I saw it when it was on Netflix and thought it was terrific. It had a great global scope and didn’t just focus on the huge hits everyone knows. One teeny caveat though: you know the old saw about how people appreciate journalism until they see a story they know about because it’s about their industry or they witnessed the event – and then all they can think about is how the journalist got the details wrong, therefore implying that the journalist (and therefore maybe all journalists everywhere) sucks at journalism? Well, I’m not endorsing that point of view but I will say that when The Story of Film rolls around to the '90s indie movie movement, I started rolling my eyes at how much he was talking about goddamned Gus Van Sant. It made me wonder if his previous episodes might be putting too much weight on all the previous film luminaries he was championing.
There’s a Brian Doan who wrote a kind of pissy takedown of it on the Roger Ebert site that I think is also something to consider while watching it: