Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
Koch ends with the former mayor showing off a typically flamboyant gesture that embodies his contradictions - choosing to be buried in a Christian cemetery in his beloved Manhattan, complete with an already erected tombstone proclaiming his Jewish identity. Read full review
As a politico, Ed Koch loved power a little too much. But as a leader, he was a storybook embodiment of New York's contradictions, which is why his chapters in the city's saga loom so large. Read full review
Koch the film makes the point without belaboring it — a mayor and a metropolis linked by tumultuous events in the worst and best of times. Read full review
The film reminds us that as amusing as he could be, he wasn’t the dazzling wit history packaged him as. “Relevant” is how he wanted to be remembered. And before he died, he got a filmmaker to remind us of exactly that. Read full review
Neil Barsky's documentary Koch captures the essence of this very big personality - though if the film were even two minutes longer, it might constitute Koch overload. Luckily, Barsky knows when enough is enough, even if his subject doesn't. Read full review
The documentary nicely mixes vintage news footage and photographs, talking-head interviews with journalists and Koch associates, and lots (and lots) of Koch. Read full review
Barsky’s film is light on biographical detail before Koch’s first term began, in 1978. That’s probably fitting. Koch obviously lived for the job. Read full review
Neil Barsky is aware of how a great and terribly troubling person can reside in the same body, but his occasional eagerness to appoint himself as his subject's latest press agent is dubious. Read full review
The politician who almost pathologically asked the question "How'm I doin'?" clearly never needed a view outside his own. Which is as New York as it gets. Read full review
The result is neither blind idolatry nor a definitive portrait; just a major missed opportunity content to loiter in the middle of the road. Read full review