[Closed] Favourite documentaries - what's your's?

Indie Game is great.

Dog Town and Z Boys is peerless in my opinion.

Dog Town and Z boys

(beaten to it)

And this cheeky little 15 minute number as featured on midweek movies a while back.. Yunki Jr MkI used it as his lullaby movie from the age of about 6 months to 2.5 years

King of Kong is absolutely brilliant. I'm sure Senna was a great driver, his film was shit in comparison though.

Stuart: A life backwards

Riding Giants.

Grizzily Man.

Westway to the World.

Cheers for that Yunki,very good.
Seen 'Indie game' - very,very good and also enjoyed 'Grizzly Man'.
Looks like 'Dog Town' next as I have no interest in skate boarding so should enjoy it 😀

This is quite good if you like road. Intresting music too.

Hell and Back Again - exceptionally shot documentary filmed in Afganistan and when an injured soldier returns home to the US. Every single frame could be an award winning photograph. Proper pure observational documentary of a sort that almost never gets made these days. I'm bored of illustrated essays.

Pretty much anything and everything by the Maysles brothers (Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter, Primary)

the Working Man's Death series, particularly the sulphur miners.

The Act of Killing. Far too bizarre to summarise, but totally compelling.

The World At War.

Should be made compulsory viewing for all teenagers at school.

Dig! - about a couple of indie bands - The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols.
[url=

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_hells_angels_take_a_mini-b ]The Hells Angels take a mini break. [/url]

The Corporation.

Close encounters of the third kind

Man on Wire - great documentary about the bloke who tightrope walked between the twin towers.

Yep, Man on Wire is great - almost like they were planning a bank job.

I found The Bridge morbidly fascinating

Equally so, 9/11 (guess what that's about) the two French guys making a documentary about a firefighter and end up in the twin towers when they come down

Also, if you have no interest I skateboarding, look for Bones Brigade:an autobiography and Stoked:the Gator story

It definitely has shades of a well planned heist

Series years ago on the History Channel about the American Civil War. Some narration by Danny Glover IIRC.

robdob - Member
The World At War.

Should be made compulsory viewing for all teenagers at school.

POSTED 30 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

Plus one. It's hardly light viewing, but it's a hell of a production.

The Corporation and Dig! were both pretty good.

That man on wire one was so dull!

Touching The Void

Scratch - early days of hip hop, I'm not big on Hip hop but it's great - whole film -

Lucas Brunelle - Line Of Sight - compulsory viewing for any roadie/commuter!!

Heart of Darkness

+1 Westway to the World

Just watch the first 9 mins of king of kong as someone above recommended
Weird but didn't move for the next hour until I'd seen it all!!!
Great ending too

Yeh, it's pretty good. I watched it with some mates so it was more of a laugh. Some funny characters in it, probably not far removed from some of the big hitters on here 😉

+1 for Man on Wire - wasn't expecting much, but it was riveting.
Senna
When We Were Kings - Mohammed Ali at his finest.

The world at war.

Klunkerz is brilliant, it's an MTB version of Riding Giants (in case you're unaware of it).

Personally I love BBC 4 music documentaries, don't care what band either - even watched one on Pink Floyd the other day, and I can't stick them.

Requiem for Detroit

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This is a fantastic story of escaping from a Vietnamese prison.

Touching the Void is an excellent docu film.

In keeping with remembrance weekend, the ridiculous daring Commando raid on St Nazaire and operation Barras, SAS raid to free 5 soldiers from the West Side Boyz in Sierra Leone (I think it's called zero hour or mission impossible or something). Both on you tube

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

Also enjoyed the Thrust SSC one on YouTube that someone posted on here a while ago.

As already mentioned Riding Giants and Dogtown.

BMX one Joe Kid on a Stingray.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Pure comedy gold.

In search of the sugar man was a good watch although i was drunk at the time.

As stated by others - World at War.

END OF THREAD!

Some great suggestions so far (except End of Thread 🙄 )

Riding Giants, We Were Kings, Dogtown..awesome.
Also check out:
Stoked: The Rise & Fall of Gator
The Birth of Big Air (Matt Hoffman)

Definitely Riding Giants, Touching The Void and When We Were Kings.

Also, Hoop Dreams - about two american kids trying to make it as professional basketball players. Not a subject I've any interest in but an absolutely compelling documentary.

[url=

Dance[/url] is 5 minutes of your life you won't be wanting a refund for

Supersize me was intersting.. .and the one about Dick proenneke, the chap building a log cabin in the us inthe 60s, was excelent..think it was called alone in the wilderness

Trinity and Beyond
Gladiator Days
Louis Theroux Miami Mega Jail

How could I forget Joe Kid on a Stingray? Essential viewing for all cyclists. Amazing history lesson into BMX. Even goes into mid-school BMX when I got into it, when there was no money at all - hear Dennis McCoys description of how the prizes changed when the money went. Every time I watch it and I hear Matt Hoffman talking about that period it chokes me up a bit and I have to go and ride!! "They were telling me BMX was dead - it's my life and I wasn't going to take it". He organised the Bicycle Stunt Series with no money but it became a legendary thing and morphed into the X-games. Wonderful!
Also got Spike Jones in it, who started out working in a BMX shop as a kid.

