What's the worst documentary you've ever seen?

"What The Bleep Do We Know."

Good heavens.

I didn't know until after it was over that I was listening to the preachings of Ramtha, 30,000-year-old Warrior God, as being "channeled" by one of the speakers in the show, or that the whole thing was produced by graduates of the "Ramtha School Of Enlightenment". Which, of course, after I found that out it certainly explained a lot.
 
"What The Bleep Do We Know" was hinckey. As video and docs become less expensive (good for us) we can expect anything (bad for the genre). Filters anybody? NPO fiscal sponsors can only screen so much and only up to the point that the producers still need foundation funding. The fiscal sponsoring organizations will be soon obsolete. So what will be the filter of the future? Probably web-based filtering sites like youtube but were's the do-re-me?
 
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Barry_Green said:
"What The Bleep Do We Know."

Good heavens.
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That was a documentary? :huh:

I sat in shock after watching 3/4 of that pile!

I said "What The Bleep Was That?!" :crybaby:
 
Blaine said:
I could answer that, but I just don't feel like starting a war...:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
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haha!!! I'm glad I read your post Blaine! I was going to say "Anything by...." but I have a feeling its best I dont finish that sentence.
 
thartley said:
haha!!! I'm glad I read your post Blaine! I was going to say "Anything by...." but I have a feeling its best I dont finish that sentence.
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Ha! I have a feeling you don't need to!
 
bustak said:
He did a nice job editing old footage & capturing new footage.
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That may be, but I don't think that twenty-some minutes (well, it certainly felt like 20 minutes or more) of exposition delivered in the form of scrolling text (and iMovie text at that - the kind that gets bigger or smaller depending on the amount of text) is an example of good editing.

Maybe I should give Tarnation another try and just skip past the endless exposition part.
 
Well I loved "What the Bleep..." - but I am certainly not familiar with Ramtha and his teachings. I suppose this film would fall into the catagory of, love it or hate it and you either get it, or you don't.

I also liked Aristocrats, but probably because it just made me laugh so hard. I certainly wouldn't classify it as a documentary as much as a comedy though. My girlfriend couldn't stomach it after about 10 minutes and that just made me laugh more. But she gets upset and queezy when someone says the word "pus".
 
Hated 'TARNATION' - Had to see it based on this thread, and yes, Im one of those that hated it, though it had wonderful, creative elements in the editing. Pacing was just too fast for the subject, better employed in a surf film or the like. Something about it just had me turning away...
 
Rameses - Wrath of God or Man

A biblical documentary which hypothesises that Moses may have killed the Pharaoh Ramses II's son. It is narrated by Morgan Freeman. It was the worst (or best from a MST 2000 POV) for never presenting any compelling evidence, dragging this one hypothesis out for an hour, showing the same footage over and over again, and constantly referring to the same cave C14 (or something) as possibly having the answer. At the end, they weren't sure the skull was actually Ramses' son, they had no good reason why Moses would have been the one to kill whoever it was that they had the skull of, and they dragged out what would have been a bad 1/2 hour doc into a terrible full hour one. I really can't believe the DVD is 90 minutes!!!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Rameses-Wrath-God-Man-Rameses-Wrath/dp/B00076QKLU
 
cygnet74 said:
touching the void -- the underwelming reenactments completely blew it for me.
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Whaa? I thought the reenactments were great - the ONLY time I've enjoyed reenactments in a documentary.
 
I just saw "In The Realms of the Unreal," about Henry Darger.

Horrible. I knew it would suck when I saw the "Funded by PBS" come up in the beginning.

Other crap:

Super Size Me - I don't know how anybody could have fallen for that nonsense. I hate the faux populist graphics, the faux populist music, and the faux populist hero.

I put all of Michael Moore in the same category. He calls D Antonio his hero? My lord. How dare he compare his garbage to Year of the Pig or Painters?

Everything on PBS

robot justin
 
Worst - BY FAR it was "Sick: The Life And Death Of Bob Flanigan, Supermasochism Man"

Worst - BY FAR it was "Sick: The Life And Death Of Bob Flanigan, Supermasochism Man"

Um, don't EVER see this movie. EVER. It hurts too much to even tell you why.
 
