Kocheese99

world at war
Blue Planet
Cosmos
Life of Mammals
Living Planet

Placeholder for Planet Earth.

Zodiac_Speaking

I wished the Oscar nominated doc shorts would get released.

Tomboymama

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

garmonbozia

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

Yakuza Bengoshi

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

Pointyskull

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

Apone

Recently released doc.

Shootout, The History Channel Presents.

iconoclasm

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.

gfoots

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

mickey65

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

mickey65

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!

Randy Miller III

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.

Yakuza Bengoshi

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.

harpo787

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...

CaseyB

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

jiffy97

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...

shacmasta

My Fave 5

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

NoirFan

Five favorites:

Portrait of Jason
The Fog of War
Salesman
High School
Crumb

grem458

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!!

J-Dubya

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.

Yakuza Bengoshi

Weird that you'd pick it as one of your five favorite documentaries on DVD if you didn't think it was on DVD. Nevertheless, it is in fact on DVD.

I'm curious of what keeps the films of Michael Moore out of the realm of documentary in your mind. Is it their polemical nature, or that Moore appears in front of the camera, or what? As for "behind the scenes" looks at movies, do you make exceptions if the work is particularly well made or feature-length. For example, would you not consider Burden of Dreams or Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse documentaries?

Cheato

From The Free Dictionary:
doc·u·men·ta·ry
adj.
1. Consisting of, concerning, or based on documents.
2. Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film.
n. pl. doc·u·men·ta·ries
A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.


I don't see how either Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11 fits those definitions. I've seen both; in my opinion, they're filled with distortions and half-truths that are well-disputed (if not disproved) elsewhere.


Here's a controversial site with a biased view that, if you can wade through the crap, points out a lot of the, well, lies in BFC.

And here's another biased site that has less crap, but you still have to get past the pettiness, finger-pointing, and name-calling, to see the kind of deceptions used in F-9/11.


As an example (hypothetical, not actually from Moore's films), if somebody were to say "I hate people who say Mexicans are evil," and then the clip is edited down so you only get the person saying "Mexicans are evil," then that is a lie. Moore seems to think that it's a valid clip to include in a documentary to prove his point if (1) he believes the person really feels that way, and (2) he doesn't have another clip where they really said it. So, he seems to feel it's OK to use the one where that person did utter those words, even if they were out of context.


On the other hand, Sicko, in my opinion, seems to be mostly pretty honest (except for the obvious and stupid scene at Gitmo), and I (as if it really matters to anyone else what I think) would classify it as a documentary.


I'm not trying to start a debate on the issue. I'm just trying to point out why many people don't consider his films documentaries--and it's not just the vast right-wing conspiracy who think that way.

cfloyd3

I am going to cheat a little and go to 6 although my list is not overly different.

Errol Morris Collection (Vernon, Florida/Gates of Heaven/The Thin Blue Line)
Salesman
High School
Wojciech Wiszniewski Documentary Set
Harlan County, U.S.A.
Dont Look Back

Yakuza Bengoshi

Gotcha. So, I'll mark you down as "because of their polemical nature."

Please tell me more about this one.

Randy Miller III

1. Gimme Shelter
2. Radio Bikini
3. Capturing the Friedmans
4. Waco: Rules of Engagement
5. Gates of Heaven