Favorite Documentaries

Im going for a more recent doco in Not Quite Hollywood an absolute cracker of a film that goes back to the great days of Australian genre cinema

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"Tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper."

I just wondered if you'd seen it, I didn't mean because of the step-father and the polygraph test. As you say, they're not that difficult to 'fool'.

Third one's supposed to be released this year.

500 Nations is still a favorite... but I would like to add:

Incident at Oglala (1992) Michael Apted

Darfur Now (2007) Ted Braun

Super Size Me (2004) Morgan Spurlock

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Davis Guggenheim

March of the Penguins (2005) Luc Jacquet

In Search Of Ancient Ireland (2002) Leo Eaton

The 11th Hour (2007) Nadia Conners & Leila Conners Petersen

The Last Waltz (1978) Martin Scorsese



And I have The Devil Came on Horseback (2007)... and How the West Was Lost (2008) on my 'to see list'... has anyone else seen them?

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How long is 500 Nations Caitlyn? I can't seem to find a running time for it.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

If I remember right, it is a little over 6 hours....

Good call - EXCELLENT doco. Beyond entertaining!

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"I'm tired - tired of playing ze game"

Has anyone seen a documentary on witchcraft named Häxan? I'm adding it to my 'to see' list....

Saw the movie, "Amadeus" and for a movie about a musician I really found it entertaining.

I liked basically all the docu's from Michael Moore, especially Sicko.

Greets
Spikez

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What's the best documentary you've seen? And not the "based on a true story" movies, but one with actual real life footage, people, etc?

I once told somebody that most of my fave documentaries involved surfing and Nazis, so they recommended to me the non-documentary Surf Nazis Must Die!, so maybe it's time I looked into it.

On the surfing end are The Endless Summer, Endless Summer II, and Riding Giants. The Nazis include Triumph of the Will, Olympia, the Why We Fight series and The Black Fox. Other documentaries I recommend include The Thin Blue Line, On Any Sunday, Four Days in November, JFK: Years Of Lightning, Day of Drums, King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis. I also find the Michael Moore films entertaining, but whether they qualify as documentaries is another story. I would list Stop Making Sense although I don't actually think it's a documentary, but Concert For George is a more traditional musical documentary. Woodstock is a documentary, but it's also a much more powerful and elegant political statement than anything which Moore has made. I also like Manson, Marjoe, The Hellstrom Chronicle (borderline doc, even if it won a Best Doc Oscar), and too many others to think of right now, although I have to mention the three That's Entertainment! films and That's Dancing! as the best docs about Hollywood and Marty Scorsese's No Direction Home: Bob Dylan is wonderful too.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I want to see that new LeBron docu. coming out in October. He seems like he's got a really good story behind all that fame, plus he is a funny guy too.
I found some funny footage from back in the day....
Check it out!

http://www.statefarm.com/lebron/#lbvideo06

I really enjoyed the documentary "Man On Wire" about the daredevil escapades of Phillipe Petit. He was the famous tightrope walker who walked between the two towers.

I though the storytelling and the incredibly emotional narration of Petit made the documentary so engaging. I felt like I was up there with him. :-)

Jay
On Screen

Mine is the

The Fog of War (2003)

I'm still stunned every time I see it.

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

Triumph des Willens ( Leni Riefenstahl, 1935 ) - Triumph is for the most part a beautiful movie, the continuous shots are masterfully executed, there are some breathtaking tracking shots of large crowds where the camera equipment seems inexistent that plunge the viewer directly amidst the events. The documentary is also very coherent, it starts with Hitler's descent from the heaven as the substitute God that will take over the Christian God, swastika instead of cross, imposing unity on the people in the name of a grand ideal. The 'politics' of the Reich is presented in a nutshell, minus antisemitism which is only alluded to (clever political move!) and Triumph is a very good example of the atrocious nature of ideology.

In conclusion: it is impossible not to have deep even if mixed feelings for this movie and it is possible to admire its technical audacity and historical significance.




Nuit et brouillard ( Alain Resnais, 1955 )

Alain Resnais, a distinguished cinema director, working with Jean Cayrol, produced a document for all humanity to see and reflect. The director visited some of the concentration camps in Europe, where he filmed the abandoned sites in which millions lost their lives in one of the most shameful times in the history of mankind. European Jews paid a great price for no reason at all. Hitler and his followers decided to eliminate them because they saw in them a threat and their money and their labor would fuel the war machinery they needed to win the war.

The director uses color photography to show how the camps looked in 1955, then switches to the black and white of the material from an earlier time. Mr. Resnais juxtaposes the same camps during the 1940s at the height of the WWII conflict and how the lonely and forgotten places of what the director found in 1955. Even looking at these places ten years after the end of the war, these silent witnesses of the horrors the victims experienced, acquire a surreal look.

Night and Fog has powerful images and it packs such power.

Hoop Dreams

Some of my favourites:
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills (1996)
Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000)
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
Brother's Keeper (1992)
Crumb (1994)
Bowling For Columbine (2002)
Dark Days (2000)
Roger & Me (1989)
Jesus Camp (2006)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Grizzly Man (2005)

& Im sure there are more Im forgetting. I got a lot of good recommendations from this thread that I need to look into now as well.

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I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil. -- Charles Dickens

The greatest documentary of all time was the "Eyes on the Prize" series documenting the Black civil rights struggle. I pull it out every couple of years when I need to charge up my "toughness" batteries. It tends to put modern life in perspective. Truly inspirational.

nobody says about Michael Jackson's This Is It