Since 1/8/06 I'll also throw in

March of the Penguins
Murderball
An Inconvenient Truth

1. Hoop Dreams
2. Deep Blue
3. Pumping Iron
4. Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey
5. March of the Penguins

Honorable Mentions
- An Inconvenient Truth
- When We Were Kings
- A Decade Under the Influence: The 70s Films that Changed Everything
- Winged Migration
- Mad, Hot Ballroom
- Bowling for Columbine
- Roger & Me

Special Mention for Scariness:
- Jesus Camp :)

Here is my list:
1: Kurosawa
2: The Fog Of War
3: March of the Penguins
Well that all.

A lot of love for March of the Penguins. Did I miss something?

Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures

1. When the Levees Broke

Fahrenheit 9/11
The War Room
The Hunting of the President
Grizzly Man
Legendary Lighthouses series from PBS

Great answer!!

Not sure if this counts as a documentary and no one's yet mentioned (I think), Super Speedway

Others:

Blue Planets
Dark Days
The Opium War
The World at War

1. Mr. Death
2. Sick: The Life and Death of Supermasochist Bob Flanagan
3. A State Of Mind
4. Divine Trash
5. Paradise Lost

The Thin Blue Line
Gates of Heaven
Roger & Me
Supersize Me!
Probably a Ken Burns documentary

Honorable mention: The Devil's Playground (about the Amish practice where their 16 year olds are sent out into the world to experience life as normal people - they have to then decide whether or not to return to the Amish community (90% or so return) - anyway, our world is "the devil's playground")

Ghosts Of Rwanda

Cocaine Cowboys.

Ones that I have seen:

Bowling for Columbine
An Inconvient Truth
For All Mankind
Stand Tall
Superior Firepower: The Making of 'Aliens'
Decade Under the Influence, A
Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey
Filth and the Fury: A Sex Pistols Film, The
Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman
Mind Meld: Secrets Behind the Voyage of a Lifetime
Pumping Iron
Empire of Dreams
Super Size Me
Triumph of the Will --> Crazy stuff in here.
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes

Ok, well, that's a bit more then 5 but they are all good IMHO.

1. Trinity & Beyond
Absolutely incredible visuals.
2. Dogtown & Z-Boys
3. Heroes of World Class
Probably the best wrestling documentary I've ever seen, and you don't have to be a wrestling fan to watch. It tells the story of the von Erich family, and World Class Championship Wrestling. The WWE is putting out their own documentary some time this year, but this is the one to get.
4. Life in the Undergrowth
My Attenborough pick. The seen with the slugs (or snails, can't remember which) mating is just incredible. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but you just have to see it. You wouldn't think slugs mating could be a beautiful thing, but it was.
5. Metallica - Some Kind Of Monster
Again, you don't have to be Metallica fan to watch.

The clear #1:
The World at War

The rest of the top 5 in no particular order:
For All Mankind
Monterey Pop
Trinity & Beyond
Tokyo Olympiad

has anyone mentioned, "The Staircase"?

awesome doc by the same filmmaker who did, "Murder on a Sunday Morning"...

I will add one honorable mention to my list:

A History of Britain

The World At War
Cosmos
Life on Earth (I wish we had all the Attenborough stuff in Region 1)
The Beatles Anthology
Stanley Kubrick - A Life in Pictures

The Sorrow And The Pity
The World At War
The Complete Monterey Pop
Microcosmos
and then it gets a little hard.....
The Sky Above, The Mud Below (Academy Award winner, bonus feature on Black And White In Color)
Mondo Cane (Yes I know that there is some dispute over staged scenes)
A Hard Day's Night (Is this a true documentary?)
Woodstock
Gimme Shelter
etc....

Style Wars
Grizzly Man
Bus 174
Crumb
Unforgivable Blackness

world at war
Blue Planet
Cosmos
Life of Mammals
Living Planet

Placeholder for Planet Earth.

I wished the Oscar nominated doc shorts would get released.

