Mike Wallace Is Here

Worth seeing if you're interested in journalists, watching people give an interview...there are some really juicy and interesting clips regarding freedom of the press...

This film does not offer any actual conclusions, but it is an atmospheric immersion in the old, smoky and very male world of American TV journalism.

A little more air might have been welcome, but this remains a hugely entertaining film for anyone interested in the American way of communicating.

Terrific and informative.

A solid piece of cultural investigation built around a man who helped write history while it happened.

Belkin floats the notion that Wallace's sharp-tongued style paved the way for the lying loudmouths who now populate our fractured media landscape, but it feels like a half-hearted bid for contemporary relevance. At least his prickishness had purpose.

Avi Belkin's documentary tells its story entirely through archive footage, which proves both compelling and limiting.

It's pure cinema: dramatic, ambiguous, devastating - and one more reason this particular film doesn't need to reference a fictionalised version of its own star's role in history.

Avi Belkin's Mike Wallace Is Here harvests a vast archive of interviews and b-roll footage to create a fascinating profile of a combative, conflicted figure, who nevertheless substantially changed the face of how news was reported.

While the film fails to address its subject's reporting on LGBTQ issues, the piece does cover a huge swath of the life and work of a man who lived to be 93, and didn't retire until age 88.