Documentaries became a box office factor with the rise of such films as "Hoop Dreams" and "Roger & Me." Before then, there were hit music documentaries like "Woodstock" but most other nonfiction films could expect short runs in few theaters before dutiful audiences. What a small but growing minority of Friday night moviegoers is beginning to discover is that there's a good chance the movie they might enjoy most at the multiplex is a doc.
In alphabetical order, these were the best documentaries I saw in 2010:
"45365" is the zip code of Sidney, Ohio. The brothers Bill and Turner Ross were born there perhaps 30 years ago. They knew everybody in town, and when they spent seven months of 2007 filming its daily life, their presence must have become commonplace. Their film evokes what Winesburg, Ohio might have looked like as a documentary.
The film is privileged. No one is filmed with a hidden camera. The camera must have been right there, in the living room, the river bank, the barber shop, the back seat, the football practice, the front lawn when a man agrees to put up a sign supporting a judge running for reelection. The Rosses must have filmed so much they became trusted and invisible. They know this town without even thinking about it.
Sidney has what can only be described as a great radio station. Local human beings sit before the mikes and run the boards. It looks like rain on the day of the big parade, but the station's reporter is on the spot. He's hooked up via his cell phone, and interviews a woman on the street with a tiny mike he holds up to his mouth, and then to hers. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. Music on Radio 105.5 Lawns. Good looking old buildings. Sidney still looks like a town, not a squatter's camp of fast food outlets. I could go to Sidney, Ohio tomorrow and feel right at home.
"A Small Act." This heartwarming documentary centers on the life story of Chris Mburu, who as a small boy living in a mud house in a Kenyan village had his primary and secondary education paid for by a Swedish woman. This cost her $15 a month. They had never met. He went on to the University of Nairobi, graduated from Harvard Law School, and is today a United Nations Human Rights Commissioner.
The film shows Mburu seeking the Swedish woman "who made my life possible." She is Hilde Back. She is now 85 years old, a German Jew who was sent to Sweden as a child. Her family died in the Holocaust. She never married, was a school teacher, has lived in the same apartment for 35 years, is a tiny woman, but robust and filled with energy.
She is flown to Kenya, serenaded by the choir from Mburu's village, feasted, thanked, gowned in traditional robes. In the village the students study by the light of a single oil flame. The schools are not physically impressive; crowded classrooms with simple board benches and desks. A gym? Don't make me laugh. Hilda Back is asked if, since she never had children, she thought of Chris as a son. We see in the film that they stay in close touch. "But I have had children," she replied. "I was a teacher. I had many, many children." And one lived in a mud house in Kenya.
"Art of the Steal."Dr. Albert C. Barnes invented a treatment for VD, and he founded the Barnes Foundation, an art museum in the Philadelphia suburb of Merion. The first paid for the second, so the wages of sin were invested wisely. How important was the Barnes Collection? It included 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos, 16 Modiglianis and seven van Goghs. Barnes collected these works during many trips to Paris at a time when establishment museums considered these artists beneath their attention. One estimate of the collection's worth is $25 billion.
Barnes hired some Philadelphia lawyers and drew up an iron-clad will, endowing the foundation with funds enabling it to be maintained indefinitely 'where it is and how it is." It was his specific requirement that the collection not go anywhere near the Philadelphia Museum of Art. That's where it is today. He hated that museum. He hated its benefactors, the Annenberg family, founded by a gangster, enriched by the proceeds of TV Guide, and chummy with the Nixon administration. The Annenberg empire published the Philadelphia Inquirer, which consistently and as a matter of policy covered the Barnes Collection story with slanted articles and editorials.
Don Argott's "The Art of the Steal" is a documentary that reports the hijacking of the Barnes Collection as the Theft of the Century. It was carried out in broad daylight by elected officials and Barnes trustees, all of whom justified it by placing the needs of the vast public above the whims of a dead millionaire. The vultures from Philadelphia were hovering, ready to pounce and fly off with their masterpieces to their nest at the top of the same great stairs Rocky Balboa ran up in "Rocky." It is not difficult to imagine them at the top, their hands in triumph above their heads.
"Best Worst Movie." I always intended to view "Troll 2," which has a Perfect Zero on the Tomatometer, but, I dunno, never found the time. Now comes "Best Worst Movie" to save me the trouble. This is a documentary about what happens to you when you appear in "Troll 2." It's about the star of the original film, a dentist from Alabama named George Hardy. This is one nice guy. Even his ex-wife says so. He has a Harrison Ford head of hair and a smile so wide, it's like a toothpaste billboard. He treats poor kids for free.
He made the movie 20 years ago when he was living in Utah. It was being directed by an Italian named Claudio Fragasso, who didn't "speaka the English" but said he understood Americans better than they understood themselves. The movie was originally named "Goblin" but the title was changed to "Troll 2" because that sounded more commercial. Don't ask me to explain it. It's about vegetarian goblins who cause their human victims to start growing branches and leaves.
For years, George Hardy forgot all about having made the movie. Then some of his patients started looking at him strangely and asking him if he'd appeared in this horror film they'd seen on cable. The film had been discovered and embraced by the bottom feeders of horror film fandom. The actors got standing ovations and Hardy started autographing photos, T-shirts and body parts at conventions. At one point he observes, "There's a lot of gingivitis in this room."
"Collapse." Michael Ruppert is a man ordinary in appearance, on the downhill slope of middle age, a chain smoker with a mustache. He is not all worked up. He speaks reasonably and very clearly. "Collapse" involves what he has to say, illustrated with news footage and a few charts, the most striking of which is a bell-shaped curve. It takes a lot of effort to climb a bell-shaped curve, but the descent is steep and dangerous. He says we are running out of oil fast -- faster than anyone knows.
He argues we have passed the peak of global oil resources. Demand is growing larger. It took about a century to use up the first half. Now the oil demands of giant economies like India and China are exploding. They represent more than half the global population, and until recent decades had small energy consumption. If the supply is finite, and usage is potentially doubling, you do the math. We will face a global oil crisis, not in the distant future, but within the lives of many now alive. They may well see a world without significant oil.
He recites facts I knew, vaguely. Many things are made from oil. Everything plastic. Paint. There are eight gallons of oil in every auto tire. Oil supplies the energy to convert itself into those byproducts. No oil, no plastic, no tires, no gas to run cars, no machines to build them. No coal mines, except those operated by men and horses. That's the heart of Ruppert's message, delivered by a calm guy who could be Wilford Brimley's kid brother, lives alone with his dog and is behind on his rent. I don't know when I've seen a thriller more frightening. I couldn't tear my eyes from the screen. "Collapse" is even entertaining, in a macabre sense.
"Cropsey" " is a creepy documentary with all the elements of a horror film about a demented serial killer, and an extra ingredient: This one is real, and you see him handcuffed in the film, not merely empty-eyed, shabby and stooped, but actually drooling. "I've never seen a perp walk like that," says a TV newsman.
The killer's name is Andre Rand, and he's currently doing time in a New York penitentiary. He was the real-life embodiment of "Cropsey," a boogie man who figured in the campfire stories and nightmares of many children in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and along the Eastern Seaboard. In the legends he lived in the woods and ventured out to abduct children. in the early 1980s, Rand was convicted for the kidnapping and murder of two young girls and suspected in the disappearance of three more.
