Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
"The early films have seldom had the scenic thrill of the Italian outdoors. But happily Brian De Palma was here to bless, and be blessed by, a tribute documentary: Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma. Wow! What other word is there for being avalanched by De Palma imagery for two hours? The bearded, darkly twinkling director talks to the camera — great stories, great thoughts on art, life and cinema — between movie clips so resplendent they run everything else at Venice ragged. Carrie, Dressed to Kill, The Untouchables, Scarface. De Palma did action painting on a movie screen. His images should hang on museum walls. He is, or was, the Jackson Pollock of high-drive narrative cinema."

Alonso Duralde, The Wrap
"I found myself wishing that De Palma was twice as long; the movie does touch upon his entire filmography — including obscurities like Get to Know Your Rabbit and Home Movies, as well as the video for Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark — but I would have loved to have heard as much detail about, say, Femme Fatale as there is about Carlito’s Way. You don’t have to love De Palma’s movies to find De Palma a fascinating look at a vital period of American film history, through the eyes of a controversial artist."

Peter Debruge reviews Our Brand Is Crisis for Variety
"In Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s new Brian De Palma documentary, the director tells a story about how Columbia exec Dawn Steel flew to the set in Thailand, took one look and caught the next plane home. That’s the sort of character [Sandra] Bullock seems to be channeling here: She wields the power, but is also susceptible to the elements, hit with altitude sickness and forced to drag around an oxygen tank from the moment she lands in Bolivia."

John Bleasdale, Cine Vue
"Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's unpretentious documentary De Palma (2015) reveals a clear-sighted and fascinating director, who often seems as bemused by the vagaries and inconsistencies in his own career as everyone else. Brian De Palma was initially seen as the most talented of the Young Turks who came to prominence in the seventies. Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg all deferred to him and his fierce intelligence. However, De Palma was to be left struggling in their wake as they all went on to accrue massive commercial and critical success while his own career, despite the occasional peak, suffered from troughs of ever-deeper despond.

"The directors eschew the conventional prologue to such 'Extended Features' fare that would involve a chorus of praise from De Palma's peers, perhaps to forestall those obvious comparisons. It's consistent with his no-frills approach, which has De Palma sitting down for presumably a day-long conversation about his career, interspersed with a little archive footage and clips from his films. De Palma talks about his financially comfortable if emotionally-stunted childhood. He was the son of a famous surgeon who had little time for his children and cheated on his wife. The latter caused the young De Palma to spy on his father and the attraction and guilt of voyeurism seems to have been imprinted."