Grunching the thread/some of my favourite documentaries that I can recall:

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (mentioned recently ITT very very good 99% positive rotten tomatoes rating)/Searching for Sugarman among my all time favourites
I really liked Tim's Vermeer (and some guy I recommended it to at the library loved it fwiw, look for the trailer and see if its for you)
Red Army (about Russian hockey, good even if you don't love sports documentaries maybe)

Pretty much a documentary and in my top 100 movies: King of Kong: a fistful of quarters.

There's another one, Canadian, about a guy and his pawn shop I really enjoyed...not sure the name of it though.

Edit: It's called broke, trailer here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ3--NB1QTc

Really interesting/compelling human story there. Most documentaries are about humans I guess, RDRR.

I loved those first three you mentioned a lot. Will watch Red Army soon.

Long Shot was a fun little doc. Nothing earth shattering, but def worth a watch. Don't google, just watch it. It's only 40 mins long.

Has anyone seen Unacknowledged? What a trip that was. Very engrossing and worth a watch imo.

One cycling documentary I really enjoyed was "A Sunday In Hell".

From WIKI:
"Danish documentary film directed by Jørgen Leth. The film is a chronology of the 1976 Paris–Roubaix bicycle race from the perspective of participants, organizers and spectators.

Paris–Roubaix is the most famous and usually the most dramatic of the spring classics. Much of the latter portion is over narrow, cobbled tracks that choke with dust on dry days and become slick and muddy in rain. For the riders it's a challenge to keep going without puncturing or crashing."

The total distance was 168.1 MI/270.5KM and was won in a time of 6HR 37'41''. I've never been much of fan of road races but big single stage races through a mixture of terrain is kind of fascinating.

30 for 30 Documentaries that stood out to me.
Broke, The U Parts 1+2, June 17th 1994, Catching Hell, Fantastic Lies

Watched Icarus, I liked it,
I think too many people just assumed it was only Russia doing this, there are a lot of stories in the UK about doping that the British Cycling team are also heavily involved, hopefully the full truth comes out and these frauds are exposed.

Watched Cleveland Strangler, I thought it was poor, I hate how straight away it became a race issue, A black man murdered a load of black prostitutes / drug addicts and the presenter ties it to racism on the behalf of the police department. There are lots of unsolved cases that are a result of horrible policing not just racism.

About to watch Long Shot + Unacknowledged

New Louis Theroux three-part series, Dark States, has just started. Involves him visiting three American cities dealing with heroin addiction, sex trafficking, and murder.

Not had a chance to watch it yet, but, as you can probably guess, it sounds pretty grim.

The first one was the same story involving a lot of the exact same people as the Netflix doc Heroin(e), which I happened to watch a few days before by coincidence.

I'm a huge Louis fan but found this very boring by his standards - likely at least in part because I'd already watched Heroin(e) and it therefore felt like I wasn't seeing anything new which is a big part of what a good doc is about - but still I hope the next two in the series are better.

It's also not dissimilar to the previous doc he did about Crystal Meth in Fresno, but less shocking/intriguing.

One of the best shot and packaged documentaries I have seen in a long long time, I may have to give it a rewatch. Thoroughly entertaining.

Time: The Kalief Browder Story. Just so disgusting. Don't Google, just watch and be horrified.

Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary

Documentary about the friendship between two 60's icons. Both were dismissed Harvard professors with a penchant for LSD use. Leary became a psychedelic guru, and counter cultural legend, while Dass went East and became a world-renowned spiritual teacher.

I've been fascinated, and at times in my life, heavily inspired, by both men, so the documentary wasn't exactly groundbreaking. However it was still cool to see old footage of them, and see them interact with each other.

Definitely worth a watch if you're interested in them. Definitely one to miss if you're not into all that mamsy-pamsy hippy crap.

Getting it now, I tell all my friends that I recommend a documentary to not to google it and just watch it, I like the surprise element.

I watched Sour Grapes, Upon your review Rich, I loved it,

Glad you enjoyed it. Hahaha that poor SOB. Can't blame him, really.

Imagine if Rudy had applied himself to something legitimate? Smart dude.

Re your spoiler -

Really looking forward to this:

Yes, kind of like some poker players they would likely be more successful in the real world.

Yes that is a good point, but when he took it to a tester he knew straight away it wasn't good.


I have been watching Hot Girls Wanted Turned on documentary series and its quite interesting so far.

Episode 5 is really fascinating. Guy with super low self esteem falls in love with a married cam girl. ugh

Episode 2 I thought was lame. It's just some emotionally ******ed guy who was obviously using dating apps as an excuse to avoid developing a real connection with anyone and thus risking getting hurt. His behavior would be exactly the same without dating apps, the only difference is he would go on fewer dates.

Wanted to post about this trailer.

I like the general idea of this, but the problem here is that it's obviously staged [at least in part, which calls into question the whole thing].

He's not giving a genuine interview there, he's acting. The behind-the-scenes stuff I'd also imagine was "staged" with a project like this in mind for the future. Solid evidence that it's staged at least in part is @1:23, with the director trying to talk a crazed Carey down. The director is not a good actor.

Anyway - the idea of shooting a bunch of extra "behind the scenes" footage on set in character to release years later as almost a sequel is a good one. But what's going to piss me off is that people are going to treat this 100% at face value - that Carey went full "method" for months, that he made the shoot difficult because he wouldn't behave, that "the studio wouldn't release the footage" (this is surely overblown).

As a mockumentary, yes. As a documentary? **** you.

For fans of 30 for 30, Nature Boy airs tonight. No explanation required.

Pervert Park

Interviews with the residents of a trailer park in Florida, all of which are registered sex offenders. Theroux did a similar doc a few years ago, but where Theroux asks douchey leading questions that result in shifty defensive answers, these interviews were raw and honest, sometimes to a very disturbing degree.

4/5

City 40

A secret city in Russia near Chelyabinsk where plutonium weapons were manufactured during the cold war. It wasn't on any map until 1994. Now it's just an industrial city with high rates of cancer and birth defects and the lakes are heavily contaminated with nuclear waste.

4/5

Icarus was so ****ing good. 10/10 it only gets better toward the end.

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AlphaGo is on amazon video / google play. very entertaining, probably even moreso if you aren't familiar with the details of the story already.

https://www.alphagomovie.com

‘Inner City Sailing’ is the extraordinary tale of a passionate teacher who taught ten inner-city boys from the deprived London borough of Tottenham, one of the world’s most exclusive sports - sailing. After renovating an old sailing boat he then entered his young team into one of the biggest sailing races in the world, The Round The Island Race, with dramatic consequences. At the centre of this adventure is an inspiring story of a teacher who goes above and beyond for the sake of his pupils.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCwe7Odjls4

First time hearing about this. Absolutely fascinating doc. My favorite thing was just watching Lee’s facial expressions during the match.

Thanks for posting.

If you're interested in that type of thing, Google DeepMind's AlphaZero is currently causing a stir in the chess world.

It was given only the rules of chess, so no opening strategy, databases, etc, then trained itself through self-play. After four hours it played one of the top chess engines, Stockfish, and won 28, drew 72.

Not only did it crush, it did it playing in a really unorthodox style.