The man fit the legend. Andre Rand was a worker in the Willowbrook State School for the mentally handicapped on Staten Island; Gerardo Rivera won fame for a TV special with footage of its half-naked children scattered on the floor, rocking back and forth in misery. Sanitary facilities were pitiful, filth was everywhere, abuse was common. Willowbrook was shut down, but some of its staff and inmates returned, living in a forgotten network of tunnels under the grounds. Among these were Andre Rand. Rumors spread of Satan worship in the tunnels. Now do I have your attention?
"Exit Through the Gift Shop." The speculation that "Exit Through the Gift Shop" was a hoax only added to its fascination. An anonymous London graffiti artist named Banksy arrives to paint walls in Los Angeles. He encounters an obscure Frenchman named Thierry Guetta, who has dedicated his life to videotaping graffiti artists. The Frenchman's hundreds of tapes have been dumped unorganized into boxes. Banksy thinks they might make a film. Guetta makes a very bad one. Banksy takes over the film and advises Guetta to create some art himself. Guetta does, names himself Mr. Brainwash, and organizes an exhibition of his work through which he makes a fortune in sales.
Surely Guetta cannot be real? With his dashing mustache and Inspector Clouseau accent, his long-suffering wife and his zealous risk-taking to film illegal artists by stealth? Surely he didn't rent a former CBS television studio and transform it into an exhibition space? Surely people didn't line up at dawn to get in -- and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the works of an artist who had never held a show, sold a work or received a review? Surely not if his work looked like art school rip-offs of the familiar styles of famous artists?
Even while I sat spellbound during this film, that's what I was asking myself. But Thierry Guetta surely did. His art exhibition was written up in a cover story in L.A. Weekly on June 12, 2008. It mentions this film, which Banksy was "threatening to do." Common sense dictates that no one would rent a CBS studio and fill it with hundreds of art works in order to produce a hoax indie documentary. Nor would they cast Guetta, indubitably a real person, as himself. Right? Right?
Banksy, the creator of this film, is a gifted filmmaker whose thoughts as he regards Guetta must resemble those of Victor Frankenstein when he regarded his monster: It works, but is it Art?
"Inside Job." Derivatives and credit swaps are ingenious, computer-driven schemes in which good money can be earned from bad debt, and Wall Street's Masters of the Universe pocket untold millions while they bankrupt their investors and their companies. This process is explained in Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job," an angry, well-argued documentary about how the American financial industry set out deliberately to defraud the ordinary American investor. The crucial error was to allow financial institutions to trade on their own behalf. Today, many large trading banks are betting against their own customers.
In the real estate market, banks aggressively promoted mortgages to people who could not afford them. These were assembled in packages. They were carried on the books as tangible assets when they were worthless. The institutions assembling them hedged their loans by betting against them. A Chicago group named Magnetar was particularly successful in creating such poisoned instruments for the sole purpose of hedging against them. Most of the big Wall Street players knew exactly what the "Magnetar Trade" was and welcomed it. The more mortgages failed, the more money they made. They actually continued to sell the bad mortgages to their clients as good investments.
Gene Siskel, who was a wise man, gave me the best investment advice I've ever received. "You can never outsmart the market, if that's what you're trying to do," he said. "Find something you love, for reasons you understand, that not everyone agrees with you about, and put your money in it." The stocks I thought of were Apple, Google and Steak 'n Shake. I bought some shares. That was a long time ago. Reader, if I had invested every penny I had on Gene's advice, today I would be a Master of the Universe.
"Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," No one is ever too old. You may have that idea about Joan Rivers, who was 75 in this film and never tires of reminding us of that fact. Is that too old? It's older than she would prefer, but what are you gonna do? She remains one of the funniest, dirtiest, most daring and transgressive of stand-up comics, and she hasn't missed a beat. "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" covers the events in about a year of her life. If the filmmakers didn't have total access, I don't want to see what they missed. In one stretch in this film she closes a show in Toronto, flies overnight to Palm Springs, does a gig, flies overnight to Minneapolis, and performs another one. Try that sometime.
The way she is funny is, she tells the truth according to herself. She hates some people. She has political opinions. Her observations are so merciless and her timing so precise that even if you like that person, you laugh. She is a sadist of comedy, unafraid to be cruel -- even too cruel. She doesn't know fear. She seems to be curious about how far she can go and still get a laugh. That must feel dangerous on a stage with a live audience. Maybe she feeds on that danger.
Her life has been like a comeback tour. She is frank about her setbacks. She was Johnny Carson's resident co-host (and gave young Siskel & Ebert their first spot on "The Tonight Show"). She left Carson to begin her own nightly show on Fox. Carson never spoke to her again. NBC banned her from all of its shows until two years ago. The Fox show eventually failed, and it was discovered that her husband Edgar, the show's manager, had been stealing from her. He killed himself. She never forgave him -- for the suicide, not the other stuff.
For her, it all comes down to this week: Does she have bookings? She looks at blank pages in her engagement calendar and says they're so white she needs sunglasses to read them. What makes Joanie run? They say if a shark stops swimming, it dies. She's not a shark. She's a woman who for various reasons depends on making audiences laugh. They walk in knowing all of her problems, knowing her age, eagle-eyeing her for the plastic surgery, ready to complain, and she forces them to laugh, because she's so damned funny. I admire that. Bernard Shaw called it the Life Force. We see her in the film's first shot, without makeup. A minute later, "Joan Rivers" is before us. Her life is a performance of herself.
"Last Train Home." It is inevitable that painful social conflict will arise between those Chinese citizens who produce consumer goods for the world, and those Chinese who want to consume them. "Last Train Home," an extraordinary documentary, watches that conflict play out over a period of three years in one family. It's one of those extraordinary films, like "Hoop Dreams," that tells a story the makers could not possibly have anticipated in advance. It works like stunning, grieving fiction.
The film opens on a huge crowd being directed by police as it grinds its way forward. These are some of the 130 million Chinese citizens who make an annual Chinese New Year's train journey from urban centers to their provincial villages -- "the largest human migration in the world." We center on Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin, a married couple. Years ago, they left their home in the Szechuan province to take low-paying jobs in a textile factory in Guangzhou, which is the huge industrial city on the mainland next to Hong Kong. They save every yuan they can to send home. They left their children behind to be raised by a grandmother. Their dream is that by 15 years of this toil, they will pay for the children to finish school and live better lives. For that dream, they have sacrificed the life of parenthood, and are like strangers at home to children who know them as voices on the telephone, seen on the annual visit. Are their children grateful for what amounts to the sacrifice of two lifetimes?
There is so much to say about this great film. You sense the dedication of Lixin Fan and his team. (He did much of the cinematography and editing himself.) You see once again the alchemy by which a constantly present camera eventually becomes almost unnoticed, as people live their lives before it. You know the generations almost better than they know themselves, because the camera can be in two places and they are usually in one or the other.
Chinese peasants no longer live without television and a vision of another world. They no longer live in a country without consumer luxuries. "Last Train Home" suggests that the times they are a-changin'. The rulers of China may someday regret that they distributed the works of Marx so generously.
"Restrepo" is a documentary shot during the 15 months an American company fought in Afghanistan under almost daily fire. They were in the Korangal Valley, described as "the most dangerous place in the world." It is also one of the most desolate, even in the arid land of Afghanistan. Sparse vegetation clings to the rocky, jagged terrain. There is dust everywhere. It is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, and in the movie, at least, the troops only actually ever see one Taliban fighter -- and the man who saw him thought it was the last sight he would ever see. There is one point when the company is ambushed and takes fire from 360 degrees. That all of them were not killed is surprising. The film is named after the first one of their number to die, a 20-year-old medic, Pfc. Juan S. Restrepo.
Battle Company is led by Capt. Dan Kearney, whose plan is to establish an outpost at a key point on Taliban battle routes. The men occupy the position at night and start digging in, using earth to build fortifications. They catch the enemy off-guard. The successful maintenance of Outpost Restrepo, named for their dead comrade, turns the tide of war in the hostile valley and frightens the Taliban. But the hearts and minds of the locals remain an uncharted terrain.
This is hard, hard duty. A 15-month tour. Our admiration for these men grows. Their jobs seem beyond conceiving. I cannot imagine a civilian thinking he could perform them. It would take much training -- and more important, much bonding. There is the sense they're fighting for each other more than for ideology. At a low point when a nearby company has taken heavy losses, Kearney talks to his men not in terms of patriotism, but in terms of finding the mofos who are shooting at them, and going out and killing them. The film is nonpolitical. It was filmed at great personal risk by the war photographer Tim Hetherington and the author Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm). It raises for me an obvious question: How can this war possibly be won?
"Scrappers." In the alley, I see them maybe once a week, the men with their grocery carts, collecting tin cans and other treasures. Some will accumulate a heap as tall as themselves. I learn from the documentary "Scrappers" that the same trade happens in Chicago on a larger scale, with men trolling the city for scrap metal and emptying their trucks at scrap metal yards. For this valuable work, they made a living, until the economy collapsed. An urban legend has grown up that such men steal copper gutters and the aluminum off the sides of garages. Such theft has been committed, but by desperate creatures of the night, not family men like Otis and Oscar, who are the backbone of the scrapper trade. "I paint my name and my phone number on the side of my truck," Otis says. "They know this truck down to 157th Street."
Otis is 73, born in Chicago. Oscar looks to be in his 40s, is from Honduras, and I have the impression he may be undocumented. They do useful work. Scrappers look for wire, pipes, aluminum, brass, copper, iron and steel. The scrap yards heap it up, process it into particles about the size of Cheerios, ship it mostly to China, where it comes back to us and ends up in the alley again. In 2007, we learn, a scrapper could earn $200 to $300 a ton. In 2008, when the market collapsed and new construction ended, the price dropped to $20 a ton.
Scrappers became desperate. Fortunate people sneer at them, write them off as bums or thieves. Few in the middle class work as hard all day as these men do -- or as usefully. "Scrappers" goes into the homes of Otis and Oscar to meet their wives -- stable, stalwart women -- and their kids. The loyalty in these homes is palpable. The film was made by Chicagoans Brian Ashby, Ben Kolak and Courtney Prokopas. They put in the hours in the alleys and brought back a human document. It is necessary we have these films because our lives are so closed off we don't understand the function these men perform. You want green, there ain't nobody greener than Oscar and Otis.
"Tabloid" is one of the damnedest films ever made by the documentary artist Errol Morris. He presents his "favorite protagonist," Joyce McKinney, who in 1977 was involved in the infamous "Case of the Manacled Mormon." She was alleged to have kidnapped an American Mormon missionary in the UK, handcuffing him to a bed, and making him a sex slave. In the British tabloid version of the story she became sexually obsessed with him about a relationship.
The case exploded into a tabloid war at the time, occupying many front pages. It had been all but forgotten when McKinney surfaced again in recent years after finding a South Korean scientist to clone her dog. Morris gains full access to McKinney, then a somewhat shady nude model, now a poised and persuasive 60-something, who proclaims full innocence and has an explanation for everything. As is often the case with Morris, we can never be sure what he thinks, only that he wants to baffle us with the impenetrable strangeness of reality.
"Rashomon" will inevitably be evoked in discussions of this film. Morris presents lawmen with boundless reasons to think McKinney guilty of stalking, abduction and possible rape. He also allows McKinney to offer a perky alternative perspective on the same events. Her alleged victim is portrayed in murky ambiguity; once unshackled, he prudently has refused all interviews. As often, Morris surrounds his story with unexpected asides, blindsides us with surprise revelations, and weaves in an ominously urging score by John Kusiak.
Errol Morris makes intensely personal films, which are neither about his subjects nor himself, but about the intensity of his gaze. No wonder he invented the Interrotron, which allows Morris and the person he is speaking with To peer directly into each other's eyes. He, and we, are constantly asking what we think of this person--and what's really going on here? If "Tabloid" is a love story, it is one only Errol Morris could film. Here is a link to my video Interview with Errol Morris.
"Vincent: A Life in Color." If you've been near Marina City in Chicago, you may have seen him. He's the smiling, middle-aged man with a limitless variety of spectacular suits. He stands on the Michigan or Wabash avenue bridges, showing off his latest stupefying suit. He flashes the flamboyant lining, takes the coat off, spins it in great circles above his head, and then does his "spin move," pivoting first left, then right, while whirling the coat in the air. Then he puts it on again and waves to the tourists on the boat, by now passing under the bridge.
The remarkable documentary "Vincent: A Life in Color" unfolds the mystery of a human personality. Would it surprise you to learn that Vincent is a college graduate? A Cook County computer programmer? A former DJ in gay North Side discos? Paying his own rent in Marina City? Buying his own suits? Legally blind? Jennifer Burns, the film's producer and director, says one day, she was looking out her office window, watching Vincent performing for a tour boat, "and I was struck by the look of sheer joy I saw on his face." He agreed to be the subject of a film -- not surprising, since his pastime is drawing attention to himself.
Vincent was an orphan abandoned by his mother and raised at St. Joseph's Home for the Friendless. There the nuns discovered that Vincent's problem wasn't intellectual but visual, and taught him to read by making sure he was always pushed up against the blackboard so he could see. In high school, he was a member of the National Honor Society, the chess club, the debate team ... and the diving team, luckily never diving into a pool without water. He used a cane in high school, then threw it away and walks freely everywhere in Chicago. It is terrifying to think of him crossing a street. All of which is admirable, but how does it explain the suits? He started wearing the suits in the 1990s, and says he gave his first bridge show in 2000, adding the "spin move" about a year later. He knows the times when every tour boat passes his bridges, and to the guides he is "Riverace" (rhymes with "Liberace").
Vincent will only say that he likes to entertain people. One expert speculates that Vincent has spent a lot of his life being stigmatized and isolated, and the suits are a way of breaking down barriers. So here is a man who likes to buy Technicolor suits and wave them at tour boats. So why not? What are the people on the boats so busy doing that they don't have time for Vincent?
"Waiting for Superman." Near the end of "Waiting for Superman," there is a sequence that cuts between lottery drawings for five charter schools. Admission to the best of these schools dramatically improves chances of school graduation and college acceptance. The applicants are not chosen for being gifted. They come from poor, disadvantaged neighborhoods. But the schools have astonishing track records.
