Haha forgot about this also... I actually own this thing.

Believe some of his other docs have been mentioned in this thread - D.A. Pennenbaker is very good at what he does:

-Al

Two that I liked that haven't been mentioned so far:

Roger & Me: Michael Moore's first work documents the town of Flint, Michigan after the closing of GM's plant put 30,000 people out of work.

The Weather Underground: A lookback at the Weather Underground, an anti-war movement from the 60's & 70's. A lot of footage from the beginning of the movement and "where are they now" interviews with several of the main members.

All,

Sorta interesting that neither of these films have been mentioned yet. Both are worth watching, though not at the top of my list.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - Michael Moore documentary re; 9/11.

Super-Size Me - About the fast food industry / health impacts on America. Guy eats just McDonald's for a month. Very flawed and silly experiment, but interesting premise.

Bukowski: Born into This. I really enjoyed this when I saw it recently. The film use a bunch of 70s and 80s interviews along with some filmed poetry readings to tell the story of Bukowski's life.

I second Touching the Void. Someone here recommended it a while back. One of the most amazing survival stories I've ever seen.

Herzog documentaries are almost all very good.

For the nature side I'd suggest Microcosmos (insects) and Winged Migration (birds), which have beautiful imagery and show stuff well beyond that which you'd see on Animal Planet or Discovery.

Lost in La Mancha
Enron
and Capturing the Freidmans were all very good.

Hoop Dreams may be 3.5 hours but feels like 20 mins to me.

Second to The Kid stays in the Picture and Stoked. Also Gladiator Days:The Anatomy of a Prison Murder I haven't seen mentioned.

El Diablo
Cocaine Cowboys - Out of all the films in this thread that I now wanna see. I wanna see this one the most. Might even get down to a Blockbuster soon to get it?

The Bridge - Gotta see this flick.

Mayor of the Sunset Strip - Classic scene when Rodney interviewed the Sex Pistols on the phone. The pioneer of KROQ and now he is relegated to a Sun. night show. The Rodney on the Roq compilation albums where I first heard Agent Orange and Black Flag. This movie made me feel old. Entertaining.

KJS
The Decline of The Western Civilisation - Penelope Spheeris first film with FEAR, Black Flag, The Germs, X, Circle Jerks, and others. A punk rock classic detailing the LA hardcore scene, circa '81.

I didn't like the The Metal Years near as much, highlights: Ozzy cooking breakfast, Chris Holmes attempting to drink himself to death in the pool, while his mom sits there with a very worried look on her face.
Penelope Spheeris went on to direct bad major motion pictures The Beverly Hillbillies, the Brady Bunch, etc..

Orangeheat, mrkilla, samjjones
The Civil War., Baseball, any Ken Burns doc. - Ken Burns always gets a big budget for his docs, and spends the $$ well. Always well made movies.


[censored]
Mr. Conservative : Barry Goldwater - I am Liberal, Libertarian, Democrat from Ariz., and I liked this one alot. This flick was made by his grandaughter[?], anyway she sugarcoats what a true Badassmofo Barry was. He was a true free thinker who would now roll over in his grave with alot of the crap the conservitive GOP now does in his name.

Our local Phx. rag The New Times did an review / article [LINK] on Barry when this flick came out. They were the last people to have access to the full BG archives, where BG true ideology on politics and his true feelings about his family life in general came out in public for the first time in his old letters. The family has now since sealed alot of the archives that painted them in their true light.


The DaveR
Hookers on the Point - Half way interesting look into the lives of street whores, meh. Agree with DiDs, that the narrator was awful. Can't believe they let him do a second one.
American Pimp - Kinda on subject, was better.

Aloysius
March of the Penguins [/b]- Wanna see it.

HBO- Legendary Nights series - Hagler vs Leonard, sticks out.

Eagles
When We Were Kings - Rumble in the Jungle, Zaire, Africa George Foreman vs Ali how the locals immediately bonded with Ali and seemed to dislike George. Which was weird, because later in his career Foreman was such a fan favorite. Maybe just a better marketing team PR man?

