type Movie Current Status In Season mpaa Unrated runtime 132 minutes Limited Release Date 05/02/15 performer Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love director Brett Morgen genre Documentary, Biography, Music 
 
 We gave it an A 
 
 In the opening moments of Brett Morgen’s devastatingly intimate documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, there’s a series of Super-8 home movies narrated by the late Nirvana frontman’s mother. Interviews with Love, bandmate Krist Novoselic, and Cobain’s first girlfriend flesh out the portrait and hint at the inevitability of the musician’s tragic path, including the most difficult scene to watch in the film: a home movie where Cobain seemingly nods off on drugs as Love cuts their young daughter’s hair. You can speculate about how complete a picture we’re getting, given that Ms. Love’s and Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was an executive producer of the film, but that’s all you can do.
– It's pretty much unanimous: Critics are in love with Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the documentary produced by Cobain's daughter, which hits theaters today before premiering on HBO next month. With interviews from his parents, Courtney Love, and more, it offers an intimate look at the star who committed suicide at 27. Here's what critics are saying: Director Brett Morgen "gives us the man instead of the myth" in a documentary that makes "Cobain's story feel not only comprehensive and fresh but revelatory," Chris Nashawaty writes at Entertainment Weekly. Some parts, including a home video of Cobain nodding off on drugs, are "uncomfortable," but "Morgen isn't interested in hagiography. He wants to show us the real Kurt Cobain, warts and all." The result is, in a word, "brilliant." "The movie creates a portrait of Cobain that’s more intimate, and more disturbing, than any that fans have witnessed before," writes Jim Farber at the New York Daily News. It "downplays commentary to stress raw evidence drawn from Cobain's deep archives." Viewers will see "a strung-out Cobain struggling to hold his infant daughter," Farber writes, and hear him speak about a high school suicide attempt. The film as a whole leaves "questions, frustrations, and a chill." "Edited from thousands of photographs, home movies, and audio clips" the "source materials alone [make] this film a must-see for any hard-core Nirvana fan," Charles R. Cross writes at the Seattle Times. The highlights come in "segments where noirish animations dramatize stories Cobain himself narrates in audio." Though the "many powerful images on screen ... begin to overwhelm the viewer," most will be left "cheering." Mike Hale describes the film as a "seamless mystery ride" that "concentrates on Cobain the writer, draftsman, and personality." Morgen "finds abundant clues and premonitions in Cobain’s writings" to suggest that "insecurity and shame" played a role in his suicide, though the truth remains elusive, Hale writes at the New York Times. His favorite part? Seeing an "angelic" Cobain as a child in the first half of the two-hour-plus film. Frances Bean Cobain recently spoke publicly about her dad.