Movies in the Documentary genre

Over the years, there has been no shortage of movies detailing the mysteries and human rights violations taking place inside the secretive world of North Korea. None has achieved the level of access found in Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia, whic...

Pumping Iron is a puff piece. From its partly-scripted elements to its decision to focus on the most relatable aspects of bodybuilding, the movie is as far from a hard-hitting documentary as one can find. (For example, the rampant use of steroids ...

Fire of Love was one of two documentaries released in 2022 about the (R.I.P.) late volcanologist couple, Katia and Maurice Krafft, who died in 1991 while pursuing their passion. The other, by the legendary German filmmaker, Werner Herzog, bears th...

Released in 1974 to celebrate MGM’s 50th anniversary, That’s Entertainment is a clip-show motion picture designed to highlight many of the studio’s beloved musicals. More than 50 songs are featured from movies as old as 1929 (The Hollywo...

Terror in the Aisles is a clip-fest. With excerpts from nearly 80 horror movies that run the gamut from classics to long-forgotten duds, the film provides glimpses of cinematic scares and gore covering the period between the 1930s and the early 19...

Growing up in New Jersey, I was of course aware of the existence of Action Park, an amusement park located in the northwestern portion of the state, not far from where my grandparents lived. Nevertheless, I turned down opportunities to visit for a...

You Don’t Nomi is a 2019 documentary that takes a fond look back at the deservedly derided Paul Vehoeven/Joe Eszterhas box office bomb, Showgirls. Although director Jeffrey McHale approaches the retrospective from a decidedly subjective poin...

They Shall Not Grow Old, the first nonfiction venture by The Lord of the Rings’ director, Peter Jackson, represents a startling trip through a time capsule into a world that, in both a real and existential sense, no longer exists. A collage ...

If one was to ask Morgan Neville, the award-winning director of Roadrunner (full title: Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain), what the movie is about, he would likely respond something along the lines of “the life of celebrity chef, ad...

If one was to clump together all the movies – both narrative and documentary – made about the Vietnam War (or, as it’s called in Asia, the American War), the number would be in the three-digit range. I have seen many of those (although b...