LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THIS TRULY TRANSCENDENT FILM!

Sometimes those that display the most life are the ones in most need of help to preserve it...It's an intensely painful documentary, one closer to the center of a raw, thoroughly unhealed, and yet very public, wound than I think I've ever seen before...Bourdain didn't seek fame, fame found him and he viewed it as a required semi-evil component in the success of his mission. He was the genuine article; a man who inspired millions of people to stretch beyond their comfort zones and take chances...Everyone who loved the man grapples with their grief and anger, trying to wrest some meaning from the void that suicide leaves behind, and only memories remain. It is beyond bittersweet...Morgan Neville delves into Bourdain's suicide in this absorbing, perceptive, empathetic documentary...Bourdain may be gone, but Roadrunner stands as a grand testament to who he was and how he continues to live on through those who keep his open-minded sensibilities close to their heart...The movie's emotional currency and unabashed passion helps it transcend its somewhat basic architecture. It's a messy affair, but then again so was Bourdain...Throughout Roadrunner, there is much to admire. It presents a complex portrait of a tortured man full of admirable contradiction. The film also offers a powerful survey of grief that combines with its celebration of Bourdain's life...Serving up a complicated look at an equally complicated man, the film is a lot like having an intense cry. It's mentally exhausting and painful, but your soul will feel cleansed by the end...A moving documentary about the relentless spirit of adventure of an individual in search of love and happiness... a magnificent, heart rending, and vital film. ROADRUNNER is every bit as truthful and dangerous as its subject...Roadrunner shakes out not as a biography so much as an inquiry into grief...We are given an up-close and personal look at his family life, including his only child, a daughter, Ariane...Director Morgan Neville structures this piece with the same searching spirit that drove his subject, celebrating his feats, while unafraid of looking at painful truths...Thankfully, Roadrunner isn't a hagiography. It's not attempting to make the man a saint. Rather, it's well aware of his demons and it wants to wrestle with them...A touching, often darkly funny documentary. ...A meditation on the price of fame, through a celebrity's emotional death. If you loved him, you'll understand him more. Don't know him? There are lessons in his life & death...As with the man, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is tangled, complex...The film's well-rounded approach is both a tribute and a cautionary tale exploring fame, love, and fulfillment. It's captivating even for those who know the tragic ending...A fascinating, moving documentary that transcends mere profile piece to reclaim a legacy, and it's as inspirational as its subject... "Roadrunner" is a sadly beautiful evocation of Bourdain's "be a traveler, not a tourist" ethos combined with a colorful life story etched in pain and loneliness...Bourdain was a true inspiration, and the sting of his passing still lingers. With Roadrunner, Neville is able to give the icon a send-off that's tear-inducing and loving, a gift to those who will always be inspired by him...In resisting the urge to paint its subject as a saint, Roadrunner gives us something better: a human...The film veers expertly between weirdly entertaining and darkly surreal...He was a tortured soul. Even when he seemed to be enjoying exotic foods while interacting with people of various cultures, this film reveals how difficult and awkward this was for Bourdain and for those who loved and worked with him...Paradoxically, it's a life-affirming saga, a masterpiece about a master whose genius it beautifully elucidates...Neville isn't trying to "solve" Bourdain, and so, in his own way, he proves himself as open to the vast complexities of experience as his subject was...A reminder of the message embodied by its subject: be open, do the things, ask for help if you need it, even if, in the end, he wasn't able to do the last of the three...A documentary that evokes, and makes sense of, the full sweep of Anthony Bourdain's gifts, charms, successive careers, sustaining passions and bedeviling obsessions. A film of fitting energy and complexity, it's a stirring account of an astonishing life...A welcome essay on the importance of slowing down and stirring the risotto, so to speak, and savoring the moments we share with friends...With immense perceptiveness, Neville shows us both the empath and the narcissist: The man who refused to turn the suffering he saw in war zones into a bland televisual package, and the one who would betray longtime colleagues to please a new lover...provides an emotionally raw portrait of a gifted, charismatic man who travelled the world but never quite figured out where he needed to be...Roadrunner isn't just a moving look at a remarkable life, but an important film in the ongoing battle to understand mental illness, and how it doesn't care about who you are, or how much money you make, or how famous you are...What it captures is that feeling of the gearshift sliding into neutral, the point later on when openness and acquiescence bleed into one...Roadrunner celebrates everything about Bourdain and not in a fluffy way, but in an honest way, and in a way that feels like a challenge to all of us to live life to the fullest...Roadrunner is a dense, intimate portrait of a brilliant, troubled man gone too soon. It digs into the essence of who he was and why he was so beloved by everyone close to him. Everyone, that is, save himself...Watching Roadrunner feels like engaging in a kind of collective mourning, a desperate bid to understand a man who meant so much to so many, even if we never met him...Morgan Neville captures the complicated, intense life of a man who was mentally tortured and globally adored with a beautiful cinematic landscape as vast and varied as the subject himself...It's a warts-and-all depiction. It's also funny, heartwarming, and absolutely devastating in its final moments...It's Morgan Neville's impression of Bourdain as a time bomb existing in plain sight that allows Roadrunner to be more than a greatest-hits rundown of the man's life...For those that want to know him, it accurately depicts both his genius and melancholy...Documentarian Morgan Neville's film wipes away the mystique of this towering cultural icon and leaves us to see a man holding on by a thread..."Roadrunner" exists in that troubling paradox. It's the kind of tension Bourdain thrived on: Steeped in bleak implications, "Roadrunner" manages, against all odds, to be a good time...It feels like an essential document, created in the radical no-reservations spirit in which he lived...An intimate and fascinating portrait of the beloved celebrity chef and television globe-trotter. It is also, inevitably, a spiritual investigation into why his life ended...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihEEjwRlghQ