Top Rated Documentary Movies on Pantaflix - Page 173

La Maison de la Radio

2013

La Maison de la Radio

2013
6.4
Making a film about a radio station doesn’t sound like the most visually compelling of projects. How many takes do you need before the acoustic transition from the opening to the closing of a door is perfect or the reader's voice correctly modulated? Nicolas Philibert has accepted the challenge to portray that which cannot be seen. Shouldering his camera, he spent half a year wandering the endless corridors of Radio France’s ‘round house’ on the banks of the Seine where he filmed people who dedicate themselves utterly and meticulously to their work.
Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment

1963

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment

1963
6.9
During a two-day period before and after the University of Alabama integration crisis, the film uses five camera crews to follow President John F. Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama governor George Wallace, deputy attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and the students Vivian Malone and James Hood. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1999.
Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden

2013

Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden

2013
6.9
An espionage tale from inside the CIA's long conflict against Al Qaeda, as revealed by the remarkable women and men whose secret war against Osama bin Laden started nearly a decade before most of us even knew his name.
Please Kill Mr. Kinski

1999

Please Kill Mr. Kinski

1999
6.4
In 1986, director David Schmoeller worked with notoriously eccentric and tantrum-prone actor Klaus Kinski on horror triller Crawlspace. Now, Schmoeller talks about this shoot and how it almost ended with crew lynching the actor.
Our Nixon

2013

Our Nixon

2013
6.4
Never before seen Super 8 home movies filmed by Richard Nixon's closest aides - and convicted Watergate conspirators - offer a surprising and intimate new look into his Presidency.
Pan 3

1974

Pan 3

1974
5.1
A journey through a field of corn.
The Eleventh Year

1928

The Eleventh Year

1928
5.9
The film is dedicated to the achievements of the Ukrainian SSR for the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.
Behave

2007

Behave

2007
7
In Rio de Janeiro, over many days, the director Maria Ramos witnesses and films the judgment of several teenagers accused of stealing, trafficking and murdering. Underage youths are protected by the Brazilian laws and their faces can not be exposed; therefore, they are replaced by teenagers from poor communities.
Hôtel des Invalides

1952

Hôtel des Invalides

1952
5.8
A short documentary tour of Paris’s Hôtel des Invalides that uses ironic narration and museum imagery to question the logic and legacy of war.
Lost, Lost, Lost

1976

Lost, Lost, Lost

1976
7
Drawn from footage shot between 1949 and 1963, Jonas Mekas’s autobiographical diary film chronicles his early years in exile, capturing the struggle to build a new life in New York and his gradual discovery of a vibrant artistic community.
Centuries of June

1955

Centuries of June

1955
4
Centuries of June, perhaps more than any Cornell film, is a naked attempt to capture the soul of a place and the mood of a disappearing moment.
Sea Urchins

1929

Sea Urchins

1929
6.3
A close-up look at sand urchins and rock urchins. At the seashore, a man digs up a sand urchin. We look closely. He sets it back in the sand, and it burrows out of sight. Its intestines take nutrients out of sand. Using magnification 200,000 times normal size, we see a rock urchin's spines with suckers on the end; a drawing illustrates how they work. A sea urchin walks toward a rock. We see three-fingered jaws—pedicellaria at the end of flexible stems—take in algae and other bits. We also see cilia less than 0.001 ml in length; their motion constant, creating whirlpools. On the shore again, we watch the setting sun. Occasional titles in French tell us what to watch for.
Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse

1940

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse

1940
6.5
The collapse of the bridge was recorded on film by Barney Elliott, owner of a local camera shop. The film shows Leonard Coatsworth leaving the bridge after exiting his car. In 1998, The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. This footage is still shown to engineering, architecture, and physics students as a cautionary tale. Elliott's original film of the construction and collapse of the bridge was shot at 16 frames a second, on 16mm Kodachrome film, but most copies in circulation are in black and white because newsreels of the day copied the film onto 35 mm black-and-white stock (not to mention, often showed the film at the wrong speed).
Daphnia

1928

Daphnia

1928
6.1
Titles in French and English help us know what we're seeing. In all waters, daphnia abound. They are crustaceans about 2 ml long, with one eye that turns in all directions. Antennae enable daphnia to move: in a close up magnified 150,000 times, we see the muscles of the antennae pulse. We see the eye, the nerve mass, blood globules, and the heart, beating several times per second. The intestine forms a long line. All are females; eggs develop above the intestine. New generations come rapidly. Inside each daphnia are tiny infusoria; we watch them clean the intestine of a dead daphnia. An enemy, the hydra, approaches. A daphnia dies, but many remain.
Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage

1937

Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage

1937
7.5
The airship Hindenburg, arriving from Europe, was being led to its mooring at Lakehurst, New Jersey when suddenly disaster struck. The hydrogen-filled zeppelin ignited, and was almost instantly transformed into an enormous fireball. In less than a minute, the entire ship had been consumed by flames. The Hindenburg explosion marked the end of the budding airship travel industry.
Liquid Crystals

1978

Liquid Crystals

1978
7
Title cards introduce images we watch without narration; they are displays of shape and color. François de Roubaix's electronic music accompanies these images, photographed under a polarizing microscope. The crystals appear to move like tiny organisms: small four-part fans share the frame with flowing lines of pink. Multiple patterns appear side by side.
Glimpse of the Garden

1957

Glimpse of the Garden

1957
5.5
Experimental film showing film clips of a garden, with birds chirping for the soundtrack.
Hapax Legomena II: Poetic Justice

1972

Hapax Legomena II: Poetic Justice

1972
5
Poetic Justice presents the viewer with an ordinary domestic scene: a stack of papers, a cup of coffee, and a potted cactus on a table. The sheets of paper compose a script that provides handwritten, frame-by-frame instructions for a film that unfolds only in the mind of the viewer.
The Day That Lasted 21 Years

2012

The Day That Lasted 21 Years

2012
7.6
Stunning espionage documentary on the US conspiracy that led to the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson original White House tapes, and CIA Top Secret documents reveal how the US government planned to overthrow Brazilian elected president João Goulart.
The American Scream

2012

The American Scream

2012
6.7
An original documentary which follows three families in a small seaside town in Massachusetts as they prepare for their annual home made haunted houses. This story highlights their long journey from planning to opening day and cleanup until next year and the obstacles which face them during the process.