Documentaries

I watched a documentary the other day called Just, Melvin: Just Evil about this guy named Melvin Just. He was an abusive pedophile who molested his children and stepchildren (of which he had roughly a dozen over the course of two marriages). The movie explores how pretty much every single one of his daughters ended up as a mentally ill trainwreck because of him.

Pretty interesting shit, and kinda sad too.
 
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I like my documentaries to be bleak and depressing. Some of my favourites have already been mentioned but I'll add:

Rain in my Heart. Following the treatment of four alcoholics in a special medical treatment sector of the hospital. Two of them were dead before the film was over, one more has died since.

Hardcore. Follows a young English woman who travels to America to become a porn star. It goes badly.

The Search for Animal Farm. A good long look at the life and state of mind of a person who became known for bestiality porn.

Swansea Love Story. Teenage heroin addicts and the shithole they live in, plus the deadbeats that raised them.

The Hunt for Britain's Pedophiles. Probably the bleakest one on the list, it really shows what a mountain of shit the officers have to wade through to actually get any justice for the victims. It's pretty graphic in places.

Mommy Dead and Dearest. The Dee Dee Blanchard murder case in detail. Munchausen's by Proxy, autism, BDSM and more.

66 Months. Severely mentally ill man slips out of the care of social services and is taken advantage of by an old alcoholic unstable gay man.

Deep Water. Regular non-sailor man with dodgy finances decides to take part in a round-the-world sailing competition. It goes badly.

The Bridge. Discussing suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge. Contains footage of actual suicides. More sad than shocking.

I'm Your Number One Fan. All about stalkers. Features a portly middle-aged woman having an orgasm to the sound of a radio DJ's voice, same woman freaking out when someone calls him gay, a man who thinks the Queen of England is Satan, and snooker.

Bulgaria's Abandoned Children. What it would be like if a whole school of children turned into the Hartley Hooligans through pure neglect.

Children Underground. Street kids in Bucharest living in a subway station, huffing paint and self-harming to pass the time.

Sex in a Cold Climate. Interviews with women who spent time in Ireland's Magdalene laundries for unmarried pregnancies.
 
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I've been watching a bunch of documentaries on Netflix.

Great British Castles: Really interesting to me as an American, it might go over basic history for Brits, but a lot of it was skipped in US history courses, and them going through the history of different castles and how they were built differently from the Saxons, through the Normans, and further was really interesting.

I forget the name, but there was one that covered the evolution of plant life through the existence of earth, and how that impacted both how the land changed and how animals developed.

I've been watching Wild China recently, which is interesting as each episode covers a different part of China and how the animal vary. I'm on the one that is covering the Himalayan Mountains and the Tibetan plateau.
 

On 14 October 1939, HMS Royal Oak was anchored at Scapa Flow in Orkney, Scotland, when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-47.
Of Royal Oak's complement of 1,234 men and boys, 835 were killed, or died later of their wounds.

This is an old but well-made documentary on what happened that night in 1939.
 
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Drunk in Public - A little known documentary detailing the life of Mark David Allen, a street bum who's been arrested for intoxication over 500 times. A sad, bleak look into how hopeless addiction can be when it gets its hooks into a man deeply enough.

The Secret Life of Machines - A British series that uses animation and live action to explore not only when famous household devices were invented, but why they were designed the way they were. Looks like it was made in the 70s, but was apparently made about 15-20 years later than that. Good if you like British quirkiness.

David Macauley's Castle - A docudrama series that uses animation to tell the story of a fictional castle, from its inception and construction to its first epic siege. Live action segments in between the cartoon segments provide more explanation. As a kid, this kind of presentation is really interesting, especially since it doesn't gloss over any of the nasty things that would happen while defending a castle that's built in enemy territory. Macauley's other books were made into documentaries as well, although after the third one or so, the quality of the animation went downhill. The voice acting was topnotch, though, and included luminaries like Brian Blessed, Derek Jacobi and John Hurt.
 
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As basic bitch as this probably is, I've always been a fan of Ken Burns.

These would probably be my all-time favorite works of his.

The Civil War (1990)
The West (1996)*
Prohibition (2011)
The Vietnam War (2016)
Country Music (2019)

*-Technically he didn't direct this one but he produced it and it's very much in his style.
 
Halfway through the Peacock documentary "I Love You, You Hate Me". It's an interesting look into what made my early childhood, but it's a bit depressing. It's leading up to something foreboding that I feel like I should be aware of, but I'm not. I don't remember hearing anything about what happened in Miami when it comes to Barney the Dinosaur.

Will watch the second half tomorrow since I was watching it with the parents and it's getting late.
 

one of the last great bands dealing with Covid restrictions does sound fun...
 
Since all the faggotry the NHL is endorsing depressed me, it made me dig up this documentary from 2014 called Red Army, about the Soviet ice hockey team.

youtu.be

Red Army | Official Trailer HD (2014)

From Oscar® nominated and Emmy award-winning filmmakers, RED ARMY is a feature documentary about the Soviet Union and the most successful dynasty in sports h...
youtu.be youtu.be
 
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Into the Deep (it has a subtitle, but the less you know the better).

It's about this Danish grifter that builds a pseudo-submarine as a precursor to doing an amateur space launch. And then while they're making a regular low-key documentary about him, he decides to do something hilariously retarded.

It's a pretty good and fun look into how dumb and oblivious most people are.
 
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Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997)

In my opinion, this is still the definitive rundown of all the reprehensible shit the Feds did during the Waco siege. Highlights include Koresh's attorney, Dick DeGuerin (probably better known now for defending Rober Durst), making Chuck Schumer look like a complete asshole.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)

In my opinion, the undisputed best true crime documentary ever made. While The Thin Blue Line came first and had really slick reenactments that were copied endlessly, Paradise Lost is just raw as fuck and the filmmakers had access to both the prosecution and the defense, as well as the families of everyone involved, that would never happen these days. Shows how genuinely fucking repulsive the media and the cops were, this movie legit knocked me on my ass when I first saw it years ago. Doubt there will be anything like it ever made again.
 
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A new trailer of indie paleo documentary Forgotten Bloodlines: Agate just dropped. It's so cool they got Nigel Marvin to narrate.
 
White Devil said:
Since all the faggotry the NHL is endorsing depressed me, it made me dig up this documentary from 2014 called Red Army, about the Soviet ice hockey team.

youtu.be

Red Army | Official Trailer HD (2014)

From Oscar® nominated and Emmy award-winning filmmakers, RED ARMY is a feature documentary about the Soviet Union and the most successful dynasty in sports h...
youtu.be youtu.be
Click to expand...

This is such a good documentary- really interesting and well done, and covers an angle that wasn't really discussed much before.
 
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