The subject and the film clips are great, although the documentary as a whole is a bit gimmicky.
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Village Voice
Village Voice
Ulmer emerges as the bigger-than-life symbol he probably desired to project: the brooding Old World artist, eternally frustrated with American market pressures, preferring to rule in Hell than serve in Hollywood.
In the main, Mr. Palm sticks to the usual biopic formula: a chronological account of a heroic individual told through talking heads, still photographs and film clips. Mr. Palm's principal deviation from this formula is that some of the interviews take place in moving cars.
50
The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
It's unfortunate that a film designed to renew interest in Ulmer is this flat.
A definitive docu on the elusive Edgar G. Ulmer is a practical impossibility, which is why Michael Palm chooses to highlight questions rather than facts. But Edgar G. Ulmer -- the Man Off-Screen neither fully illuminates the tales nor finely sifts through the evidence to discover the truths behind the myth-making.