MusashiStyle
Grizzly Man - Have seen pieces and parts of this, liked it alot, wanna see the whole thing

Frontline & NOVA on PBS - In the last few months one aired that was very good chronicling Eisenhower and 'military industrial' complex. Qoute - "we know they have weopons of Mass Destruction - We got the reciepts for them!" ROLMAO still when I thik of this line.

This year they also did one I liked very much on the US Forest Service, chronicling the history and different policy direction the agency has taken in their history

econophile
Gimme Shelter - Couldn't believe how ghey they were back then. Mick okay...but keith Richards seemed just as ghey, which suprised me. Good flick, but I thought it could have been a little better? When the chit was hitting the fan during Sympahy For the Devil, Mick and the Stones could have done alot more to help the situation. Sonny Barger talking about how the Stones hung the Angels out to dry. The Hells Angels supposedly still have a open contract out on Mick Jagger from this concert.

lippy, private joker & odellthurman
Bowling For Columbine, Roger and Me, and fareinheit 911 - I do think that even if republicans saw these movies with open minds, before the reviews. MM would get much more credit for the great all around movies he makes,

odellthurman; Liberals are just generally more artistic. so it is a natural they are better filmakers.

The Shot Heard Around the World [HBO?] - Detailing the epic season and rivalry between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the NY Giants. Chronicles the season and ends with a playoff game for the National League Pennant. October 3 1951, Bobby Thomson launches "The Shot Heard 'Round The World" & "The Giants Win The Pennant!" ...
MLB - Box Score and Newspaper Article on this Game....Right Side of Page, You Can Listen To The 9th Inning of this Game


J.A.Sucker Scared Straight - You get such classic lines as: "I ain't never heard the sounds of no birds chirping, but I do know what it sounds like to hear a mean screaming 'cause he's got two dicks in his ass!" - and - "Give me your shoes... GIVE ME YOUR DAMNED SHOES!!!!!!!!"
This show did scare me straight haven't even thought about it fot probably 25 years.
J.A.Sucker; you put those qoutes in your post, and I can hear them just like it was yesterday. This Terrified my azz when I was a kid.

Wires
Black Tar Heroin [/b]- Wanna see this one.

Golden_Rhino & El D
the corporation: was this the movie where they made a website as some conservitive sort of group, then went to a board meeting in Europe?

Golden_Rhino
Qoute "My biggest problem with it (and most documentaries), is that it was obviously pushing an "evil empire" agenda."
When you start analyzing the world in depth, it seems very easy to come up with conspiracy theories. When you follow the $$, sometimes it paints ugly pictures for you. [Kind of typical of alot of docs.]

P Chippa
The Iceman: Richard Kuklinski - Might have been the HBO 'coroner' narrating it? The first one was very much superior to the second one. How he kept it hidden from his family, and potrayed himself as being such a family man. Intense.


-1

Agreed. It's not a documentary if you completely make up facts to suit your worldview. Rise and Fall of Enron and Thin Blue Line are documentaries.
BFC is not, simply a well-made 'based on a true story' film that takes multiple liberties with history, which has nothing to do with POV or having a 'storytelling' angle.

Hoop Dreams had 3.5hours of footage after 6 years, so they clearly left stuff out and had a POV [Arthur's mom as hero, Gates' coach as gloryhound, etc] but is factually accurate in all depictions and narrations, unlike BFC.

Who Killed the Electric Car? - a great look at the EV1 that GM produced (as well as other electric cars), their amazing potential to redefine driving in america, and how they were quietly killed by a combination of... well i guess you must watch it to see.

Hoop Dreams is awesome. Along the same basketball-vein, I really enjoyed Year of the Yao and Through the Fire. Although not even close to the level of Hoop Dreams, each of these films really made me like the subjects, Yao Ming and Sebastian Telfair, respectively.

Edit: Also would like to add Once in a Lifetime, the story of the New York Cosmos(who had Pele on the team) and how soccer was a huge deal, for a brief flickering moment in the USA.

DN

Man this one pissed me off, even more so because I watched it directly after An Inconvenient Truth.

The Cruise You can never fully understand New York City until you see it through the eyes of "Speed" Levitch. Some kind of renaissance man, part poet/philiosopher, a circle line bus tourguide and an entirely different kind of rebel, his view on life and the modern city are delivered in an amazingly hilarious film.

The director, Bennet Miller, has made two movie; this one, 10 years ago, and Capote.

