Film Reviews










      "Scientist, novelist, activist, inventor, filmmaker, architect, prophet, healer and madman Harold L. 
      'Doc' Humes was, by all accounts, an exhilarating, infuriating and terrifyingly brilliant man. 
      His Oscar-nominated documentarian daughter Immy Humes has gathered testimonials from luminaries including Norman Mailer, 
      William Styron and Timothy Leary, who experienced his erratic genius firsthand, and has skillfully interwoven them with archival footage into 'Doc.' 
      Fascinating, wryly distanced docu... at Gotham's Film Forum, will likely get increased play with the upcoming reissue of H.L. Humes' 
      once lavishly lauded, long out-of-print novels....Casual footage from the era captures the excitement of liberation and the headiness of artistic ferment.... 
      Immy imaginatively segues from unexpected angles, mapping out the complex historical, cultural and personal synapses that link the man to his times....
      Tech credits are first-rate, including inventive editing and Zev Katz's jazz-laced score." 
 
 – Ronnie Scheib, Variety

“The latest in a series of documentary films… made about an esteemed and estranged relative by one of the subject’s offspring. 
It is also one of the very best. Directed with tight, but understated control by Immy Humes… 
(Norman) Mailer is particularly eloquent about Humes’s larger-than-life personality and the ebbing and flowing sanity that went with it. 
Expert blending of period documentary footage… some of the most well-spoken talking heads ever assembled… 
tempered by the affecting tenderness of first-person emotional subjectivity… nothing short of inspiring… deliciously ironic… a fine film.”

 – Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

“An extraordinary true story! The work achieves a fine balance between intimacy and a broad, culturally and historically nuanced perspective. 
Rediscovering Doc Humes is like opening a series of fat files filled with essential, yet unknown secrets about the 20th century literary world. 
The reprinting of Doc’s novels after almost 50 years will bring a major writer back to life.” 

– Elizabeth Bachner, Film-Forward



“An exquisite example of a real life story given newfound dimension through a playful, 
scattershot montage… glued together by the film’s delectable soundtrack choices. 
The stylistic success here is so great that it’s easy to lose sight of the film’s central figure, a brilliant and inventive figure with a mind as divergent and
curious as the construction of the film itself… 
By so expertly meshing subject and approach, DOC achieves that rare case of a person truly given new life on the silver screen.” 

– Rob Humanick, Slant
 
 
 “The fascinating life story of its subject, a brilliant man whose early life reads like a road map to the ideologies of the beat era… 
Cool, revelatory anecdotes from the likes of George Plimpton and Norman Mailer make it an invaluable record of one magnetic man’s historical footprint.” 

– New York Magazine

“ DOC channels whole decades of American cultural history through its subject, revealing a personal yet unsentimental portrait of the man 
against the backdrop of his times. 
Through an imaginative use of drawings, writing snippets, stills, home movies, interviews, archival footage of New York, Paris, and London and 
a vibrant jazz soundtrack, the filmmaker mixes elements as textured as the subject himself.” 

– Karen Kramer, The Reeler







A “lively and loving documentary!”

– V.A. Musetto, 
New York Post





“An engaging time capsule of ‘60s downtown subversive culture.” 
– Lisa Rosman, Flavorpill

 

  Head Butler's

    review of

     Men Die


The New Yorker


Time Out NY