We have met five of these students, heard from them and their parents, and hope they'll win. The cameras hold on their faces as numbers are drawn or names are called. The odds against them are 20 to 1. Lucky students leap in joy. The other 19 of the 20 will return to their neighborhood schools, which more or less guarantees they will be part of a 50 percent dropout rate. Underprivileged, inner-city kids at magnet schools such as Kipp L.A. Prep or the Harlem Success Academy will do better academically than well-off suburban kids with fancy high school campuses, athletic programs, swimming pools, closed-circuit TV and lush landscaping.
"Waiting for Superman," this documentary by Davis Guggenheim, focuses on an African-American educator named Geoffrey Canada, who deliberately chose the poorest area of Harlem to open his Harlem Success Academy. His formula: qualified teachers, highly motivated, better paid. Emphasis on college prep from day one. Tutoring for those behind in math or reading. There are also charter boarding schools, with no TV or no video games. One kid says he wants in, but "my feelings are bittersweet." One problem with most schools, Guggenheim says, is that after teachers gain tenure in two years, it is almost impossible to fire them.
What struck me most of all was Geoffrey Canada's confidence that a charter school run on his model can make virtually any first-grader a high school graduate who's accepted to college. A good education, therefore, is not ruled out by poverty, uneducated parents or crime- and drug-infested neighborhoods. In fact, those are the very areas where he has success. Consider this: Those lotteries are truly random, as by law they must be. Yet most of the winners will succeed, and half the losers (from the same human pool) will fail. This is an indictment: Our schools do not work.
"Winebago Man." There is a video on YouTube that has had millions and millions of hits and made its subject, a man named Jack Rebney, internationally known as "Winnebago Man." He first attracted attention when an old VHS tape surfaced featuring the out-takes of a 1989 session when he was trying without much success to star in a promotional film for Winnebagos. In take after take, Rebney blew lines, forgot lines, thought lines were stupid, was distracted by crew members moving around, was annoyed by stray sounds, was mad at himself for even doing the damn thing. Every time the filming broke down or Rebney called a halt, he exploded in verbal fireworks. The only reason "Winnebago Man" doesn't consist of wall-to-wall f-words is that he separates them with other four-letter words. The video was found hilarious by countless viewers. But who was the real Winnebago Man?
A documentary maker named Ben Steinbauer found out. He was curious about the reasons we like footage of real people subjecting themselves (usually unwillingly) to ridicule. Are we laughing at them, with them, or simply in relief that we aren't them? How does their viral fame affect them? Jack Rebney seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Steinbauer finally tracks him down in Northern California, where he lives alone in the woods, calls himself a hermit, and wants nothing to do with nobody -- never. That's not because of the YouTube video, which he doesn't give a $#!+ about. It's because of the way he is.
Now around 80, he works as a caretaker for a fishing resort. He has an unlisted phone number, uses post office boxes, and his dog is all the company he wants. He does have a computer; I imagine him feeding the endless comment streams on blogs. Rebney more or less agrees to be filmed. He figures a doc might be a way to air his views, of which he has a great many views.
Rebney is threatened with blindness. We wonder how he will get along, at his age, living in a cabin in the woods. He is not a comic character; he's dead serious, a hardened realist, whose only soft spot may be for his dog. He keeps up with events, feels the nation is going down the drain, and isn't sure why he was so angry while making the Winnebago promotional film. Steinbauer takes Rebney wider than YouTube -- all the way to the Jay Leno show, and to a fascinating personal appearance at a Found Film Festival, where he regards himself on the screen and then goes out to speak and proves himself the master of the situation. Steinbauer even sets him up with a Twitter account, but, typically, Rebney loathed it. His most recent Tweet in the film, on March 28, 2009, was: "UP YOUR FERN."
Great summaries.
I too was riveted by Collapse. Many things I knew strung in a long summary by a man weighed heavy by the information. Wow.
Thanks for lively introductions to these shows.
There's a documentary you wrote about called Song Sung Blue being released on DVD in February. It has been in obscurity for some time so I doubt it will peek a collective interest as many of the above titles. But as a hidden gem I think it's uniqueness will slowly reveal itself to home audiences. I saw it in 2008 at Hot Docs and without rhyme ot reason I'm just gonna say it's my favorite documentary of all time :)
You can see Cropsey in full at Hulu, fyi.
Thank you so much for this Roger. I always use your lists as a guide for my movie watching and really appreciate the effort you put in.
Love these write-ups, Mr Ebert. I'll definitely have some movies to add to my Netflix queue. I absolutely loved Restrepo and Exit Through the Gift Shop but are sadly the only two on this list I've seen. I am, however, surprised not to see The Tillman Story or Waking Sleeping Beauty appear on your list. Sleeping Beauty in particular because you gave it such a positive 3.5 star review (that led me to see it).
I'm shocked that you omitted Gasland, by Josh Fox. I found it very inventive in it's story-telling.
How does Waiting for Superman compare to The Lottery? They sound like almost identical documentaries.
-Immediately drawn to "45365". I love the quiet camera, like in "Into Great Silence" and "A Day in the Life of Canada" and I get the sense that this film has that.
-Think Michael Ruppert from "Collapse" is a dead ringer for Jacques Parizeau. Eh Canadians?! Back me up on that one.
-"Last Train Home" looks absolutely beautiful. I mean in terms of it's spirit, I know nothing of it's cinematography.
-Will watch "Restrepo" with great attention.
-Sincerely hope I get to see "Winebago Man". I've seen that youtube vid. Now he's living like a hermit you say?! Who knew. Thank goodness for documentary film makers.
Very nice. If I could add one title, it would be Lucy Walker’s Waste Land, about Brazilian garbage pickers and their remarkable collaboration with Brazilian artist Vik Muniz -- among the most uplifting and humane films I’ve seen in years. (Given a second nomination, I would add Thomas Balmes' Babies, but I know you weren't as in love with that one as I am!)
I would have included Marwencol.
I have never been a big fan of documentaries because they usually leave me with more questions than answers (because they are usually biased and I can't tell what's true), but I was enthralled by Restrepo. My Netflix account was convinced I'd like it and it was right.
Robert Butler recently wrote that Documentaries are the only "genre" that continues to produce and improve film as fine art, and this year was an exceptional year for them. They DO look interesting. I'll try to make an effort to watch those on your list.
I was really hoping you would have read more on the problems with our public schools since seeing Waiting For Superman which is a sham of a film and a documentary. It's a terribly one dimensional movie and there are many flaws in the solutions the filmmakers present.
I am a teacher but even if I wasn't, as a film lover I found the movie to be nothing more than corporate propaganda by a well to do man who knows very little about how schools work and didn't seem interested in looking at the problem very deeply.
To my recollection, not a single teacher was interviewed in the movie. How can you make a film about education and not talk to any teachers?
What, no "Catfish"?
I saw more terrific docs this year than terrific fictional films, proving again that true life is much more interesting and it just wasn't a great year for movies. I'll be seeking out the third on this list I haven't heard of and seen. Small personal docs like "Best Worst Movie" and "Winnebago Man" were true joys to watch while others were fascinating and some horrific. If I may add to your list a few favorites of mine..."Catfish" - I kept expecting there to be credits at the end proving the doc about a hoax was a movie hoax, but there wasn't. "Gas Land" - How the collection of 'clean' natural gas is one of the biggest threats to the environment. I'm waiting impatiently for "Waste Land" and Marwencol" on dvd as I hear they are 2 of the best as well. And seek out "The Topp Twins - Untouchable Girls" about the entertainment duo who are the pride and joy of New Zealand.
