25 Documentaries That Will Make You a Better, Albeit More Irritating, Person

Documentaries can be an easy way to take a deeper dive into social issues that impact us. Though scrolling your Twitter feed for the latest updates from the blogosphere is a nice start, it's always good to absorb 90 minutes (or more) on a topic that triggers your interest and compassion.

After spending a couple hours cuddled up with our Netflix accounts, we always hope to emerge an (ever so slightly) better person. When a doc manages to have a profound impact, we often spend the next week fighting the urge to preach our newfound opinions on the film's central issue from bar stools and office chairs.

It's easy to feel like you now have a personal stake in an issue when all you've really done is watched a movie about some people who have a personal stake in an issue. And so here is this list of documentaries that affected us so deeply that we had to annoy our friends with the facts gleaned from their powerful images, sympathetic anecdotes, and commanding voice-over narration (but no bibliographies—damn). Hopefully these thoughtful works will move you as well, but not so much that you move everyone else around you in the opposite direction.

These are 25 Documentaries That Will Make You a Better, Albeit More Irritating, Person.

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Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)

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You'll Become An Expert On: Childbirth

"If you're going to have good stuff, you might as well use it to get the best outcome."

Disturbing language like this, which turns childbirth into something clinical and corporate, is the target of The Business of Being Born. The documentary explores how childbirth has developed in the United States, from a natural occurrence to be celebrated to an ultra-efficient medical procedure. A viewing will leave you with a broader idea of the possibilities of childbirth and skepticism toward doctors who may rely too heavily on medical procedures in the name of efficiency.

We're sure that pregnant women. who already have much to contend with because of the living thing inside them, would love to hear you drone on about how they should consider a water birth while they're trapped talking to you, not even able to drink.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Dolphin Fishing

Really, who's against protecting the lives of dolphins? Watching an attempt at dolphin advocacy as slick and compelling as The Cove bolsters Ric O'Berry's already appealing project. The film has been met with equal amounts of acclaim and skepticism, however.

Many viewers take issue with the obvious clash of cultural priorities in the film. The Japanese fishermen view dolphins as part of their diet, and not a smiling animal to be housed in aquariums. Many have gone as far as to call the film propaganda.

The cultural tension swirling around the mission of The Cove is one that might require some careful consideration before taking sides and forming definitive opinions. Admittedly, this can be hard to do when presented with a film full of such violence—which is exactly what the filmmakers were going for.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Fracking

Pennsylvanian Josh Fox received a letter in the mail offering him $100,000 in exchange for the right to frack (hydraulic fracturing) his land. Though energy companies continue to insist that fracking is a safe process, when Fox, moved by the proposed drilling on his land, toured the country, investigating fracking, he found "flammable, foul-smelling water, sick people and animals, and families who no longer use their wells but truck in all their household water."

When you came back from work and found your roommate trying to set his drinking water on fire, it was because of this film. If you're lucky, maybe he went out and signed a petition after.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Uganda

The visually striking, emotionally stirring War/Dance follows a group of Ugandan refugee children as they compete in a national music competition. No question that the film's affecting, but its worth thinking about how that's achieved.

The common criticism is that the cinematography is just too pretty, providing a glossy, glamorized look at lives taht have been fraught with unthinkable trauma. What's been lost at the cost of this visual sheen?

As we hopefully learned from KONY 2012, bringing change to the countries of Africa will be a more complex process than it seems on the surface. It will require something beyond the superficial (as is the case with every issue mentioned in this list).

Still, it's hard to deny that films like War/Dance aren't valuable.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Global Warming

Climate change deniers seem about as credible as Birthers these days, but that shouldn't stop you from pontificating to your friends about the dangers of global warming after seeing this movie.

Sure, you could go as far as actually buying energy efficient products, but why not save money and just throw a recycling bin in your kitchen and start feeling superior to your friends? Though there are tons of boring charts, graphs, and proposals you could dig up to further educate yourself regarding global warming, why not just pop in the blu-ray of The Day After Tomorrow and call it additional research?

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You'll Become An Expert On: Big Food

Not all farmed food is created equal. Food, Inc. delves into the practices of agribusiness in the United States, and the film's findings are not pleasant. From industrial meat and produce production, to the bloated food lobby, the doc gives a step-by-step analysis of the misdeeds of food conglomerates.

This will be the perfect film for you to quote to your impoverished friends as they opt for Top Ramen and Easy Mac due to budgetary constraints, so that you can make them feel even worse about their situation.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Wal-Mart

You don't have to worry about changing how you spend your hard-earned dollars, because you don't shop at Wal-Mart. You shop at Target.

Jokes aside, this doc engages with the ethical issues that apply not only to Wal-Mart, but to all of U.S. mega-retail. Union-busting, mom-and-pop-store-killing profiteers allow us to have so many things at such a low financial cost. Lowering the price of goods usually comes with a human cost though, both to the workers abroad manufacturing the goods and the folks selling them here.

