Metacritic reviews

In short, this is a terrific documentary from start to finish, beautifully structured and by turns bracingly political, informative and inspiring.

In its mix of remarkable archival material, the film is both tender and galvanizing, summoning up what New York felt like in 1972 (yes, I would know) and offering a fresh slant on a country’s upheaval and a generation’s countercultural awakening.

The rare rock doc that’s a must-see.

It is a smart and warm-hearted documentary that never tries to separate the superstar at its center from the political and cultural context, or to split John from the woman he loved and admired — and never deliberately cast shade on. It is also one of the finest portraits of these artists on film.

As much as the film repeatedly pays tribute to their relationship— its unaffected honesty, their political influence, the beautiful and often alienating art they created — it can’t compete with the view of their cozy apartment. “All I want is the truth,” Lennon once sang; he knew that it’s much simpler than you could ever imagine.

Macdonald and Rice-Edwards take us back to the 1970s to explore these two but also show that two of the most important figures in music history were just a pair of flawed individuals trying their best to use their position of power to make the world a better place.

If only more nostalgic music documentaries could muster such a fun, fierce and full-blooded take on old, familiar material. One to One, against the odds, makes Lennon feel somehow vital again.

It’s a document of a febrile time and a wake-up call for a fizzled revolution.

While it’s a remarkable feat, particularly from an editing perspective, there’s also something laboratory-like about raiding the archive from a distance and imposing such an articficial structure on it.

The filmmakers have managed to make a bracing, scattered and somewhat revelatory look at a period that’ll go down as a misstep in which the Smart Beatle was fumbling to figure out what to do and intermittently coming up with a satisfactory answer.