Documentaries are probably the most unappreciated
film genre, even as the viewing public seems
increasingly enamored with every flavor of
reality television.
Even worse is when high profile, rabble-rousing
pieces from people like Michael Moore or Al
Gore discredit documentaries as a whole and
steal publicity from smaller, more honest,
and more interesting movies.
This article will give some well-overdue attention
to less famous docs that would, in a fairer
world, be better known than all the blockbuster
fiction movies or the Ken Burns-type movies.
10.
Sunshine Hotel (2000)
A short film about the closing down of New
York City’s last flophouse.
The sight of mostly old men, in some cases
driven somewhat crazy by their standards of
living and addictions, shuffling through lives
most of us would consider a living hell is
predictably depressing.
But there are many surprising sparks of life
in these people, especially Bruce, a guy who
makes alcohol runs for the other tenants and
takes time to make a succinct and surprisingly
inspiring speech about how “work works.”
9.
Home Movie (2001)
Director Chris Smith had already made the
relatively well-known film American Movie
which introduced the world to horror movie
maker Mark Borchardt.
While his follow-up film does not have quite
the dramatic punch of that film or quite the
emotional investment, Home Movie is much more
fun.
A mosaic of wildly different homes, all of
them quite different from your average home,
it contains many laugh-out-loud moments along
with the occasional poignant scene (several
courtesy of an alligator specialist.
Honest.)
8.
Blood In the Face (1991)
This film is very largely comprised of footage
of rallies by the American Nazi party and
the Klu Klux Klan and interviews with their
various spokespeople.
The movie has drawn some criticism for not
including any narration or footage to refute
the claims upon which the organizations are
founded.
Reviewers have actually asserted that it is
possible that the movie will be used as a
recruiting tool.
Honestly, the movie features members of the
KKK seriously reporting about a thirty-five
thousand man army of Mongolian cavalrymen
assembled in Canada waiting to invade, along
with the theory that Caucasians are the emotionally
superior race because they can blush (that
is what the title “Blood in the Face”
refers to).
If you see the movie as anything but a frightening
message of the thought processes involved
in being a member of these organizations,
you were probably going to turn dangerous
anyway.
7.
The Last Cigarette (1999)
(Editor’s Note: No trailer here.
I couldn’t find one ANYWHERE.
A dozen-plus Youtube/Dailymotion searches
turned up nothing but personal videos of people
recording their last cigarette ever before
they quit.
Great for them, but not so much for my research.
The doc is available on Netflix, for those
who want to see it.)
From the same crew that made Blood In the
Face, this documentary about the banning of
cigarettes from public places is again by
turns hilarious and horrifying.
Again without commentary from the filmmakers,
we see various news reports and bits of archival
footage that illustrate the nature of cigarette
addiction throughout American history along,
with some ridiculous footage of the congressional
hearings that resulted in massive fines for
tobacco executives.
Highlights include a sampling of smoking fetish
videos (no nudity, it’s seriously just women
smoking), and a story of a man who demanded
his legal right to keep smoking in his garage
in the face of evidence it was hurting the
health of his upstairs neighbor.
6.
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1988)
One of the funniest documentaries ever made
about a serious subject.
It’s a loopy analysis of the impact of a
nineteenth-century importing of cane toads
into Australia to fight an outbreak of cane
beetles.
It turned out the toads couldn’t really
feed off the beetles anyway, so they just
bred their way out of control and became one
of Australia’s ugliest environmental disasters.
The footage of toads eating mice, poisoning
pets from the toxins in their skins, being
adopted as pets, being run down by devoted
truck driver killers, and even creepier stuff
will possibly give you the strangest laugh
of your life with how it’s handled.
Alternately, it might just make you uncomfortable
that Australia simply exists.
5.
Manufactured Landscapes (2007)
Ostensibly about high profile photographer
Edward Burtynsky’s dramatic photographs,
this film is really more about the massive
advancement of industry in the developing
world.
While the photographs are excellent (and often
very obviously staged) it’s more what director
Jennifer Baichwal does with her motion pictures
that affect the viewer.
An incredibly long shot of a factory floor
in China sounds boring, but long before it’s
done, it changes from boring to breathtaking
from the sheer scale of what is being shown.
Incredible rivers of industrial waste and
teams of people picking through garbage dumps
are shown more conventionally but no less
effectively.
4.
The Devil’s Miner (2005)
This film is most significantly about teenage
Bolivian miner Basilio Vargas working in a
silver mine.
It’s so dangerous that a strange variation
on Catholicism has been created for the region
where the deaths in it are considered “sacrifices
to the devil.”
Nevertheless, our protagonist still has his
plans for getting out of there and living
a real life.
It’s a great counterpoint to Manufactured
Landscapes, which is about documenting the
sheer vastness of progress in the developing
world and environmental concerns.
This portrait of an individual in a portion
of the world less touched by progress is great
for showing what the cost of the alternative
to all that is.
Equally essential viewing is a special feature
on the DVD called One Year Later, which revisits
the situation one year after the fact.
3.
Harlan County USA (1976)
In 1973, the miners at Harlan County, Kentucky
went on strike against Eastover Mining and
Duke Power Companies because they were not
being allowed to join the United Mine Workers
despite a majority vote.
The strike, as documented here, stretched
on for thirteen months and was extremely violent.
So bad was it that at one point, filmmakers
Barbara Kopple and Harry Peet actually film
strikebreakers shooting at them!
With an extremely bittersweet ending, the
movie none the less remains one of the best
of the 1970’s, let alone one of the best
documentaries.
Warning: the movie contains a lot of folk
music by people who are not singers at all.
2.
Lake of Fire (2006)
The extremely divisive issue of abortion legalization
in America gets the best analysis you could
realistically expect in this sixteen-year
project from Tony Kaye, also of American History
X fame.
The movie is entirely in black and white,
but the portrayal of the issue is anything
but.
Articulate individuals express their opinions
on the subject, and both oddly callous pro-elective
abortion legalization and anti-abortion legalization
individuals show how far extremism can go.
One interview with a murderer who actually
says “yes, yes people who say ‘goddammit’
at baseball games should be executed” will
probably be the moment that makes the strongest
impression, but the movie offers many others.
1.
The Yes Men (2004)
Combine the Wall Street Journal Business Section
with Jackass: The Movie and you get a sense
of how great the pranks featured in this fourth
movie by Chris Smith are.
Touching on financial concerns that effect
the world over, corporate pranksters Mike
Bonanno and Andy Bichalbaum top themselves
again and again as far as making overpaid
business representatives and highfalutin corporate
seminars seem utterly idiotic.
In fact, they’re so good, TopTenz won’t
spoil anything.
But here’s something to consider: the same
year this movie came out, the Yes Men used
the BBC to make a prank announcement featuring
Andy Bichalbaum that Dow Chemical would be
donating twelve billion dollars to assist
in providing medical treatment to those who
experienced health damage as a result of the
pollution the company caused.
It ended up dropping the company’s stock
value two billion dollars.
Bet Dow Chemical wished more people had seen
this movie then