The finest movie I have seen in a loooong time is Between the Folds by Vanessa Gould. http://BetweenTheFolds. National broadcast coming January 18 on PBS Independent Lens. Also on Netflix. Gah, what a phenomenal, inspiring piece of work!
Thanks for including "A Small Act" on your list. It's an honor to be in the company of films with such beautiful, compelling, important and innovative storytelling. I have to admit, I haven't seen all these films, but they are definitely on my list now.
Patti Lee
Producer / DP
A Small Act
Pleased you included recently-released Tabloid, definitely the most incredible doc of 2010, as only a love story a la Errol Morris could be.
I also saw a PBS doc called Between the Folds which turned my brain inside out and made me gasp repeatedly for an entire hour. Mesmerizing and utterly unexpected. I think about it every day.
And Collapse - great film.
An excellent list covering a very good year for non-fiction film. One note on 'The Art of the Steal': the Barnes collection is actually in its original home... for the moment. It will relocate next year, moving from the Barnes residence in Merion, PA to a newly-constructed home in Philadelphia.
Inspired by the film, I went to visit last year and was enraptured. There is still time to see the collection, in Merion, as Barnes intended, and it's an experience that shouldn't be missed.
http://www.barnesfoundation.org/
Roger, I haven't seen the documentary on the barns, but as I work for a contemporary art museum I know a good bit about the matter and know that there are many sides to it as well as many possible villains. However, when you say:
"[The theft] was carried out in broad daylight by elected officials and Barnes trustees, all of whom justified it by placing the needs of the vast public above the whims of a dead millionaire"
You make it sound as if a dead millionaire's whims should be more important than a vast public's needs, a highly arguable position.
Just wondering.
My favorite: "I knew it was you. Remembering John Cazale."
Incredible.
And thanks to Mr. Cazale's brother, Steve, who convinced Meryl Streep to participate. (IMDb)
That is a fine list of films. My new shopping list...
- I loved seeing "Vincent" at Ebertfest 2010. Loved meeting Vincent at the Ebert Club meet-n-greet and getting my own personal pun from him. What a spirit in that man. And a great film.
- I saw Restrepo at home last night. Wow. Unimagineable danger for those brave troops. Moved at the scene where Lt. Kearny confronts having killed innocents in a village, and tries to make sense of that. Moved by the interviews in Italy - those will be haunted men. I had the same response that you had in your review: Why are we in Afghanistan? Bring them home.
- Can't wait to see "Last Train Home" and, well all of the rest.
Hi Roger, Im a big fan, and this is a great list. Have you seen 'The Two Escobars' by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist? It was part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series and tells the story of Pablo Escobar's relationship with the Columbian national soccer team. I love the portrait that it gives of Columbia in the early 90's, and it's my second favorite documentary after Herzog's Grizzly Man.
For me, it was "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work". I love documentaries about people, especially about people that I've been watching my whole life. What I respond to is a documentarian who pierce the guarded shell and capture a famous subject at their most vulnerable. It takes away the "magical" quality that we associate with a legend and brings them back down to earth.
What I learned about Joan Rivers is that she is, at heart, an approval junkie. She must have people to love her. There's nothing wrong with that. I understand that quality fully because I am the same way.
What I love about documentaries is they can inspire you to live life better or take action.
"A Small Act" does that as does "Vincent: A Life in Color."
"The Winnebago Man" answers nagging YouTube questions which I also like to follow up on.
I was sad after seeing "The Art of the Steal" and wish I had been able to see and study at the Barnes before it was dismantled. What a shame. Small, black college loses to politics and egos.
"Restrepo" was important because of how it portrayed the reality of war and that needs to be a part of every history lesson.
I love reading your lists and people's comments because I can get an idea of what I missed and should add to my Netflix viewing queue.
re Jonathan's comment on the Barnes foundation - it was Albert Barnes's collection. He owned and loved every piece of art there, and left specific instructions about the collection's care, display and availability before he died. So yes, his whims come before those of the public. The collection's move outside of its original location in Merion is a travesty.
By the way, "The Art of the Steal" is available on Netflix instant streaming.
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/The-Art-of-the-Steal/70123257
I think that guy Rivera you mentioned in Cropsey is Geraldo, not Gerardo. Not that it, or he, matters.
Haven't seen many docs this year, but really enjoyed Waking Sleeping Beauty.
I'm curious: If "I'm Still Here" had not been so quickly unraveled as a performance, would it have made your best documentaries list?
netflix streaming has been a godsend for these quiet days at work lately. I have been ravenously devouring the documentary section, including Collapse, which should be shown to every politician in the country. Another doc related is called "Fuel" which actually gives some hope to the coming crash using biodiesel. I would advise anyone who thinks life on this planet is hunky dory to check them both out, the empending disaster is not decades away, it's years away and it's not gonna be pretty.
One out of sixteen: I've seen "A Small Act".
I want to see ALL of these, except for the ones I really, REALLY want to see.
Ken
Ah, you give me too much homework, Roger. I know you don't mean to. That's just how I take it.
Am surprised "Song Sung Blue" isn't on the list, but it hit me for a lot of detailed reasons, having lived as a musician for so long. Not to mention the huge surprise you handed us all afterward at Ebertfest. There are small heroes everywhere, and this film finally pays attention to a couple of them.
Vincent and Jennifer Burns made me think about living in Chicago after all, if that's the kind of people you can find there. "Vincent: A Life In Color" will promulgate itself, we all hope, tho' I heard someone in the audience complaining too longly that it needed more editing for being too long. A ritalin casualty, perhaps.
"Collapse" turned out to be what I expected, all discussed on your blog, tho' the editing was even less honest than I anticipated, making highly arguable facts suspiciously unarguable. It gave credence to the tinfoil-hatters who claim Ruppert is a CIA shill selling "peak oil." They usually get big jobs as oil company execs after they leave Langley (I don't know what's wrong with Larry Kolb). In all, I thought Ruppert's off-the-shelf brand of gloom-and-doom was too much sales job.
Couldn't finish "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work." Guess I got the picture too soon. Maybe if I'd persisted I'd'a been rewarded, but her personal dull roar of money, work, money, work, got too unfunny for me. What American is not roaring dully the same way?
Watched all of "Exit Through the Gift Shop." Naively, the reason I finished was because I was STILL waiting to see somebody exiting through the gift shop and what could possibly happen. Otherwise, yas, yas, one reason our rasping, rattling civilization is shuddering on its deathbed is because artists are regarded with near-criminal suspicion anyhow; yet if they're very clever, shallow and hyperactive, they'll be rewarded. Perhaps with a heart condition.
I can't imagine leaving a fuzzy print of Leonard Nimoy with smeared lipstick and a superimposed Marilyn Monroe wig as a family heirloom. My great grandkids would grow up worrying that they too might have dingbat genes. Cute crap like that isn't going to increase in value anyhow. Well, okay, maybe like "I Like Ike" buttons, but at least those things don't take up so much space. Noting the rich lady collector who mentioned where she thought she'd left her original Andy Warhol.
