Documentaries
Here is an update to this list. I’m listing both movie documentaries and TV documentaries here.
Best of the best
- The Battle Over Citizen Kane
- Bowling for Columbine
- Capitalism: A Love Story
- The Corporation
- Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner
- Eden: Untamed Planet
- Endurance
- Fahrenheit 9/11
- Fahrenheit 11/9
- The Fog of War
- For the Love of Spock
- Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World
- Guns, Germs and Steel
- An Inconvenient Truth
- Jane
- Lost in La Mancha
- Planet Earth
- Planet Earth II
- Prehistoric Planet
- Roger & Me
- Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb
- This Changes Everything
- Walking with Cavemen
- Walking with Dinosaurs
- Walking with Prehistoric Beasts
- What We Left Behind
- Where to Invade Next
Runner ups
- Apollo 11
- Behind the Planet of the Apes
- The Big One
- The Captains
- Chaos on the Bridge
- Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
- Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist
- Grizzly Man
- Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees
- Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D
- March of the Penguins
- Nature: A Conversation with Koko
- The One Per Cent
- Penn & Teller: BS!
- Project Nim
- Slacker Uprising
- Space Station 3D
- Spellbound
- Star Trek: The Captain’s Summit
- Trekkies
- TV Nation
Honourable mention
Seeing-the-World-in-a-New-Way Movies
These films are sometimes lumped in with documentaries, but they are quite different. They have no dialogue or story — it’s all about following the visuals as they show you the world in a way you’ve never seen it before.
Best of the best
- Baraka
- Koyaanisqatsi
- Powaqqatsi
Runner up
Honourable mention
- Naqoyqatsi
Comedy Specials
Again, these are sometimes lumped in with documentaries but are clearly different.
The only 4 I’ve seen lately