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Completed : 2012 : Documentary Movies - Sort: Most Popular

Amy Renner Amy Renner

Dec. 21, 2013

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Limited Netflix DVD VOD / Digital

The film showcases the richness of Mexican music both young and old, from traditional music to pop rock and rap blended with interviews from Diego Luna, Lila Downs and many more leading personalities.

R Documentary Music 1 hr, 40 mins

  • 4.5

59%

41%
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The story of the Extreme Mustang Makeover Challenge, an annual contest that dares 100 people to each tame a totally wild mustang in order to get it adopted into a better life beyond federal corrals. Stunning and poignant, Alex Dawson and Greg Gricus' debut feature documentary chronicles a handful of unforgettable characters from their first uneasy meeting with their horses and over three months as they attempt to transform from scared strangers to the closest of companions.

PG Western Documentary 1 hr, 46 mins

  • 3

82%

18%

Following five kids and families over the course of a school year, the film confronts bullying’s most tragic outcomes, including the stories of two families who’ve lost children to suicide and a mother who waits to learn the fate of her 14 –year-old daughter, incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus. With rare access to the Sioux City Community School District, the film also gives an intimate glimpse into school busses, classrooms, cafeterias and even principles offices, offering insight into the often-cruel world of children, as teachers, administrators and parents struggle to find answers.

PG-13 Documentary 1 hr, 40 mins

  • 4.3

89%

11%

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of brutally beating and raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. New York Mayor Ed Koch called it the “crime of the century” and it remains to date one of the biggest media stories of our time. The five eachspent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a shocking confession from a serial rapist and DNA evidence proved their innocence. Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE tells the story of how five lives were upended by the rush to judgment by police, a sensationalist media and a devastating miscarriage of justice.

NR Documentary

43%

57%
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Limited Netflix DVD VOD / Digital

ilmed in more than twenty states, The House I Live In captures heart-wrenching stories from individuals at all levels of America's War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America's longest war, offering a definitive portrait and revealing its profound human rights implications.

NR Documentary

  • 5

65%

35%
Los Angeles Netflix DVD VOD / Digital

A documentary feature that pointedly confronts the most urgent problem facing America today – its increasingly destructive economic trade relationship with a rapidly rising China. Since China began flooding U.S. markets with illegally subsidized products in 2001, over 50,000 American factories have disappeared, more than 25 million Americans can’t find a decent job, and America now owes more than 3 trillion dollars to the world’s largest totalitarian nation. Through compelling interviews with voices across the political spectrum, Death by China exposes that the U.S.-China relationship is broken and must be fixed if the world is going to be a place of peace and prosperity.

NR Documentary 1 hr, 19 mins

  • 2.4

38%

62%
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Despite a lack of obvious similarities between Siberia and Tokyo, a thriving model industry connects these distant regions. Girl Model follows two protagonists involved in this industry: Ashley, a deeply ambivalent model scout who scours the Siberian countryside looking for fresh faces to send to the Japanese market, and one of her discoveries, Nadya, a 13-year-old plucked from her rustic home in Russia and dropped into the center of bustling Tokyo with promises of a profitable career. After Ashley's initial discovery of Nadya, they rarely meet again, but their stories are inextricably bound. As Nadya's optimism about rescuing her family from financial hardship grows, her dreams contrast against Ashley's more jaded outlook about the industry's corrosive influence.

NR Documentary 1 hr, 17 mins

  • 4

63%

38%

Follows Half-a-Mill and his Brooklyn crew, The Godfia Criminals, as they struggle to launch Milion, in an effort to attain money, success and recognition through music.

Documentary

  • 4

33%

67%

On April 2nd, 2011, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM played its final show at Madison Square Garden. LCD frontman James Murphy had made the conscious decision to disband one of the most celebrated and influential bands of its generation at the peak of its popularity, ensuring that the band would go out on top with the biggest and most ambitious concert of its career. Shut Up and Play the Hits is simultaneously a document of a once-in-a-lifetime performance and an intimate portrait of Murphy as he navigates both the personal and professional ramifications of his decision.

NR Documentary Music 1 hr, 45 mins

  • 2.2

23%

77%

Join Keanu Reeves on a tour of the past and the future of filmmaking in Side by Side. Since the invention of cinema, the standard format for recording moving images has been film. Over the past two decades, a new form of digital filmmaking has emerged, creating a groundbreaking evolution in the medium. Reeves explores the development of cinema and the impact of digital filmmaking via in-depth interviews with Hollywood masters, such as James Cameron, David Fincher, David Lynch, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, and many more.

