Feed your mind!

watched an absolutely incredible Rom-Com the other day”......said no-one. Ever.

Long the mainstay of dinner-party and water-cooler conversation, the documentary film is the high-falutin cerebral side of Netflix. The sort of thing that might even convince tech- shy Sri Lankan parents to sponsor (or at least condone) your subscription. Watching documentaries instantly expands your mind, and makes you more interesting to your fellow humans. Observe.

He watches documentaries? What a charming intelligent fellow he seems, I must try to get to know him better. Implication: He will have a successful career, a beautiful family and command respect within the community. He watches fantasy/sci-fi epics? Errrr....sorry I’m washing my hair Friday night. Yes and Saturday and Sunday too. And the week after as well. Implication: He will fail to impress girls, be passed over for that promotion at work, nobody will love him, his friends will disown him, he will become obsessed with Pokemon Go.

So, to up your game for prospective romantic dates, give you fodder for pseudo-intellectual conversations with your boss, and generally keep you on the straight and narrow, I have picked out my top documentaries on Netflix.

There have been many trailblazers in the tech-era, but none more inspiring and tragic than Aaron Swartz, genius whizzkid, cofounder of Reddit, inventor of RSS Feeds, and open-access internet campaigner. This astonishing documentary details his life, death, legal case and essentially persecution by the US Government. A thoughtful principled young man and firm believer in freedom-of-information, he is about as far from an unstable hacktivist as you can imagine. Yet the full force of the US Government is brought to bear on him. Heart-breaking, uplifting and tragic, Aaron Swartz is a digital-age Che Guevara, and more people deserve to know his story. A must-watch.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Scientology, it’s basically a totally mental ‘religion’/cult who believe that....well I’m going to leave you to watch to get a sense for how truly insane it is. Needless to say it involves aliens, parachuting human bodies into volcanos....and a Galactic Overlord. I kid you not. He’s called Xenu and he looks like Ming The Merciless. They should be a punchline. However, they have assets and a turnover larger than entire countries, Hollywood devotees, and are accused of using brain-washing, blackmail, forced slavery, coerced abortion and other nefarious activities. Most worryingly, they are responsible for the largest (non US Government- sanctioned) counter-espionage programme ever. On the surface they can be as charismatic and flashy as their favourite son Tom Cruise, but dig deeper with this incredible film, and you’ll see the ugly underbelly. You’ll never want to watch another Mission Impossible film again.

Unpicking the complex web of intrigue woven around the bizarre murder of Olympic Gold medal-winning superstar wrestler Dave Schultz, Foxcatcher fills in the details behind the recent fictionalisation Team Foxcatcher (starring Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo and a frankly frightening Steve Carrell). The story circles the odd, divisive and eccentric figure of John E. DuPont, heir to the DuPont fortune. A wrestling novice, but one of the richest men in America, it charts his obsession and involvement with USA Wrestling’s Olympic training programme. His slow but assured descent from poorly-concealed personality disorder into profound paranoia and mental illness, seems to be obvious to everyone but those involved. This is a study in how much latitude, true money and power can buy you within every single echelon of society, from international sport to federal law enforcement. Compelling viewing.

With all the race tensions blowing up in the USA at the moment, it seems apt to profile one of the greatest sporting documentaries ever made. Hoop Dreams follows two young black kids from the 8th-grade playgrounds in the Chicago projects, all the way to first-year of college, pursuing their dream of playing in the NBA. They get headhunted out to a predominantly white private- school and the film follows their trials and travails trying to ‘make it’. The US professional- sports machine is in full- swing and this shows off its dispassionate and questionable socialconscience (e.g. school fees sponsorship dries up for one boy as he fails to develop fast enough into the ‘Great Black Hope’ on the court). As a portrait of family sacrifice it is near-unrivalled and accurately shows the struggles of poor black families in 90s America; less high-top fades and Reebok Pumps, and more drugs, gun violence and food stamps. The exploitation of black athletes (and African-Americans in general) has never been more ‘of the moment’. Some day a change gonna come? This film shows that little seems to have changed.

This Oscar-nominated film tracking the Ukrainian uprising against Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych is a triumph of narrative, but not necessarily of objective journalism. It has a twisting storyline akin to an action movie and cinematography (28 separate cameras were used) that drops you literally into the middle of the violent clashes between protesters and riot police. You don’t really need to know much about the conflict in advance as it opens with a brief ‘explainer’ segment. Some aspects are glossed over (far-right NeoNazi groups providing much-needed ‘muscle’ for the ordinary honest protesters, and American meddling in the inception of the revolution are both notably absent) in favour of a more simplistic storyline, but as a storydriver, it works. Dramatic, breathtaking and melancholy, it captures the indomitability of the human spirit perfectly (if a little unilaterally).

Honourable mentions: The E-Team, The True Cost, Being Elmo, Somm, Pumping Iron.