Personal Lists featuring...

West of Memphis 2012

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Every year there are a huge number of movies that fly right under the radar of the average movie fan. movies that are great but just not that well known.

There are plenty of movie gems out there and hopefully this list will help you find some.

Feel free to submit new movies in the comments below.

This list contains movies/documentaries and short films. The list was originally created on IMDb. http://goo.gl/gHles

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This isn't intended to be a comprehensive list. I'm just going to be periodically updating this list with titles from the following IMDB search parameters:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature,tv_movie,tv_series,tv_episode,tv_special,tv_miniseries,documentary,short,tv_short&genres=crime,documentary

UPDATED: 3/25/24

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Episodes, shows, and movies from the podcast. Does not include Patreon-only episodes.

Missing:
Episode 17 - Captivated
Episode 195 - Escape to Alcatraz
Episode 242 - The Last Call Killer
Episode 300 - Debunking the Myth of Patient Zero (YouTube)
Episode 328 - Catching the Craigslist Killer
Episode 331 - Murder in Mustang

Updated 2/4/2024.

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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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HollyWood Movies based on Popularity

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Pulled from https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/?year=2012

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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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