80
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Brad Wheeler
Tender, topical and well-crafted, No Ordinary Man is no ordinary film.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
RogerEbert.com by Carlos Aguilar
Co-directors Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt exalt the professional and personal life of Jazz musician Billy Tipton in No Ordinary Man, and avoid simplification of the trans masculine experience.
80
A fascinating deconstruction of history, culture, and identity, No Ordinary Man raises so many crucial questions — and answers them so thoughtfully — that it moves beyond entertainment into the realm of essential text. It belongs, equally, in theaters, streaming queues, and classrooms.
25
San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson
There’s one big problem about No Ordinary Man: The Billy Tipton Documentary: It’s not really about Billy Tipton. Instead, it’s about how transgender representation is perceived in the media, chiefly between 1989, when Tipton died, and current times.
80
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
This is a compelling, often profound film, one that creatively surmounts its inherent limitations and shines a vital and heartfelt light on being transgender.
83
No Ordinary Man is ultimately a melancholy look at how far things have or have not come for trans people since Billy Tipton’s death.
80
The New Yorker by Richard Brody
No Ordinary Man challenges the very basis of cultural production, eschewing the familiar accumulation of biographical and historical information and instead questioning the process by which such information is gathered.
70
The New York Times by Teo Bugbee
This is a respectful tribute that is a shade too morally and cinematically safe in its execution.