School's out and adventure is on! Whether you plan to roam from home this summer or not, you're undoubtedly looking for escapes, even virtual ones. Follow this list of smart documentaries in which filmmakers focus on things people do during summer months: travel, camping, hiking, sports, gardening and more. These informative and relevant documentaries reflect our current environment and cultural milieu, and may inspire you to take action, even from the comforts of your own couch.

4th and Goal

If your summer activities include a lot of toughing it out for touchdowns, you'll enjoy this sports documentary in which six highly talented and very likeable African-American high school football players tackle their way towards recruitment for the NFL. In the end, we get to see who scores and who doesn't.More »

John Muir in the New World

Think summer, think traveling to National Parks. And, whenever you enter a national park or wildlife preserve, think about John Muir (April 21, 1838 to December 24, 1914), and thank him. This wonderful biographical documentary about the great American environmentalist and hero of the natural world will tell -- and show -- you why.More »

Bomb It

If, while walking around your home town or exploring another, you fine yourself looking at public spaces covered with graffiti, let yourself be curious rather than confounded. As you'll see in John Reiss' entertaining Bomb It, graffiti artists world wide take their work very seriously, always striving to achieve their personal aesthetic and style. You'll get a whole new spin on graffiti art and artists.More »

Chasing Bernie Madoff

If you're not taking a vacation this summer due to financial woes, be they caused by Bernard Madoff or not, watching this documentary about how the world's biggest ponzi scheme culprit was caught and is being punished will help you let off some steam. Presented as a cloak and dagger tail, Chasing Bernie Madoff entertains you while it informs you of some truths concerning America's financial crisis.More »

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

If you plan on catching up with some Hollywood movies you may have missed over the years, get help with scheduling your selections from Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel. Roger Corman set standards on the B movies circuit, producing hundreds of schlock films that started the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Peter Fonda, William Shatner and Sandra Bullock, among many other Hollywood A-listers. He also introduced European greats like Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut to American audiences. Corman's profile is Hollywood history.More »

The Beat Hotel

Whether you're heading for Paris this summer, or just wish you were, this wonderful literary documentary covers the exploits and adventures of American expatriot poets, writers and artists who headquartered themselves in a cheap hotel on the Left Bank. Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Frank Corso are among the group of renegades. Not exactly breezy watching, but utterly engaging.More »

Crazy Horse

Looking at Paris from a different perspective, Frederick Wiseman goes behind the scenes at the Crazy Horse, and reveals all about the inner world of the world famous nightclub that presents the world's most applauded nude cabaret. The filmmaker's all-seeing fly-on-the-wall camera puts us in the audience, on stage, behind the scenes during showtime, rehearsals and down time, and gives us access to costume and wig fittings (what's nudity without the tease of some exotic and skimpy cover ups?), board room meetings and auditions for new dancers. Fun and fabulous and sufficiently risque.More »

Sweetgrass

This wonderful documentary allows you to tag along as Montana shepherds drive a huge flock of 3,000 ewes and lambs from remote ranches in northern Montana to the stockyards in 2002. This was the last-ever sheep drive of the sort, ending a century-old tradition. The shepherds' stories and the magnificent, wildly rugged and challenging Beartooth Mountains make for a remarkable travelogue -- one that's ideal for summer watching.More »

Patience (After Sebald)

British filmmaker Grant Gee follows the itinerary taken by cult author W.G. Sebald in his The Rings of Saturn, the moody and mysterious book that explores the physical landscape of Britain's East Anglia and the interior landscape of the protagonist's mind. The film is mesmerizing, and it may convince you to read or reread The Rings of Saturn this summer, or to actually trek the itinerary yourself.More »

Under Our Skin

If you're spending a lot of time outdoors this summer, this compelling documentary will convince you to put on a lot of insect repellent. Under Our Skin is a primer on Lyme Disease, focusing on several people who have the disease and how it has effected their lives, and the controversies they face when trying to find the best care and treatment for their condition. The film is very relevant as a pre-summer-romp preventive alert.More »