100 Must-See Documentaries Streaming on Netflix This December

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Compared to last month, there aren’t a lot of additions to the Netflix 100 listing for December. Morgan Spurlock’s Rats, surprisingly one of my favorite docs of the year (read my review at Film School Rejects), does begin streaming on the 16th, and that’s about it. But there also aren’t many expirations, only Medora already and Restrepo in a few days — so I took the latter off the list, but try to watch it before it goes away.

I have to apologize for last month’s inclusion of a bunch of World War II classics that either were just very temporarily on Netflix or didn’t in fact happen at all. That’s eight titles I had to remove and refill with titles I had eliminated for, as I’d hoped, just the short time. The re-adds, which I just slipped back in are the Herzog titles Into the Abyss, Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Happy People: A Year in the Taiga and Mala Mala, My Prairie Home, Print the Legend, Our Last Tango, Western and Cartel Land.

Now a reminder of how the Netflix 100 titles are numerically arranged:

They are mostly ranked in order of my favor with some objective authority, but there are some clumps throughout the list that obviously fit together. Some are by director, some are by genre or subject matter and some are by series. In fact, I see this whole list as being best watched in order of the rankings.

There are a few double features in the bunch (Super Size Me and Super High Me and GasLand and FrackNation, for two example sets) and some groupings where I truly think the higher ranking title is best watched before a certain title or titles below it (Into the Inferno is sort of a sequel to Encounters at the End of the World and The Look of Silence is sort of a sequel to The Act of Killing, for two example sets).

(Editor in Chief)

Christopher Campbell is the founding editor of Nonfics.