Nice to see extensively detailed stories about the grand states of yore from a perspective of engineering, rather than politics and great man moments.
Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
111–120 of 568 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
#112"Fog of war" about the life of Robert McNamara. He is quite candid about some of the mistakes he made.
Werner Hertzog
Adam Curtis
Brian Cox (the physicist)
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
#113"Planet Earth II", breathtaking documentary about animal life on earth with extraordinary scenes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5491994/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Inside Job", documentary about 2008 crisis, masterpiece, narrated by Matt Damon. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/
"The Last Dance", I'm not a fan of basketball, it's a doc about Michael Jordan, one of the best docs I've seen, sounds boring but you can't wait to watch the next episode, recommended even if you don't watch sports like me, it's about extraordinary person/athlete and what it takes to be GOAT https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8420184/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Zero Days", great doc about stuxnet exploit https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Human", what it is to be a human from different perspectives https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3327994/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Over the Limit", documentary about olympic gymnastic and shows the price of winning at any cost. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8184202/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Life Story", beautiful doc about animals, great scenes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4150884/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Planet Earth", extraordinary scenes of animals lives https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0795176/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Blue Planet II", like Planet Earth but in water https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6769208/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Cosmos", doc about cosmos, nature of the world etc, very good https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395695/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"The Tinder Swindler", "Posing as a wealthy, jet-setting diamond mogul, he wooed women online, then conned them out of millions of dollars." Surprisingly good https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14992922/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"The Farthest", about first human made object leaving our Solar system https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6223974/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Our Planet", https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9253866/?ref_=rt_li_tt
"Cartel land" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126304/?ref_=rt_li_tt
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
#114https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civil_War_(miniseries)
Detailed. Unagitated text. No reenactment. Based on contemporary documents only (almost). Competent experts, some quite characters. Reserved but impressive music.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
#115I am Not Your Negro https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5804038/
Q: Into the Storm https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14215442/
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
#116Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
#117"Jiro Dreams of Sushi" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiro_Dreams_of_Sushi If you're a developer / engineer you'll admire the professionalism. And more importantly value proposition of your work.
I think Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a fantastic documentary and recommend it also. I came away with a different impression, in that I certainly don't admire or want to share Jiro's attitude to work, because the perfection-at-all-costs approach looked like it had a pretty devastating fallout on his wife and his two sons. It's a fascinating documentary in that you'll either come away saying "how inspirational!" or "I'm run…
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
#118“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?
#119For non-US folks, it’s set in a place that you probably don’t imagine really exists here, but it’s a level of poverty and despair on par with any urban slum or containment area in its own right…
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
#120Already 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…