One to One: John & Yoko

Lennon and sometimes Ono are exhilaratingly present in “One to One: John & Yoko,” a documentary flooded with music and feeling that revisits a narrow if eventful period in the couple’s life.

By March 1973, Lennon and Ono would move uptown to the Dakota, and the next chapter would begin, but “One to One” retrieves this chapter from the cultural memory hole and restores it to its proper complicated place.

It’s inspiring and often amusing to watch troubled soul Lennon strive to be his best self while the culture around him freaks out. Ditto for Ono, whose charming humanity dispels endless media fantasies about her.

The result is in every sense a partial portrait, but doesn’t remotely suffer from being so – in fact, its exhortation to viewers to fill in the gaps where possible is one of its central pleasures.

Macdonald and Rice-Edwards immerse in the famous power couple’s lives in NY, but this estate-approved doc struggles to deliver intriguing insight.

A film that somehow manages to avoid cynicism as it details a country in violent transition. There is always room for a post-Beatles doc if it’s this good and this original.

This is an effortlessly absorbing portrait of a megastar dancing to a charged political era.

Previously unseen musical performances are terrific, as are the private moments, and the film is equally concerned with the bigger picture of a major shift in global society.

The music is the drawing card, but what seduces you is how the movie penetrates the mythos to capture John and Yoko as down-to-earth people determined to make the world a better place through their activism.

It's a surprisingly intimate film, considering the wider scope of the story...