A Grin Without a Cat
Directed by Chris Marker
1977
Chris Marker assembled hours of the global left arguing with itself between 1967 and 1977: a chorus of narrators reads his commentary, and none of them is given the last word.
★ 2.0
The Movies canon
Sourced and screened.
Every film chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Gates of Heaven
Directed by Errol Morris
1978
Herzog promised to eat his shoe if Errol Morris ever finished it, then did: two California pet cemeteries, and the people talking about their animals reveal everything about themselves.
★ 2.9
March of the Penguins
Directed by Luc Jacquet
2005
The American release swapped the French version's talking penguins for Morgan Freeman narrating, and it became a phenomenon: a colony walks seventy miles inland to breed in the Antarctic winter.
★ 3.3
Taxi to the Dark Side
Directed by Alex Gibney
2007
Alex Gibney's father was a naval interrogator and told him to make it: an Afghan taxi driver died in American custody at Bagram, and the film follows the policy up the chain.
★ 3.4
The Endless Summer
Directed by Bruce Brown
1966
Bruce Brown could not get a distributor so he rented cinemas himself, starting in Wichita in January snow: two surfers follow summer around the world, and the narration is unhurried and dry.
★ 3.4
Spellbound
Directed by Jeffrey Blitz
2002
Eight children and one spelling bee, and it is unbearably tense: Jeffrey Blitz found that how American families prepare for it reveals everything about them, and the finals are agony.
★ 3.8
Fahrenheit 9/11
Directed by Michael Moore
2004
Disney refused to release it and it held the documentary box office record for five years: Michael Moore won at Cannes with an argument aimed squarely at an election five months away.
★ 4.0
20 Feet From Stardom
Directed by Morgan Neville
2013
The backing vocals everyone can sing were recorded by people nobody could name: Darlene Love, Merry Clayton and Lisa Fischer finally get the camera, and the singing is extraordinary.
★ 4.2
Encounters at the End of the World
Directed by Werner Herzog
2007
Herzog went to Antarctica announcing he would not film penguins, then made the saddest scene about one anyway: he is really there to interview the people who chose the place.
★ 4.5
Roger and Me
Directed by Michael Moore
1989
Michael Moore invented a whole documentary style here, himself as the persistent nuisance: Flint, Michigan after General Motors leaves, filmed by someone who grew up in it.
★ 4.5
The Interrupters
Directed by Steve James
2011
Steve James followed former gang members whose entire job is talking people out of retaliation: Chicago violence filmed as something interruptible, one conversation on one corner at a time.
★ 5.7
When We Were Kings
Directed by Leon Gast
1996
Leon Gast shot the footage in 1974 and could not finish the film for twenty-two years: Ali in Kinshasa, talking constantly, in the weeks before the biggest fight of his life.
★ 6.2
Gimme Shelter
Directed by Albert Maysles and David Maysles
1970
The sixties end on camera here: the Maysles followed the Rolling Stones to a free concert at Altamont, then sat Mick Jagger at an editing bench and made him watch what happened.
★ 6.2
Grizzly Man
Directed by Werner Herzog
2005
A hundred hours of video shot by a man who camped among Alaskan grizzlies, edited by Werner Herzog, who disagrees with him completely: two views of nature, arguing across the cut.
★ 6.7
The Last Waltz
Directed by Martin Scorsese
1978
A rock concert storyboarded like a feature and shot on 35mm by seven camera crews: The Band's 1976 farewell is the concert film everything else gets measured against.
★ 6.8
Touching the Void
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
2003
You will not believe it is true and it is: two climbers in the Andes, one broken leg, and a decision that neither man has ever fully stopped explaining.
★ 7.0
Man on Wire
Directed by James Marsh
2008
Petit walked a wire between the Twin Towers in 1974 and Marsh tells it as a heist: the planning, the break-in, and forty-five minutes in the air.
★ 7.0
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Directed by David Gelb
2011
It will alter how you think about doing one thing for an entire lifetime: an eighty-five-year-old sushi master in a Tokyo subway station, still not satisfied with himself.
★ 7.0
The Thin Blue Line
Directed by Errol Morris
1988
A documentary that overturned a real murder conviction: Morris reconstructed the same killing over and over from contradictory testimony, and the case collapsed within a year of release.
★ 7.0
Shoah
Directed by Claude Lanzmann
1985 · France
Nine hours long, with no archive footage at all: Lanzmann spent eleven years getting survivors, bystanders and perpetrators to describe what they saw, standing on the actual sites.
★ 7.0