Discussion Forums - Culture & Society

Recommend your favorite documentaries or docudramas.  What impacted you?

I love documentaries! Among my favorites:

"Ballets Russes"

"The Weather Underground"

"Same River Twice"

"Andy Goldsworthy: Rivers and Tides - Working With Time"

The Thin Blue Line (it amazed me for how non-flashy it was)

Baraka

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

National Geographic: Africa

Life of Birds/ Life of Mammals/ Blue Planet/ Planet Earth

Errol Morris' First Person

Sicko

National Geographic: Taboo

Teresa, hope you get it fixed!

Teresa never did get it fixed, but here's what she meant to say--interesting!

Thanks! (I cut and pasted and it shows up in the window, but when I submit, it disappears???) Oh well. :) Here is what I wrote:

I love documentaries too! I especially liked:

Spellbound (spelling bee)
Small Wonders (violin classes in NYC)
Mad Hot Ballroom (ballroom dancing in NYC public schools)
OT: Our Town (School play in rough LA High School)
King of Kong (the world of old-arcade video games competition)
The Last Days (The Holocaust)---thought about this one for the longest time after seeing it! Anyone else?
Into the Arms of Strangers (Kindertransport)

I didn't particularly like SuperSize Me, the March of the Penguins and one about the migration of birds (It was beautiful, but just too long.) In looking at my list it appears I tend to like ones about children/youth, the arts, and the Holocaust, or any combination of those.

We just got Shadow of the Moon from Netflix, but haven't seen it yet. Has anyone seen The Business of Being Born? If you are a Netflix member, you can watch it free online. Oh, for laughs I liked Trekkies, and Home Movie (another Instant Play at Netflix).

OH OH OH, how could I have forgotten the 7Up series?!? Incredible!

Any opinions on the ones I've mentioned??? Would love to hear what you think.

I haven't seen most of these, but I will definitely look out for them.  I did see SuperSize Me and March of the Penguins--March WAS long and drawn out.  I like the other documentaries the guy that SuperSize did--esp the tv series--I think it was called 30 Days.

I really liked March of the Penguins. I took my daughter to the theatre to see it, and she really liked it, too. We now have it on dvd.

SuperSize Me impacted me big time, too. It reinforced what I already knew about the fast food industry. This movie helped make fast-food unattractive in a way that my willpower never could.

For the Bible Tells Me So

Born into Brothels

Bowling for Columbine/ Roger & Me

March of the Penguins

Cowspiracy 

EARTHLINGS 

Tapped 

Got the facts on Milk The Milk Documentary aka Got Milk?

The Great Culling

The World According to Monsanto (now Bayer)

Zeitgist ~ first of three films

Vaxxed Film They Don't Want You to See

Bought - The hidden story behind vaccines big pharma and your food

On the movie Rendition there's a short documentary in the special features titled Outlawed that is excellent.

I'm a huge documentary buff!

Lesser known ones:

-Jesus Camp is AMAZING. It's a real life horror movie when you realize people like this actually exist =X It's not biased at all, but it makes these people look crazy.

-Religilous with Bill Maher is great. He speaks the truth, very biased towards atheism (my kind of movie).

-For the Bible Tells me so is about gay people and the church, it was my kind of slant, which is why it was good for actual reasons, not comedy ones.

-Hell House (just watched last night), was entertaining. Less so than the above mentioned ones, but it's worth a watch if  you're not religious and want a good laugh.

-Earthlings is alright, HUGE animal rights slant. I agree with some parts of it, while others are too extreme for my tastes. Be warned, you see animals getting put to sleep, quite sad.

-Food Inc., really informative about where your food comes from.

-This Movie is not yet rated (I believe that's the name), very good look at how and why movies are rated the way they are.

More main stream ones:

-ANYTHING by Michael Moore. He's a genius when it comes to this genre.

-Super-size me, very interesting indeed.

-Inconvienent Truth, completely worth a watch.

I've seen so many more, but these are the only ones I can think of now.

Nice thing to discover is that I can watch many on Netflix and decide if I really need to get the dvd.  Many of my favorite ones, such as the three Zeitgeist films and The Great Culling are available on YouTube.

Secrets of the Vatican

Greedy Lying Bastards

Slavery by Another Name

I've posted a list of documentaries available in the Bazaar.