Got any Documentary recommendations?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been on a documentary kick lately and am always looking for new ones. Netflix’s Watch Instantly would be ideal, but if not that’s ok too. Please no Micheal Moore schtick on any part of the political spectrum, I can’t stand that stuff. I like history and obscure things or places I know nothing about.

Here’s what I’ve seen so far:

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia: Wow, hilarious yet sad, it’s like Jerry Springer and Intervention rolled into one. By the end the filmmaker shows some sympathy for the family and while it was like watching a train wreak (“Oh hell no, she did not just snort her post labor pain killers”) by the end I felt bad for them.

King of Kong: The narrative is so tight I find it incredibly hard to believe it wasn’t scripted. Fantastic anyway though.

Atom Smashers: Dated but still interesting, my wife liked it and she’s not nearly as dorky about science as I am.

Man on Wire: Meh, an egotistical ponce with a dull obsession.

Dogtown and Z Boyz: It was on IFC and I found it engaging despite not caring at all about skating or surfing.

Paris Is Burning: About the 80’s voguing culture in New York City. My wife made me watch it and I’m glad she did.

Terry Jones’ Barbarians: I love history but this was dull. Jones takes some serious leaps when describing the sophistication of the Celts.

Long Way Round: Ewan McGregor and his friend ride motorcycles around the world. Pretty good, but anticlimactic, near the end they wanted it all to be over and I wanted to stop watching.

Comedian: Meh, saw it in the theatre. The camera follows Jerry Seinfeld and Orny Adams around the New York stand-up circuit. I felt I learned a lot about a job I could never have the guts to do but Orny is insufferable and I felt like punching him when it was all over.

**Michael Palin: Sahara **: Pretty good, the problem with the Sahara is it’s just sand, a lot of sand, but still just sand.

The Atomic Cafe: Chilling, and an absolute must for anyone younger than 35 to get some perspective on The Cold War. Why it’s considered a ‘dark comedy’ is beyond me…I didn’t giggle once.

The Cruise: An eccentric tour guide’s take on New York City, the world and his life. Very very good. What is it with New York and documentaries?

Radio Bikini: American navy personnel during the nuke tests on Bikini Atoll. Not bad, like The Atomic Cafe but with personal stories. What the US government did to servicemen is truly sickening.

Planet B-Boy: Breakdancing world competition, not a subject I’m interested in the slightest but another one my wife made me watch and I’m glad she did.

Word Wars: International Scrabble championship, not bad…watchable. King of Kong is far better though.

Born Into Brothels: Self-aggrandizement masquerading as a documentary. If it wasn’t for some personal stories of the subjects themselves this thing would be utterly horrible.

An Inconvenient Truth: Gore’s post election sour grapes notwithstanding this is an important movie.

The Fog of War: Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic, and if I was a history teacher this would be required material.

Murderball: Paraplegics compete in a no-holds-bared game. Not bad, watchable.

Dear Zachary: It’s supposed to be really good, but I just haven’t been able to get through it. After 20 minutes it’s just sat on my queue for the last month or so.
Next up:**
Please Vote For Me
Gasland
The Lottery
I Like Killing Flies
Heavy Metal in Baghdad**
and some Ken Burns’ stuff

2

Genghis Blues is excellent.

Beer Wars is very good as well.

3

I see you’ve already watched “The Fog of War” and liked it. You should also enjoy Errol Morriss’ other films, especially “The Thin Blue Line” and “Mr. Death”.

I never miss an opportunity to recommend “My Kid Could Paint That” about a famous 4-year old abstract expressionist. There’s a twist.

4

Best Boy. It’s about an attempt to help a middle-aged mentally retarded man to live independently. Just a beautiful film.

The Endless Summer. A surfer’s quest to find the perfect wave. Very entertaining.

Blue Water, White Death. Real-life Jaws – before the book came out (it seems like Peter Benchley saw it).

5

Hands on a Hard Body is one of my favorites. A story about a contest in Texas of folks trying to win a pickup truck.

6

I just watched Countdown to Zero and found it very interesting. It’s about the current state of nuclear weapons, and risks of terrorism. Certain parts were reassuring (assembling a gun-type atomic bomb would take a team of about 20 people, an isolated area to work in, and about $8 million) and scary (there’s a good deal of nuclear material unaccounted for in the world.

Also very much enjoyed Beyond the Lighted Stage, a recent documentary about Rush. And I’m only a casual Rush listener. They come off as very interesting people. I especially liked Geddy Lee’s attitude toward their fans.

7

I just watched A Wink and a Smile, which is about modern burlesque, on Netflix Watch Instantly. I quite enjoyed it but had to turn it off before my pizza was supposed to arrive because I didn’t want to weird out the pizza guy.

