Typically I would reserve any specific genre list such as this for an end of the decade or similar compilation. But what we experienced over the past 12 months was and is something truly unique and unlike any year in recent memory. If truth is in fact stranger than fiction, it is also then more elusive and haunting, more provocative and absolutely less reprehensible. This point is revealed and then some within 2010’s remarkable documentaries. Even as the year’s fiction films toyed with timelines or conjured dreamscapes, a remarkable number of documentaries challenged basic assumptions about structure and representation, faith and truth. Those remarkable films I have had the privilege of watching and below are what I believe are the best of the best. Enjoy:
15) Catfish
Although over-hyped and poorly mismarketed we still find here a TRUE (yes, it is real) look at the human spirit and need for some people to find and feel a connection with someone, anyone and the lengths they will take to experience that. Now, I won't spoil Catfish's twists here, but the publicity strategy is frustrating. It gives the impression that the major thing going for Catfish is the element of surprise, when in fact, the craft of this film is uncommonly impressive. You could remove the mystery quotient altogether and Catfish would remain the rare ultra-low-budget personal hybrid documentary with an extraordinary visual logic, and an even more extraordinary sense of compassion for its subjects. Even, especially, when its subjects take a turn for the superweird. The ending drags a bit in a style Peter Jackson could only appreciate but it doesn't remove us from what is still an intriguing character study.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuE98oeL-e0
14) Gas Land
A film that exposes the "fracked up" truth about natural Gas and the families exploited in the process. One man, one idea with one camera begins to document something that is both frightening and enlightening. Its the type of doc that makes you a character as well exposing the ugly underbelly as we tread along attempting to light a match to the companies at fault. Although after the viewing don't be surprised if you find yourself lighting a match as well... under your own water faucet.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8
13) Art of the Steal
Everybody likes a good art heist flick. But Don Argott's documentary The Art of the Steal is the rare heist film where we root for the art owners, not the cunning (and always attractive) thieves. The bad guys here are a powerful cabal of politicians, media entities, greed mongers, and massive public charity organizations, while the good guys are a scrappy bunch of art scholars. What are they fighting over? Control of a collection believed to be the greatest repository of Post-Impressionist and early Modern art, and is rumored to be worth at least $25 billion. And what takes place is no doubt a criminal act.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMe3r9PLtpI
12) Cropsey
Cropsey is the pseudonym given to all the evil that lurks in the shadows of Staten Island. This urban legend, passed down to each generation, takes on many different guises: Cropsey is the crazed killer brandishing a hook for a hand, or maybe an ax, or the ever-popular butcher knife. But is Cropsey a manifestation of the fears of the young or a bonafide maniac tormenting the towns people? InCropsey, directors Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman seek to weave the urban legend with the real-life disappearances of young children on Staten Island. And while the legend isn't really the question in the end, the journey to get there and our own curiosity pushes us along to an entertaining look at a fine example of the rare suspense themed Documentary.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJKPvaNEVjs
11) Winnebego Man
This is a fascinating journey into a strange, darkly funny story of internet legend Jack Rebney, a Winnebago salesman who achieved notoriety based on outtakes of a corporate video he shot in the 1980s. As the Toronto Star critic Gregg Quill aptly put it "Perhaps the most disturbing issue raised in Ben Steinbauer's fascinating and often hilarious Winnebago Man has to do with the Internet's awesome ability to reduce complex and apparently dangerous behavior to the level of banal spectacle." You laugh at him while also realizing how sad some of this has all become but in the end it has this redeeming subtlety that can't help but make you smile.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtCRVUdaiyw
10) Best Worst Movie
How do you combat the burden of being an actor attached to Troll 2, the worst film of all time? If you’re Michael Paul Stephenson, you film a stunning documentary, Best Worst Movie, that chronicles the unexplainable phenomenon that has turned Troll 2 from a bargain bin film into a cult classic. Just a simple viewing of the original subject is entertaining enough but now with this eye opening documentary about the creation of this "masterpiece" you have what is one of the more rewarding and sincere looks at the movie making business and the dreams of those just looking for a break.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tFgZ6DmXmw
9) The Lottery
If there's one political issue that should be simple, it's education. Everyone is for education; everyone agrees children deserve the best education possible. But trying to determine just how to give children that education is a sore subject, and that's where the problems begin. The troubling documentary "The Lottery" shows how just how many sides to a one-sided issue there can be. When you are talking about a child's future this is one time where winning really is everything.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khlm4fa-_cE
8) Marwencol
The moment of discovery is a complex thing for any artist working in obscurity. For the fascinating, unclassifiable subject of "Marwencol," it's also the most recent side effect of a brutal barroom beating. Director Jeff Malmberg's debut documentary is an intimate portrait of Mark Hogancamp, whose recovery from devastating trauma revolves around a world painstakingly created from dolls and miniatures. While it is tragic what happened to Mark, he admits that it opened a door for him. He is a new person, a person with a passion and a talent, and he is a person that you should get to know.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNKPEp6aEqQ
7) Waiting For Superman
