Side by Side

Directed by Chris Kenneally

(Not rated)

***

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“For a film geek this movie is absolute heaven,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. To explore how digital filmmaking is eclipsing the old-fashioned art of making movies on celluloid, director Chris Kenneally and co-producer Keanu Reeves have put together “a dream symposium” of directors and cinematographers to tell us what’s being lost and gained. With directors Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, and Christopher Nolan among those weighing in, the conversation is “worth a year of film school and at least 1,000 hours of DVD bonus commentary.” Reeves asks “the right questions of the right people,” said Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times. The actor knows his stuff, and “it is that sense of professional talking to professional that is one of the film’s greatest strengths.” Kenneally and Reeves don’t take sides in the debate about whether digital filmmaking opens new creative paths or encourages lazier, uglier, and overbusy movies, said Noel Murray in the A.V. Club. Instead, they seem to accept that digital’s triumph in Hollywood is inevitable and already all but complete. Art, it appears, is ever-changing.