It’s got a breezy touch as it makes its way through the labyrinthine story of the painting and how it intersects with the twisted life of the Alters

| May 17, 2024

A Willem de Kooning painting stolen decades earlier from an art museum is discovered hidden in the home of Jerry and Rita Alter after they’ve died. ... in this compellingly offbeat true-life crime documentary.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 17, 2023

You can't make this stuff up.

| Original Score: 4 stars | Sep 15, 2023

Allison Otto’s entertaining documentary is a fascinating look at the world-traveling couple Jerry and Rita Alter, whose estate included Willem De Kooning’s Woman-Ochre — which had been stolen from the University of Arizona museum in 1985.

| Aug 5, 2023

We often speak of a “who done it” as though the answer to the mystery is simply the identity of the person committing the crime. But ​The Thief Collector entreatingly and insightfully shows us that is just the beginning of the story.

| Aug 5, 2023

A fascinating kernel of certainty is padded out with giddy speculation... This true crime documentary is as guilty of an overactive imagination as the genre’s most rabid fans are.

| Original Score: 59/100 | Jul 27, 2023

There's half a film here, but the result is not coherent and I just loathe these thieves.

| Jun 6, 2023

Otto did a particularly good job fusing all these different elements.

| Jun 6, 2023

Complex and stinging, and funny and innovative.

| Jun 1, 2023

Allison Otto's entertaining THE THIEF COLLECTOR is one of those truth-stranger-than-fiction kind of documentaries, about a world-traveling but ordinary-seeming couple, Rita and Jerry Alter, with a secret life.

| May 22, 2023

How the painting got there, and who the Alters really were, is the subject of Allison Otto’s sassy and lively documentary.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 21, 2023

Allison Otto’s The Thief Collector, then, is a most refreshing documentary that gives true crime the America’s Next Top Model moment it needs.

| May 20, 2023

The Thief Collector is wildly entertaining and features some of the funniest reenactments of the year.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 19, 2023

This is an utterly transfixing story told with an infectious tone, but it's about 80% speculation. And while that speculation is fun, the whole can feel like spinning wheels for long passages.

| Original Score: 6/10 | May 19, 2023

[M]uch of Allison Otto's documentary ... amounts to a lot of speculation.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 19, 2023

Ultimately, however, The Thief Collector confirms one of Citizen Kane’s grand themes, the unknowability of human personality. When the Sadlers left this world for the next, they took several, unrecoverable secrets with them.

| May 19, 2023

With its whirlwind, surface-level observations of fascinatingly complex lives, it's the kind of scattershot true-crime documentary that grips in the moment but, with reflection, is more entertaining to discuss than revisit for additional clues.

| Original Score: C+ | May 18, 2023

Allison Otto’s snappy documentary “The Thief Collector” ponders how and why the Alters got away with their one famous crime — and perhaps many more.

| May 18, 2023

Allison Otto brings audiences one of the most audacious modern-day stories of crime and passion. Part art history, part true crime, all intrigue, The Thief Collector is tailor-made for mystery lovers and cinephiles alike

| May 17, 2023

The Alters could rival Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole in How to Steal a Million. After all, they did it. They got away with it too (but you’re not going to believe how).

| May 17, 2023