Perhaps this film will stop you from shopping at Wal-Mart, but then you have to contend with the questions of where you're going to buy your mops and George Foreman Grills and feel good about it.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Oil Dependence

We often pay lip service to the impending oil crisis in this country. It'd be difficult to find many outright fans of America's dependence on oil outside of the petroleum industry.

A Crude Awakening looks into the near future, when we will reach "peak oil," the point at which oil production will be at its height and all available oil resources will be tapped. The scarcity that will occur at such a point could have a disastrous impact on the world economy, particularly if we haven't properly investigated alternatives.

The lessons of this movie make us feel better about not being able to afford a car.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Corn

Corn is at the center of the industrialization of American food. This might not sound like too exciting a starting point, but filmmakers Aaron Woolf, Ian Cheney, and Curt Ellis managed to make an entertaining and informative film out of the seemingly dull subject matter.

The narrative revolves around Cheney and Ellis moving to Iowa to farm an acre of corn while informing the audience of the agricultural philosophies that have resulted in huge, corporate corn surpluses.

For those of you feeling a bit high and mighty, you're in luck. It'll be easy for you to bash your friends about corn, as it's in most of what we eat. Good luck cutting it out of your diet, though, especially if you don't have tons of money to blow. Better to just bitch and moan.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Patriarchy

You need only look at the magazines on your local news stand to understand that we live in a patriarchy. Women are made into objects by the male gaze on magazine covers regardless of the mag's demo. The problem extends well beyond photographed body parts, of course. Representations of women in TV, film, etc. is sorely lacking. Powerful women are still treated superficially by the media, made to look either crazy or silly.

In other news, have you guys seen those pics of Kate Upton in Antarctica for the SI swimsuit issue? She looks super cold.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Fast Food

By now, everyone's familiar with Morgan Spurlock's 30-day run of eating nothing but McDonald's. So, how can you bore your friends with details from Super Size Me at parties? You're going to want statistics when you get around to condescending to your buds when they pull up to the drive-thru, beyond the anecdotal evidence of one dude stuffing his face.

Just as director Morgan Spurlock found many detractors following the film's release, you'll likely gain your fair share of haters if you criticize your friends' burger-eating habits.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Health Care

Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore struck again in 2007 with Sicko, a doc comparing and contrasting the socialized medicine that many industrialized nations offer with the privatized medicine of the United States. In case you can't guess what side Moore is on, he favors socialized medicine, as do most of our twenty-something writer friends.

If you're under 26 and are still on your parent's health care, be careful before you hold forth on the virtues of the film to older, uninsured folks. They might not be too eager to hear about your point of view, as they're busy worrying about how they'll pay for the next doctor's visit.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Christianity

With the sharp socio-cultural divide in this country, many blue-staters have never seen anything like the conservative North Dakota church portrayed in Jesus Camp. While the documentarians do their best to maintain an even-handed point of view as they examine the church's practices, what's stopping you from making broad generalizations about Christianity after viewing this film?

Many Americans have no problem doing so with other religions. Sure, you could use the film as the impetus for an attempt to understand the other side of the culture gap, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Fuel-Efficient Vehicles

Prioritizing the Hummer over the Prius is one of the worst decisions that the auto industry ever made. Who Killed the Electric Car? examines the hard truth that, despite being in production for years, electric automobiles have not been made widely available to the driving public.

The film's narrative focuses on a 1990 California initiative requiring auto companies to produce electric cars, the program's failure, and its ultimate repeal. While understanding the arguments on both sides might require some further research involving science and math, we're content to watch the film and go out and hate on Hummers rather than do any more additional book learning.

Admittedly, Hummers are very, very easy to hate.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Public Education

Educate yourself about education: Did we just blow your mind?

Waiting for Superman examines the shortcomings of America's public school system. Superman not only reminds us that we live in a country where the quality of education children are entitled to is based on a lottery system, but also puts human faces to the damning statistics related to education that are so often bandied about.

You'd better be careful who you choose to talk with about this film. Odds are, the person you're talking to benefited from the gerrymandered public schooling, exclusionary private schooling, or has worked to overcome the inequalities inherent in the system the film examines. No matter what, if you are going to stir up this hornet's nest in conversation, you might want to cite additional sources.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Conservative Media

Have you heard the one about how Fox News is biased? The network's "fair and balanced" slogan has long rung hollow in the face of the well-documented tactics Fox has used to advance its conservative agenda.

What Outfoxed brings to the table is months of research bearing out how and how often the biases, which are meticulously mandated from the top down, are applied. Now that we're validated in dismissing Fox News, we can go back to only getting our news from The Daily Show. The guys at CNN are prolly good.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Immigration

"The only way someone can get into the United States is to run what has functionally become a gauntlet of death."