Got the rest punched in on Netflix. On we go.
No list of what's on netflix instant? I know "Exit Through the Gift Shop", "Restrapo", and Joan are. All in HD as well. "A Small Act" and "Waiting for Superman" are not. "Art of the Steal", "Collapse", and "Cropsey" are on instant as well in HD. Added Art and Collapse (good comedy) to my list.
I wouldn't be terrified by collapse. We already have ways to make products without oil. Oil is just cheaper right now. As oil prices increase, these products will become more viable, and then lower in price as economy of scale comes into play.
Watch "Gasland" if you haven't and want to see something much worse in energy. Of course, if you promote that film, your government might think you want to be a terrorist: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/29/mark-ruffalo-terrorism-watchlist-gasland
A Small Act, should be in the best films of the year, not just documentaries.
Vaughan, there's nothing wrong with making a documentary about a service from the perspective of the people who USE it instead of the people who provide it. You may feel that your perspective is given short shrift in this documentary, but to be honest, when people look at MOST goods and services, they look at them from the perspective of the people who use them, not the people who provide them. When people write about cars, they write about the experience of buying and driving and owning one, not the experience of working in a factory and making one.
The whole situation with education actually mirrors the auto industry in many ways. If you had interviewed American auto workers 10 years ago about what ailed the US auto industry, they would have given you a litany of answers, all of which conveniently excluded themselves from any blame whatsoever. If you interviewed management, they would do the same thing. Apparently, no one is to blame. And yet, the American automakers were not competitive with foreign automakers: a fact that neither labour or management would face.
Now we see the exact same problem in education: neither the teachers or the administrators want to admit that something is seriously wrong, and if there is something wrong, neither of them will admit that they are doing anything less than the very best that can be done in their limited circumstances. And yet, somehow, we're seeing a lack of competitiveness anyway, compared to Asian nations that were dragging themselves out of semi-industrialized poverty just a couple of generations ago. Go figure.
re: Waiting for Superman - The NY Review of Books had an exceptional take-down of Waiting for Superman in a recent issue which is worth reading if you thought that WfS was one of the best docs of the year. Available for free at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/
Michael Wong is absolutely right and assertive. But another bullet point, Vaughan Johnson seemed to forget that teachers were interviewed. Hello Vaughan, did you decide you hated the film before you watched it? I dislike vacuous rabble-rousers like you. It's never to late to change your life Vaughan, go study Buddhism.
CROPSEY is rubbish! C'mon man, no MARWENCOL???
Missed 45365 on PBS' POV a couple weeks ago. Argggh.
i worked for a couple of summers as a tour guide on the wendella boats on the chicago river and used to see vincent quite often. at first, i thought he was nuts, but had the opportunity to stop and talk with him while crossing the michigan ave. bridge one evening. a very interesting guy. i'm glad this documentary was made and i'm glad you're telling more people about it.
though I am sure that Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman" is a great film just based on cinematography and craftsmanship, as a factual account of what ills American public education, it is on the level of Seth Rogen's "Green Hornet."
Diane Ravitch tells us why: basically, the film ignores structural factors like poverty and inequality and just focuses on school teachers and their unions. That would be like if a film were to focus on the American car industry's recent decline by only focusing on the factory floor workers and their unions.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/
I'm so thrilled to see Vincent, a Life in Color on here! I loved getting the inside scoop on this local semi-celebrity who spreads so much flavor and cheer. It captures a beautiful and beloved part of Chicago perfectly.
Dear Roger;
Wonderful time of year. I agree with you on each of these I have seen and look forward to ones I have not.
Now that you have added Twittering and Facebooking and working on a TV show to your day, already crowded with reviewing films for print and blogging, you seem to have lost interest in the good ol' Answer Man column. Say it ain't so.
Ebert: I gotta get organized.
I took Jim Emerson's advice about watching two different movies back-to-back and watched Collapse after finishing Capitalism: A Love Story to compare and contrast how the subject of an economic meltdown was approached – and boy, what a treat it was. I found both Capitalism and Collapse more entertaining than enlightening (a bit unfortunate since they are both documentaries), but one of things I noticed was how drastically different both films approach the subject of economic crisis. Michael Moore and Michael Ruppert are drastically different in their outlooks – Moore the optimist and Ruppert the pessimist – yet both approach the role of government/institution with some of the greatest suspicion and skepticism possible. I know Collapse was edited down from footage taken over a period of days and hours, so perhaps Ruppert's knowledge would seem more cohesive if we were able to see how his thoughts flowed (or maybe not, who knows); Moore, on the other hand, seemed keen on finding key information that roused emotion more than understanding, where he simply comments that a complex derivative is simply math to confuse you when in reality, it really isn't (I'd say it's more bureaucratic than anything).
But I digress. I am surprised that the documentary Smash his Camera didn't make the list, but perhaps it may be that the other film Tabloid which, guessing the subject matter, perhaps did a better job at examine the nature of tabloids and its effects.
You may also be interested in an upcoming documentary called The Interruptors, which examines a group of three community leaders – two men and a woman – in the lower SES springs of Chicago who try to prevent violence from happening within their communities. It's from the director of Hoop Dreams Steve James, which may perhaps prompt your interest more (I heard about this movie from /Film, courtesy of this link: http://www.slashfilm.com/sundance-2011-the-interrupters-trailer/)
Judging by the range and quality of documentary films released this year, I really feel that 2010 was the year for documentary films to really shine – just as your list has demonstrated so well :)
Mr. Ebert, I am curious as to why Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams does not make an appearance. That is all.
"Collapse" gave me terrifying experience early in 2010. It had everything I had worried about and it was more than that. I wrote a Korean review in my blog on the next day with that gut-chilling feeling remaining in my head.
"Exit Through the Gift Shop" and "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" are funny and lively documentaries. Before I watched the former, I happened to come across "(Untitled)", a funny comedy about the modern art world, so I enjoyed the documentary a lot. I was not familiar with Joan Rivers, but, after watching the documentary, I wished she would work till her death.
I thanked Grace Wang for her eloquent introduction to "Last Train Home". South Korea also went through rapid development during the 1960-70s, and lots of people left their hometowns to Seoul and other cities for earning money to support their families. Things have changed a lot, but, whenever traditional holiday seasons begin, the same things happen. The highways are jammed, and it is hard to get the tickets for buses and trains unless you buy them in advance.
It was great to meet Vincent at 2010 Ebertfest before watching "Vincent: A Life in Color". I still do not forget what he did to me at the pizza party before the first day, but I have no malice about that.
"Restrepo" is an excellent documentary. Some criticized it for being more or less than the daily records of soldiers in the Korangal Valley shot in HD, but I have no idea about what they wanted besides its clear, honest look on people going through those hard situations.
I really want to see "45365", "Inside Job", "Tabloid", and "Waiting for Superman". As usual, I will wait, and then the chances will come, like "Art of the Steal" and "Best Worst Movie".
Roger,
Has the short documentary "Undercity" made it's way over to you, yet? It's kind of a sequel to 2000's "Dark Days," but it's mostly just following around some urban explorers in NYC.
Whole film on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/18280328
Roger, noted your tweet concerning the omission of CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS. "Lacked a North American opening date."
