Monday, November 11, 2024
HomeEntertainmentThe 22 best documentaries streaming in August 2024

The 22 best documentaries streaming in August 2024

Looking for great fly-on-the-wall looks at subcultures, obsessions, and stories of incredible artistry? From the beautiful time capsule in Summer of Soul to the sublime tragedy of Fire of Love and Grizzly Man, the best documentaries can wrangle complex histories into intricate, astonishing narratives that mirror the human condition.

To make a documentary is to capture a subject as honestly as possible, offering a snapshot that’s educational, sensational, or (ideally) both. Here are the 22 best documentaries streaming now across various platforms.

20 Feet From Stardom (2013)

Everett

Darlene Love was a backup singer for years, supporting acts who were the kind of stars she should have been, too. This Oscar-winning documentary features interviews with dozens of backup singers about their experience standing behind artists who got to be the face of their music rather than being edged out of the spotlight.

The archival footage in 20 Feet From Stardom is particularly harrowing, capturing how essential these unknown singers were to the songs that captivated the world. —Chris Bellamy

Where to watch 20 Feet From Stardom: The Roku Channel

American Movie (1999)

Everett Collection

Sometimes you’ve just gotta slam a guy’s head into a kitchen cabinet repeatedly until you get the shot right. This is the American Dream… at least according to Mark Borchardt, the I-think-I-can amateur filmmaker at the heart of American Movie. This portrait of his creative process, directed by Chris Smith, is exceptionally funny, and the joke is often on Borchardt, but the affectionate eye of the camera is never condescending.

Too many titles use the word “American” as a faux-meaningful affectation. This one earns the modifier — not because it’s some sweeping statement, but because its American-ness feels so elemental, from its Midwest suburban setting to Borchardt’s single-minded passion for his horror project, which he pursues with a courageous tenacity. —C.B.

Where to watch American Movie: Tubi

Bowling for Columbine (2002)

Everett

Neither self-serious nor blithe, Michael Moore’s satirical documentary explores the issues that led to the Columbine massacre and gun violence in America broadly. The film, like most of Moore’s output, has a sensationalist aspect, largely (if not entirely) because of his personality; however, it also serves as a reminder of his talent for synthesizing the rising cultural shifts of the 1990s and early aughts. Here, we watch as Moore walks us slowly, almost subliminally, to a place of logical rage, and then shake our heads at how little has changed. —Eric Farwell

Where to watch Bowling for Columbine: Tubi

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)

Everett

Kurt Kuenne’s devastating documentary about grief and the Canadian legal system’s failings revolves around the murder of his friend, Andrew Bagby, at the hands of his mysterious ex, Shirley Turner. What follows is an examination of Turner’s baffling release from prison and the incredible sorrow that envelops the family after tragically losing a son and getting mired in a custody battle with the very person responsible. —E.F.

Where to watch Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father: Amazon Prime Video

Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)

Everett

There’s no “right” way to deal with grief, or the anxious fear of waiting for something bad to happen that you know will come to pass. But Kirsten Johnson found a unique outlet in Dick Johnson Is Dead, in which she deals with her father’s dementia and the looming specter of his death by killing him on camera repeatedly (with his enthusiastic participation).

Watching father and daughter execute each fatal scenario gives us a remarkable glimpse into their relationship — and the catharsis that comes with the creative process itself. The film’s intimate sense of joy is not a deflection against the truth of what the Johnsons are facing, but a self-conscious, honest expression of it. —C.B.

Where to watch Dick Johnson Is Dead: Netflix

Fire of Love (2022)

Everett

One of two movies about volcanologists Katherine and Maurice Krafft released in 2022 (the other directed by Werner Herzog), Fire of Love is part self-portrait, part nature documentary, and part elegy. The pair died in the 1991 Mount Unzen eruption but left behind two decades of footage from which this documentary is compiled.

This is a love story between two people and their shared obsession, one inseparable from the other. The film casts their lives as a testament to the power of science and paints discovery as the ultimate act of self-discovery. —E.F.

Where to watch Fire of Love: Hulu

The Fog of War (2003)

Everett

Robert McNamara is a polarizing figure. Partly responsible for escalating the Vietnam War, and a key person in the Cuban Missile Crisis, he served as Secretary of Defense for Kennedy’s bright but tumultuous presidency. Now in his late 80s, this documentary sees McNamara recount the “lessons” he learned and reflect on his career.

Errol Morris did a tremendous job articulating the key aspects of McNamara’s life and legacy that influenced his approach to the decorum of war, but he also gives his subject space to consider what he got wrong. —C.B.

Where to watch The Fog of War: Tubi

Free Solo (2018)

Everett

Free Solo is a gripping psychological profile almost by accident. Ostensibly, it’s about Alex Honnold’s attempt to complete the first free solo climb of Yosemite’s El Capitan, but in spending so much time documenting the pursuit, the film can’t help but implicitly ask why, or rather, what kind of person would be driven to do this?

The mortality rate for free solo climbers is a fact Honnold casually accepts. Thus, Free Solo is thrilling for its footage and what its subject tries to accomplish, but a sense of existential ambivalence comes with that morbid thrill. —C.B.

Where to watch Free Solo: Hulu

Gates of Heaven (1978)

Everett

In Errol Morris’ debut, viewers are introduced to the unique personalities that operate pet cemeteries in Napa Valley. Morris lets his subjects’ personalities sparkle, weaving a wild farcical tale about the mundane that is believable but just weird enough to stand out.

Morris would later scale up to more serious and heady subjects, but he never had a more curious or more fascinated eye than when documenting 450 dead animals being dug up for reburial at a different location. —E.F.

Where to watch Gates of Heaven: AMC+

Grizzly Man (2005)

Everett

Werner Herzog has long been an important and divisive figure in documentary filmmaking, and this film is perhaps the best example of why. Following the life and death of bear obsessive Timothy Treadwell, Herzog tries to give audiences a jumping-off point for understanding his passion, succeeding only to the extent that it’s possible to understand him at all.

This is a complicated portrait of a person who believed in the good of wild animals and ultimately died as a result. But Herzog never judges or condescends to Treadwell, even if his involvement in documenting the fallout becomes increasingly complicated. —E.F.

Where to watch Grizzly Man: Amazon Prime Video

Hoop Dreams (1994)

Everett

Hoop Dreams possesses a lightning-in-a-bottle magic that documentaries rarely capture. Over five years, the film follows two young Black teenagers in Chicago who get recruited to play basketball at an upscale prep school. It’s the late 1980s, Michael Jordan is ascending to god status, and the possibilities of discovering the next great superstar are infinite.

Regardless of whether Arthur Agee and William Gates become the next Jordan — or even the next Isiah Thomas — their lives wind up far more interesting than potential glory, with unexpected developments achieving a profundity few scripts ever could have. —C.B.

Where to watch Hoop Dreams: Max

If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise (2010)

Everett

Spike Lee’s follow-up documentary to the equally excellent When the Levees Broke (which is also streaming on Max) examines the effort to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and how the disaster changed the city.

Lee is terrifically skilled at bringing disparate concepts together; here, he captures everything from police corruption and the loss of four housing projects to the New Orleans Saints and their Super Bowl XLIV victory, the latter serving as a vibrant pulse that amplifies the possibility of what the city is capable of. —E.F.

Where to watch If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise: Max

Lost in La Mancha (2002)

Everett

Monty Python‘s Terry Gilliam tried and failed to mount his vision of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote for years before finally succeeding in 2018, 16 years after this documentary arrived. Despite every effort Gilliam and his production crew made, there was no way to save the initial attempt at making the movie, which may have contributed to Gilliam’s diminished presence in the entertainment industry.

This film explores the many ways that art can be destroyed or inhibited, including a NATO practice base making too much noise, the destruction of sets, and personal injury. It’s also a rare documentary where knowing the outcome after the cameras stopped rolling enhances the work rather than rendering it irrelevant, turning the entire project into an arc about the long road some dreams take. —C.B.

Where to watch Lost in La Mancha: The Roku Channel

Meru (2015)

Everett

Anyone who’s ever said “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey” has never met the climbers in Meru. For them, the destination is everything as they scale Mount Meru in the Indian Himalayas via the treacherous Shark’s Fin route with their eyes on the peak.

Few documentaries have ever provided this kind of first-person access to true, gravity-defying danger — because most documentaries are not co-directed by one of the very people at risk. But Jimmy Chin is the exception, filming his climb, avalanches, injuries, and near-fatal setbacks that befall the voyage. What follows is remarkable, harrowing, and a marvel of documentary editing. —C.B.

