191–200 of 568 posts
"Dig!", the documentary about a band named the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Introduced me to psychedelic rock, and lead singer Anton Newcombe is the prototypical mad musical genius. I got the impression that he and his lead guitarist Matt Hollywood had kind of a modern-day Mozart/Salieri relationship, and tambourinist Joel Gion adds such a funny dynamic to the group.
This is the best WWII documentary I've ever seen, and it's available free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5O9I5AUXI What makes it great is (a) that the filmmaker tried only to use source material, including audio narration, created during WWII, and (b) that the film sources were shot in color (rare for the time).
Into the Inferno - Werner Herzog. Documentary on volcanoes where the director allows the filming locations to bring other topics to the forefront. Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World - Werner Herzog. Film about the internet. The Thin Blue Line - Erol Morris. Film about a murder of a police officer that comes to a different conclusion than the court did about who the murderer is and led to the release of an…
With the line that sings to my cynical soul, "Any good prosecutor can get a jury to convict a guilty man but only great prosecutors can get a conviction for an innocent man."
“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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I agree to with you on the cost of perfectionism - I also didn't care for how women were treated at the restaurant (seating arrangements etc), but like you mentioned it's a fantastic documentary. I think for me, I came out thinking "damn I truly do may be only 25% dedication to my craft".
If you say "I didn't care for the way women were treated..", it expresses disapproval.
We use "don't/didn't care about" to mean exactly the opposite. "I didn't care about" means that it doesn't matter to you at all.
I also like the slice-of-life glimpses of the lives of people in the cities interspersed with the nightlife scenes.
My favorites on Netflix this year were: Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 https://www.netflix.com/title/81280924 Challenger Final Flight https://www.netflix.com/title/81012137 FYRE (Festival) https://www.netflix.com/title/81035279 From a long time ago, and I don't even know if you can still watch it anywhere, but that FogBugz Aardvark'd documentary was really fun to watch too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark%27d:_12_W…
Oh yeah, that Woodstock documentary was really good. Didn’t know what happened back then, and was surprised to learn that there was another Woodstock.
Harlan County USA (1976) is a great documentary about a coal strike. https://www.criterion.com/films/777-harlan-county-usa
American Movie (1999) is a documentary about a wanna film-maker in the US. In other hands the documentary would have mocked this man and his wild attempts to get his films made. But the documentary ends up being a mostly sympathetic film about struggling against adversity. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181288/