Loved Dogtown and Z-Boys... And for some reason, B-29 Frozen In Time, I love the ridiculousness of it all, even if it does end very sadly.

Pump up the volume.

Anything by Kevin Macdonald (eg Touching the Void or One day in September)

Man on a Wire

Bus 174 (note this is one is almost too long but the care attention and research that went it to it make it a must see)

Bear with me on this - and relevant today - but Clarkson made a documentary about the Victoria Cross that was absorbing.

athgray - Member
Series years ago on the History Channel about the American Civil War.

Ken Burns one? Most of his series are cracking see also 'The West' and 'The Dustbowl'

Couple of my favourites are:

Burma VJ - trailer

How Vietnam was Lost - whole thing

Pretty much any Adam Curtis ones

On Any Sunday.

A recent one and about bikes... plus actually really interesting.

RYOKOU - About Aussie track racer Shane Perkins and Japanese Keirin racing.

enjoyed this the 1st time round, looks like its getting (or has been) re-released

In S.R. Bindler’s 1997 cult classic, Hands On a Hardbody, two dozen small-town Texans compete for a brand-new “Hardbody” pickup truck at a local car dealership. The event is a contest of endurance and sleep-deprivation—whoever can remain standing the longest with one hand on the truck will get to drive it home. Capturing several days of lunacy, laughter, struggle and heartbreak, Hands On a Hardbody is more than a documentary about winning a truck. It is a remarkable study of competition, camaraderie, faith and determination—the ultimate human drama.

Style Wars is a classic

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Scratch
Some Kind of Monster
Hoop Dreams
Dogtown and Z Boys
Bones Brigade

Lots of good stuff on Storyville - really enjoyed this one.

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/may/25/storyville-shooting-robert-king-review

Was a bit disappointed by Senna.

Bear with me on this - and relevant today - but Clarkson made a documentary about the Victoria Cross that was absorbing.

Second the Storyville suggestion, there's usually always a good one to be found on the iplayer.

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis ]Adam Curtis[/url] can not be beat for sheer vision and editorial genius.

I loved his multi-part documentary, 'The Power of Nightmares', but his '[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) ]All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace[/url]' surpasses even his own high standards.

Then, of course, there is the sublime Werner Herzog...

Hot out of the editing room

Shaun Ryder on UFOs - sorted

"One day in September " about the Hostage siege at the Munich Olympus is pretty incredible

+1 to Scratch

Dark Days
Buena Vista Social Club
Chasing Legends
Fire in Babylon

edit and Exit Through the Gift Shop

I'm struggling to think of a bad documentary to be fair.

Senna, TT3D, Man on wire, Bowling for columbine, all of the Werner Herzog ones I've seen...

can we class coffee and cigarettes as a documentary, just so I can mention it.

Gents ... where do you get these from? Youtube ?? Anywhere else???

These will be great for the long slow hours on the turbo/trainer road over the winter.

Talking of which, may I add to our list a couple of roadie docs

A Sunday in Hell

and

Stars and Watercarries

Hmmm..
I'd say anything that has these subjects in and I'll either record or watch..
Egypt
Asia Major
North Africa
The Americas
Space
Art
Art History
Design
That stuff that Coxy does best
Engineering
Transport
Sociology
Any thing that Dr Lucy Worsleys doing
In the main BBC4 outputs and occasionally BBC2

I don't think I have a favorite but "Cry Free Town" is very good, but upsetting.

@Rosey Yes! Theres a good one about the hour record too, can't remember what that one's called but it's on youtube too.

Edit - the impossible hour.

Exit Through The Gift Shop +1
Man On Wire +1
Dark Days +1
I would like to add "The Endless Summer" to the mix.

Some excellent suggestions here.

For fans of all things pithy, Etre et Avoir is very good - it's about the relationship between a teacher and his pupils in a rural French school.

'Chorlton and the Wheelies'

In addition to the above, 'Capturing the Friedmans'. It's about a family dissolving in the midst of allegations of child abuse by the father and the accompanying media frenzy. It largely stitched together out of their own home movie footage.

I've never been wrong-footed so many times by a single film. Just as you're settling on a particular perspective, there's another revelation that catapults you across to the opposite view.

Alone in the Wilderness, about building a log cabin by hand in Alaska, then living in it. Simple and beautiful. Available on the Tuuube

Seconded, and yes, very relevant - I shall re-watch tonight.

The documentary about the first attempts at scaling the eiger north face. Fantastic.

Shameless plug.

Whores' Glory - for my Mrs there is no longer desire to watch Pretty Woman again. Ever.

Not really a favourite, but quite an important documentary

Operation Solstice - The Battle of the Beanfield

You've been trumped .

The story of Donald Trump building his golf courses in Northern Scotland and riding roughshod over all and sundry in the process . What an a-hole that man is . The Scottish parliament don't come out of it looking too good either .

Seven Wonders.

Netflix or LoveFilm any good for documentaries these days? They were rubbish a few years ago.

Touching The Void.