Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman Reviews

Shulman's still photographs are essential to any study of the style's vast popularization and commercialism.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

Eric Bricker's documentary celebration of America's most renowned architectural photographer is effusive in its praise, tame in its public-television-style execution.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Although Shulman died after Visual Acoustics was completed, this stylish film reminds us that great images endure after bodies and buildings crumble.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Eric Bricker's glowing portrait of Shulman uses its subject's photos to persuade the viewer that one picture is worth a thousand architectural masterworks.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Architectural photographer Julius Shulman was a pivotal figure in US popular culture. He's the one who taught Americans to love modernism.

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Bricker doesn't have much filmic pizazz, but Shulman's photos encompass the entire history of modernist architecture.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

The Shulman we see is a man of sharp humor, with an ego to match some of the architects he worked for. He's been slowed down by time, but relishes all the attention lavished on him as a living master.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Visual Acoustics is nominally about the life and career of landmark Southern California architectural photographer Julius Shulman, but it's more about the buildings he photographed than it is about him. Which is probably the way he'd like it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

Shulman is such an interesting character due to the influence he wielded in Modern architecture's ability to flourish in America that all the gushy conversations with architects and academics actually seem merited.

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A thoroughly compelling, well-edited and illuminating documentary that rarely has a dull moment.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.25/10

"Visual Acoustics" offers a history lesson, biopic, and visually harmonic essay via Julius Shulman's gifted focus.

Full Review | Original Score: B

Architecture aficionados, and design mavens in general, will have an agreeable time with Visual Acoustics.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Schulman's passion to be present in the here and now and "stop time" with his photographs is indicative of a mortal who has channeled the powers that be to make something that wasn't there before: Art in its greatest sense.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Visual Acoustics goes out of its way to remain as kindly and pleasing as Shulman himself.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Just about everyone in Eric Bricker's festschrift seems to love Julius Shulman, including (adorably) the unstoppable old gent himself. What's not to like?

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Gives a convincing, contagious taste of its protagonist's playful optimism.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Precise as a blueprint, the film convinces you of Shulman's worth (and, by extension, of the architects he helped immortalize) without imparting the passion the filmmakers so obviously feel. It's functional, but it could have used a little more form.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4