Best Documentary Movies
The best documentaries out-plot fiction: stranger twists, higher stakes, real consequences. Music docs, true crime, nature epics and portraits of obsessive people doing improbable things, ranked by audience rating. Find where each one streams and build a watchlist of the real world.
SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023)
Walking the Tracks: The Summer of Stand by Me (2000)
How the Beatles Changed the World (2017)
I Know That Voice (2014)
Let There Be Light (1946)
A Man Named Scott (2021)
X-Men: The Mutant Watch (2000)
Jesy Nelson: "Odd One Out" (2019)
Machine Gun Kelly's Life In Pink (2022)
Hitsville: The Making of Motown (2019)
The Epic Journey of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (2012)
Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music (2025)
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song (2022)
Loving Vincent: The Impossible Dream (2019)
Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019)
The Making of 'The Frighteners' (1998)
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019)
Perfumed Nightmare (1979)
Dark Shadows: The Collinses - Every Family Has Its Demons (2012)
Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea (2026)
Everything Is Copy (2015)
I Am Chris Farley (2015)
Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (2006)
Once Upon a Time… One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (2011)
Raphael: The Lord of the Arts (2017)
The Magic Touch of Harry Potter (2004)
Bacurau no Mapa (2019)
The Ghost Army (2013)
Coup 53 (2019)
Chadwick Boseman: Portrait of an Artist (2021)
Rodman: For Better or Worse (2019)
The Killing of America (1981)
Behind the Curtain: Stranger Things: The First Shadow (2025)
Making The Witcher (2020)
David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived (2023)
Metallica: A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica (1992)
WWE: Triple H: Thy Kingdom Come (2013)
Hero (1986)
Laurel & Hardy: Their Lives and Magic (2011)
Still Screaming: The Ultimate Scary Movie Retrospective (2011)
Mistaken for Strangers (2013)
Monty Python: The Meaning of Live (2014)
Floyd Norman: An Animated Life (2016)
Apollo: Missions to the Moon (2019)
Marx Can Wait (2021)
2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony (2022)
Butterfly in the Sky (2024)
Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy (2025)
What's Up, Fatlip? (2003)
Get Me Roger Stone (2017)
Johnny Carson: King of Late Night (2012)
Islam: Empire of Faith (2001)
Beside Bowie - The Mick Ronson Story (2017)
The Sound of 007 (2022)
Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Loki Season 2 (2023)
Monty Python Live (Mostly) (2014)
That Moment: Magnolia Diary (2000)
Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer (2022)
The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story (2009)