I haven't watched many, but three fantastic ones I can think of are the King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (i've watched this so many times), Anvil: The True Story of Anvil, and Dear Zachary: A letter to a son about his father
Great thread. I absolutely love documentaries. I've seen about 75% of the documentaries mentioned in this thread and I would recommend all of them. I'm looking forward to checking out the one's I have not seen.
To add to the documentaries already mentioned, you should check out anything by Adam Curtis. Specifically 'The Century of the Self', 'The Power of Nightmares ', and 'The Trap — What Happened to our Dream of Freedom'. They are all available on http://video.google.com.
All the great rock and roll ones: Don't Look Back (Dylan), End of the Century (Ramones), Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones), Kids are Alright (Beatles), Meeting People is Easy (Radiohead), etc.
Not sure what it was called - i saw it on the National Geographic channel the other week. Was about a platoon of American soldiers who ended up building a forward base in a mountain range in Iraq/Afghanistan (apologies can't remember which) titled 'Restrepo' after i believe one of the soldiers' killed in a contact. Found it to be very interesting but this type of stuff always makes me a bit sad knowing people personally overseas and goign through Basic Training with a soldier killed overseas. There was also another one i saw online titled '2 Weeks of Hell' i think - it was a simplified documentary of the selection course for the Green Berets. LOL'ed hard at the idiot who tried to sleep during the night navigation exercise.
I highly recommend Catfish. Dragged me on an emotional roller coaster... down right gripping documentary. Don't read this if you haven't seen it: Spoiler Angela was severely disturbed... couldn't believe she had single-handedly constructed such an elaborate series of lies. 15 separate facebook accounts to form this imaginary network of friends and family, and used photos of a Canadian model to represent her supposed daughter, "Megan." Crazy, man. I didn't feel an ounce of sympathy for that woman. She perpetually lied to Nev, and I was surprised he handled the situation like he did. I was laughing my ass of when he was toying with Angela through those raunchy texts, and it was truly pathetic from her perspective. This was some sort of very serious psychological issue... I thought it was going to have a terrifying twist, especially when they pulled up to the farmhouse in the middle of the night and he just casually approached the barn. I wanted some blood thirsty psychopath to emerge, but honestly, I thought it was going to be some middle-aged man responsible for the whole fiasco. One more thing, why in the hell didn't he ever try to iChat/skype Abby or Megan?
<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CUB7QveDdYM?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CUB7QveDdYM?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> Amazing. Highly recommend. Earsnot is king.
thadeus, can't believe you forgot this one. I think you were the one that turned me onto it. <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ys2LKKfwTjU?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ys2LKKfwTjU?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>
I met the director of this documentary on a flight a couple of months ago. I was going to Calgary, and he lives in Kelowna, BC. Pretty cool guy, with a really rich step-dad that helps support him so that he can work on movies that don't pay very well. My favorite documentary that hasn't been mentioned is Cocaine Cowboys. The honesty of those convicted for their involvement in the Miami drug trade really makes for an interesting docuentary.
The World at War: With over 20 hours in length, this is the most comprehensive WWII documentary ever created. It is in 26 parts, and can be viewed in its entirety on youtube. The First World War: Based on Hew Strachan's wonderful book, this 10 part film provides a nice rundown of WWI. Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage: Long overdue bio on Rush.
Berga: Soldiers of another War. No it's not a spanish p*rn. I remember watching it in 2003 on PBS and immediately afterwards dropping the $50 donation to get a copy of it. It concetrates on American pows in a death camp. Coverup:behind the Iran contra affair. The girl next door: That one is about the p*rn industry. Very good stuff, the film too! For sports, it has to be one I saw on HBO a long long time ago. The legend of earl the goat. I've never seen Hoopdreams but will now. I wish Brian's song had been a documentary.
I DVR'ed the whole series on the Military Channel a few months ago. It was great. I kind of felt like I was back in high school history class watching a film, but it was still great. This one was very good too. I wish they would have included every album, but then it would have been 5 hours long. That would've been fine with me, but I can see why they couldn't do it. I've been a Rush fan since the mid-80's but I can probably count on one hand how many interviews I've heard with Neil. It was really cool to see him open up like that, being such a private person. Pretty funny seeing Alex drunk at the end.
