There have been several recent films about the pressures dictating prices on the international art market, but none have been as instructive -- or as enthralling -- as The Lost Leonardo.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2021

Perhaps Da Vinci should have painted Christ throwing the art dealers out of the temple.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 10, 2021

Sweet heavens, this is strong.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 10, 2021

The unknown becomes the unknowable. In this story, all interests are vested, and the most esteemed authorities can be - at best - winging it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2021

The re-creations of clandestine meetings and shots of faceless men transporting the painting can be a bit cloak-and-dagger cheesy, [but] that's the only stumble in a film that tells a strange tale populated by a cast of eccentric and dangerous characters.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 2, 2021

Really, "The Lost Leonardo" is a detective story. Like any good detective story, it's also a morality tale.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 1, 2021

Andreas Koefoed paints a telling portrait about the art world, illustrating the deception, the pretense and the secret billionaire buyers at the apex of some shady shenanigans.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 19, 2021

A documentary investigating a story that's already been in the news requires new insight or merit to add anything new to the conversation, and the strength of the film is in its interviews.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 18, 2021

It's never pedantic. It plays like a thriller, like a heist. While I was watching, I could totally imagine that someone is going to pick up the rights to this and turn it into a feature film, because it's so gripping and thrilling.

| Aug 14, 2021

An enthralling, globe-trotting story of greed. It plays out like a detective mystery and feels as meticulously plotted as an art heist. It's so well told.

| Aug 14, 2021

Koefoed puzzles out the story of how all of this came to be, shrewdly letting viewers absorb all the facts and points of view and deciding what they want to believe.

| Aug 13, 2021

What stayed with me after I left the movie was a reaffirmation of how great art, in all its many manifestations, has the power to move us and change our way of seeing, even our lives.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 12, 2021

Among other things, this picture freshly demonstrates that a conventionally structured documentary can pack the fascination and wallop of an expertly executed fictional thriller.

| Aug 12, 2021

"The Lost Leonardo" is the first art-world documentary I've seen that captures what art becomes once it goes through the looking glass of greed: not just a commodity, but a way of transferring and manipulating power.

| Aug 12, 2021

"The Lost Leonardo" crystallizes how remarkable it is that something a random guy found in New Orleans could eventually become a smokescreen for a foreign despot's crimes against humanity.

| Original Score: B- | Aug 10, 2021

Saltz proves the fiery disbelieving voice of The Lost Leonardo, railing against the work as a "made-up piece of junk" that became a phenomenon solely due to its ability to reap windfalls...

| Jun 18, 2021

There's nothing quite like a good story, well-told.

| Jun 14, 2021

The Lost Leonardo deals less with absolutes than fungible notions of perception and power.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 13, 2021