...their 75-150 mi driving limit on an 8-hr charge, and top speed of 80?
Something not mentioned in the film at all- just a thought. I don't know anyone who would want to drive in LA or NJ or DC with a car that maxes out after a few hours of driving.

According to GM, fully costed these would have been $80k, which you can debate, but is still awfully high for a car that only 800 people leased at half that price or less 10 years ago. These were 'quietly killed' by lack of demand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster
This goes up to 130mph and 250mi before a new charge, with a reported fuel efficiency of 135mpg. Let's see how that does.
You can reserve a 2008 model today.

It wasn't lack of demand that killed them. Also, keep in mind the technology was rapidly improving and prices would obviously have come way down. We could all be driving 500+ mile electric cars today if the auto companies, state of CA, and the federal government wanted us to. They already had 300 mile versions ready at the time GM pulled the plug.

GM might be saved if they can actually ge this off the ground
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16503845/

I read this a few weeks ago, and my thought was it sure looks like inferior technology to me than what was already proven years ago...

I wonder if that conclusion is justified unless you've also seen documentaries about other rappers.

Showtime is showing Rize this Saturday at 7:30pm.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey - Sam Dunn is a 30-year old anthropologist who wrote his graduate thesis on the plight of Guatemalan refugees. Recenly he has decided to study the plight of a different culture, one he has been a part of since he was a 12-year old: the culture of heavy metal. Sam sets out on a global journey to find out why this music has been consistently stereotyped, dismissed and condemned and yet is loved so passionately by its millions of fans. Along the way, Sam explores metals' obsession with some of life's most provacative subjects - sexuality, religion, violence and death - and discovers some things about the culture that even he can't defend. Shot on location in the UK, Germany, Norway, Canada and the US, this documentary is the first of its kind. It is both a defense of a long-misunderstood art form and a window for the outsider into the spectacle that is heavy metal.

Tokyo Girls - Tokyo Girls is a candid journey into the world of four young Canadian women who work as well-paid hostesses in exclusive Japanese nightclubs. Lured by adventure and easy money, these modern-day geisha find themselves caught up in the mizu shobai - the complex "floating water world" of Tokyo clubs and bars. Drawn by fast money, some women become consumed by the lavish lifestyle and forget why they came. One hostess calls it "losing the plot." With a pulsating visual style, Tokyo Girls captures the raw energy of urban Japan and its fascination with the new. Shot in Canada, Osaka and Tokyo, this is a riveting inside look at the impact of the "economy geisha." Desired mainly for her looks, the hostess is rapidly replacing the cultural institution of geisha - women trained in the ancient art of traditional entertainment.

I loved Metal: A Headbanger's Journey His interviews in the film are great. I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys metal and/or documentaries.

Has anyone seen Kurosawa: A Documentary on the Acclaimed Director It is in my Netflix queue currently.

Mad Hot Ballroom - Documentary about NYC public school students who participate in the program where they learn to ballroom dance and participate in a ballroom dance competition. I liked this one a ton.



these two aren't for the homophobic

Gay Sex in the 70's - a look at the gay scene in NYC during the 70's.

That Guy: Peter Berlin - the life and times of photographer/model Peter Berlin.

I'd like to reiterate how good this was. I would be surprised if anyone could watch this and not come away thinking that the kids convicted of murder aren't innocent.

The Boys of Baraka - Kind of surprised that this has not been mentioned. Follows four inner-city youths from Baltimore who are accepted into the Baraka school in Kenya. A school founded "to give "at-risk" African- American boys from Baltimore a chance to learn academically and grow personally in an environment far removed from their troubled neighborhoods." Excellent.

The Man Who Knew viewable here Frontline documentary on John O'Neill. FBI counter-terrorism official and authority on Al Qaeda in the 90's. He repeatedly warned of a the danger from Bin Laden. Chafed against the FBI bureaucracy and was head of security at the WTC on 9/11.

The Beauty Academy of Kabul American women who start a Beauty parlor in Kabul in 2003. Provides a welcome view of life in Kabul after the Taliban. Worth a viewing if interested in current affairs etc.. but otherwise so-so.

Have to echo other posters who said Touching the Void Awesome survival story.