Popular reviews

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  Review by Melissa Tamminga 20

  There's an attempt here to play up the idea of eccentricity: if a woman is single and doesn’t appear to want to marry, if she travels alone to far off places, if she travels down back alleys and to stockyards, if she wants a lock for her door, if she collects newspapers, if she takes photos of an injured person instead of standing around gawking like everyone else, if she isn’t freely open about her past, if she opts not to tell a shop-owner her name, she is deemed an oddity. And yet, I wonder, were a man to behave in the way she did, would he be called such an eccentric? Are any of those actions really so extremely…

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  Review by Bradley J. Dixon ★ 1

  Being "found" by John Maloof may have been the worst thing ever to happen to the work of Vivian Maier.

  Maloof's self-congratulatory documentary — in which he makes himself a subject equally as important as Maier herself — half-heartedly exposes the genius of her photographs (in split-second bursts, with no care or attention to their artistry) while simultaneously justifying why Maloof should not be criticised for commercialising her work.

  Strangely cruel to its own subject, the film depicts Maier's personality (secretive, private, an outsider, a loner) as freakish and shameful, then adds insult to injury by exposing the detailed and, to the story, ultimately irrelevant minutiae of her life for all to see.

  I can say one thing about Vivian Maier that cannot be said about John Maloof: she made great art.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½ 3

  69/100

  Not really bothered by the knowledge that Maloof stands to gain financially from the attention his film will draw to Maier's work (much of which he owns), as it never came across to me as mere advertising. The ethics of delving publicly into the life of a pathologically private person is trickier, but as a materialist I'm inclined not to be overly concerned about what might upset a person if they were alive, and Maier seems to have no living relative to be mortified on her behalf. So my only beef with Maloof is that he fails to recognize the degree to which his own personality reflects hers, and that he didn't have the courage to hand the project…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½

  but get this Maloof guy out of here, honestly.

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  Review by JurassicaParker ★★★★

  My favourite part is still that woman talking about her housekeeper.
  'Olivia. Delightful person. She speaks very little English and I speak very little Spanish and we get along beautifully.'
  Then the camera shows Olivia reading the Spanish edition of Michael Moore's 'Stupid White Men' with a blissful smile on her face.

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  Review by slyman ★★★ 1

  Her art is fascinating, but the documentary is troubling in that it is as much about the film maker as the artist. The film was best when Maloof was off the screen and her pictures were on it.

  Also somewhat troubling how Maloof has acquired her entire collection and is profiting off of it, especially when she was so private.

  Two word review: Troubling perspective

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  Review by Lily Schmidt ★★

  "She would never have let this happen."

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  Review by Esteban Gonzalez ★★★★

  “The history of street photography is being rewritten.”

  John Maloof’s life changed when he bought a box full of old negatives in a local auction house. He was simply trying to find old pictures of his neighborhood for a history book, but what he got in return was more than he bargained for. He discovered these amazing street photographs taken by a woman named Vivian Maier and started posting them on his blog. Eventually the photos began getting some recognition and Maloof decided to start digging into this person’s past and figuring out who she was and why she never developed all those negatives. Using the archive footage from the negatives he began piecing together certain elements of Vivian’s past.…

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  Review by Rob Patrick ★★★½

  This John Maloof guy has the personality of someone trying tamarind for the first time in a Buzzfeed video. 

  Maier’s work is affecting and fascinating, but I could do without the film’s perverse speculations about her perceived traumas.

  All you need to know about Vivian is that she loved hats and photography. That’s good enough for me.

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  Review by russman ★★★½ 1

  "Hey kids, let's go see some sheep get slaughtered!"

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  Review by Kilo_Orange 5

  In this rather useless documentary, Vivian Maier commits the unfathomable act of being a woman who preferred to raise other people's neglected children rather than promoting her excellent photography.

  It’s a chilling reminder that being a "mother" (for rich folk’s kids in this case) - one of the best and most creative jobs around - is viewed as a role for lower caste untouchables by some. “Woman chooses to be a nanny” should not be a documentary topic.

  And as if it wasn't bad enough she might choose a regular life, Maier added to her disgrace by taking photos just for the love of it too. No one in the film can seemingly understand the simple concept of making art…

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  Review by Andrew Dignan ★½ 1

  Seems fair to question whether the entire initiative to bring Maier’s work to light (and this film in particular) would exist if Maloof weren’t directly benefiting from the attention and the gossipy “tsk-tsking” he attempts to stir up. Spending considerably less time establishing the anonymous artist’s bonafides (well, hell, if Tumblr liked her stuff…) than trying to dig up enough human-interest fodder to rally the morning talk show circuit to his cause, Maloof gathers a series of fleeting acquaintances and former employers to lay bare the life of an intensely private woman, robbing her in death of seemingly the only thing she cared about in life. Engaging in reckless speculation (including a suburban housewife blurting out that Maier was sexually…