Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 568 posts

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

#301

Post by walthamstow »

denton-scratch wrote: post #266

I saw a 2-hour-long documentary about the Standard Model of particle physics, sometime around 1980. It was basically a presentation, by one man, with graphics (which were pretty good for back then). The presentation was sober, and completely free of gee-whizz hype. I think it must have been BBC. As I remember it, it was a really good presentation of the discoveries that had recently been made in particle physics. I'v…

The sheer amount of incredible mind-expanding content that is held in the BBC archives but not readily accessible (even to a UK taxpayer with a TV license) really kills me inside.

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

#302

Post by ethbr0 »

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".

> boomer-aimed catastrophe porn designed to give the viewer a smug sense of having "esoteric knowledge"

I'll just balance it out with some TED optimism porn.

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

#303

Post by anjbe »

Oxyana, a look into the effects opiates have had on the small town of Oceania, West Virginia.

Happens to be one of the only movies I own through a DRM‐free digital download purchase, sold through Vimeo. I wish I could buy all my movies this way. Of course, it’s also available through the usual DRM‐encumbered sources too (Blu‐Ray, Amazon Prime).

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

#304

Post by rado »

kmike84 wrote: post #126

Exit Through the Gift Shop - an amusing documentary about somebody trying to find Banksy (a street artist), and much more, supposingly directed by Banksy himself. There is some debate if it is documentary or not (the story is almost too good), but it seems the evidence suggests it is real. EDIT: sorry, I missed the "last 4 years" part in the question. This film is older than that.

Masterpiece, one of my top 3 films about art, along with “Achilles and the Tortoise” and “Vincent and Theo”

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

#306

Post by ethbr0 »

pkrotich wrote: post #207
Syntonicles wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably a typo, but just in case English is your second language: We tend to use "don't care for" or "didn't care for" in this context. 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.

Thanks for the feedback - yes I'm not a native English speaker (I'm trilingual)

It's a weird quirk, now that I think about it, as a native English speaker. It's only a change in present / past tense and the preposition, but communicates something completely different.

I guess reflecting on something external is always assumed in the past tense (I didn't care for...), while reflecting on ones own opinions (I don't care for...) suggests personal belief.

And "for" (external) vs "about" (self) intensifies the above.

But there aren't any real logistical or constant rules for why the above is, in English. :(

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

#307

Post by DavidWoof »

Cupertino95014 wrote: post #122

I only see Hoop Dreams mentioned once, without comment, so: It's a 3-hour doc about two urban black teenagers who are basketball phenoms, and are recruited by a white suburban high school to play for them. Three hours is long enough for an extended meditation on what their lives were like, and what they hoped to get out of basketball. Read the Roger Ebert review of it.

It's not mentioned because OP asked for documentaries from the last 4 years, and Hoop Dreams must be over a quarter century old at this point.

Great film though.

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

#308

Post by anjbe »

9/11, directed by the Naudet brothers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_(2002_film)

Notable for containing the only footage I know of that shows the first plane hitting the tower, because they were already in the middle of filming a documentary about New York firefighters. Here’s a clip of that part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miA8Td4oNcY

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

#309

Post by JeremyReimer »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #180

I saw Seeking Asian Female for a class and couldn't get it out of my head. It's a documentary about this older man who has a pretty...egregious Asian fetish. He finds this woman in China who he flies over to the US with the intent of marrying her ASAP. At this point most people have a preconceived notion of where the story is going, but I'll just say it ends up being a lot more complicated. There's a really nice refl…

In a similar vein, I watched My Thai Bride on a recommendation from a friend, and it also stuck in my head for a long time. It's about an older British man who flies to Thailand in search of a wife, but it handles the entire situation with honesty and sensitivity. It sounds weird, but I learned a lot about geopolitical forces from this film.
Post reply on HN