Documentaries tend to cross taste lines and must be seen by all types of viewers. You can't go wrong with any of these great films.
1) Grizzly Man (2005)
Directed by: Warner Herzog
Written By: Warner Herzog
Plot: A devastating and heartrending take on grizzly bear activists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who were killed in October of 2003 while living among grizzlies in Alaska.
What We Say: It’s hard to put into words just how powerful Grizzly Man is. The film immediately opens with the facts surrounding Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard's tragic death. These facts stay inside you as you learn his story and are haunted by what is to come. The film is a stark look at the brute force of nature and human being’s blinding passion of life and art. Warner Herzog’s magnificent documentary uses Treadwell’s videos of his experiences in Alaska chronicling both the bears in their natural habitat and his Treadwell’s own inner demons. The movie works on such an emotional level because it makes you feel like you made a new best friend and lost an old friend at the same time. Although knowingly tragic, the film isn’t a downer by design. Treadwell oozes life and passion and does everything he can to make you feel what love is with spoken words and a video camera. He succeeds to such a powerful degree that even in the end, audiences will feel he died showing the world a connection that can exist between man and nature that is beautiful and not to be feared.
2) Up the Yangtze (2007)
Directed by: Yung Chang
Written By: Yung Chang
Plot: At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.
What We Say: It’s hard to escape news of China nowadays. After hosting the Olympics in 2008 and its steady recovery from the worldwide recession, modern day China is becoming a tour de force. Despite all of this progress, there are always many stories of people left behind and forced into new way of life with little input from them.
Up the Yangtze is another heartfelt and powerful documentary about people that have to adapt to the new more modern world they find themselves in. Part of the documentary focus on a group of young adults that leave their family’s old ways and find employment on a tourist cruise ship as a way of providing for their family in this new China. They have to learn new customs and some English that is now demanded by the influx of new money and foreigners in China.
The other half of the film focuses on the rising water levels of the Yangtze thanks to a new dam being build up river that the government says will usher in a new more modern China. The unfortunate effect of these rising water levels is that they will now displace thousands of Chinese families that have lived along the Yangtze for generations. It’s truly heart breaking to watch one family pack up their belongings and say goodbye to their house that has been in their family for generations. They watch as the waters rise each day and know soon that life as they know it will crease to exist. Up the Yangtze is truly one of the most sobering and emotional documentaries ever to be produced.
3) Unknown White Male (2005)
Directed by: Rupert Murray
Written By: Rupert Murray
Plot: The true story of Doug Bruce who woke up on Coney Island with total amnesia. This documentary follows him as he rediscovers himself and the world around him.
What We Say: Imagine waking up one day with no memory of who you are or even where you are. Then imagine living without a history of where you came from or who you are close to. How do you move on? Friends and Family members may recognize you by looks, but without a personality conditioned by life experiences, they don’t recognize your personality anymore. Then imagine experiencing life for the first time again through the eyes of an adult.
On July 2nd, 2003, Doug Bruce left his apartment on the Lower East Side at about 8pm. He turned up 11 hours later on the New York subway heading to Coney Island. He had no idea who he was. Unknown White Male is the startling story of a man who, for no apparent reason, lost 37 years of life history. He lost every memory of his friends, his family and every experience he had ever known. It’s an extraordinary tale of one man’s quest to find himself, in a very literal sense. It’s extremely hard to put into words again how amazing this story is. This is a story Hollywood couldn’t create. It is real. See it to believe it.
4) The Cove (2009)
Directed by: Louie Psihoyos
Written By: Mark Monroe
Plot: Using state-of-the-art equipment, a group of activists, led by renown dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry, infiltrate a cove near Taijii, Japan to expose both a shocking instance of animal abuse and a serious threat to human health.
What We Say: The Cove is a powerful documentary shining a light on the horrific dolphin slaughters happening in Taiji, Japan. Led by Ric O’Barry, who had many key parts in the original production of the beloved television series Flipper, the crew tries to get the much needed actual footage of the slaughter to be able to finally show the world what is happening right under our noses in the coves.
