It makes a very good case that you should be interested in Zappa's work.

| Feb 25, 2021

If there is one American musician who was overdue for a comprehensive documentary, that's Zappa -- and this one doesn't disappoint. It's as messy as his music in parts, but that fits.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 24, 2021

Key to the success of the film is the editing, a pinballing assault of free association, claymation and gleeful profanity, which goes some way towards recreating what it must have been like to spend time inside Zappa's head.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 21, 2021

Winter has simply collated the resulting audio and video recordings into more than two hours of slightly sophomoric Zap-tastic musings on the pointlessness of commercial music, the need to fight the system and the tediousness of mainstream success.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 20, 2021

Winter has created a fascinating watch.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 19, 2021

Winter's film deserves a lot of credit for appreciating the full, intrepid range of Zappa's music, though penetrating the leathery mystery of his personality is perhaps a tall order.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 18, 2021

Winter's doc can't hold a candle to any of the musician's best songs or climactic symphonies... The good news is that Winter seems to have recognized that from the start, and made a certain peace with the low ceiling of his film's conventional structure.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 12, 2020

Frank Zappa hates this film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 1, 2020

This compelling, entertaining and no-B.S. documentary, directed by Alex Winter and produced by Frank's son Ahmet, gives a full picture of the Italian American musical iconoclast.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 30, 2020

Captures its subject's spirit without tipping into mere hero worship.

| Nov 28, 2020

A complex and surprisingly satisfying portrait of an artist who defiantly marched to the beat of a different drummer (or two).

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 27, 2020

"Zappa" foregrounds the laudable and often astonishing aspects of the man's work and personality.

| Nov 26, 2020

Roughly chronological in shape - there's a charming wealth of home movies from Zappa's childhood and adolescence - "Zappa" spends much time with the early Mothers of Invention of the mid-to-late 1960s...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 26, 2020

I appreciate this documentary more than I actually liked it, which is the same way that I felt about Frank Zappa.

| Nov 26, 2020

I appreciated that this wasn't a complete deification of the man... I learned a lot about him that I didn't already know, and it is a good L.A. story, too.

| Nov 26, 2020

There's little fault that even the most hardcore fan could find with Mr. Winter's film, which accomplishes the acrobatic act of doing justice to a figure like Frank Zappa.

| Nov 25, 2020

As "Zappa" makes clear, Frank Zappa spent his whole career keeping himself unique, often to his credit and occasionally to his detriment. Winter's movie does the same, in a way that does justice to a guy who's not easy to do justice to.

| Nov 24, 2020

Winter gives Zappa pride of place among the most important composers of the 20th century, sharing some extraordinary performances of his little-known classical work.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 24, 2020

It's a multimedia immersion, filled with rare footage of Zappa from his teenage years on and assembled with the loving dexterity we've come to expect from Alex Winter as a filmmaker.

| Nov 23, 2020

In "Zappa," this legendary artist's uncompromising nature is bracing, bold and utterly refreshing.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 23, 2020