Ailey's story is interspersed with rehearsal scenes of a new work celebrating the 50th anniversary of the company he founded.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 10, 2022

This captivating documentary portrait of the choreographer Alvin Ailey, who died in 1989, treads a fine line between loving memorial and unfettered hagiography.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 7, 2022

Poeticism ebbs and flows throughout Wignot's impressonistic mediation, fluctuating in parts.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 7, 2022

What emerges is Ailey's lifelong seriousness and his vocational purpose in dance.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 5, 2022

You leave "Ailey" hoping that, somewhere, he's watching still.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 26, 2021

Poetic -- absolutely beautiful.

| Aug 7, 2021

Though Ailey aptly demonstrates why this virtuoso should be remembered, it reveals little about the man himself, only sketchily delving into his adult personal life.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 5, 2021

A haunting portrait of what it means to be an artist - from the triumphs to the empty, lonely feeling that you're never as good as you're supposed to be.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 5, 2021

Best absorbed as an elegant, impressionistic primer, a chance to bask in his mastery of movement and dance, as framed by those near enough to him to know what it took out of him to gift it to the world.

| Aug 4, 2021

The film brings a more human understanding of a figure so noteworthy he has earned mononym status for the title.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 3, 2021

Perhaps the greatest gift of this tightly conceived and beautiful doc lies in its appreciation of the divinity of dance.

| Jul 24, 2021

An educational journey, an uncompromising look into the challenges of an artistic life, and a tribute to the man whose studio and dance company still bear his name.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 23, 2021

Wignot layers images, video and - most important - voice-overs from Ailey to create a portrait that feels as poetic and nuanced as choreography itself.

| Jul 22, 2021

Not even Alvin Ailey's peers can articulate the innovations and soulfulness of his choreography half as well as his work itself.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 18, 2021

As a result, it feels immediately hollow. Who is this nebulous voice, more seen than heard, that bears the film's name?

| Feb 23, 2021

Director Jamilla Wignot's film gives voice to the silent protest in Ailey's heart that did not have an audience...

| Feb 20, 2021

Wignot masterfully weaves the present with the past in a way that causes her movie to surge with urgency.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 11, 2021

Ailey has a clear love for dance and the American master it focuses on, but it has a hard time passing along a vocabulary for that passion.

| Feb 8, 2021

[Ailey's] accomplishments and legacies are verified by this reverent and galvanizing film. A doc that celebrates dance that's a reflection of black life as created by a gifted pioneer.

| Feb 5, 2021

"Ailey" creates a feeling about Alvin Ailey: how grace and eloquence, fire and obsession merged within him.

| Feb 3, 2021