Because of the corruption and secrecy, it proves to be extremely difficult and the crew runs the risk of being arrested in Japan and banned from re-entering the country, which is where they need to be to obtain the crucial footage. For years Japan has illegally slaughtered whales for meat and have hidden behind a loophole saying it was for scientific research. The dolphin slaughters, however, are something that until recently, have not really been public knowledge.
It also brings to light the cover up about Mercury poisoning that has been going on for years. Dolphins have very large amounts of mercury in them and since the meat is mislabeled and often sold as more expensive whale meat, many people consume the contaminated meat without their knowledge, resulting in mercury poisoning. The last mass population mercury poisoning incident was made to look like a disease that spread and the Japanese government continues to deny any knowledge of this.
This documentary is graphic and powerful. It’s not propaganda or an extremist animal rights film, it’s simply the truth. It opens are eyes to something that needs to be stopped, tells us the facts, exposes the corruption and lets us see the footage for ourselves. It takes us on a heart-felt, emotional, and very moving journey and is something everyone should see.
5) Man on Wire (2008)
Directed by: James Marsh
Written By: Philippe Petit
Starring: Philippe Petit
Plot: A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, "the artistic crime of the century."
What We Say: Man on Wire is about Philippe Petit, a wire-walker who successfully walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. Man on Wire feels like a heist film leading up to the event of the famous wire-walk with the meticulous planning involved and surprisingly, the performance goes off without a hitch. Although the act is mind blowing to see take place and orchestrated, it’s Petit as a person who steals the show. His spirit fills every frame of the film. His free spirited and playful personality is infectious. His relentless commitment to this dangerous, illegal, unbelievable act is astounding see in first person accounts. It’s this window into Petit’s psyche the film thankfully affords audiences to see. It would have been too easy for the director to focus only on the incredibly act and all the planning that went into it. Petit is a modern day explore into worlds unknown and it’s his thirst for pushing the limits of the status quo that tickles the explorer in all of us. No film captures it better.
6) The Endurance (2000)
Directed by: George Butler
Written By: Caroline Alexander
Plot: A retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition to Antarctica in 1914-1916, featuring new footage of the actual locations and interviews with surviving relatives of key expedition members, plus archived audio interviews with expedition members, and a generous helping of the footage and still photos shot on the expedition.
What We Say: At the end of the “Heroic Age” of discovery, Ernest Shackleton was an adventurer looking for greatness in perhaps the last great uncharted portion of the earth at that time. He put together a team of 27 men and headed due south to Antarctica and become the first team to ever to cross the continent. But as disaster struck, the quest became the ultimate struggle of survival as the team abandoned ship and had to figure how to get home. Their story is passionately told by their own photograph and video, narration by Liam Neeson and modern day location footage of their journey.
This is the ultimate film about man’s thirst for adventure, the strength of the human sprit and male masculinity that doesn’t seem to exist like this anymore. It’s hard to believe what these guys had to do to stay alive. The leadership, planning, teamwork, will power and hope these guys sustained for two years is nothing short of amazing. The director does a great job building suspense throughout the film as the crew jumps over one hurtle to only find 20 more in front of them. Utter hopelessness is kept at bay by the gentlemen’s cunning dexterity and determination. It’s amazing still why anyone with such limited technology would agree to such a difficult quest for fame? Man doesn’t want to be told he can’t do something. The challenged must be defeated. Visions of daring heroics and conquests must be had. The Endurance captures that spirt.
7) Burden of Dreams (1982)
Directed by: Les Blank
Written By: Michael Goodwin
Plot: A documentary on the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's epic 'Fitzcarraldo,' showing how the film managed to get made despite problems that would have floored a less obsessively driven director. Not only does he have major casting problems, losing both Jason Robards (health) and Mick Jagger (other commitments) halfway through shooting, but the crew gets caught up in a war between Peru and Ecuador, there are problems with the weather and the morale of cast and crew is falling rapidly.
