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Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#61

Post by westhom »

Couple of random ones I highly enjoyed recently:

- Feels Good Man -- story of the innocent illustrator behind Pepe the Frog and how the internet ruins nice things

- War Room (1993) -- fly-on-the-wall doc of James Carville during the most intense period of Bill Clinton's election campaign (amazing "pre-internet" energy)

- Downfall: Case Against Boeing -- all in the title

- Cane Toads: An Unnatural History -- hilarious story of the introduction and unintended over-multiplication of cane toads in Australia

- The Man Who Skied Down Everest -- story of a Japanese alpinist plus a team of scientists and 800+ sherpas and their mission to support him skiing down Everest from near the peak

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#62

Post by ChoGGi »

Einstein's Brain

"English filmmaker Kevin Hull crossed America in search of the truth about the stolen brains, together with the Japanese scientist Kenji Sugimoto, who has been studying Einstein for over thirty years."

https://www.idfa.nl/en/film/35af3499-a6ce-498f-a5ae-cbba455e...

The only issue is good luck finding a legitimate copy anywhere.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xM4m-Z0nAio

Edit:

Triumph of the Will

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-triumph-of-th...

(Goes better with the commentary by Anthony Santoro)

General Idi Amin Dada - A Self Portrait

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5609-general-idi-ami...

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#63

Post by orasis »

“The Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis.

https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s

It goes through each decade of the 1900s and explains how Freud’s psychology and the new field of marketing completely reshaped society. For the first time in my life I feel like I understood the “why” of how things work in American society. This film is probably best if you’re age 40+ and actually remember some of the events.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#64

Post by reb »

Already so many good recommendations here, so just a few I enjoyed but haven't seen mentioned:

— This excellent 2013 re-working of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (not a proper doc, but if you like Adam Curtis, you'll probably like this). If you like to consider whether the world we've built is good for us, look no further: https://vimeo.com/60328678

— Pump Up The Volume, a 2001 BBC doc about the rise of House music. Maybe the best work on this topic ever produced, covering the early years as disco evolved into Daft Punk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_Hz6FQyVJ8

— Paris Is Burning, a slice-of-time doc about the 80's Ballroom drag scene in NYC. You can see the roots of many elements of popular culture documented here, shown through performances and conversations featuring some of the stars of the scene at that time. This one's on HBOMax these days, but I'm sure it can be found elsewhere online.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#66

Post by nowandlater »

Pretty good ones:

Hearts and Minds (great Vietnam War documentary) - https://play.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GXk3jwwTEBZ4...

My Best Fiend (Klaus Kinski biography/documentary by Werner Herzog) - https://watch.plex.tv/movie/my-best-fiend?autoplay=1&utm_con...

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#67

Post by nickdothutton »

orasis wrote: post #63

“The Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis. https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s It goes through each decade of the 1900s and explains how Freud’s psychology and the new field of marketing completely reshaped society. For the first time in my life I feel like I understood the “why” of how things work in American society. This film is probably best if you’re age 40+ and actually remember some of the events.

+1 for any Curtis documentary. They aren't something you necessarily need to agree with to enjoy. Most of them involve him attempting to stitch together an over-arching narrative for events of our time.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#68

Post by yotamoron »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #26

The World at War - BBC documentary series about WWII. Shows humanity simultaneously at it's best and worst. The Vietnam War - Ken Burns documentary series. Very balanced and sobering take on the Vietnam war, events leading to the Vietnam war, and unrest in the US during that period. The Fog of War - Errol Morris doc about Robert McNamara. The Salt of the Earth - Doc about photographer Sebastião Salgado Alone in the W…

The fog of war is amazing.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#69

Post by spaetzleesser »

gandalfgreybeer wrote: post #43
tatoalo wrote: post #12

I'm going to list just a few of the best I have seen so far: - The Last Dance [ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8420184/ ] - Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer [ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13651632/ ] - Indie Game: The Movie [ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884/ ] - The Staircase [ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388644/ ] - Making a Murderer [ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5189670/ ] - Icarus [ https://www.im…

I absolutely loved the Last Dance but I really like basketball. I wouldn’t recommend it to non-fans of basketball though (basing this off a small sample size of friends).

I am not into basketball but I found The Last Dance excellent.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

#70

Post by asdfqwertzxcv »

Fires of Kuwait - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tUzkF_Dp8M

A first hand account of the firefighters who were sent to cap the oil wells that Saddam set on fire during his attempt to invade the country.

Senna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aPLOQeSHrM The story of famed F1 driver. I'm not a racing fan but this one was amazing.

Apollo 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc Completely new footage was found of the complete Apollo 11 mission. The best doc of the space race, by far.

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