At a brisk, dense 90 minutes.. it is an excellent introduction the life and work of the Welles with a focus on the creative.

| May 4, 2024

The material is simply recycled. Yet Welles himself lights up the documentary. He was born to be interviewed, and it is a pleasure to watch him at different ages.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 5, 2019

Solid, straightforward but immaculately researched, Chuck Workmans documentary is a fitting tribute to the maverick Welles. If he were alive today, hed surely raise a glass.

| May 3, 2018

Magician is a good primer for those who are unfamiliar with Welles, while functioning as a greatest-hits reel for students of the man.

| Aug 24, 2017

Magician certainly makes you want to watch all of Welles's films again, including the ones that we can't, which means it probably accomplishes its goals.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 3, 2016

I'm sad to report that at a mere 1 hour and 34 minutes Magician is rushed and sometimes choppy, leaping through Welles's bountiful life.

| May 23, 2016

What Workman has assembled is the kind of film Welles would have been happy to part of. It's a unique, warm and fair portrait of a man who was both genius and joke and well aware of it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 21, 2015

I'm a pretty big Welles geek, so I enjoyed the experience anyway... but I can't imagine this will enlighten anyone who just wanders in off the street.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 18, 2015

As a primer for newcomers to the Orson Welles universe, the superficial Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles does its job well.

| Original Score: B | Aug 14, 2015

As fascinated as it is by Welles' ascent, his unfair decline and lifelong battles to have his visions realized, it never really offers any insight on his actual work.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 4, 2015

Despite the firm timeline, it has a scrappy feel, as though Workman was uncertain how to corral all the information and he underplays the most crucial aspect that sets a filmed documentary above a written one - emotion.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 11, 2015

An entertaining, but hardly radical, primer on Hollywood's first real auteur ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 6, 2015

Excerpts from unfinished films offer glimpses of what might have been, while Welles in discussion remains an unsurpassed raconteur.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 5, 2015

Stuffed with fascinating details about the stage, radio and screen achievements of the wunderkind who never quite fulfilled his potential.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 2, 2015

[Magician] has an inelegant, cobbled-together feel that doesn't do justice to its subject.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 2, 2015

This film makes a valuable and stimulating case for brilliant Welles movies such as Chimes at Midnight and The Trial.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 2, 2015

A passible Welles hagiography which offers very little that you couldn't easily find in an Encyclopedia.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 2, 2015

If you're a budding film student or a newly-minted cineaste looking for a quick and easy brush-up on the all-time great American director, Magician will serve perfectly well.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 30, 2015

If director Chuck Workman maps a familiar rise and fall of rule-breaking brilliance it is vindicated by the great raconteur and in-depth praise from an impressive roster.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 29, 2015

Magician, like Welles' least loved works, ends up as a great bunch of moments with no clear through-line.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 29, 2015