What We Say: Burden of Dreams is the second documentary on this list that features Werner Herzog in its creation. This time though, he is the focus of the film. Where in Grizzly Man, Herzog spotlighted on Timothy Treadwell blinding passion of life and art, Burden of Dreams does the same for him. The film depicts the insanity of Herzog's obsessive film making with delicate passion and understanding of its subject. It’s also as a result; a movie about the art of filmmaking itself and its plight. Herzog is a fascinating subject, which is probably why he is so great at picking interesting documentary tales himself. The sheer fact that during filming of Fitzcarraldo, he built a full scale replica of a boat and then hired natives to drag the boat over a mountain because the other side provided a better shot, reason enough he deserves a film about his creative process. It’s this dedication to his craft and the fact he lets nothing stand in his way and tell him it can’t be done, why he has been such a gift to the world of cinema and that even to this day, he still produces new projects.
When Herzog closes the film by stating, "It's not only my dreams, it's my belief that they are your's as well, and the only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate. And that is what poetry or literature or filmmaking is all about. It's as simple as that. I make films because I have not learned anything else and I know I can do it to a certain degree. And it is my duty, because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves, otherwise we would be cows in the field." You truly begin to understand this man and this film, and cinema itself. To this day it remained etched in my memory.
8) Winged Migration (2001)
Directed by: Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud
Written By: Jean Dorst, Stephane Durand
Plot: Documentary on the migratory patterns of birds, shot over the course of three years on all seven continents.
What We Say: The cameras of Winged Migration fly like the birds do. Using every available trick in the book, director Jacques Perrin takes viewers in a first person (or is that bird) view of the experience of migration. The film begins in spring in North America with the migration to the Arctic. Once there, it's time for courtship, nesting, mating, birth, and first flight. Chicks then must soon fly south but bad weather, hunters, and pollution definitely takes their toll on the young and weak ones. There is a spare narration and a few titles throughout much of Winged Migration. It’s visual journey that becomes very meta. This is mostly a relaxing film that is a form of therapy after a long day of work. Although the birds may not agree, but it’s a very soothing experience to fly among them and experience the freedom they feel. This isn’t a hard-hitting nature doc like March of the Penguins was. It’s meant to show one small segment of beauty that life offers than man will never experience. Sit back, relax and enjoy.
9) My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
Directed by: Amir Bar-Lev
Written By: Amir Bar-Lev?
Plot: A look at the work and surprising success of a four-year-old girl whose paintings have been compared to the likes of Picasso and has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What We Say: In 2004, four-year-old Marla Olmstead of Binghamton, New York, took the art world by storm. After the New York Times picked up an article by their local paper, she became an overnight celebrity. Her pieces were being sold for huge sums as people wanted to jump on this latest sensation. Once 60 Minutes pick up the story, doubt began to creep into the equation about whether she was the sole creator of her artwork. What seemed liked over night, she went from child star to fraud. The documentary benefits from having begun before the 60 Minutes coverage, when the authenticity of Marla's work was unquestioned.
This was all captured by Amir Bar-Lev, who spent months inside the Olmstead household revealing much more than 60 Minutes could. The family assumed he'd be on their side, defending the family’s honor and vindicating their story. This is a very fascinating story and one that the director leaves open for a lot discussion.
This is a brilliant movie that provides the evidence and leaves it to the viewer to decide the truth. Some of the scenes later in the film involving her parents will leave you spellbound. Does 4-year-old Marla Olmstead paint her own art or is her father intervening? It’s up to you to decide.
10) Riding Giants (2004)
Directed by: Stacy Peralta
Written By: Stacy Peralta, Sam George
Plot: Documentary detailing the origins and history of surf culture.
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These lists aren’t supposed to be the “be all, end all” designed for you by a higher authority. The specific rankings, to a degree, are arbitrary and subjective for everyone. The lists merely provide, in our opinion, a handful of films that hit their mark and satisfy you with a few hours of blissful entertainment. We try and supply you with films from different decades to different countries, from old classics to contemporary hits, and from ones forgotten to other more recent standouts. We find our picks to be the best of their breed and believe that you will enjoy them too.
Feel free to post your comments or suggestions on our Mainstream & Offbeat Viewer's Top 10 Documentary Films list below.
Check back soon for our Deeper Cuts #11-20.
My all time weirdest documentary experience is Fudge 44 which is about creatures spotted in Tokyo in the early eighties I think
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jac2-XMGd1w