5. Sweetgrass (2011)
It's not often you see a Western in which the cowboys take a break from mindless killing and instead do their goddamn job for a change, but Sweetgrass is an exception. A documentary about a group of shepherds dragging a giant cloud of sheep through Montana's Beartooth Mountains - them being one of the last groups of their kind to do so - Sweetgrass is also an exception in that it's one of the few Western narrative docs out there. Concerned with the business of shepherding, Sweetgrass could have been an insular tale with narrow potential interest. But it's actually a quiet, universal look at animal nature and the life cycle, and the film's hypnotic long takes are captivating, the green, snow-capped Montana vistas a gorgeous natural backdrop. Like so many Westerns, the feeling of hope and possibility is constantly at the fore, even if the task at hand is occasionally arduous and desperate; Sweetgrass offers a glance at life in the slow lane, so far away from dizzying city normality, and the feeling is liberating.