The Bleeding Edge (2018, Kirby Dick) (Patreon)

Generally avoid advocacy docs, 90% of which merit the criticism you see checklisted above, but making a film as great as Sick earns you many years of loyalty. This muckraker, true to form, gains almost nothing (apart from a wider audience, potentially) from being filmed rather than written, but it did make me gasp a few times—not just at grotesque anecdotes, like the woman whose colon more or less fell out of her body, but at are-you-fucking-kidding-me? statistics. Learning that medical-device companies can avoid clinical oversight by claiming a device is "substantially equivalent" to one that's already been approved inspired concern; learning that this is permitted even when the predicate device has been recalled provoked horror; learning that 98% of medical devices enter the market via this loophole—98%!—well, that just sorta reinforced everything else happening nowadays, frankly. But, again, a camera wasn't necessary to convey any of that information, and I'm not someone who's prone to being swayed by footage of a woman who lost her job due to her medical problems and is now forced to put her kids in foster care*. That just feels manipulative, frankly. Still, this is an issue people should know about, and if you'd rather watch than read, it's on Netflix.

* This is a longstanding issue I have with filming people's misery. Dick follows this woman to a motel when she becomes homeless, for example, filming her as she asks the desk clerk how much a room costs; it looks for a moment as if she doesn't have the money, and I'm not thinking about the greedy corporations who put her in this position—I'm thinking, à la Sam Kinison, "Yo, Kirby, give the lady $40! You're standing right there!" Documentary ethics schmocumentary schmethics.