Good documentaries?

AKIRA

AKIRA

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I need some good documentaries. Moved in to my apartment 3 weeks ago for 4 months (I'm on my co op term) and I don't have any cable tv. Computer get's reaaaallly repetitive after a while and I'm starting to go insane.

I love documentaries, so if anyone can make some suggestions I'd really appreciate it:thumbs:

THANKS
 
topdocumentaryfilms.com


Almost everything you'll ever need
 
In the shadow of the moon.
When we left Earth: The NASA missions.
 
It Might Get Loud and Man On Wire were both very decent documentaries.
 
Don't watch Zeitgeist, it's retarded. No, I'm not going to qualify that opinion to the inevitable Alex Jones tard that tries to pick a fight over it.

I really liked The Cruise which is a really low budget, relatively obscure documentary about Speed Levich. Spike Lee's documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath is also really good, and super long (like 4+ hours). I think it's called When the Levees Broke. If you're even remotely interested in weed, there's a great documentary called The Union: The Business Behind Getting High about underground weed grows and all that. It's pretty informative and isn't rife with either pro or anti legalization propaganda.

I watch a fair amount of documentaries but I can't really remember any other good ones off the top of my head right now, but I'll post again if I do.
 
The Obama Deception.

Get ready to don your foil hat.
 
Expelled. That is, if you enjoy blatant propoganda and the sound of Ferris Bueleur's proffessor's voice.
 
Waltz with Bashir

Such a great film that flips your mind about war.
 
American Movie
Metal: A Headbangers Journey
Anything Louis Theroux
Capturing the Friedmans
The Vice Guide To Travel
BBC stuff, Walking With X, Planet Earth, Life etc.
Helvetica
Jesus Camp
Religulous

Can't remember any more right now.
 
The first part (religion) of Zeitgeist was good, the rest sucked.

Also I second It Might Get Loud.
 
Adam Curtis does good stuff - especially The Power of Nightmares and The Trap.

The Corporation and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent might also be interesting. The Cove has been critically lauded. The US vs John Lennon is pretty cool.

Moving away from politics, Werner Herzog's Antarctican adventure Encounters at the End of the World is brilliantly weird, as is the amusing Incident at Loch Ness which follows his attempts to make a film about the Loch Ness monster. Previous Herzog experience is a benefit but not necessary.

If you can get hold of it, Culloden is a fantastic dramatisation of an important battle in British history.

Meanwhile, Koyaanisquatsi is made of unnarrated footage of natural life and human life, trying to compose a visual tone poem.

For films that are not documentaries but that are shot as if they were, see Threads (nuclear paranoia), It Happened Here (Nazi-occupied Britain) and Russian Ark (Russian history). Similarly, The Thick of It and The Wire are two shows that aren't documentaries but feel as if they might be, depicting party politics and crime and police work respectively.

See also: WALKING WITH DINOSAURS!!!
 
Came to post "The Corporation", too. "Why We Fight" and "Who Killed the Electric Car?" are both pretty interesting, as well.
 
I second Sulkdodds' recommendation for Adam Curtis documentaries. The Century of the Self is near enough on par with The Trap IMO, but he also has a series of very insightful films about a wide range of topics: The Living Dead (three films about 'the power of the past'), Pandora's Box (series of 6, loosely connected around a science and industrialisation theme), The Mayfair Set (more or less about how financial services and stockmarkets came to dominate the world economy), 25 Million Pounds (about Nick Leeson and the fall of Barings Bank) and The Power of Nightmares as Dodds mentioned. Not sure, but I think Curtis is on record as saying he doesn't mind at all if people torrent them.

There's also It Felt Like a Kiss, which is the film used in a walk through installation art piece that Curtis created. It has no narration and I'm sure it's incomplete without the accompanying walk through experience, but it's still an interesting, evocative and slightly surreal watch.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Moving away from politics, Werner Herzog's Antarctican adventure Encounters at the End of the World is brilliantly weird, as is the amusing Incident at Loch Ness which follows his attempts to make a film about the Loch Ness monster. Previous Herzog experience is a benefit but not necessary.
Click to expand...
I'm not a big documentary watcher, but Herzog's Grizzly Man is good stuff.
 
"WWII in HD" was awesome. It's a five part series.
 
Laivasse said:
There's also It Felt Like a Kiss, which is the film used in a walk through installation art piece that Curtis created. It has no narration and I'm sure it's incomplete without the accompanying walk through experience, but it's still an interesting, evocative and slightly surreal watch.
Click to expand...
Wait, you can actually get hold of it on its own? I thought I was forever condemned to not have seen it because I didn't hear about it in time to get tickets for the original installation. BRILLIANT.

kupocake said:
I'm not a big documentary watcher, but Herzog's Grizzly Man is good stuff.
Click to expand...
I do need to watch this. I remember reading about the part where he listens to an audio recording of the man + girlfriend being actually killed by a bear, and telling the owner to destroy it. Jesus.
 
I can tell you right now, any documentary on cult leaders is going to keep you interested.
Namely Jim Jones or the Heavens Gate Cult. I admit I have a strong interest in cults because they scare me so much, and I also think very valuable lessons can be learned from them.


Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7IxGGfpSWk
 
The World at War - possibly the definitive WWII documentary series. It was meticoulusly well researched, detailed and features interviews with civilians, soldiers, senior officers and politicians. Watching the whole lot is quite an undertaking (26 episodes from the original series, plus a few extra ones if you get the DVD set) but if you're at all interested in WWII this is the documentary series to watch. It covers all the major campagins of WWII as well as other things like Hitler's rise to power, life in Britian during the war, life in Holland under occupation, etc. As a bonus, the series is narrated by Laurence Olivier, who does an excellent job. And that score still gives me the chills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alqEPrzSr8I

Also, The Great War - a similar series about the First world war. It covers a greath breadth of topics in significant detail. Again, if you are at all interested in this conflict
 
Oh, and I forgot to mention an important one; Nothing by Michael Moore.
 
Planet Earth by BBC. Beyond a shadow of a doubt the best nature documentary I've ever seen. The camera work is unbelievable.
 
Koyaanisqatsi

/anything you will ever see in your life.
 
I really thought Life After People was cool, and it's still ongoing on the Discovery channel.

Also, Air Battles. 'Course I'm biased.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Wait, you can actually get hold of it on its own? I thought I was forever condemned to not have seen it because I didn't hear about it in time to get tickets for the original installation. BRILLIANT.
Click to expand...
Yep, it was up on Curtis' own blog for a while, and at UKnova (where I got it), but it's gone from both now. I'm sure you wouldn't have to look far to find it somewhere on the high seas. (Incidentally there is a Curtis megapack still available at UKnova, which even contains some stuff I didn't list in my previous post, but It Felt Like a Kiss is not included in it)

It gave me mixed feelings, partly because it left me wondering what the rest of the art installation was like, partly because its insights are more nebulous and abstract than those Curtis normally offers, due to the 'visual poetry' element of his work being given primacy as the main vector of storytelling. I'm struggling to even recall the main themes of it, but tbh that's mostly just down to my shoddy memory.
 
Some of my favs:

Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends (episode listing here). Theroux is your typical Brit and he visits the US to meet some of its more colourful inhabitants. The first two seasons are the best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpUtUQ5YC-Q

A very good nature documentary that hasn't been mentioned yet is Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe. It follows a day in the life of the insects that live in a meadow. Some great close up footage of little critters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TnjX3j69RU

If you are into political stuff you might like 'The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara'. The former American Defense minister looks back at the history of the 20th century and the role he played in it. He is very critical of himself which makes it extra interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iyXjHNhUUQ
 
Well, I just finished watching the one about the People's Temple, and The Most Hated Family in America. Both were both kinda sad to watch. In the People's Temple, it seemed a lot of the followers were very kind and good-hearted people that let themselves be controlled by a leader who seemed to be a little insane.

I was suprised by The Most Hated Family in America. It put quite a different spin on the story than what I was expecting. This wasnt Michael Moore driving across the country trying to ruffle some feathers. Louis was civil, and attempted to connect with many members of the family. As a result we get to see some of the truer sides of the people. No-one admits to anything of course, but especially with the girl at the end, you could tell that maybe she wasnt as happy as she said she was, that perhaps she wanted to live a normal life but feared turning against her church and her family. If you ask me, I agree with Louis that perhaps the whole motivation behind this church is the anger that Gramps (the pasteur) holds for many things in this world, and from there he spread his hatred to his children, and then into their children. Whereas before I may have dismissed them as hopeless, part of me wants to think that a lot of these people have some good in them, and that maybe they will be able to turn away and live normal lives again.

Thanks for the recommendations, guys.
 
Felix said:
Koyaanisqatsi

/anything you will ever see in your life.
Click to expand...

Philip Glass! Even though I know this is going to make me sound like a mindless impatient moron, I had a hard time sitting through the whole film. It was very long and while most of the shots were pretty awesome, some parts were also very slow. Especially that one with the slo-mo plane landing. I was like, "OK... laaaaaanding.... taaaaaxi-ing..... my gosh this plane is never going to get anywhere."

Just wrote a little about this in the film rating thread, but I'll recommend How the Earth Was Made for anyone who wants a brief history of the Earth starting 4.5 billion years ago, and is maybe interested in a little bit of geology (there's a neat bit about a layer of iridium from when the meteor hit and killed the dinosaurs). The only unfortunate thing is the title, which I had originally thought referred to the creation of Earth in the astronomical sense. I also would've liked it to be a little more in-depth, but it's fine if you only have a couple of hours to spare.

I definitely need to check out Planet Earth sometime. I watched the Disney Earth which didn't impress me all that much. Maybe I need to see it on something other than my laptop screen.

Y'all just reminded me I need to watch Who Killed the Electric Car too. I was supposed to watch it for a Energy Technology & Policy class I took a couple of years ago, but never got around to it. So many films, so little time.

[edit] I don't know if this counts as a "documentary" but I will highly recommend Sigur Ros's Heima film, even if you don't listen to the band. I was watching it at home, and my parents who have little to no interest in the music I listen to, sat down and seemed fairly captivated by it. It's very well done. Iceland is an awesome place.
 
I'm going to be watching Helvetica soon. My friend gets a shit load of docs from the uni library. I watched Jesus Camp tonight and it was actually really good. It's not too rage inducing, you just start to feel bad for the kids.
 
The Race to Absolute Zero. BBC documentary on how scientists want to reach 0 degrees Kelvin or -276 degrees Celsius.
 
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