Universal

I like to think I know more than a little bit about sports. I wake up to Mike and Mike in the Morning, drive to work while listening to The Dan Patrick Show and rush home to catch Pardon the Interruption. I've played organized football, baseball, basketball and soccer throughout my life, and I always make the playoffs in my fantasy football leagues. (Let's skip the part where I've never actually won.) Unfortunately, I have somewhat of a blind spot for sports that are more popular outside the United States. As a result, I know very little about Formula One racing and I knew absolutely nothing about Brazilian F1 champion Ayrton Senna until I watched the engrossing and spectacularly thrilling documentary about his life.

Senna eschews many of the conventions of documentary filmmaking, most notably the use of talking head interviews. (We do get sporadic voice-overs from key players, including Senna himself.)  Instead, director Asif Kapadia tells Senna's story entirely through an awe-inspiring collection of archival footage that chronicles both his professional triumphs and failures, as well as his personal life and the massive impact he had on his home country. There are even some relatively private, truly gripping moments involving the dynamics of a racing team and the behind-the-scenes politics of Formula One, a topic that I guarantee I wouldn't have found even mildly interesting in almost any other context.