De Palma

Paltrow and Baumbach simply walk De Palma through his filmography and collect his best stories. But this systematic approach has a nice leveling effect in that his more obscure, offbeat projects get as much attention as his signature films.

De Palma remains a focused and productive filmmaker at 75, with several productions in the development pipeline. "De Palma" makes one hope that he'll keep up the pace for years to come.

De Palma is a deceptively simple documentary film: Director Brian De Palma sits in front of a fireplace for nearly two hours and talks about his life and career. If you love movies, it's time well spent.

A trip through his wild and hugely influential filmography is mandatory for any film fan, and that's just what directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow offer in their new documentary.

Immersive and illuminating ...

A serious examination of De Palma as an auteur, coming through one of the most fevered epochs of Hollywood history and surviving to tell the tale.

You'll dig this movie a ton, because it's basically a master filmmaker taking a stroll down memory lane and exploring what makes his work stand out.

You'll learn more about the art of filmmaking in this documentary than from any course in the UCLA or NYU film school.

[His] candid commentary reveals him to be a cultivated man with a gut-bucket sensibility trying to make mass-market commercial hits but who rarely finds the right combination of style and substance. At least we now know why he did what he did.

Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow are the co-directors of De Palma, a scrumptious documentary about the creator of Carrie and Scarface.

By the end, regardless of how one feels about any number of his pictures, there is no question that he was a man who made movies exactly the way he intended.