Fantastic Fungi

One of the most positive and hopeful documentaries in years, this lean, beautiful, entertaining mushroom movie suggests that the answers to many of our problems could grow naturally and abundantly. Louie Schwartzberg's Fantastic Fungi is determined to be more than just a talking-head movie. It uses truly astonishing time-lapse cinematography to show mushrooms blooming. Some of them are beautiful -- growing a net-like covering below their dome caps -- and some are terrifying (one looks like it has spiky red claws). The film also benefits by having Brie Larson narrating as the voice of the mushrooms themselves.

It also finds a great subject in mycologist Paul Stamets, who tells lots of great stories while wandering around in the woods, including one about how mushrooms cured his stuttering. The movie is immediately and consistently interesting. But it eventually moves into profound, cosmic proportions by proposing that mushrooms are a connective force to everything in nature -- and that humans probably ought to be more of a part of that connection. The movie does talk in depth about "magic" mushrooms, arguing that they're wrongly perceived as a "party drug" and are really far more useful than their reputation would suggest. But Fantastic Fungi also doesn't suggest that all viewers must take them. Rather, it merely provides information and the results of a few positive studies, and lets viewers make up their own minds.