Though Pavement is the star and the performers in its orbit are all in supporting roles, “Pavements” is distinguished by cinematic artistry that’s as distinctive as it is personal. “Range Life” may be a Pavement story, but “Pavements” is a Perry film.

| May 2, 2025

It provides a sense of Pavement more comprehensive (but also more artificial) than a typical talking-head-filled rock documentary would. It’s the sort of music film that satisfies the film audience even if they don’t care for the music, and vice versa.

| May 2, 2025

Part spoof and part serious, the film is about mythmaking as much as it is about music. The result is delightfully destabilizing.

| May 2, 2025

"Works remarkably well as an informative recounting of the band’s history, a reality-bending experiment, and a distillation of the Pavement spirit, in which irony masquerading as earnestness could sometimes serve as cover for a subterranean sincerity."

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 2, 2025

Is as gleefully idiosyncratic and as suspicious of mainstream success as the band and its fans.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 2, 2025

What is the point of all this deception?

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 2, 2025

“Selling out” may be a fading notion, belonging to an older era of fanzines and cassette tapes. Yet in his work Mr. Perry keeps alive ideas of authenticity vs. falsity, of the struggle to stay true to something in a crass commercial world.

| May 2, 2025

Although it’s not the most accessible music documentary — in fact, you could go so far as to say it’s downright inaccessible — Alex Ross Perry has created a downright brilliant, genre-defying work of cinema.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Apr 30, 2025

A sharp-elbowed movie that conjures the same sensation I often get when listening to Pavement, like there’s a part of the joke I’m not in on.

| Apr 19, 2025

Pavements takes their controversial oddity further than ever before. The result is a wild ride for two hours, one that seems to defy structure and storytelling at every opportunity.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 16, 2025

If Perry is aiming for a film that embodies the very agitation that Pavement strived for, he can count the ironic Pavements a success

| Mar 18, 2025

I haven’t seen a movie before that tears itself apart and puzzles itself into a new shape in, really, ever. I think.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 18, 2025

It captures the artistry, ingenuity and humor of its subject better than an encyclopedic history ever could – a music doc for whom success, in the spirit of Pavement, looks very different.

| Jan 26, 2025

Pavements is perfectly Pavement-y.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 16, 2024

While passion didn’t necessarily appear to be part of Pavement’s persona, Perry feels obliged to overcompensate... It’s impossible not to be won over by the director’s efforts.

| Dec 4, 2024

Perry’s work in Pavements is one of the wildest and unhinged approaches to a music documentary ever made, but the fact that he pulls it all together into something that isn’t a mess is a testament to Perry’s craft.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 26, 2024

I imagine the hope is that the uniqueness of Pavements intrigues enough to allow newcomers the desire to uncover what kind of band could have possibly inspired such an elaborately all-encompassing interpretation.

| Oct 12, 2024

In a perfect world, Alex Ross Perry's Pavements would be the final nail in the coffin for the institutions in which the entertainment industry produces content based on a musician's discography.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 8, 2024

Alex Ross Perry’s Cubist portrait finds a fitting balance between reverence and mischievousness.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 2, 2024

In an age of musical biopic plenty, this semi-ironic, postmodern take — which runs through Perry's part drama, part documentary, and part mockumentary — may be just what the doctor ordered.

| Sep 20, 2024