I had trouble staying with the varied animation styles, and the sense of humor is all over the place, but the well-researched narrative drive pulled me through.

| Jan 18, 2023

Penny Lane’s NUTS! recounts the story of Dr. John Brinkley, who earned fame and fortune in the 1920s for transplanting goat testicles as a fertility cure for men.

| Aug 23, 2022

Lane takes advantage of non-fiction for petty and selfish reasons, which makes Lane not too far removed from her own subject.

| May 22, 2019

Dr. John Romulus Brinkley Jr. had trouble with the truth.

| May 11, 2019

A surprising, strange, delightful film that's more than its strange premise would have you believe.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 2, 2019

Simply a good time, rollicking as it revels in one Brinkley exploit after another.

| Nov 8, 2018

In a different director's hands, this film might be a tragedy about the Depression-era consumers who fell for Brinkley's schemes, but for the most part, it's a quirky comedy

| Aug 18, 2017

Lane's loose, playful, collage-like treatment of the story sets just the right tone.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 29, 2016

Nuts! is such a fascinatingly goofy tale, with peekaboo plot elements popping out from every angle, that a straightforward documentary approach could never do it justice.

| Dec 27, 2016

Nuts! is downright fun, and the larger ideas underlying Nuts! are certainly thought-provoking enough to sustain multiple viewings.

| Dec 6, 2016

I'm convinced that above anything else, Lane is a master of tone; it makes me eager to see what project she takes on next.

| Dec 2, 2016

Director Lane and screenwriter Thom Stylinski take a lighthearted, folksy approach to telling Brinkley's life story

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 1, 2016

Nuts! is a real hoot.

| Aug 26, 2016

Nuts! is, on the whole, an incredibly entertaining and clever film that understands and constantly sidesteps the easy tropes of the genre.

| Original Score: 7.8/10 | Aug 26, 2016

Nuts! is a marvel of storytelling - both in the old fashioned sense of a good yarn, and in the sense that editing and scripting leave the viewer genuinely unaware of where this spectacular story is going.

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 2, 2016

Lane uses creative animation, archival footage and recordings - the good doctor apparently loved to be filmed - to tell an absolutely outrageous story of neediness, greed, delusion and gullibility.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 29, 2016

It's a daring formal gamble on Lane's part, but it doesn't completely work.

| Jul 25, 2016

Caught up in the fun of telling this tall tale, Lane never matches the fine, humbling truth of Our Nixon...Lane's wild narrative flirts with Michael Moore-style deceit and contempt. Yet Lane's essential humanity comes through.

| Jul 21, 2016

It's flat-out exciting; really, how many documentaries can you say that about?

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 21, 2016

The hilarious true story of a man who took old fashioned "can-do" to unimaginable lengths.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 18, 2016