I'm too chicken to check out Lake of Fire. I'll have to one of these days, I feel like I owe it based on the dedication exhibited by it's production.

A lot of great reccomandations in this thread. Quite few I'll have to check out. The one that hasn't been mentioned thus far which is one of my favorite movies is Crumb, about the cartoonist, but is more about mental illness. You sort have got three brothers who are all fucked up but two manage to find a way to function through art.

Chasing october

Of the docs I've seen at this year's SXSW, I recommend:

Lemmy
Marwencol
The People vs. George Lucas
Saturday Night
Hood to Coast
Life 2.0
Bear Nation

And later today I'll find out if Waking Sleeping Beauty is worth the time.

Manufactured Landscapes

There's some amazing footage and photos of technology waste.

Another good sports Doc: More than a game

And: Go Tigers!

Often overlooked, but most of the episodes of PBS Frontline can be watched online for free:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl..._source=topnav

They tend to be somewhere between pretty good and excellent and cover a diverse range of topics.

I would also recommend The Union, an unusually good Canadian documentary about marijuana. You can, at the moment anyway, watch it online for free here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...4414651731007#

I like Dogtown and the Z-boys by Stacy Peralta, it's about the early days of skateboarding. I'm definitely not a skateboarder but the story is told in a way I can't stop watching.

+1 for Spellbound, very good documentary.

Some good/excellent documentaries :

Up The Yangtze (Chang)
The Battle of Chile (Guzman)
War Dance (Fine)
Burden of Dreams(Blank)
Grey Gardens (Maysles)
Gimme Shelter (Maysles)
Watermarks (Zilberman)
Night and Fog (Resnais)
Titicut Follies (Wiseman)
The Cemetary Club (Shemesh)
Le Joli Mai (Marker)
Land Without Bread (Bunuel)
Man on Wire (Marsh)
Calle 54 (Trueba)
Crazy Love (Klores & Stevens)
A Jihad for Love (Sharma)
The Last Continent (Lemire)

American Swing

Add my name to the Hoop Dreams lovers
I watched Murder on a Sunday Morning during the Oscar Challenge and really enjoyed it
If you have a fair amount of time on your hands I'd also recommend When the Levees Broke Lee is filming a new part so I'd watch the original and then watch the update when it's released in the next month or two.

A lot of my favorites are already mentioned, but are two more I love:

-Lost in La Mancha
-Marjoe (winner of the Best Documentary Oscar in 1972)

'Cocaine Cowboys' was definitely an interesting look into the Miami drug underworld of the 70's

Read the book several years ago and highly recommend it. I have not seen this doco yet but it has been in my Netflix queue for some time.

I have heard that the The Last Just Man is an even better documentary about Rwanda but it is not available on video anywhere. It used to get shown on the IFC channel from time to time.

Edit: Oddly enough, it looks like 1/4 of The Last Just Man is up on Dailymotion, but not the rest. That really sucks.

Murderball
Riding Giants (it's about big wave riding and is on HDNet a fair amount if you have HD cable)

A bit outside of your stated preference but I would also recommend:
- Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room
- Who Killed the Electric Car? (A bit of environmental/political slant to it, but not overly preachy or one-sided)

dark days
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235327/
its about the people who used to live in the underground train tunnels of new york. they had a small town set up there. its very interesting and 95% of the movie is underground seeing how these people live. one of the most interesting docs ive seen.

if anyone has some other movies like that or about drugs, poverty, ect. i liked to hear about them. i like depressing docs for some reason.

Per the suggestions of this thread, I just finished watching The Thin Blue Line.

Fantastic piece of work, and I love the music by Glass. Thanks for this (and all the other) suggestions. I now have tons of material to watch!

My favorite documentaries and the three that immediately come to mind when I think documentary:

Lake of Fire
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
Waco: The Rules of Engagement

American Movie
Harlan County USA
Lessons of Darkness (might not fit your criteria, but I love this one)

Wow, not one mention for Frank and Ollie? Thread fail.

I haven't seen it yet(it's in my Netflix queue) but I've heard nothing but praise for the Cove.

I was surprised that these two had not been mentioned yet. People think that I am being funny when I say that Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. It was like watching the political rise of Hitler ... anybody would buy into anything those guys said.

Who Killed the Electric Car? struck an unusual note with me ... one of the jobs that I have held in my life was taking calls for Saturn (R.I.P.) ... and one of the projects that my company picked up on was taking calls regarding the EV1. I had completely forgotten about it until I watched this documentary.

I have to add The Aristocrats (not family fare!), Word Wars (Scrabble geeks!), Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, and one that I cannot remember the name of ... it is about Amish children that are sent out into the world to determine if they want to pursue their faith or not.

If you liked the movie Apocolypse Now, watch the documentary of the filming of the movie called Hearts of Darkness (1991).
Note that Apocolypse Now is based (loosely?) on a book called "Heart of Darkness", thus the name for the documentary.