One to One: John and Yoko

Both a concert film (Madison Square Gardens, August 1972) and a time machine, dropping us into the dizzying political kaleidoscope of the early 1970s, Kevin Macdonald’s latest documentary (codirected with Sam Rice-Edwards) is a rewarding addition to Lennon Studies, illuminating a fractious point in his career shortly after the Beatles bust up, and in the midst of his activist phase. Vietnam is still raging, and Watergate is just around the corner. Yorko Ono is equal point of fascination here. Indeed John often looks naive in comparison. But their idealism and commitment remains inspiring and the concert synthesizes much of what is best about their union.

Not just an enormously moving historical portrait but a freshly relevant and cathartic one.

Bilge Eberi, New York magazine

Film-maker Kevin Macdonald has created a fever dream of pop culture: a TV-clip collage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s time in New York in the early 70s, as they led the countercultural protest.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Lennon and sometimes Ono are exhilaratingly present in “One to One: John & Yoko,” a documentary flooded with music and feeling that revisits a narrow if eventful period in the couple’s life.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times