Top Rated Documentary Movies on Amazon Video - Page 12

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

2003

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

2003
6.7
British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.
Lessons of Darkness

1992

Lessons of Darkness

1992
7.8
Shortly after the Gulf War, oil fires were raging all through Kuwait. In the week before this sea of fire would be extinguished, Werner Herzog filmed this apocalyptic landscape with its murky skies, scorched earth and capricious flames.
Burden of Dreams

1982

Burden of Dreams

1982
7.5
The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.
Life, Animated

2016

Life, Animated

2016
7.4
At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

2012

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

2012
7.4
A further investigation into the arrest of three teenagers convicted of killing three young boys in Arkansas who spent nearly 20 years in prison before being released after new DNA evidence indicated they may be innocent.
Project Nim

2011

Project Nim

2011
6.8
From the team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature - and indeed our own - is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.
Waiting for "Superman"

2010

Waiting for "Superman"

2010
6.9
Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Waiting for Superman is an impassioned indictment of the American school system from An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim.
Unacknowledged

2017

Unacknowledged

2017
6.3
Dr. Steven Greer presents brand new top-secret evidence supporting extraterrestrial contact, including witness testimony, classified documents, and UFO footage, while also exploring the consequences of ruthlessly enforcing such secrecy.
78/52

2017

78/52

2017
7.2
The most famous murder scene in movie history comprises 78 camera settings and 52 cuts: the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. 78/52 tells the story of the man behind the curtain and his greatest obsession.
Twinsters

2015

Twinsters

2015
7.3
Adopted from South Korea, raised on different continents & connected through social media, Samantha & Anaïs believe that they are twin sisters separated at birth.
The Hunting Ground

2015

The Hunting Ground

2015
7.4
A startling expose of rape crimes on US campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. The film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue—despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath—both their education and justice.
Babies

2010

Babies

2010
7
Babies, also known as Baby(ies) and Bébé(s), is a 2009 French documentary film by Thomas Balmès that follows four infants from birth to when they are one year old. The babies featured in the film are two from rural areas: Ponijao from Opuwo, Namibia, and Bayar from Bayanchandmani, Mongolia, as well as two from urban areas: Mari from Tokyo, Japan, and Hattie from San Francisco, USA.
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

2005

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

2005
7.7
A chronicle of Bob Dylan's strange evolution between 1961 and 1966 from folk singer to protest singer to "voice of a generation" to rock star.
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

2012

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

2012
7.3
Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The Devil and Daniel Johnston

2006

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

2006
7.7
This 2005 documentary film chronicles the life of Daniel Johnston, a manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist, from childhood up to the present, with an emphasis on his mental illness and how it manifested itself in demonic self-obsession.
A LEGO Brickumentary

2014

A LEGO Brickumentary

2014
5.9
A look at the global culture and appeal of the LEGO building-block toys.
The Unbelievers

2013

The Unbelievers

2013
6.5
Scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss travel the globe promoting a scientific worldview and the rational questioning of religious belief.
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

2010

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

2010
7.3
In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. The camera follows the protagonists in the village over a period of a year. The natives, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives according to their own cultural traditions.
LA 92

2017

LA 92

2017
7.7
Twenty-five years after the verdict in the Rodney King trial sparked several days of protests, violence and looting in Los Angeles, LA 92 immerses viewers in that tumultuous period through stunning and rarely seen archival footage.
Hitting the Apex

2015

Hitting the Apex

2015
7.7
The inside story of six fighters – six of the fastest motorcycle racers of all time – and of the fates that awaited them at the peak of the sport. It's the story of what is at stake for all of them: all that can be won, and all that can be lost, when you go chasing glory at over two hundred miles an hour – on a motorcycle. But this documentary is also an opportunity to understand the passionate relationship that links the pilots, the technical teams and the legions of fans to the spirit of GP Moto.