8

51 Birch Street - A man films a documentary about his explorations of his parents’ marriage. His mother dies, and within months, his dad moves in with his secretary from 40 years prior. This leads the son to look into what their marriage had been like, and in the process he discovers his mom’s diaries. Interesting, sad, heartwarming, and much easier to deal with than Dear Zachary.

9

Some good ones mentioned so far. Others you might like:

Riding Giants - Doc about big wave surfers and the history of the sport. I’ve never surfed in my life, but found it fascinating. Some gorgeous footage too

Darwins’ Nightmare - Bleak, depressing, and riveting doc about the perch fishing industry on Lake Victoria in Africa and how the whole lake ecosystem and human society has been affected.

Hoop Dreams - Not mentioned, but you’ve probably seen it already. If not, get it.

Touching the Void - Not a pure documentary, since there’s a combination of reenactments with actual documentary footage of a disastrous mountain climbing trip. Might scare off of ever climbing a mountain, if you any such plans.

Anything by Errol Morris.

10

Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) is available for instant viewing. (You miss out on an extra 90 minutes of interviews and footage that’s on the DVD, though.) If you weren’t a fan of his music before, you’re likely to become one after seeing it.

11

Soul in the Hole - like a much grittier Hoop Dreams focusing on NYC street basketball.

12

Jesus Camp. If you’re not familiar with the Pentacostal way of life, you might think this is staged. It is not.
Along those lines, *Marjoe *is an oldie but a goodie.

*The Last Days *is a fine document of the Holocaust.

13

[ul]
[li]Les Paul: Chasing Sound - a history of the musician and inventor of solidbody electric guitars, tape echo, multi-track recording, etc.[/li][li]**Tom Dowd: The Language of Music **- a history of the guy who was the engineer and/or producer on some of the most important pieces of recorded music in the 20th Century. The more you hear, the more you realize he was up their with George Martin, Phil Spector and other great sound shapers and a fascinating character in his own right.[/li][li]**The Ramones: End of the Century **- great doc on their life, times and relationships[/li][/ul]

14

I thought Ken Burns’ The War to be a great documentary on World War II. However, it is quite graphic and brought tears to my eyes several times.

15

Not even at the clip of VP Richard Nixon “ringing the Bell for Mental Health. Vice President Nixon says that Mental Health is one of our most serious problems”?

That clip has virtually nothing to do with the subject matter or with giving a feel for the period. I think they found it and just couldn’t resist slipping it into the film.

16

Squid Invasion is actually a show from the Discovery Channel, but I saw it streaming on Netflix and therefore deem it qualified enough to be a “documentary.”

Two episodes, one about collosal squid, and one about the Humboldt squid. I found squid fascinating in this show.

17

Have you seen American Movie? It’s not on Instant but you can get the disc from Netflix. It’s fantastic!

18

I suggestDeep Water. Totally unexpected ending. Great doc.

19

Morris also did a series of half hour documentaries for PBS called “First Person”, which is where the material for The Fog of War came from; he started to interview McNamara and realized that the well of informed and self-critical retrospective by one of the most prominent authors of the Cold War exceeded a half-hour format.

It’s not a great documentary in and of itself, but Mark Wexler’s documentary about his father, Tell Them Who You Are cinematographer Haskell Wexler is very interesting for the contrast between father and son. Haskell, who has bounced between fictional cinema and documentary, sometimes (as with the groundbreaking Medium Cool straddling both horses at once) is clearly both proud of his son’s accomplishments and yet critical of Mark’s “stay inside the box” approach to documentary styling and fear of being too intrusive or risky that he might lose favored access to conservative politicians like George W. Bush.

Two of the most disquieting documentaries I’ve seen are Capturing the Friedmans, about a father and son falsely and absurdly accused and convicted of molesting children in a computer class, and Deliver Us from Evil, about serial molester Father Oliver O’Grady and his protection by the Catholic Church which continued to reassign him to new parishes with duties involving children every time he was accused of molesting children, even long after it was apparent that the allegations were at least partially true, including active efforts to cover up his activities by Bishop Roger Mahony and an annuity payout to assure O’Grady’s silence about Mahony and clergy efforts to conceal knowledge of O’Grady’s actions.

Then of course there is Reefer Madness… :wink:

Stranger

20

Being from St. Louis originally I must recommend Monument to the Dream, the documentary about the building of the Gateway Arch. They show it in the Jefferson National Expansion Museum, the one below the Arch where you go if you want to ride up in it. Really interesting, and these days even more so for its “time and place” capturing of St. Louis in 1967.

Another incredible one I can recommend which I haven’t seen mentioned yet is Werner Herzog’s Little Dieter Needs To Fly. I’ll let the plot summary speak for itself: