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Critics reviews

FILMWORKER

Tony Zierra United States, 2017
There are of course understandable reasons for such discreet omissions, and these ultimately don’t compromise the portrait that “Filmworker” offers of Vitali, whose main life choices combined admirable humility with a fierce and unshakable conviction about serving art in his own way.
May 11, 2018
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Matthew Modine—who wrote about Vitali repeatedly in his published diaries of the hellish production of Full Metal Jacket and is also interviewed in Filmworker—echoes what seems to be a common sentiment about Vitali: that the guy is a friendly mystery, either a glutton for punishment or a saint. It’s this fascination that makes Filmworker compelling, despite its modest and uneven means.
May 10, 2018
Whatever exaggerations Filmworker may or may not entertain, Vitali exudes throughout this film the same earnest, eccentric devotion and enthusiasm that no doubt persuaded the man he served and that will surely provide researchers and scholars plenty to think about in the seemingly endless preoccupation with the life and work of Stanley Kubrick.
May 10, 2018
The New York Times
The material about Kubrick’s process is finally more interesting than the discussions about his temperament.
May 10, 2018
Despite the rueful tone with which the movie charts the sacrifices of time, family life, autonomy, and personality that Vitali made on behalf of Kubrick, Vitali himself expresses no regrets—and Zierra is even less critical. As a result, “Filmworker” amounts to yet another rite of devotion in the ongoing cult of Kubrick—a cult that worked its power not just on Vitali but on all of modern cinema.
May 9, 2018
It's ultimately a portrait of self-loathing. Vitali believed in Kubrick more than himself, sacrificing his art and life in the process. Yet Vitali's art infused with Kubrick's own. Filmworker is also an examination of the limitations and exaltations of devotion that suffers from a somewhat limited purview itself.
May 9, 2018
It is truly inspiring and touching just how little bitterness Vitali has in him, and it stems from his having no regrets over a life dedicated to something he believes in with utterly selfless purity . . . The honor might be his, but the gratitude should be not only Kubrick's, but all of ours. Cinema would be much the poorer without Stanley Kubrick's legacy, but "Filmworker" emphatically proves that Stanley Kubrick's legacy would be much the poorer without Leon Vitali.
November 26, 2017
Far more lucid than the middle film in Schroeder's trilogy, Terror's Advocate (2007), and it builds to a genuinely horrifying endpoint.
July 11, 2017
Zierra's entertaining and informative documentary playfully uses scenes from Vitali's many film and TV appearances to tell the story of his career with Kubrick. But Filmworker also makes clear the enormous personal toll his work took on the actor-turned-assistant: Halfway through the movie, we're introduced to Vitali's now-grown children, and it's a genuine shock to realize that he had a family this whole time — and was often unable to give attention to them.
May 25, 2017