Like the city, Koch comes across here as brash, contradictory, almost endlessly fascinating and a bit sad.

| Nov 3, 2020

Barsky wisely includes just enough dissenting voices and admissions of grievous error by Koch himself to prevent the pic from seeming like a 100% feel-good puff piece.

| Nov 3, 2020

Koch offers as comprehensive a picture as it can in 94 minutes of a man whose tenure merits a miniseries.

| Nov 3, 2020

He was certainly combative, and confident, and full of love for the city he governed with such gusto. Koch is a New York story for the whole world to appreciate.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 26, 2013

What he really was was one of a kind. Whether intentionally or not, "Koch" shows that that's not necessarily a bad thing.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 11, 2013

An emphasis on Koch the character obscures his administration.

| Mar 14, 2013

Though the film, more than two years in the making, was never intended as such, it plays like the kind of eulogy Koch would have approved - neither fawning nor eviscerating but always compelling.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2013

The film advances no theories to explain his contradictions, only a thrilling, sometimes affecting account of what he did.

| Feb 28, 2013

The former mayor is an alert onscreen presence, but the film surrounding him is not always so lively.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 28, 2013

"How'm I doin'?" Koch famously asked anyone and everyone he passed by, rarely hanging around for the answer. In "Koch," for the most part, he does all right.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 28, 2013

"Koch" is a treasure trove of little moments that illuminate a famously cantankerous, sharp-elbowed, showboating personality.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 7, 2013

A highlight-to-lowlight chronicle of the man's three terms as mayor, and in the case of any other mayor, such a narrow focus might have seemed reductive.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 6, 2013

Even if he stomped on your special interest you can't deny that he did it with a sui generis verve that mixed region-specific curmudgeon-ism and impish joie de vivre

| Feb 4, 2013

Koch presents an uncommonly juicy subject for a documentary, and filmmaker Neil Barsky makes the most of the opportunity.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 1, 2013

If the film were even two minutes longer, it might constitute Koch overload. Luckily, Barsky knows when enough is enough, even if his subject doesn't.

| Jan 31, 2013

It's hard to fault a documentary for being as slanted toward a subject as director Neil Barsky's "Koch" is when the movie chronicles as self-celebratory a figure as former Mayor Ed Koch.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 31, 2013

New York may be a safer, cleaner and less argumentative place than it was in the 1980s, but he remains as contentious, as mischievous and at times as inflammatory as ever.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 31, 2013

Koch doesn't try to do anything radical as a piece of filmmaking, but Barsky -- a former newspaper reporter -- covers Koch's story magnificently as a journalist.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 31, 2013

Neil Barsky is aware of how a great and terribly troubling person can reside in the same body, but his occasional eagerness to appoint himself as his subject's latest press agent is dubious.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 30, 2013

If unlikely to change anyone's mind about its subject, it's an effective primer on a voluble and charismatic mayor who embodied the spirit of the city he loved.

| Jan 29, 2013