Waiting for Superman isn’t a solution to the education problem in America; it’s a call to action. Written and directed by Davis Guggenheim, filmmaker of The Inconvenient Truth, the documentary demonstrates how high-quality educational opportunities are largely inaccessible and how a child’s future often comes down to chance. Through the stories of five kids, Guggenheim presents the pitfalls of America’s education system—and the disheartening reality of their impact. I rated this slightly higher than "The Lottery" based on the emotional connection I had with the families and the straight forward commentary from superstar to be Geoffrey Canada. One story in particular really pulled at my evil set of heart strings.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFN0nf6Hqk0
6) Inside Job
Despite the fact that it’s a trite truism that Wall Street is fueled by greed and “greed makes the world – or at least the markets – go round,” it’s merely the tip of the iceberg of moral depravity and social corruption that has been exposed on Wall Street in the new documentary by Charles Ferguson.The Inside Job is a version of the financial crisis for thinking people (as much as that’s possible on the big screen, anyway). And unlike Ferguson's first film No End in Sight we build a true narrative here not seen since one of my favorite corruption Docs, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. And just like that visceral film be prepared to be pissed at the world (although determined more here) by the time the credits roll.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk
5) Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer
In a very different way, Client 9 insists on the ongoing performances of other participants in the financial crisis, as they dodge responsibility and seek exposure, claim legal rights and manipulate clients, constituents, and colleagues for a living. Alex Gibney’s film brilliantly points out how performance structures daily experience, as deception and also as principle. There is so much more to the story here than a sex scandal and in many ways the defiling of one of the great politicians of our time and the true cost it took in order to make this happen. Political agenda aside this is a fascinating look at the depths people will go in order to hide the truth.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WldZazpFy7I
4) A Film Unfinished
Some movies are difficult to watch because they force us to confront the brutality of others. Some are tough to sit through because they bring us face-to-face with the this same force within ourselves. And some films, like A Film Unfinished, a new documentary that consists almost entirely of Nazi footage taken inside the notorious Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw, assault us on both of these levels. As Unfinished unspools, we are left shedding tears for the fate of millions of innocents, and to quietly worry about how we, as onlookers, would have responded were we on the outside of those grim walls in the years when this unparalleled evil fell over the Polish people. Beautiful yet Haunting this is not for the faint of heart.
Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khut0kKn-c8
3) The Tillman Story
The Tillman Story is about the frustrating lack of resolution. It opens with an poignant interview: Pat Tilman, of the Arizona Cardinals. He appears uncomfortable, a familiar figure but also self-conscious, his performance a function of the interviews limits, as well as the limited purpose, to promote the team, to sell product during the Holiday season. “If they knew anything about my son,” observes Mary Tillman, “They wouldn’t have done what they did.” With this injustice in mind, Amir Bar-Lev’s film takes up the case of the Tilman family, with visible and insistent outrage, demanding truth from the government and military that has made it its mission to repress truth, about the current wars and about Pat Tillman’s death.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaMAVAqef7I
2) The Oath
The Oath begins as a portrait of former self-proclaimed jihadist and former personal bodyguard to Osama Bin laden, Abu Jamal, currently driving a cab in Yemen, parenting his young son and looking back on the fate of his brother, Salim Hamdan, detained at Guantánamo until the Supreme Court ruled against the
Bush Administration in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ('06). Laura Poitras’ extraordinary film turns into a series of reflections on possible truths, documentary subjects, and all manner of performances. It’s one of the best films of the year, never letting you forget the limits of its truth-telling, the performative genius and survival of its subject, the media imagery that creates and undoes him, the governments and war machines that deflect rather than reveal truth. What is "The Oath" and what secrets are Abu Jamal and his Bin laden ties hiding? The search for those answers is a rewarding one in what in many years would have been hands down the top documentary piece.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFXLhJWDMXc
1) Exit Through the Gift Shop
Perhaps the cagiest version of these challenges within the Documentary field is offered in the perfectly named, superbly unfixed
Exit Through the Gift Shop, which may or may not be “the Banksy film,” as it’s been wonderfully tagged. Looking sideways and a little ironically at how art is made and marketed, ETTGS undermines the very story it tells, asking you to doubt the subjects it produces (filmmaker-turned-street-artist Thierry Guetta, street-artist-turned-filmmaker Banksy) and their capacity to speak honestly. In reflecting on the authenticity of art and the value of politics, it maintains its complex indefinition in a way that a similarly themed film: the more visceral
I’m Still Here, didn’t manage.
What is real and what is fake? Where does the joke begin and end... or is it even a joke at all? The clues exist both in the art and the subjects but in the end does it really even matter? There is no question the documentary here is real, the only thing left to wonder is what truly is being documented.
It's the best of its kind in 2010 for a reason; the truly great films never end when the credits roll.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0b90Yppqu
Honorable Mention -
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Restrepo, Collapse, Casino Jack, Last Train Home, Prodigal Sons, The Street Stops Here, The Most Dangerous Man in America Waste Land
