Documentary Recs

The Knife

The Knife

Magnificent Witch
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Oct 2, 2013
Is anyone here into documentaries? Do you have any recommendations?

Just to give back to the thread, the last documentary I watched was "Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card-Counting Christians." Two guys taught a class on card-counting in a church basement, justifying it by pointing out that the usual religious injunction against gambling didn't apply because by counting cards, they'd removed the gambling from the equation, turning it into a game of skill. They built up a team of good god-fearing card-counters and started hitting the blackjack tables.
 
I've seen that one! Louis Theroux is kind of hit-or-miss for me. The ones I like, I really like and have seen a couple of time; the ones I don't like are just sort of forgettable. That one was good, though.
 
Expelled. No intelligence allowed. Sure its possibly the worst "documentary" ever made but its a fucking riot if you know the barest bits of science or history
 
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Judge Holden said:
Expelled. No intelligence allowed. Sure its possibly the worst "documentary" ever made but its a fucking riot if you know the barest bits of science or history
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"Here's what Richard Dawkins teaches with his Darwinian theory", *Footage of Nazis play over Dawkins dialogue.
Ben Stein voice: Here is a Nazi gas chamber, see what you wonderful "science" does Dawkins!?
Cut to goofy editing that makes Dawkins look like a smirking asshole.

It depends on what type of Docs you like. I've always been a big documentary watcher. I kind of avoid political documentaries now, unless I really know that they are well sourced and not horribly biased. I like a lot of Docs about crazy people, like, "I Think We're Alone Now" which is on Netflix instant, and "The Woman Who wasnt' there" also on Netflix instant, the latter being about a women who fabricated a story and became a popular member of a 9/11 survivors group, fooling everyone around her for years. "Confessions of a Superhero" and "The Reinactors" are great docs about the lives of the people who dress up in costumes and get money in front of the Hollywood Chinese theater. The last Doc I watched was called Room 237, which was about peoples various interpretations of Stanley Kubricks, "The Shinning", it was interesting to see what people could read into a movie, my favorite was the idea the Kubrick shot the staged moon landing, and put hidden messages in the shinning as if to come clean.
 
Expelled is pretty much an Academy Award winner if there were such a thing for creationist documentaries. There are some really really bad ones, look for them on YouTube, Extant Dodo has some good ones. I posted a link to an annotated version of Expelled in the least favorite movies thread.

I like the documentary Speak. It's about people from the speech club Toastmasters (I'm a member) competing in the world championship of public speaking (I know someone who competed this year). My fellow Toastmasters didn't like it because it focused too much on human interest issues (there's a guy who had his foot and ankle amputated and a woman who nearly died from a serious medical problem) and didn't focus enough on competing or participating in Toastmasters. Still, I liked it.
 
Picklepower said:
It depends on what type of Docs you like. I've always been a big documentary watcher. I kind of avoid political documentaries now, unless I really know that they are well sourced and not horribly biased. I like a lot of Docs about crazy people, like, "I Think We're Alone Now" which is on Netflix instant, and "The Woman Who wasnt' there" also on Netflix instant, the latter being about a women who fabricated a story and became a popular member of a 9/11 survivors group, fooling everyone around her for years. "Confessions of a Superhero" and "The Reinactors" are great docs about the lives of the people who dress up in costumes and get money in front of the Hollywood Chinese theater. The last Doc I watched was called Room 237, which was about peoples various interpretations of Stanley Kubricks, "The Shinning", it was interesting to see what people could read into a movie, my favorite was the idea the Kubrick shot the staged moon landing, and put hidden messages in the shinning as if to come clean.
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I've seen Room 237, too! I liked the chick who found all the references to the Minotaur and the labyrinth.
 
Check Vice Documentaries on Youtube. It's a channel that uploads free documentaries of some interesting and some weird shit around the world. They actually sent someone (with brass balls) to film one in a hidden camera at North Korea.
 
OOOH Vice is Awesome. I think they were in even more danger when they were in Liberia, then in DPRK, since they could have easily been shot in Liberia, but I think even the DPRK gov. knew that they couldn't get away with kidnapping them because, it would have been a huge incident. Not that I would feel safe in either of those countries anyway.