I need to see more documentaries, but the top of the few I have seen are:

Spellbound
Paper Clips
Rabbit in the Moon
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Winged Migration
The Story of the Weeping Camel

1. Grey Gardens / The Beales of Grey Gardens

2. Capturing the Friedmans

3. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills /
Paradise Lost 2: Revelations

4. Tokyo Olympiad

5. Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance / Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation / Naqoyqatsi: Life as War

The Up Docs (7 Up, 14 Up, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, 49 Up)
Salesman
Don't Look Back
Portrait of Jason
The Corporation

I can't recommend these two films enough....

Recently released doc.

Shootout, The History Channel Presents.

berkeley in the '60s<--- how is it even possible no one mentions this?
hoop dreams
hearts and minds
beyond the mat
Imagine: John Lennon

i can remember a few really good pieces from college, i forget the names, one was about ww2, another about how lions do not hunt nearly as well in pairs, but they take mates regardless.

American Movie
Brother's Keeper
Crumb
Hoop Dreams
Paradise Lost 1 & 2

1. The two docs out on Aileen Wuornos (lesbian serial killer)
2. The Mayor of Sunset Strip
3. The Life and Times of Harvey Milk
4. Ghosts & Gravesites of Hollywood
5. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

I tried watching it, but after 30 minutes I grew bored and realized it was like watching Animal Planet and couldn't figure out why the hell they bothered making a movie about it!

Maybe not all "Top 5", but here's some great ones:

Radio Bikini
Battle of Algiers
My Flesh and Blood
White Light / Black Rain
Hoop Dreams
Night and Fog
Salesman
Harlan County, USA

...and any of Ken Burns' stuff is great, too.

Battle of Algiers is a essential film that every cinephile should see but it's barely a docudrama (more akin to I am Cuba than to Nanook of the North, for example), and not at all a documentary.

I didn't go through the first two or three pages as I'd seen them quite some time ago, and until about two posts ago I was thinking to myself, I can't believe there's no mention for White Light/Black Rain.

I've not seen the entire thing, I never knew it existed and just came across it on one of the movie channels in the last week. Probably saw about half of it, maybe less, but it had no repeat play listed for it, and I couldn't look away.

I've got an August 6 birthday...

Lots of great documentaries already listed. I'm going to list some that haven't been listed in this thread yet:

1.) GG Allin's Hated
2.) Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Mark Kerr
3.) The King of Kong
4.) Confessions of a Superhero
5.) I'm From Hollywood

I'll throw "Overnight" into the mix. About Troy Duffy (writer/director of "The Boondock Saints") getting Hollywood handed to him on a platter and burning the whole thing down...

My Fave 5

1.Beyond the Mat
2.The Smashing Machine
3.Super size Me
4.The Curse of the Bambino
5.Pumping Iron

Five favorites:

Portrait of Jason
The Fog of War
Salesman
High School
Crumb

That was my list from 2006, but I'd do a slightly different one today:

1. Trinity and Beyond:The Atomic Bomb Movie (still a fave and has such great replay value)
2. The Up Series (watched all that are available at this point and think they're still amazing if a little repetitive)
3. A Paralying Fear: The Story of Polio in America
4. Planet Earth (the mother of all nature documentaries)
5. American Experience: Eleanor Roosevelt

and five should be warned about 'cause they are horrible:

1. Albert Fish (and H.H. Holmes) - both by the same director in the same boring, awful style.
2. Jack the Ripper Conspiracies - worst documentary of all time with the most annoying narrator possible
3. The War: A Ken Burns Film - I love most of the stuff he's done but I just thought this one was too boring to get through (I really tried!!)
4. American Experience: Partners of the Heart - again a boring presentation of what could have been very interesting
5. Ebola: The Plague Fighters - I love anything about diseases, but this was HORRIBLE!!

The Fog of War
The Farmer's Wife http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...s/farmerswife/
(I don't think it's on dvd though)
One Day in September
Waco
Hoop Dreams
Paradise Lost

Looking at some of the previous listings make me wonder if we are all on the same page as to what is actually a documentary. For instance, Michael Moore films, which I enjoy, to me are not documentaries. A behind the scenes look at a movie isn't really a doc.