Open Forum Friday: Why Are All of the Year’s Best Movies Documentaries?
As many of you are probably aware, we’re big fans of documentaries here at Film Junk. Maybe our growing love for them has had something to do with our cynicism toward cheesy Hollywood blockbusters, but I think more than anything, there’s just been an overwhelming wave of good ones being produced in recent years. They run the gamut from informative to dramatic to humourous, and as we all know, truth really is stranger than fiction. Film Junk’s top 10 movies of 2005 included 4 (count em, 4!) documentaries on it, and now it’s looking like 2006 is shaping up in a similar way. Believe it or not, we’re not the only ones who think so either. Christy Lemire, a film critic for the Associated Press, wrote a piece this week that echoes these sentiments. She lists Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, Neil Young: Heart of Gold, The Heart of the Game and The War Tapes as being among her candidates for top 10 films of 2006. And then there’s Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which is turning into this year’s March of the Penguins with its impressive per-screen box office averages. Is there a reason why these movies are doing so well? There are a lot of factors at work, but I think while Hollywood is busy soiling themselves with bad sequels and remakes, people are starting to open up and realize that not all documentaries are dull PBS specials. What do you think? Has your interest in documentaries increased recently? Do you think they’ve been the highlight of an otherwise bland year for film? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.
Comments (2)
I’ve always been open to seeing new things as long as I think it’s something I’ll enjoy. I have noticed that over the last few years, I’ve been watching more documentaries because, more and more, they have appealed to me. The stories have been interesting enough to capture my attention and as a result, I’ve been seeing more documentaries.
Posted by themarina on June 16th, 2006Well, I don’t know if all the best movies are documentaries, but my interest in them has definetly gone up ecsponentially since I was exposed to you junkies.
You know when people talk enthusiasticly about something you tend to get excited about it as well, but then as you get into it you are more or less always disappointed. This thing for documentaries definetly stuck with me though.
I still prefer fiction I think. Fiction still works on more levels for me, and I would still consider fiction a more pure expression of art, than documentaries.
The best documentaries in my opinion are the ones who deal with little things. Like “March of the Penguins” for example. When you take something that nobody knows anything about and you craft something interesting and actually spread the message, and tell a story about the world that people do not know already, that is when a documentary becomes really interesting and worthwhile. I am not very excited about a bombastic documentary like Inconvenient Truth. It seems a little ‘infomercial’-like to me. Like Michael Moore’s films. Because the theme is so known to us, and we have already made up our minds about it, you pretty much already know what you are gonna take away from the movie. That’s why I prefer the “smaller” docs, the ones that tell us stories we had no idea existed in our world.
Ranting rocks,
Posted by Henrik on June 17th, 2006Henrik.
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