Where to watch Meru: Amazon Prime Video

MLK/FBI (2020)

Everett

Sam Pollard helms this keen examination of the FBI’s role in the torment and death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. From early attempts to create division and dissent in his ranks to phone taps, the organization operated from a place of racist anxiety over the power of Black America and one leader who was leading a peaceful and righteous path to equity.

Pollard’s film is especially poignant in showing how short-sighted the country remains, even if the methods of dismantling progress have shifted from political entities to more public-facing groups. —E.F.

Where to watch MLK/FBI: AMC+

Paris Is Burning (1990)

Everett

To say Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ cultures were largely ignored or erased by mainstream America in the 1980s (and beyond) is an understatement. That fact is one undercurrent of Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, which documents Harlem ball culture of the mid-to-late ’80s and finds a host of endearing performers all too eager to bring us into their orbit.

The beauty and vibrancy of drag balls speak for themselves, but Livingston is also savvy enough to understand how those events intersect with the political and social realities of the time. This is a vital document that’s both celebratory and sobering. —C.B.

Where to watch Paris Is Burning: Max

The Punk Singer (2013)

Everett

Kathleen Hanna fronted punk greats Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, two bands that existed at different times in the evolving (but still sexist) conversation about women and their place in culture, with the musicians often serving as paragons of feminist critique and anguish.

This Sini Anderson documentary contextualizes Hanna within the progressive alternative rock scene that emerged in the 1980s and gained true steam in the ’90s, before highlighting her struggle with Lyme Disease and the way the messages in Hanna’s music translate her personal battles. —E.F.

Where to watch The Punk Singer: AMC+

Samsara (2011)

Everett

Talking heads, voiceover, and archive footage have their place in documentary filmmaking, perhaps disproportionately so, but a movie like Ron Fricke’s Samsara unlocks the capabilities of the form. It’s far from the first non-narrative doc — for one, Fricke shot Godfrey Reggio’s iconic Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and directed Baraka (1992) — but it may be the most gorgeous.

Samsara uses its spectacular, globetrotting 70mm footage to philosophize about life on Earth, forging connections across time, space, and place. Fricke’s meditation on cycles of creation and destruction is free-associative yet thematically controlled, with the final result existing somewhere at the nexus of musical, essay, and poem. —C.B.

Where to watch Samsara: Tubi

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Everett

Errol Morris is one of the most celebrated documentarians of his time. Here, he follows his curiosity to the shooting of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood and the man convicted of the crime, Randall Adams. Investigating inconsistencies in the case, Morris utilizes testimonies from key figures to recreate pieces of the night in question in strange and striking detail.

Far from offering a traditional examination of a “wrong place, wrong time” miscarriage of justice, Morris turns his fixation into a shared obsession, with the director as the crafty detective and the audience as his second set of eyes. —E.F.

Where to watch The Thin Blue Line: Netflix

Stories We Tell (2012)

Everett

Sarah Polley films are gut punches that incorporate the mind as much as the heart, often exploring community, family, and truth. In this documentary about the affair that led to her birth, Polley incorporates home movie footage — some authentic, some staged — and interviews with different family members to plumb the depths of a woman who remains, even to those who knew her, something of an enigma.

While most documentaries, personal or political, tend to land on one specific version of events, Stories We Tell is wise enough to know the truth is in the eye of the beholder, the rememberer, and the storyteller. —E.F.

Where to watch Stories We Tell: Amazon Prime Video

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

Everett

Ahmir Thompson (a.k.a. Questlove) painstakingly restored footage from the historic 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which saw the best acts of the era take the stage over six Sundays in the same summer as Woodstock.

Words can’t adequately capture how emotionally resonant it is to see Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, B.B. King, and Sly and the Family Stone, as brilliant as they’ve ever been, perform for New Yorkers who needed a reason to unite and celebrate. This isn’t just a movie about music but a musical experiment, a historical document with its own meticulously crafted beats and rhythms. —E.F.

Where to watch Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised): Hulu

The War Room (1993)

Everett

What goes into winning an election? This is the question explored in The War Room, which examines Bill Clinton’s presidential bid via the proxies of James Carville and George Stephanopolous, who ran his campaign and engineered its success in an outsized way.

The film considers the relationship between the media and politicians, and how savvy minds can spin news into something that makes or breaks the success of someone, no matter how dirty their hands are. —E.F.

Where to watch The War Room: Max

Source link

RELATED ARTICLES

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular