Altman

The career-portrait documentary is a tricky beast to pull off. A director will be inclined to do the artist’s body of work complete justice while also offering a fresh look at the individual behind the curtain. With cooperation from its subject’s widow, Ron Mann’s Altman, a bio-doc about one of America’s greatest filmmakers, succeeds somewhat on the latter front, thanks to various home movies and rare behind-the-scenes and interview footage.

It is with Robert Altman’s actual films that the documentary flounders. Roughly nine works of a 39-film career get anything close to decent screen-time, and some of those get maybe two minutes. Over half his filmography appears only in the form of on-screen titles or a single promo image, with nary an explanation of what the films even are, as the voiceover discusses another topic. For a tribute to a man it describes as highly influential (see all the famous faces popping up to define ‘Altmanesque’), Mann’s ultimately fluffy film is irritatingly uninterested in the breadth of Altman's art. [Josh Slater-Williams]