As expected, there was a terrible purge of great documentaries from Netflix Watch Instantly this month, thanks to the streaming service losing its deal with Epix. That loss combined with the expiration of the entire Up series and the lack of many new additions to replace all those titles made me decide to drop our Netflix list back down to 100 titles from 150. And that meant that I had to cut a bunch of docs that are still streaming on Netflix but which aren’t as essential as those recommended down below. I’m sure they’ll return later, as I suspect more and more films to disappear from the catalog in the future.
Here are the titles we had featured that Netflix lost since September 1st: Man With a Movie Camera, Stories We Tell, Grizzly Man, Seven Up, 7 Plus Seven, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, 49 Up, Milius, Aileen Wuornos: Selling of a Serial Killer, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Underwater Dreams, Cool It, A Fierce Green Fire, Armadillo, 20 Feet From Stardom, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey. I’d rather not make note of all those I personally decided to remove from our list. They were all tough cuts.
Despite the seemed surplus of newly available documentaries streaming on Netflix, I’ve only added two to the Netflix 100 list. Most of that surplus is inessential PBS specials and so-so docs. What I feel necessary to recommend, however, are the devastating Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About a Father, which returns to Netflix Watch Instantly after being gone for a while, and Rodney Ascher’s new feature, The Nightmare, which I have to include because I think it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before in nonfiction cinema.
It’s true that I still need to catch up with a lot of docs that I’ve excluded simply for lack of familiarity. I’m hoping that through more interaction with our readers, particularly those who become supporters of the site on Patreon, that I’ll finally see those films that have been recommended to me, such as Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. So, even if we don’t see a lot of additions or expirations on Netflix’s side, you should still see some movement and alterations going forward.
Now a reminder of how the 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 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)
- The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978)
- 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)
- Leviathan (Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2012)
- 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)
- Room 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2013)
- The Nightmare (Rodney Ascher, 2015)
- Trekkies (Roger Nygard, 1997)
- 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 Unknown Known (Errol Morris, 2013)
- 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 Imposter (Bart Layton, 2012)
- Naqoyqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 2002)
- Samsara (Ron Fricke, 2011)
- Life in a Day (Kevin MacDonald and Natalia Andreadis, 2011)
- Touching the Void (Kevin MacDonald, 2003)
- 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)
- Call Me Kuchu (Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall, 2012)
- Crazy Love (Dan Klores, 2007)
- 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)
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Alex Gibney, 2005)
- Client 9: Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Alex Gibney, 2010)
- Kids for Cash (Robert May, 2013)
- The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki, 2012)
- Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog, 2011)
- The Farm: Angola USA (Liz Garbus, 1998)
- Gideon’s Army (Dawn Porter, 2013)
- Evolution of a Criminal (Darius Clark Monroe, 2014)
- Which Way Home (Rebecca Cammisa, 2009)
- These Birds Walk (Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq, 2013)
- Girl Model (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, 2011)
- Iris (Albert Maysles, 2014)
- Mad Hot Ballroom (Marilyn Agrelo, 2005)
- Pandora’s Promise (Robert Stone, 2013)
- Countdown to Zero (Lucy Walker, 2009)
- Gasland (Josh Fox, 2010)
- FrackNation (Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney and Magdalena Segieda, 2013)
- Last Call at the Oasis (Jessica Yu, 2011)
- Dirty Wars (Rick Rowley, 2013)
- Restrepo (Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, 2010)
- Hell and Back Again (Danfung Dennis, 2011)
- Out of the Clear Blue Sky (Danielle Gardner, 2012)
- After Tiller (Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, 2013)
- Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story (Mark Herzog and Sandrine Orabona, 2014)
- The Invisible War (Kirby Dick, 2012)
- What Happened, Miss Simone? (Liz Garbus, 2015)
- 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)
- Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story (Brad Bernstein, 2012)
- Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010)
- 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)