About four months ago, I wrote a bit about The Megalist, the completely insane statistical method I use to push myself to watch awesome movies I’d never seen before. After many years of using the tool, I noticed something interesting.

The tool pulls in data from various “Best of [Genre]” lists from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. On most of these lists, the movies don’t move around much. For example, Sunset Boulevard has been in the #1 spot of IMDB’s Film Noir Top 50 for ages. The films below it shuffle around in ranking a little, but mostly they’re the same titles. This is because nobody really makes great Films Noir anymore, so nothing is going to bump White Heat from the list.

The other lists get a little more life from newer movies (i.e., Inception stormed onto some of these lists last year), but still mostly reflect the classics.

Except for the Documentaries lists, from both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. The turnover is HUGE every time I update The Megalist. It’s nearly impossible to make headway against these lists, percentagewise, because new “OMG BEST OF ALL TIME” documentaries are charging onto the lists faster than I can watch them.

I find this fascinating.

I believe this is because most audiences have trouble separating an interesting subject from the actual crafting of a documentary film. I can’t tell you how many “OH WOW WATCH THIS AMAZING DOCUMENTARY BEST I’VE EVER SEEN !!1!11!!!” docs I’ve watched that turned out to be interesting diversions, yet were nonetheless only ordinary pieces of filmmaking.

This is where Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone comes in.

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Over the last week, I happened to see two new films that shared some interesting ground: Brave and Beasts of the Southern Wild. Both films are led by strong-willed, female children, in an age where American filmmaking still seems to struggle with the concept of a female lead. They are very interesting companion pieces as well as simply being decent films, so I recommend catching both, if possible.

(The discussion below is spoiler-free, so feel free to proceed if you haven’t seen one or either film.)

BRAVE

I’ll begin with the film you’re more likely to have seen already.

Brave is the tale of a young girl, Merida, who is the princess of a Celtic warrior clan. She is headstrong, uninterested in girly things, and skilled in archery. When her family proposes she choose a suitor for a future husband, she is completely uninterested. The plot goes from there.

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