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90A superb portrait of a father and son disguised as a docu about Haskell Wexler.
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90A remarkable work -- lively, painful, humorous, deeply revealing of both father and son -- that is worthy of one of Hollywood's finest directors of photography.
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90Near the beginning of the movie, the younger Wexler admits that the film is his attempt to get closer to his father. This sense of personal mission helps make Tell Them Who You Are the richest documentary of its kind since Terry Zwigoff's "Crumb."
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88Funny, touching, vital.
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88What Mark does, better perhaps than either he or his father realizes, is to capture some aspects of a lifelong rivalry that involves love but not much contentment.
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83As fascinating as all the film history is, the movie's core is the dynamic between a famous but distant parent and his child.
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80A strange, strident and finally fulfilling father-son saga.
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80What makes this movie deeply fascinating is the fight Haskell wages. As the semi-willing subject of this movie, he's determined to gain the upper hand or, at least, come out somewhat sympathetic.
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80Possibly without meaning to, the younger Wexler has made a superb examination not of professional cinematography -- really, who cares? -- but of the eternal bad business between fathers and sons.
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80The elder Wexler keeps insisting that he won't sign a release for the film unless he approves of the finished product, so he must have been pleased with its brutally honest assessment of him as a gifted filmmaker who never realized his true potential.
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75Chicago-bred Haskell is such an intense, contentious, prickly figure, he would tend to take over any film portrait, and he definitely dominates here.
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75A fascinating glimpse of family love and rivalry, if not a deep-digging documentary of "My Architect" quality.
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75Breezy and informative. It offers a view of the talented, opinionated man that only his son could pull off.
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75Engaging and perceptive.
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75In more ways than one, Mark Wexler gets the release he's seeking.
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75Beneath its exploration of fatherly distance, this is really a portrait of why cranks make better artists than earnest nice guys.
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70Busting with clips from films Haskell Wexler shot and directed, the doc is a rare thing: an ingenuous portrait of a thoroughly Four-Square Artist, Assembled With Love And Rockets Inside A Family's Spite-Tainted Gates.
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70A compelling look at the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler by his photojournalist son Mark.
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63In the new, personal documentaries in which you pick up a camera to help get a grip on your own life, there is a queasy line between inspiration and therapy. Mark Wexler crosses back and forth over that line.
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60The last word on Haskell Wexler's career hasn't been spoken, but it's hard to imagine there's much more to say about him as a bad dad.
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60A desperately sad look at two men whose determination to rebel against their heritage and succeed in their artform has rendered them unable to communicate. Compelling stuff, though.
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60Fascinating for the issues--ethical, aesthetic, psychoanalytic--it raises. But it doesn't fully come together.
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60He has had a notable career, and I wish there had been more specifics about it in the film.
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50Haskell comes off as a jerk -- but Mark somehow looks even worse: not just insincere but weak, vain and vindictive.
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50Tell Them Who You Are is indulgent by design, and the elder Wexler may be right about his son's aesthetic failings.
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