



The wedding ceremony in 2018 at Windsor Castle of Prince Harry & Meghan Markle. Happy times then, but it all seems to have gone rather *i*s up. :rolleyes:

Very interesting.

I actually paid to see this. Taylor is a beautiful woman, but I confirmed my belief that her songs do not resonate with me.

I haven't seen it but I've heard ... things.

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...Z3xjboH4XZ.jpg

Good documentary on max.

Weird, but good.

I felt the same way about Britney Spears.

No way would I pay a dime for Britney Spears documentary.

Very interesting. Rory Kennedy, who was born after RFK’s death, directed & produced this.

Both good in their own ways.

Re: Documentaries
 

I just finished The Greatest Night in Pop.

Re: Documentaries
 

For anyone who might have TCM > On Demand...
I've been watching a series called "The Power of Film" (which they've been airing twice on Thursday nights).
It's a six-part series.

It's not the typical behind the scenes, making of, or movie trivia documentary, but one that follows the patterns in movies and explores what it is about the great ones that makes them great. Film professor Howard Suber is the host and walks you through many film clips.

These episodes are very entertaining because the watch time seems to whiz by.

They kind of have the feeling of the old Joseph Campbell series ("The Power of Myth") that used to air on PBS.

P.S. I just checked the reviews on IMDB - and most are flames saying this series is at a third-grade level (no wonder I like it!) ;)

I just happened to watch the one from last night. I enjoy just about any documentary about films and film making, but I thought Prof. Surber was making points where there were often none to make. IOW he does what many do when discussing the arts: they over-intellectualize the meanings and their insights in their commentary about the films or the selected clips. He seemed to go from one brief point to the next with little connection. Still, I'd watch another one, but I have the feeling that Surber should stick to academia where that approach is the norm.

Good points. I think I just like movie documentaries. I mentioned not long ago (on some thread) that I was a fan of the TV series That's Hollywood which aired back in the late 1970's and was narrated by Tom Bosley.

I like anything with lots of movie clips! ;)
But I do find the episodes of this series to fly by, so I must be enjoying it (whether I agree entirely with it or not). His delivery is kind of enchanting.

On the point of over intellectualizing, I too would remind Prof. Suber that sometimes "a cigar is just a cigar", but then analyzing movies & looking for patterns in them is what he does. I will say I never gave much thought to things like the "one hour turn around" in movies or that most stories focus on the protagonist being "trapped" in some way.

(My one criticism is: a wider range of movies including some lesser known or foreign films would make the series better as he seems to reference a lot of the same films over and over).

Very good from Australia.



Re-watch. Excellent & sad.

Re: Documentaries
 

Actors and Directors Talk Marlon Brando


https://youtu.be/0F2OZW6KaSg

It's the reason I've been watching... My biggest criticism is that I don't ever wanna see movies mentioned from the last 40 years on Turner CLASSIC Movies. It defeats the purpose, because I didn't watch many of those movies.



I've recorded them automatically, but I haven't seen it yet, and I've had all the time in the world, but have put anything/everything except this, but I hope it's good. I think the last episode is on love (a communist conspiracy)


https://youtu.be/IGFzyuxglnU

Re: Documentaries
 

Thanks for sharing this

Re: Documentaries
 

TCM is playing documentaries all day and night..
"Harlan County USA" is on in a few hours.

Good one.

So glad this was free with Prime. A hot mess. $20,000,000 for the album & this so-called movie. Documentary? :rolleyes:

So.... not likely to get an Oscar nomination for best documentary of 2024, huh? :p

Tragic loss.

Loved this. And it was 3-1/2 hours long!

Having watched the 5 feature-length documentaries that are up for the Oscars this year, I really have to say, they are all really amazing, but the topics they cover are also really bleak and almost depressing to watch.

More than any other year in recent memory, it really takes a strong stomach to sit through all of them, especially if you watch them in quick succession. :(

Oppenheimer: The Real Story (2023)
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...5NzYy._V1_.jpg

It tries to tackle a whooole lot in less than 2 hours, and it does tend to focus most on Oppenheimer himself as opposed to his work.

The Exit of the Trains was a recent Romanian documentary I watched last month that was simply amazing. Photographs of Jewish victims who were killed during the Iasi Pogrom are shown, with an accompanying narration about how they were murdered,*

This goes on for 2 hours and 40 mins, and then we are shown the real atrocities. For the last 20 minutes, Photographs of the massacre are revealed on screen, and it isn’t for the faint at heart. We’re talking bloody bullet riddled bodies on the side of the road or near the walls, where they were executed.

The Romanian officials who carried it out really did photograph the event, and some even seem to be posing for the camera.

Powerful. A father’s fierce love for his first-born. Totally worth watching.

15 Hours is better.

Good stuff. I enjoyed it.

Frederick Wiseman directed this 4 hours long documentary. I loved it & could have watched more.

Re: Documentaries
 

Where's My Roy Cohn?
There's some archival footage I've never seen before, and a few stories I hadn't been privy to, so I'll see the rest of this (after doing a quick browse)


https://youtu.be/ucOtZEu-SKw

Interesting.

Four hours long & there is a 36 hour version if one desires it. Very interesting. Based on a book written by McQueen’s wife BiancaStigter.

Delightful & sad documentary about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) (2023)

For those who suspect that the so called "climate crisis" is a scam, this documentary completely refutes the international climate hoax and the reasons behind its proliferation. Featuring well established respected scientists, they reveal why human beings have nothing to do with changes in climate.

https://youtu.be/k3Ut3cjENZg?si=E3TzHwwfjJiURCbt

Interesting. From Estonia.

I watched this today because of your post. I really liked it. I found it to be beautiful and compelling. I would like to see more films like this.

Weird. Trying to post TOTAL TRUST in documentaries thread. It’s about surveillance in China & is darn scary. Every time I try to upload the cover shot I get this message:

“Your submission could not be processed because a security token was missing.

If this occurred unexpectedly, please inform the administrator and describe the action you performed before you received this error.”

@Yoda

This happens if a page (like a reply page or a private message page) is left open for a long time. If you then try to submit the form without refreshing the page, it'll give the above error. If you refresh before submitting it should be fine.

The logic underlying that is that each visit has a security token, so if you're away for a long time the token expires. Which is fine for just browsing but causes a mismatch if the very old, unrefreshed page attempts to actually post data to the site.