50 Best Documentaries of the Aughts

Even though I mocked the (still technically incorrect!) way we're all measuring decades, I am powerless to the siren call of the listicle. I know I'm going against the grain with the purists by not ranking them, but once the list was winnowed down from hundreds of great films to just fifty it started to feel petty. However in the interest of reading pleasure I instead broke them down by their thematic elements.

This proved to be daunting in a different way. I'm always loathe to champion films that are inherently undistributable due to copyright strictures but I couldn't deny the pleasure of watching legendary film editor Walter Murch discuss his process and philosophy in Murch or Thom Anderson's Los Angeles Plays Itself, a must for understanding how setting impacts storytelling choices.

Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke also felt tough to categorize. His decision to make a comprehensive documentary about the impacts and responses to Hurricane Katrina immediately following his massive commercial success with Inside Man felt activist in nature. But a decade from now his event-centric film will likely feel as though it belongs under the Historical/Political heading.

And once the dust settled even I was surprised that each of my nature- and adventure- picks revolved around Antarctica. Must be the Shackleton spirit in me. As always, all favorites are subjective, I would love to hear which films you thought were great this decade.

Enjoy!

ACTIVISM
Blue Vinyl (Gold and Helfand, 2002, USA)
The English Surgeon (Smith, 2007, UK) (pictured)
Shut Up and Sing (Kopple, 2006, USA)
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Lee, 2006, USA)

ART
The Beaches of Agnes (Varda, 2008, France)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Andersen, 2003, USA)
Murch (Ichioka and Ichioka, 2008, USA)
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (Fiennes, 2006, UK)
Rivers and Tides (Riedelsheimer, 2001, Germany) (pictured)
Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (Harlan, 2001, USA)
True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia (Baichwal, 2002, Canada)

CHARACTER
Forbidden Lie$ (Broinowski, 2007, Australia)
The Gleaners and I (Varda, 2002, France) (pictured)
Girl 27 (Stenn, 2007, USA)
Grizzly Man (Herzog, 2005, USA)
Protagonist (Yu, 2007, USA)
Shadow Billionaire (Spraic, 2009, USA)
Tyson (Toback, 2008, USA)

EXPLORATION//NATURE
Encounters at the End of the World (2007, Herzog, USA) (pictured)
Ice People (Aghion, 2008, France/USA)
Winged Migration (Perrin, Cluzaud and Debats, 2001, France)

FAMILY//PERSONAL
51 Birch Street (Block, 2005, USA) (pictured)
Of Time and the City (Davies, 2008, UK)
Tarnation (Caouette, 2003, USA)
Zombie Girl (Johnson, Marshall and Mauck, 2009, USA)

HISTORICAL

Cooking History (Kerekes, 2009, Slovakia) (pictured)

Orange Revolution (York, 2007, USA)

The Staircase

 (de Lestrade, 2003, USA)

GLOBALIZATION

Dust
 (Bitomsky, 2007, Germany)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Gibney, 2005, USA)

FLOW: For Love of Water (Salina, 2008, USA)

King Corn (Woolf, 2007, USA)

Life and Debt (Black, 2001, USA)

Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) (Kohn, 2007, USA)

Manufactured Landscapes
 (Baichwal, 2006, Canada)
Merchants of Cool
 (Goodman, 2001, USA)
Mondovino (Nossiter, 2004, Argentina) (pictured)
Oblivion (Honigmann, 2008, Netherlands)

Our Brand is Crisis
 (Boynton, 2005, USA)
Rip! A Remix Manifesto
 (Gaylor, 2009, Canada)
Up the Yangtze

 (Chang, 2007, Canada)

SPORTS

The Heart of the Game

 (Serrill, 2005, USA)  (pictured)

WAR

Control Room (Noujaim, 2004, USA)

Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi (Olds, 2009, USA)

The Fog of War (Morris, 2003, USA)

Iraq in Fragments (Longley, 2006, USA)

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (Kennedy, 2007, USA) (pictured)

No End in Sight (Ferguson, 2007, USA)

Taxi to the Dark Side (Gibney, 2007, USA)

Waltz with Bashir (Folman, 2008, Israel)

Comments

[Valkel.blogspot.com]

My two big faves:
Bigger, Faster, Stronger
- for best editing/structuring
War Dance
- for creative visuals, beauty and poignancy, triumph of the human spirit type of thing, very good storytelling

I'd also include
Control Room
- I think that was ground-breaking even though flawed
The Corporation
- not an easy watch but a great resource and cramming of tons of info on the DVD
Kassim The Dream
- about Ugandan boxer, formerly child soldier
Persepolis
- maybe not exactly a documentary, but if it is it is in my top ten for sure, LOVED it!
Strange Culture
- not 100% satisfying to me but a very interesting approach and a really important story, took the mixing doc and fiction idea to a different place by including on-camera conversations between actors and the real people they played
Sicko
- I know, I know, but I'm a sucker for M. Moore, I can't help it. It's like the best candy ever for me. And I do think there are some really great points in there amongst the propaganda.

[Jean B. Knowlton]

The Corporation

[Allison I.]

I'd add:

-The Education of Shelby Knox
-New Year Baby
-Cat Dancers
-Tom Dowd and the Language of Music
-A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
-Audience of One

[eric]

Nice list! Films I would have included:
- Man on Wire
- Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)
- Capturing the Friedmans
- Spellbound

Films that would land on my most-overrated list:
- Tarnation
- Control Room

[akorn]

the up series is at the top of my list.

[Ben Nelson]

Not sure if this would be activism or character, but the environmental comedy "Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea" is terrific, so it's worth a look and consideration for the list, if only to hear John Waters' narration.
http://www.saltonseadocumentary.com

"Dark Days" also pretty great and straddles that same line of activism (homelessness) and character.

http://www.palmpictures.com/film/dark-days.php

[Joshua Tanzer]

Ditto "Boys of Baraka."

Ditto no "Capturing the Friedmans." I found it a novelty based on the fact the family had filmed itself, but that doesn't mean they had a story worth watching. It was fuzzy as to any conclusion about what really happened. It was more voyeurism than storytelling.

These would be my own top 5:

- Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
- Iraq in Fragments
- S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
- Bus 174
- Burning Dreams (Chinese, unreleased)

Joshua

[Richard Schachter]

Some other great docs not on the list:

Spellbound
Keep the River on Your Right
Young at Heart
Trouble the Water
The Cove

[Ronit]

I would add "Kassim The Dream" which fits in multiple categories: Sports/War/Character/Activism

[Erin D.]

hey Greg, Capturing the Friedmans is not a film I responded to well but have always meant to go back and see again. Thanks for reminding me!

JP, I have a Dylan allergy. But Boys of Baraka was a strong contender.

[Greg]

No "Capturing the Friedmans"?!? Wha?

[JP]

The Boys of Baraka
La Sierra
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan
Dear Zachary
One Man's Journey (2005)
Lake of Fire