Giving the documentary a fair shot

I’ve complained about a lack of film distribution a lot in this column (for anyone counting, this will be the 20th time I’ve complained). 

I’ve scoffed at the lack of proper distribution for foreign films, low-budget indies and award-bait movies unnecessarily trying to stir up buzz for a long time. Now that list of criminally lesser-seen films includes documentaries. 

For several years now, I’ve been able to look back on a year and agree how great a year it was for documentaries. 2010 is remarkably above and beyond in that category, even if few others have been. 

Some of the best films this year include documentaries, some you might have heard of, others you likely never will. Three of the top-10 reviewed films of 2010, according to Metacritic, are docs, such as “45365,” “A Film Unfinished” and “The Tillman Story.”

One documentary is a slice of life from a heartland America zip code, another is a critical examination of a historically inaccurate German film that has been used as propaganda and the last is about a soldier in Afghanistan killed under friendly fire.  
Serious and hard-hitting as those might be, many others scream box-office gold. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is a mesmerizing, near mockumentary directed by and starring the famous street artist Banksy.

The stars of “Restrepo” received some name recognition on CNN after they called the Korengal Valley, where the film occurs, “the most dangerous place on Earth.” The fact any footage exists from this war zone is remarkable.

“Waiting for Superman,” which just opened in limited release this past week, is an examination of the American public school system by Oscar-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”).

Even celebrities are not far from documentaries. “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” proved to be a funny, touching and somewhat unsentimental biography of the iconic comedienne.

And this shortlist does not include the two soft-docs that cleaned up at the box office this summer. “Oceans” and “Babies,” which some critics actually admired for their spectacle appeal, are arguably nothing more than YouTube videos with HD cameras.
 
Movies like those have become the norm for documentaries. Nature documentaries, goofy experiments and satirical jabs at American industries are all Americans expect from the genre today. Superstars like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock certainly have influence, but many people would agree if I said they’ve run out of things to say.
Some of the best documentaries of the last decade have either moved me or terrified me to a greater degree than most dramas or horror movies, but some have no agenda at all.

Some films are stirring portraits of a person, a city or an idea, and some are more lyrical and cinematically wonderful than anything readily available at the local multiplex. 

We should stop equating documentaries with the “60 Minutes” reports or the CNN investigations and start judging them as films.