Fall break is a wonderful time to catch up on all the Netflix you've been missing the past few weeks after your summer binging. Here are nine that might pique your interest!
Blackfish
Tilikum is an orca involved in the death of three people. The documentary focuses on him and explores the consequences of places like SeaWorld that keep orcas captive under extremely stressful conditions. Rotten Tomatoes rates it as 98% fresh.
Brooklyn Castle
I.S. 318 in Brooklyn has 65% of its students living below the federal poverty line. They also have the highest ranked junior high chess team. This follows several of their students as their share their dreams for the team and their own lives. 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
Brother’s Keeper
A man is accused of “mercy killing” his brother, but his neighbors rally to protect him and his surviving brothers as one of “theirs,” while it becomes clear that police coerced the man into signing a confession. The documentary follows the strange family and town as the case unfolds. Rotten Tomatoes rates it as 100% fresh.
The Endless Summer
This documentary follows a group of surfer-bros in the 1960s as they travel around the world to surf, looking for the elusive perfect wave. It’s rated at 100% fresh but, honestly, I don’t really care about that. I just know that I’ve seen the poster for this everywhere but never knew what it was for.
Girlhood
Girlhood follows two troubled girls from Baltimore who end up in the Waxter Juvenile Facility, where Maryland’s most violent juvenile offenders go – one girl stabbed a friend to death at 11 and another attacked a fellow foster child with a box cutter. 94% fresh.
How to Survive a Plague
A stirring and angry documentary about the activists in the 1980s and 1990s who pushed for more action to be taken in turning AIDS into a manageable condition. 99% fresh.
Man on Wire
In 1974, a man named Philippe Petit spend an hour on a wire suspended between the Twin Towers in New York City without a safety net before he was arrested. The film is highly acclaimed, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film, not to mention a 100% fresh rating.
Paris is Burning
A very controversial documentary that chronicles New York City’s “ball culture” and the largely African-American and Latino LGBT community involved in it. While some think it’s a loving documentary of the “Golden Age” of drag balls, others feel like it fetishesizes and exploits trans people. Either way, it’s 100% fresh.
Room 237
Stanley Kubrick’s film “The Shining” is very complex movie that’s been open to many different interpretations. This documentary explores nine of those, including about how it’s actually about the genocide of native Americans, or to publicize the Apollo 11 moon landing, or that it’s about the Holocaust. 93% fresh.
all images courtesy of IMDB
