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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?

#131

Post by AlbertCory »

Here's one you don't have yet, and for a change with a documentary, it's actually funny:

"Exporting Raymond" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1356763/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Phil Rosenthal, the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond went to Russia, to help start a Russian TV version of his series. They got the scripts, but they completely recast it with Russian actors and changed a few situations. "What's funny about a guy who's nobody, and lives with his parents?" they asked.

We had Phil and his producer at Google for a Q&A after the screening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoGwRYUeo1E

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

#132

Post by tra3 »

westhom wrote: post #61

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…

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

This is a good one. For context, it deals with the 737 Max 8 crashes, pre covid. Boeing was incentivized to release a flawed aircraft which killed 362 people, across 2 crashes. They knew after the first crash what was going on, but decide to do nothing.

Apart from the technical description of the failure it also explains how the corporate structure and the race for profits compromised Boeing's culture of safety.

See also moral mazes [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mazes

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

#133

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

hermitcrab wrote: post #99

"Fog of war" about the life of Robert McNamara. He is quite candid about some of the mistakes he made.

Yeah, this is a very well filmed documentary. The combination of the Phillip Glass score and some camera techniques that make the interview feel very in person and vivid definitely work. It's a fascinating and surprisingly frank look at someone that helped shape the last century, including making decisions that resulted in the deaths of 100's of thousands of people.

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

#135

Post by tra3 »

70jS8h5L wrote: post #9

I love documentaries, and these are my favourites. All very worth a watch. - The Crash Reel - McConkey - Buck - Apollo 11 - Carts of Darkness - The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia - Samsara - Baraka - Brooklyn Castle - Spellbound - Drew: The Man Behind the Poster - Crumb - The Jinx - The Art of Flight - King of Kong - Indie Game: The Movie - Capturing the Friedmans - OJ: Made in America - The Barkley Marat…

Appreciate the list very much. Do you think you could share the ones to start with and why you liked them?

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

#136

Post by 0xDEFACED »

It’s 10 years old, but I didn’t see “The House I Live In” in any of the previous threads. Its an amazing look at the history of The War on Drugs, and its impact on the criminal justice system and human rights in the United States.

https://imdb.com/title/tt2125653/

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

#137

Post by colordrops »

bloqs wrote: post #121
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.

https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg obligatry response whenever anything by Adam Curtis is offered up. Sorry, I'm largely of the opinion that it is (well made) boomer-aimed catastrophe porn designed to give the viewer a smug sense of having "esoteric knowledge".

There is some truth to this parody, but there is also a lot to learn from Century of Self, if you weren't already aware of, say, Edward Bernaise and his role in American society. Now his doc HyperNormalisation, I took nothing away from it, but oh boy was it an amazing way to spend the evening. The music and imagery is fricking amazing.

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

#140

Post by anfractuosity »

I really enjoyed the The Bit Player (2018) about Claude Shannon, it uses an actor to play Shannon.

I thought More Than Robots (2022) seemed really cool too, about teams of teenagers building robots for a competition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsIo57pH-pA - is an interesting short documentary on the making of neon signs.

Birdmen: The Original Dream of Human Flight (2012) was pretty fascinating on the history of wingsuit flying

And also Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

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