Documentary 1 hr, 39 mins

  • 4

78%

22%

With epic proportions of Shakespearean tragedy, the film follows two unique characters, whose rags-to-riches success stories reveal the innate virtues and flaws of the American Dream. The film begins with the family triumphantly constructing the biggest house in America, a 90,000 sq. ft. palace. Over the next two years, their sprawling empire, fueled by the real estate bubble and cheap money, falters due to the economic crisis. Major changes in lifestyle and character ensue within the cross-cultural household of family members and domestic staff.

PG Documentary 1 hr, 40 mins

  • 3.6

29%

71%

Addicted to Fame is the outrageous, couldn't-make-it-up, rare glimpse into the making of the B-movie 'Illegal Aliens', starring the late '90s icon Anna Nicole Smith. Director David Giancola embarks on the project with the intention of making a 'movie that mocks B-movies', but finds himself mired in an uncontrollable drama brought on by eccentric personalities, tragedy and the madness that is the movie business. 'Illegal Aliens' bombed at the box office but the story was the second most-reported of 2007, only after coverage of the Iraq War. With 'Addicted To Fame', Giancola grants the public the first-ever look behind-the-scenes on the set of Anna Nicole Smith's last movie, dubbed by some critics to be 'the worst movie ever made', starring the most controversial and tragic figure of the 1990s.

Documentary 1 hr, 29 mins

  • 4

39%

61%

Tells the stories of five members of the chess team at a below-the-poverty-line inner city junior high school that has won more national championships than any other in the country. The film follows the challenges these kids face in their personal lives as well as on the chessboard, and is as much about the sting of their losses as it is about the anticipation of their victories. I ronically, the biggest obstacle thrust upon them arises not from other competitors but from recessionary budget cuts to all the extracurricular activities at their school. Brooklyn Castle shows how these kids’ dedication to chess magnifies their belief in what is possible for their lives. After all, if they can master the world’s most difficult game, what can’t they do?

PG Documentary

  • 1

50%

50%
Los Angeles Netflix DVD VOD / Digital

Does hell exist? If so, who ends up there, and why? Featuring an eclectic group of authors, theologians, pastors, social commentators and musicians, Hellbound? is a provocative, feature-length documentary that looks at why we are so bound to the idea of hell and how our beliefs about hell affect the world we are creating today.

NR Documentary

  • 3

45%

55%

Kumare is a wise guru from the East who indoctrinated a group of followers in the West. Kumare, however, is not real--he is the alter ego of American filmmaker Vikram Gandhi, who impersonated a spiritual leader for the sake of a social experiment designed to challenge one of the most widely accepted taboos: that only a tiny "1%" can connect the rest of the world to a higher power. Concealing his true identity from everyone he meets, Kumare forges profound and spiritual connections with people from all walks of life. At the same time, in the absurdity of living as an entirely different person, Vikram, the filmmaker, is forced to confront difficult questions about his own identity. At the height of his popularity, Kumare unveils his true identity to a core group of disciples who are knee-deep in personal transformation.

NR Documentary

  • 1.3

29%

71%

A documentary about Earth's most valuable resource, water.

PG-13 Documentary

  • 3.7

30%

70%

A documentary on French chef Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs in the world, and the passing of his three-Michelin-star restaurant to his son Sebastien.

Documentary

  • 4

28%

72%

This darkly comic, genre-bending piece of journalism from international provocateur Mads Brugger rips the corroded lid off the global scheme of political corruption and exploitation happening in one of the most dangerous places on the planet: the Central African Republic. Armed with a phalanx of hidden cameras, black-marked diplomatic credentials and a bleeding-edge wit, Bruegger transforms himself into an outlandish caricature of a European-African Consul. As he immerses himself in the life-threatening underworld of nefarious bureaucrats, Bruegger encounters blood diamond smuggling, bribery, and even murder--while somehow managing to crack amazing razor-sharp barbs at every steps along the way.

NR Documentary 1 hr, 33 mins

  • 3.2

30%

70%

An urgent expose of the culture wars being fought within America's public school system, The Revisionaries is a behind-the-scenes look at the Texas State Board of Education's decade-defining conference on state textbook standards. As Texas is the country's single largest textbook buyer--and publishers are forced to re-write content to comply with their educational standards--the board's decisions have the ability to affect the future of American education.

Historical Documentary 1 hr, 32 mins

  • 5

100%

0%

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