Red Chapel is a great DPRK documentary, that has both humor and sadness. In this one, 3 people from Denmark (2 Korean) go as a fake comedy group to perform in a DPRK "culture festival" and it is fucking amazing. They realize that the north Korean in charge of the program wont let them do their skit but instead writes one for them. And one of the Danish/Korean men, in the "comedy group" is mentally handicapped, so the North Korean drama instructor makes them hide that fact. Its really good, there are moments of humor like I said, but also sad moments, the end made me cry, I REALLY recommend it.
 
Picklepower said:
OOOH Vice is Awesome. I think they were in even more danger when they were in Liberia, then in DPRK, since they could have easily been shot in Liberia, but I think even the DPRK gov. knew that they couldn't get away with kidnapping them because, it would have been a huge incident. Not that I would feel safe in either of those countries anyway.

Red Chapel is a great DPRK documentary, that has both humor and sadness. In this one, 3 people from Denmark (2 Korean) go as a fake comedy group to perform in a DPRK "culture festival" and it is fucking amazing. They realize that the north Korean in charge of the program wont let them do their skit but instead writes one for them. And one of the Danish/Korean men, in the "comedy group" is mentally handicapped, so the North Korean drama instructor makes them hide that fact. Its really good, there are moments of humor like I said, but also sad moments, the end made me cry, I REALLY recommend it.
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A-fucking-greed. Vice's north korea doc was awesome (poor lonely tea lady :( ), and I have been planning to watch red chapel for a while now. I remember a few months ago watching a bbc doc with my parents where they filmed NK's "glorious countryside" and we were all blown away at just how much north korea resembles Cormac Mccarthy's "The Road" once you leave pyongyang.
 
I could not even make it through Expelled. My brain started to overheat around the thirty minute mark. The Red Chapel was excellent.

I'll watch almost any kind of doc, although I tend to lean toward quirky character studies and historical events (hello, I'm a member of this forum). There's a doc called "In the Realms of the Unreal" about Harvey Darger, an elderly janitor who was possibly suffering autism as far back as the early 1900s. Lived alone in his filthy little apartment for four decades, had no living relatives, went to Mass three times a week. No one thought anything of him until after he died, when his landlords came in to clean out his apartment and found he had been creating a 15,000 page fantasy novel with hundreds of illustrations. He'd been in and out of some miserable turn-of-the-century orphanages and mental hospitals for much of his early life, and the novel was a huge, unsophisticated allegory for the way children are abused and mistreated. The guy's now one of the most celebrated outsider artists in American history.

Unfortunately, the story was more amazing than the production values, and Dakota Fanning's narration didn't help.
 
As stated above, Vice does some kick ass documentaries.

One documentary that really stuck with me was Reel Injun, a documentary about the representation of native Americans in the film industry.

Also, anything about North Korea. It's a really interesting hellhole.
 
Some other good ones are.
Wesley Willis- The Daddy of Rock and Roll
Gods Cartoonist: the comic crusades of Jack Chick
Public Access Hollywood. (to bad public access Is nearly nonexistent now, I like to think of Youtube as the new public access. )
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Blackfish. It was really good.

Prostitution Behind the Veil was also good.
 
Salto said:
Check Vice Documentaries on Youtube. It's a channel that uploads free documentaries of some interesting and some weird shit around the world. They actually sent someone (with brass balls) to film one in a hidden camera at North Korea.
Click to expand...

The North Korea Vice documentary is awesome, it felt like they stepped into some bizarre alien world.
 
i love pretty much all of the espn 30 for 30's

but the last really great documentary i watched was "god grew tired of us"
 
Don't feel like starting a new thread,
My favorite documentaries are Burzynski and Michael Moore Hates America.

Watched Whore's Glory yesterday on Netflix.
Started in Thailand at a nice brothel. The women seemed happy and laughing as the john's watched them behind glass picking out which one they wanted. The girls punched a clock and went to a salon to start their day. For 1600 baht (about 50 American) you got to hang out and have a few drinks and sleep with them in a nice room like a hotel.
Then it went to Bangledesh where I felt depressed. The brothel was cramped and the women actually lived there. They charged 200 taka (about 2.75 American). One woman said she had about 15 guys that day. The women there also fought with each other as their kids were sleeping in the hallway. It almost moved me to tears.
It ended in Mexico, where it was a cross between Thailand and Bangledesh, they charged 200 pesos (15 American) and seemed happy.
It's subtitled but if you don't mind reading it I'd recommend it.
 
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