Really good rock doc, because the talking heads feel like punctuations to the flow of music instead of vice-versa. Like most movies, it is 90 minutes long when it could be LP-length, but say la vee. A musician’s musician, impenetrable as a person, at least in the movies I’ve seen. I first heard him in another doc, his mouth wide open, playing technically-imperfect tunes, immediately striking, a true jazz weirdo. That movie’s archive footage was shot in 1969, this one’s in 1967, both released decades later.

Paul Grimstad for Criterion:

From the [1967] Blackwood footage, interspersed with other archival film, photographs, new interviews, and narration, Zwerin distilled an hour-and-a-half-long structure not all that different from a Monk composition: jumpy, elliptical, catchy, moving … As a counterpoint to the archival material, Zwerin shot new footage of pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris (both Detroit natives, like Zwerin) playing through Monk tunes as four-hand duets. We see how much fun they’re having, how generous and congenial their sharing of the music is, and how a Monk song like “Well, You Needn’t” allows for endless elaboration without its melodic outline ever becoming blurred.