Fortunately, the excellent "45365" qualified--barely-- earned $853 during its entire run. Surely the finest film ever released that never grossed a grand.
boxofficemojo.com
Roger, very good list. I am very disappointed that I have actually seen none of these (that's me being lazy, and also me being just incredibly, INCREDIBLY angry about having missed Last Train Home when it played here). That being said, I don't know if Frederick Wiseman's new film, Boxing Gym, played in Chicago, or if you had the chance to view it at all (which is likely, since you didn't review it, or anything), but I not only think that it is the best FILM of the year, but perhaps the greatest documentary I've ever seen (even moreso than F for Fake, which is just astonishing as hell). I cannot recommend Boxing Gym enough. Wiseman is a master of pure cinema, and he is, as usual, in full control of his method here. I've seen it twice in theaters, and I cannot wait to watch it again. It is truly a marvelous piece of filmmaking, and I hope you have the chance to see it soon. :)
Savy
Gotta call you on "Waiting for Superman". The doc just totally ignores so so many facts. Like 1) No...the pool of kids who enters the lottery is NOT the same as the regular ol' "human pool". Parents who care ennough and have it together ennough to enter their kids in the lottery are simply in a different demographic than the general population where the losers go and 2) Any school that can get rid of problem kids easily (as these charters can) is going to get much better results than a school system where this is difficult if not impossilble. In other words if you can send your kids to schools where only kids with motivated families attend and where problem kids can be gotten rid of, might not that in itself cause much of the success of these schools? Much has been written about the horrible dishonesty of the documentary. It does not mean it shouldn't be on your list. But I think it required a little more careful analysis.
>Derivatives and credit swaps are ingenious
No one probably cares, but they're called credit default swaps, and they're a type of derivative.
'A "credit default swap" (CDS) is a credit derivative contract between two counterparties.'
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap
As to what matters, thanks to you I now look forward to seeing several documentaries I wouldn't have otherwise.
"Feature films may be fiction, but they certainly are documentaries showing actors in front of a camera." You wrote this in your review of "Anti-Christ". I just finished watching it on Netflix. This is a burning question. I need your opinion. Do you think "He" strangled "Her", out of compassion for her suffering, or out of vengeance for stabbing his leg with an axle? I also watched "Art of the Steal" on Netflix. If I was in Philadelphia, I would most definitely visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art. To criticize what those public officials did would make me a hypocrite. For the greater good, right? Have you, or are you, reading "All the Devils Are Here?". It's sort of hard to pick out THE anti-christ.
I see a lot of people mentioning "Catfish." Doesn't everyone know that it's a prankumentary by now? Just because it doesn't mention in the credits that it's a 'hoax' doesn't mean it's not one. Hence the title: prankumentary.
Ebert: You should watch Sweetgrass, as it definitely belongs on any list of best documentaries of the year.
This list is incomplete without "Sweetgrass" (unless you saw it in 2009). I've seen "Restrepo" and "Exit Through the Gift Shop" and liked both.
No Sun-Times review for "Casino Jack & the United States of Money" (no, definitely not the Kevin Spacey version), about the Jack Abramoff scandal that finally led Tom DeLay to prison this week?
Alex Gibney may be sitting back and typecasting himself on the mainstream pop-documentary riff he established for "Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room"--rather overdoing the "cutesy irony" graphics and soundtrack songs--but Gibney does an effective job of finding the humorous incongruities of complicated money scandals for the masses, and the loopy self-indulgences of those involved...Sort of like where "Roger & Me"'s style would've headed in a few years, if Michael Moore's ego hadn't gone nuclear.
Roger,
I always appreciate your "best of" lists like these. This gives me a lot to look forward to. However, I agree with many of the criticisms of "Waiting for Superman" provided in previous comments. I'm glad I saw that film, but I feel sure there are ways of seeing the education problem that do not blame the teachers so heavily and that could be more helpful in pointing us toward some real solutions.
Now I've just got to watch "Last Train Home" as soon as I can. Thanks.
Right on. Waiting for Superman, funded by people who want to show that schools are to blame for their own failure, is part of a larger assault on teachers unions, public schools, and liberal arts.
I couldn't agree more, documentaries have become more and more popular. Additionaly they are important to film as well. While I don't agree with all the one's you listed here, I'm glad to see documentaries getting the well deserved attention.
The teacher's union is the most corrupt union in America Marilyn, they just get away with it because of how poorly we pay our public services and "teacher" is the everyman selfless, honorable position. The other two doctors and scientists wish they got the breaks they did but thank God they don't.
I'll say this about "Best Worst Movie" It was a great, great film until the ending. You shouldn't be able to present yourself superior to even your fanboys for being obsessed (fanboys as opposed to fans Roger, fans like/love a movie and can even be part of a cult following of film. Fanboys start an actual cult about the film and sleep outside theaters waiting for movie tickets for about a month.) when behind the scenes and in recent interviews you say you'd be willing to do a sequel to "Troll 2", when your Aesop you figured out was "Being obsessed with the past and fame is pointless and an ultimately empty experience". Unless of course the story is supposed to be how you failed to realize that aesop and openly continue down that path.
Also I contest that Troll 2 is the "Best Worst Movie", The Room by Tommy Wiseu usurped that title 3 years ago.The flavor of the month, does eventually change.
Watched Collapse. Very similar to an hour of the Glenn Beck show minus the chalk board. I would present a fourth group of people on the Titanic. Those who panic and do something stupid. The last half of the doc seemed to go forever though.
Finally watched "Exit Through the Gift Shop", and I'm of the camp that it was faked. Loved some of the art pieces though.
One of the best documentaries to come out of Ireland for many years, "His and Hers" was an amazing and simple doc about the lives of women in the midlands in Ireland. Interviewing women of ages 0-90, it was as touching and as funny a revelation of Ireland and its culture as you're likely to find. I think it's done well at some fests in America, but if you can find it, see it.
OneOfUs on January 14, 2011 3:48 PM: "CROPSEY is rubbish!"
I'll admit it's Blair Witch Project tone was a bit one-noted. But, as others have already pointed out, "Cropsey," along with other films you've mentioned, are available on Netflix Instant Play--which is how I found it, completely by accident. And that's why I like it so much: It snuck up on me unannounced, a little creep whose shtick got weirder and more menacing. Not a great film, but a surprisingly effective deconstruction of Staten Island's bizzarro underlife.
I've seen most, but not all of these - 45365 sounds like my sort of thing, I'm going to hunt it down - but I'd put Denmark's Armadillo above Restrepo in the 'war is Hell' category, and Gasland should surely warrant a place, too. Although I've not seen it (yet) I'm led to believe that The Tillman Story is top-notch, too. Kudos to John in Denver for the Cazale nod, even if it was over far too quickly (as, of course, was Cazale).
First, I want to say how inspirational, generous, diverse, honest, and what a good person you are Roger; I really admire your strength. I definitely have enjoyed your film discussions, writings and you sharing your thoughts of just being human. Thank you! ... Now, can anyone recommend where I might see some of these documentariies? For example, where can I rent/buy Vincent? I will check Netflix for some as noted above, but there are a few that seem hard to find. So any recommendations would appreciated. Thanks.
You got this comment? Shortly after 3 p.m., 1/19?
Yes, Winnebago Man was very upset. Then again, he never had occasion to exclaim: "He bite me in my vagina!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO5tFO8lZ2A&feature=related
(Follow-up doc is optional.)