These are striking words to hear about immigration, which, for many Americans, is merely a philosophical issue. Though some U.S. citizens lack a personal stake in the issue, the immigration discussion is well-trod. Dying to Get In is a welcome addition to the discussion, as the film focuses more on the plight of immigrants more than it does on the larger economic impact, which is so often the center of the dialogue.

Regardless of your feelings on immigration, this film give you a whole new respect for the plight of the migrants that you and your friends can discuss while waiting for your delivery man to bring you your dinner. Hopefully, you'll tip him a bit better after you catch this movie.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Native Americans

The Canary Effect is the next entry in a long-line of documentaries and texts aimed at educating the populace about the injustices Native Americans have endured in the past, and continue to endure today.

Suicide, alcoholism, and poverty continue to run rampant on reservations, while local governments play a game of alternately exploiting Native Americans for their resources and denying them aid. One North Dakota Senator went so far as to claim that Native American educational institutions don't need government support because voters patronize Indian casinos. Understand: we hope this documentary is enough to prevent you from saying something that stupid, but we also hope that viewing the film won't be your only lens into Native American culture: at least read a Sherman Alexie short story, too.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Corporate Greed

Corporate greed has occupied considerable airtime in recent years, but films like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room go further than easy "eat the rich" platitudes by dissecting the breadth and depth of Wall Street abuses. The combination of greed and hubris at Enron took the company so far off the rails that its was creating fake companies to hide massive debt, and engineering the energy crisis in California to bolster fading profits.

We were motivated to speak out ourselves, but it's a little late in the game to join the Occupy Wall Street movement. Besides, we remember from our days in the Boy Scouts that camping out in park can get very cold.

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You'll Become An Expert On: International Refugees

After a five year journey attempting to escape Sudan, and ten years of a meager, communal existence, the young men chronicled in God Grew Tired of Us still had another tough chapter ahead of them: They had to acclimate to their new lives in America. This doc follows a group of these refugees as they adjust to the States while trying to cope with the memory of what they left behind.

The plight of these refugees is hard to confront, even in the uplifting framework of this documentary. Several critics have pointed out that the more controversial documentary on the same topic, The Lost Boys of Sudan garnered less attention because it was a harder film for audiences to swallow: It posed more provocative questions and showed images of a more graphic nature.

Better make the right choice.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Copyright Infringement

Much of the dialogue around copyright infringement in the mainstream media has been aimed at vilifying copyright infringers. In the blogosphore, the discussion has been dominated by outrage over the harsh punishments doled out to the heroes of open-source.

RiP takes a tack that is less polarizing, which makes it all the more effective. This documentary is a celebration of collaboration and re-mixing in a number of art forms. Filmmaker Brett Gaylor goes as far as to encourage audiences to remix the documentary itself. Sure, you'll get some education on how copyright is handled in the US, but you'll also see a number of artists who create art by technically infringing copyright.

You might just find yourself inspired to create new work of your own. More likely, you'll continue to be inspired to download Breaking Bad on The Pirate Bay.

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You'll Become An Expert On: Women

Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's documentary series, looks at the ugliest aspects of the treatment of women around the world, including child prostitution, domestic violence, and maternal mortality, shining a light on evils that are too often ignored. The documentary highlights numerous women around the globe working with organizations that strive to end these abuses.

You could certainly donate to any of these organizations, but you could also use that money to treat a woman to dinner and wow her with your newfound knowledge of world-wide female struggle.

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You'll Become An Expert On: The Abuses of the US Military

Though Dilawar, an innocent Afghani taxi driver killed by US troops, is the entry point of Taxi to the Dark Side, the film goes on to explore the military culture that allowed the secretive, abusive detentions at Guantanamo Bay during the Bush administration.

It's hard to hear about the United States tacitly condoning torture; the film's breakdown of Bush-era policies is methodical and chilling. When director Alex Gibney attempts to trace responsibility for the actions of the troops up the chain of command, he's met with claims of ignorance all the way up to President Bush. This film should prepare you for arguments with arch-conservatives on the ethics of torture.

Well, if they're actually well informed you might want to read a couple books before you get into a debate, or just hope they got their opinions from watching one movie. Or, better yet, Fox News.

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You'll Become An Expert On: The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs has gotten ample attention in the media as of late, and filmmakers, pundits, and bloggers generally agree that that the war has been lost, and with massive casualties.

This film estimates that there have been over 45 million drug-related arrests since war was declared on narcotics, but as one judge puts it, "Of the 2,600 people I've sent to prison, I've seen three or four kingpins. We're incarcerating poor people."

You could use this film as a basis for further exploration of America's drug problem. If that seems like too much work, at least you have some ammunition the next time your mom finds weed in your sock drawer: You can tell her that if she punishes you, she's just perpetuating a broken system.