Cinema Eye Nominees: Audience picks for the best non-fiction feature films from the past year.
The definitive documentary about Nirvana’s magnetic and iconic frontman, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck is a wicked-sounding and totally immersive portrait of a caustic poet who used pain as fuel for his expression. Better than biography, this film makes him alive again by re-animating his creative spirit through his own words and image. Comprised of Cobain’s own art, music, journals, Super 8 films and audio montages, his lasting influence on culture, music and the tastes of a generation are on full display in this astounding opus. Cobain never had idle hands, he kept busy—playing guitar, painting, drawing, doodling—and kept his mind even busier. He played with blood, bile and complete contempt for "stardumb"—a singular artist with a genius for contradictions in his lyrics and his life. Ambitious and apathetic, fierce and fearful. It really is all there in the music: the whole story, the meat and the man. Just listen. Angie Driscoll