This doesn't really refer to documentaries other than the tenuous link between visual depictions of nonfiction. That said, Chaz did a great job on Chicago Tonight, and the clips of Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (who was also good during the interview) look like the new show will have real (and real interesting) conversations. Looking forward to the premiere!
I'd like to bring to your attention no less than three documentary films tackling the same subject from different angles:
1) Dracula's Shadow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula's_Shadow_%E2%80%93_The_Real_Story_Behind_the_Romanian_Revolution
2) Cold Waves - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183136/
3) The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1646958/
At least one of these is bound to impress you.
Thank you very much, and Godspeed!
I liked Inside Job, and I really loved Exit through the Gift Shop. I was interested in seeing a lot of the other ones but never quite made my way to the theater for them.
But I did notice that Marwencol isn't on this list and didn't get a review. Ever since I saw the trailer for that movie I desperately wanted to see it. It looks like something I'll love (and that 100% on rottentomatoes with a bunch of reviews helps to support those suspicions). Can anyone here confirm that this is indeed a good movie? Do you plan on seeing it in the near future Roger?
Anyways, I doubt many people besides noticed that you passed this one by. Now, Scott Pilgrim on the other hand...
"Restrepo" is such a powerful documentary it landed at #3 on my list of Best Films of 2010 (ahead of more well-known movies like "Inception" and "How To Train Your Dragon"). It should be seen by everyone. I don't think I will ever forget that one. It's a touching and suspenseful piece of work that shows the life of a soldier more intimately and objectively than anything I've seen in a long time.
Roger, a challenge: if you watch my film Journey from Zanskar and honestly don't find it as worthy of these top ten I'll eat my shoe! (Assuming I have to I'll damn sure cook it differently than Werner Herzog cooked his.) :-)
You have to add "Most Valuable Players" to your list. Saw this documentary at Docuweeks in Hollywood and it was by far the best of the showcase. It proves how great our school system could be if we put as much support toward arts education as we do sports. "MVP" is the real world version of "Glee". A must see when Oprah airs it on OWN.
Have you seen Senna? It's playing at Sundance this week and it looks really good.
Great list. Thanks much for it. Many on the list I've been planning to see.
I was disappointed to see that "Bhutto" didn't make the list. It's a Sundance doc about the first woman elected to lead a Muslim country, assassinated 2 years ago.
PS. I can't wait to see your PBS show!
Love the list, and can't wait to track down the 5 or 6 I haven't seen yet.
I agree that there are others I would've loved to note ("Sweetgrass" is one of my new all-time favorite movies) but that's the great thing about "Top 10's"--we can all pick and choose what we feel are our favorites, and I'm just thrilled to have such a hard time choosing between the delightfully rich bounty of high-quality, intelligent, captivating documentaries being released in recent years.
Surprised nobody has caught this yet, though--"Scrappers" was of particular interest for me (I live in Chicago and we have our own visitor that frequents our alley), so after looking into it, I discovered a small mistake: the image you have posted for "Scrappers" (discarded bomb shell or something) is actually an image from a DIFFERENT documentary, called "Scrapper." (Described as, "An Explosive New Documentary about bomb-scavenging survivalists exploiting a military range in the California desert.") I didn't realize this, however, until I watched the trailer and couldn't figure out why I wasn't seeing Otis or Oscar with their metal-filled carts. Looks like "Scrappers" was a 2010 release, and that "Scrapper" is 2011. Confusing, I know.
(I'm admittedly more interested in your pick...)
Just thought you'd like to know!
Thanks again for the great reviews!
What a great list of films, not only by Roger, but also by the commenters. My Netflix queue runneth over. Thanks.
Hi Roger,
Our documentary feature which premiered at Slamdance last year,Candyman:The David Klein Story, is on sale and being distributed on dvd worldwide by Indiepix. It is about the rise and fall of the man who founded the Jelly Belly co. in 1976.
We would love for you to review the disk.
Let us know if you are available.
Bert Klein
Producer
Candyman
This is not a comment on your list of the best docs of 2010. It is a much-delayed suggestion about your blog entry from a while back about funding your website.
I, for one, would happily purchase a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of "Ebert Ltd., Fine Film Criticism since 1967."
This from a man who has sworn-off logos since seeing the movie "Crumb."
Sincerely,
William Mitchell Hedifant
What about 8: The Mormon Proposition or Sex Positive. I enjoyed some of the documentaries mentioned but I think that the two I've mentioned deserve some respect.
I haven't seen the documentary, but I did happen to catch the Oprah Winfrey show about it. I agree with you.
As I see it, the problems in our schools today stem from things that don't take place in schools. Corporations are only interested in educating people to be consumers without critical thinking.
I'm not surprised there is so much homelessness and despair these days when come Christmas we're all clawing and trampling each other for the latest gadgets and toys. Most adults have little awareness of the world around them and the problems we face.
I'm in shock. You omitted "Cane Toads:the Conquest."
CONTINUED:
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One of those submissions is the GO SNOW DAY rap video by Mistuh JJ that was featured on WGN on Friday, February 4th, and who will be performing live in about 4 hours from now (7:45 a.m. CST) also on WGN.
For more details about this project, you can go here and check it out at my Youtube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUQii3dAXT4
Hi Steve.
just saw the video these guys did for the documetary your are doing on YouTube about the Chicago Blizzard 2011. great projects and some great content from the people who contributed. should make a great video documantary. looking forward to seeing it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUQii3dAXT4
Unless you throw in the occasional vintage "Van Halen" shirt... :0)
"Tabloid is one of the damnedest films ever made by the documentary artist Errol Morris."
In the words of Jules Winnfield: "Damn, Negro! That's all you had to say!"
I don't even want to read the rest, I just want to see it.
I just read your review of the Grapes of Wrath (2002). How can you state that a movie like that is "still relevant" and support Waiting for Superman, an anti-union movie? You state in your review of Waiting for Superman, "one out of 57 doctors loses his medical license, but only one in 2,500 teachers is fired...a union teacher is a teacher for life. That teachers themselves accept this is depressing." This is in fact false. Waiting for Superman is an anti-union movie that is full of false information and sponsored by wealthy individuals that are fighting to destroy teacher unions. Their agenda is to start by stating that teachers are bad, unions protect bad teachers, and they bankrupt states. These same individuals are now attacking other unions. Your support slaps Tom Joad in the face.
I've seen mostly all of the docs in the list, and I thought each of them were quite good. And to the people saying the list is bad - It's pretty hard saying this list is incomplete as it is personal view of what the writer saw in 2010.
"Exit Through the Gift Shop" is indeed a hoax.
All that remains unknown is by whom, and upon whom it was perpetrated.
By Fate on Thierry? By Thierry on Banksy? By Banksy on the viewers? By Banksy on the "graffiti culture"?
We may never know.
Exit Through the Gift Shop was AWESOME! lol.
touche!
I only just watched Collapse last night and it went straight to the top of my best docco list. reminded me of 'fog of war' the style it was shot in.
Made me realise that even if we make electric car we are still screwed because all the tyres and parts need oil anyway. also made me realise even more than I already did how this capitalist world where we fly tomatoes from one side of the other cas it works out cheaper, is just sooooo wrong.