Sorry - I liked In The Realms of the Unreal quite a bit.

And, c'mon - anything on PBS? That's ridiculous. Granted, there is a HUGE amount of crap on PBS - infomercials and Tenors of all kinds, but are you saying that there is nothing of value to be found on POV or Independent Lens? Do you even like documentaries?

Sorry. I'm feeling a bit scrappy today.
 
I thoroughly hated March of the Penguins, which some people claimed to be documentary. It was a thinly veiled love story played out by clueless penguins, manipulative in the highest degree. The clincher for me was when a baby penguin dies, and the movie cuts to the mother penguin, and then to a "flashback" scene in which the mother penguin "remembers" the life of the baby penguin. To claim to know what a penguin is thinking is patently ridiculous, and I didn't appreciate the film talking down to me in this fashion for its entire legnth. Morgan Freeman was an excellent narrator, though.

Aristrocrats also was awful. It had a good concept, this one joke that all comedians know and have their own take on, but the way it was edited destroyed the personal aspect of the joke. The filmmakers seemed to think they needed to bring some energy to the film in the editing, cutting back and forth rapidly, instead of allowing the comedians to do their work. This approach made it impossible to actually discern how any one comedian in the film interpreted the joke; instead, it made the whole one big mish-mosh of the same joke, totally negating the point the film was trying to make. Why do that? It could have been an incredible documentary.
 
Del Senno said:
I thoroughly hated March of the Penguins, which some people claimed to be documentary. It was a thinly veiled love story played out by clueless penguins, manipulative in the highest degree.
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maybe in the most general, general sense, March of the Penguins is documentary-like. But you're arguing against the very nature of what it actually is...like saying the George Foreman grill is a bad toaster.

Del Senno said:
The clincher for me was when a baby penguin dies, and the movie cuts to the mother penguin, and then to a "flashback" scene in which the mother penguin "remembers" the life of the baby penguin. To claim to know what a penguin is thinking is patently ridiculous, and I didn't appreciate the film talking down to me in this fashion for its entire legnth.
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i fear you have a limited appreciation for poetry. :)
 
PBSsssssss

PBSsssssss

Bus No. 8 said:
Sorry - I liked In The Realms of the Unreal quite a bit.

And, c'mon - anything on PBS? That's ridiculous. Granted, there is a HUGE amount of crap on PBS - infomercials and Tenors of all kinds, but are you saying that there is nothing of value to be found on POV or Independent Lens? Do you even like documentaries?

Sorry. I'm feeling a bit scrappy today.
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I think that PBS is the worst thing that ever happened to documentary. It took the form and ruined it with talking heads, patronizingly overt POV, and staid direction.

While it may have been a good home for docs once, it is now the most corrosive force in documentary today - it sets the standard, and that standard is a boring, condescending template that is offensive artistically, ethically, and intellectually.

POV and Indie Lens certainly have some good programs, but they are not "PBS" productions. They are indie docs that may get ITVS funding, but are done by independent producers (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong.) But way more often than not, the only good thing about PBS docs is the subject matter, and it's easy to forgive awfulness if the subject is "important."

I certainly like documentary, but only when it strives to be cinema, and not hamfisted propoganda.
 
worst because they were boring as hell

grizzly man
shanghai ghetto
my architect
the boston red sox movie
go tigers
tarnation
 
robotjustin said:
POV and Indie Lens certainly have some good programs, but they are not "PBS" productions. They are indie docs that may get ITVS funding, but are done by independent producers...
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Point well taken, and I wasn't distinguishing between the independently produced work and the Secrets-of-the-Dead-bad-re-enactment-nothing-we-didn't-already-show-you-in
the-preview crap that PBS itsef produces.
 
Eggs

Eggs

Bus No. 8 said:
Point well taken, and I wasn't distinguishing between the independently produced work and the Secrets-of-the-Dead-bad-re-enactment-nothing-we-didn't-already-show-you-in
the-preview crap that PBS itsef produces.
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Egg-zactly!

Speaking of which, I loved the Egg program.
 
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