Personal Lists featuring...

Spellbound 2002

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This is it. The end of the lists. Finally! So the other day I posted the best documentaries of the decade as selected by a group of acclaimed documentary filmmakers. Now, we’ve got The Documentary Blog’s own top 50 docs of the decade. I was originally aiming for 25 but I just couldn’t cut it down, so 50 will have to do. Let me stress that this list represents my own personal opinion and nothing more. Hopefully some people can use this as a starting point to check out some great films. Feel free to share your own lists in the comments and let me know what I missed! One thing’s for sure; it has been a great decade for documentaries!"

Source: http://www.thedocumentaryblog.com/index.php/2010/01/05/the-documentary-blogs-top-25-documentaries-of-the-decade/. TDB is Jay Cheel who is a Co-Host of the Filmjunk-Podcast.

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Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (Winners & Nominees)

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All the Oscar nominees in the Documentary (Feature) category (1943 - to date, reverse chronological order display).
Winners list > https://trakt.tv/users/oropher_e/lists/academy-awards-best-documentary-feature-winners?sort=rank,desc

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Source:
Years 1931-2018 come from:
The New York Times: Book of Movies
the essential 1,000 films to see
2019 ed

Years after 2018 come from NYT website.

work in progress
There are discrepancies between the website and the book, particular for years after 2003. Please leave a comment for any errors you find.

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List compiled from: https://www.vogue.com/article/best-documentaries-of-all-time

Ranked as in the list

1: 13th (2016)
2: A Poem Is a Naked Person (2015)
3: The Act of Killing (2012)
4: American Factory (2019)
5: American Movie (1999)
6: Amy (2015)
7: Bill Cunningham New York (2010)
8: Blackfish (2013)
9: Bowling for Columbine (2002)
10: Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
11: Burden of Dreams (1982)
12: Cameraperson (2016)
13: Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
14: Crumb (1994)
15: Citizenfour (2014)
16: City of Gold (2015)
17: Cusp (2021)
18: Dark Money (2018)
19: Disclosure (2020)
20: Don’t Look Back (1967)
21: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
22: Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
23: F for Fake (1973)
24: The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)
25: Gimme Shelter (1970)
26: The Gleaners and I (2000)
27: Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015)
28: Grey Gardens (1975)
29: Grizzly Man (2005)
30: Harlan County, USA (1976)
31: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991)
32: Hoop Dreams (1994)
33: How to Survive a Plague (2012)
34: I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
35: Jane (2017)
36: Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)
37: Kate Plays Christine (2016)
38: Kedi (2016)
39: Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
40: Man on Wire (2008)
41: McQueen (2018)
42: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)
43: My Octopus Teacher (2020)
44: Nanook of the North (1922)
45: Night and Fog (1956)
46: O.J.: Made in America (2016)
47: Original Cast Album: Company (1970)
48: Paris Is Burning (1990)
49: Pina (2011)
50: The Queen of Versailles (2012)
51: Restrepo (2010)
52: Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (2018)
53: Salesman (1969)
54: Searching for Sugarman (2012)
55: Senna (2010)
56: The September Issue (2009)
57: Sherman’s March (1985)
58: Shoah (1985)
59: Spellbound (2002)
60: Stories We Tell (2012)
61: Super Size Me (2004)
62: The Thin Blue Line (1988)
63: The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
64: Twenty Feet from Stardom (2013)
65: The Up Series (1964–)
66: Waltz With Bashir (2008)
67: The War Room (1993)
68: Weiner (2016)
69: West of Memphis (2012)
70: When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Parts (2006)
71: Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

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The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films list serves as a companion to the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1,000 Greatest Films of all time list which, - by its nature - tends to have very few films from the 21st century in it. The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films list attempts to highlight and honour this century's most critically revered films and act as a sort of 'resting bay' for many great films that are likely to be included in the 1,000 Greatest Films list sooner or later.

Source: http://www.theyshootpictures.com/21stcentury.htm

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List of Academy Award-winning since 1994 in:
- Best Picture - Best Director
- Best Actor/Actress - Best Supporting Actor/Actress
- Best Original Screenplay - Best Adapted Screenplay
- Best Animated Feature Film - Best Animated Short Film
- Best Documentary Feature - Best Documentary Short Subject
- Best Live Action Short Film - Best International Feature Film
- Best Original Score - Best Original Song
- Best Sound Editing - Best Sound Mixing
- Best Production Design - Best Cinematography
- Best Makeup and Hairstyling - Best Costume Design
- Best Film Editing - Best Visual Effects

The list includes also nominations in the same categories.

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Over 1,000 films are listed in this visually arresting, full-color celebration of the silver screen. Film personalities, including actors, directors, cinematographers, and animators, write about their favorite films from a variety of angles. Martin Scorsese, Nicole Kidman, and Nick Hornby are among those who weigh in. Writers are matched to suitable (or sometimes surprising) themes and genres within the wider subject of how films can alter the course of a life. Movie stills and posters, trivia, and top-ten lists make this a book that can be dipped into or read from cover to cover. Great screen moments — endings, beginnings, kisses, death scenes — are given special spreads. The eclectic approach speaks to fans of big Hollywood blockbusters and factoid-reciting film geeks alike.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Time-1000-Films-Change-Guides/dp/1904978738

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Can you remember a time without Rotten Tomatoes? Those sightless days of people reaching out and bumping into movies at random, like wandering through a Blockbuster with all the lights off. Those were dark and undirected times. Since the launch of RT in August of 1998, though – the site went live on August 18 of that year – movie fans have had immediate access to the largest accumulation of film reviews ever, distilled for one purpose: to get you watching the best kind of movies you want to see. (Or if you only want to watch bad movies, the site can help you find those more quickly, too.)

As we mark our 20th birthday, we’re looking back on the past two decades with this guide to the 200 best-reviewed movies released since that fateful day in August of 1998. To keep the competition tight, we only included movies that had at least 80 reviews, the number at which wide-release movies qualify for Certified Fresh status; applying that rule, and limiting the total list to 200 titles, the lowest Tomatometer score you’ll find is 95%. The criteria also meant that no films from 1998 made the cut (Shakespeare in Love did come awfully close).

The list, which we’ve ordered chronologically, runs the gamut of movies, ranging from popular blockbusters (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part II, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) to indies (The Wrestler, Nightcrawler) and the still underseen (Step, Gloria). Some 14 movies come from this very year made the list, among them Mission: Impossible – Fallout and BlacKkKlansman. There are seven Best Picture Oscar winners and 24 animated movies in there – 10 of which are Pixar products, and three of which come from the UK’s Aardman Animations. Documentaries make up a whopping quarter of the movies listed, and include landmark films like Bowling For Columbine and Man On Wire, while 53 of the movies listed are foreign-language, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the first film on the list, Pedro Almodóvar‘s All About My Mother.

A number of directors show up twice on the list – Ava DuVernay, Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler, and Sean Baker among them – and a handful show up even more than that: Lee Unkrich, Pete Docter, Brad Bird, and Richard Linklater. Meanwhile, series like the Paddington, Before, and Toy Story films appear more than once, along with both films in The Act of Killing/The Look of Silence documentary pairing feature.

So: 200 movies, 20 years. How many have you seen after all this time? And how many are you adding to your watchlist?
Link: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/freshest-movies-past-20-years/

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Capturing truth, life, and reality — one movie at a time. The best documentaries allow us to see the world with a fresh set of eyes, from social experiments (Super Size Me) to quirky competitions (The King of Kong) to political exposés (Citizenfour) to the ultimate cat video (Kedi). Now, we take the top movies of the form (each is Certified Fresh from at least 100 critics reviews) for our countdown list of the 100 best-reviewed documentaries ranked by Tomatometer.
Link: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/100-best-documentaries/

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The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films serves as an ongoing companion to our listing of the 1,000 Greatest Films of all time.

The 1,000 Greatest Films list, by nature of the sources used and formulas applied - and we believe quite rightly so - leans towards films that have so far stood the so-called ‘test of time'. This listing therefore attempts to highlight and honour this century's most critically revered films and act as a sort of 'resting bay' for many great films that will, no doubt, eventually find a spot within the 1,000 Greatest Films part of our website.

This is our seventh 21st Century listing, and despite calls from followers to increase it to 300-and-beyond, for now it once again encompasses 250 films. It is primarily based on critics' year-end lists (from 2000 to 2011), plus it also takes into account mentions given to any films from 2000 onwards that show up in critics' all-time-best-of lists (that are also used for the compilation of our 1,000 Greatest Films list). Additionally, it also incorporates many best-of-the-decade lists from 2010.

List source...
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/21stcentury.htm

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No, I do not want a banana.

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