It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley

David Bowie said that Grace, Jeff Buckley’s 1994 debut, was the best album he had ever heard. Buckley would become famous for his cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, and his record label positioned him as the next Bob Dylan, but his musical inspirations stretched from Nina Simone, Judy Garland and Edith Piaf to Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan and Led Zeppelin. With a voice that could range across four octaves, he made you hear them too (Robert Plant told him he was the most exciting singer of his generation.) It didn’t hurt his prospects that he looked like James Dean and that his father was the fabled 70s folk singer Tim Buckley (though he was brought up by his single mom). But Tim had died of a drug overdose at 28 and in a tragic twist of fate Jeff would only outlive him by two years.

With the cooperation of Buckley’s former band mates, his romantic partners and his mother, Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg (Deliver Us from Evil, West of Memphis) gives us a complete and rounded portrait of an extraordinary talent and a troubled but sensitive man, unearthing a rich trove of footage from his early years and sublime performances in venues large and small.

What the documentary captures, I think, is that Buckley was on his way to becoming a staggeringly huge star. I defy you to see [it] and not fall in love with Jeff Buckley’s voice. By the time the film is over, you want to find a way to go back and rescue him to let him live the life he should have.

Owen Gleiberman, Variety