As Netflix has grown more and more popular, it has introduced people to several new genres of movies and television that they previously hadn’t watched. One of the genres that has come into a new era of popularity is documentary films and TV series. Here are five slightly obscure but fabulous documentaries that you should definitely add to your List! Sports, nature, history...a little something for everyone!
No Más is a 30 for 30 documentary which chronicles one of the most bizarre fights in professional boxing history. I don't want to give too much away, but in this film, viewers walk through Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran II's WBC Welterweight championship fight and their rematch in 1980. The most interesting aspect of the documentary, though, is the way that it chronicles this historic fight from the perspective of both combatants.
Restrepo is a 2010 documentary about the War in Afghanistan. It tells the story of a combat team of the United States Army in the Korangal Valley of Northeastern Afghanistan. The film details the 2nd Platoons’s 15-month deployment and depicts their defense of the outpost named after a platoon medic who was killed earlier in the campaign, PFC Juan Restrepo. Restrepo received the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
The Civil War is a nine-episode piece created by Ken Burns and first broadcast on PBS in September 1990. The documentary explores the Civil War’s military, social, and political facets through more than 16,000 photographs and paintings, and excerpts from the letters and journals of individuals on both sides of the bloody conflict. This documentary brings this horrible conflict into an entirely new reality for the viewer, touching on nearly every nuance of the complicated conflict.
Mile… Mile and a Half tells the story of a group of friends backpacking the John Muir Trail in California. These artists on an adventure not only carried everything they needed to survive on their 30 day, 211 mile trip, but they also carried all the camera equipment necessary for amazing shots of one of the most scenic places in the United States.
Gideon’s Army is the tale of 3 public defenders: Travis Williams, Brandy Alexander, and June Hardwick. It details just how much they do while crushed under their incredible workload, working day after day on seemingly unwinnable cases and being paid meager salaries despite their status as US attorneys. This film uses the case of Gideon v. Wainwright as a backdrop for the precedent of public defenders that we see in today’s legal system, and this documentary is the story of those undervalued and overworked public defenders.
And there you have it! When you’re procrastinating your papers or avoiding work, go find documentaries on Netflix. They’re so much fun to watch, and really educational, so it’s almost like you’re doing schoolwork anyways!
