
This month saw more essential films added to Netflix Watch Instantly than leave, though there were some sad departures of the expired variety. As we warned last month, Leviathan was indeed one of them. Also Life in a Day and Last Call at the Oasis, making it seem they were just getting rid of docs starting with the letter L. But then also The Invisible War.
As for the brand new additions, we had previously noted that now-Oscar-shortlisted Best of Enemies, about the 1968 debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, was coming to Netflix, as was the fashion doc Dior and I and Bobcat Goldthwait’s profile on comedian and anti-child-pornography hero Barry Crimmins, Call Me Lucky. I’ve added them all to this month’s Netflix 100 for necessary year-end interest.
Another notable addition from this year is the popular Sundance breakout The Wolfpack, about sheltered brothers who know movies more than the real world outside their NYC apartment. Also Ethan Hawke’s Seymour: An Introduction, about pianist and teacher Seymour Bernstein, and Mala Mala, about Puerto Rican transgender persons.
Classics that have been added this month include Bennett Miller’s The Cruise, which is one of our top docs about NYC, and Morgan Spurlock’s very influential Oscar nominee Super Size Me. I’ve decided to pair that with one of its followers, the Doug Benson pot doc Super High Me. And finally, returning to the Netflix streaming library is the ethically complex spirituality doc Kumare.
I had to make some “Sophie’s Choice” selections in order to make room for all those newcomers, and many will surely return in the future. They are Gideon’s Army, Pandora’s Promise, Into the Abyss, Client 9, Room 237 and Woody Allen: A Documentary, which I’d just featured last month. You’ll notice three of these leaving are docs by directors still represented on the list.
As for coming attractions, the only one I can think of worth noting is the original documentary series Making a Murderer, which we haven’t seen yet but are excited for.
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 (Expedition to the End of the World and Encounters at the End of the World and The Act of Killing and Camp 14, 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.
- The Cruise (Bennett Miller, 1998)
- The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)
- Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)
- Life Itself (Steve James, 2014)
- Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986)
- Brother’s Keeper (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, 1992)
- Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock, 2004)
- Super High Me (Michael Blieden, 2007)
- Expedition to the End of the World (Daniel Dencik, 2013)
- Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, 2007)
- Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010)
- The End of Time (Peter Mettler, 2012)
- Particle Fever (Mark Levinson, 2013)
- Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (Brannon Braga, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter, 2014)
- Pina (Wim Wenders, 2011)
- Paris is Burning (Jennie Livington, 1990)
- Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008)
- Manakamana (Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, 2013)
- Approaching the Elephant (Amanda Wilder, 2014)
- Actress (Robert Greene, 2014)
- The Civil War (Ken Burns, 1990)
- Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003)
- The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (Sophie Fiennes, 2012)
- The Nightmare (Rodney Ascher, 2015)
- Side By Side (Chris Kenneally, 2012)
- Casting By (Tom Donahue, 2012)
- Lost in La Mancha (Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, 2002)
- Virunga (Orlando von Einsiedel, 2014)
- War Don Don (Rebecca Richman Cohen, 2010)
- The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2013)
- The Act of Killing: Director’s Cut (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
- Camp 14: Total Control Zone (Marc Wiese, 2012)
- The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle, 2015)
- The Imposter (Bart Layton, 2012)
- Kumare (Vikram Gandhi, 2011)
- Naqoyqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 2002)
- Samsara (Ron Fricke, 2011)
- Touching the Void (Kevin MacDonald, 2003)
- Last Days in Vietnam (Rory Kennedy, 2014)
- Best of Enemies (Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, 2015)
- Let the Fire Burn (Jason Osder, 2013)
- The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 (Goran Olsson, 2011)
- Concerning Violence (Goran Olsson, 2014)
- How to Die in Oregon (Peter Richardson, 2011)
- How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012)
- Crazy Love (Dan Klores, 2007)
- All American High Revisited (Keva Rosenfeld, 2014)
- Maidentrip (Jillian Schlesinger, 2013)
- Undefeated (Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, 2011)
- Medora (Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart, 2013)
- Rich Hill (Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos, 2014)
- White Earth (Christian Jensen, 2014)
- The Overnighters (Jesse Moss, 2014)
- Jesus Camp (Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, 2006)
- Detropia (Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, 2012)
- Caucus (AJ Schnack, 2013)
- Control Room (Jehane Noujaim, 2004)
- The Square (Jehane Noujaim, 2013)
- Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom (Evgeny Afineevsky, 2015)
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Alex Gibney, 2005)
- Kids for Cash (Robert May, 2013)
- The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki, 2012)
- The Farm: Angola USA (Liz Garbus, 1998)
- Evolution of a Criminal (Darius Clark Monroe, 2014)
- Which Way Home (Rebecca Cammisa, 2009)
- These Birds Walk (Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq, 2013)
- Call Me Lucky (Bobcat Goldthwait, 2015)
- Girl Model (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, 2011)
- Iris (Albert Maysles, 2014)
- Dior and I (Frederic Tcheng, 2014)
- Mad Hot Ballroom (Marilyn Agrelo, 2005)
- Countdown to Zero (Lucy Walker, 2009)
- Gasland (Josh Fox, 2010)
- FrackNation (Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney and Magdalena Segieda, 2013)
- Restrepo (Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, 2010)
- Hell and Back Again (Danfung Dennis, 2011)
- Out of the Clear Blue Sky (Danielle Gardner, 2012)
- First Comes Love (Nina Davenport, 2013)
- After Tiller (Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, 2013)
- Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story (Mark Herzog and Sandrine Orabona, 2014)
- Mala Mala (Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini, 2014)
- What Happened, Miss Simone? (Liz Garbus, 2015)
- Seymour: An Introduction (Ethan Hawke, 2014)
- Kurt & Courtney (Nick Broomfield, 1998)
- Beware of Mr. Baker (Jay Bulger, 2012)
- Bigger, Stronger, Faster (Chris Bell, 2008)
- This Ain’t California (Marten Persiel, 2012)
- Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010)
- Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story (Brad Bernstein, 2012)
- Print the Legend (Luis Lopez and J. Clay Tweel, 2014)
- Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012)
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb, 2011)
- More Than Honey (Markus Imhoof, 2012)
- Microcosmos (Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou, 1996)
- Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite, 2013)
- The Whale (Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit, 2011)
- The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield, 2012)
- Tabloid (Errol Morris, 2010)
- Vernon, Florida (Errol Morris, 1981)
- Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (Kurt Kuenne, 2008)