Gleason

I would normally ignore a film like this at all costs, but I'm glad I didn't in this case. The footage here is completely honest and exceptionally composed.

Truly heartbreaking and honest portrait of such an evil disease -- I just think it should've been a bit shorter to have a more precise, emotionally straightforward and less repetitive impact.

Very moving. Although it involves a different illness, the film reminded me of the film My Life with Michael Keaton which always brings me to tears. And I am not a sentimental person.

He doesn't want to be called a hero, but he is the definition of the word.

Audiences are bound to find Steve Gleason's story affecting, but there's not much to it. A 20-minute long item would have covered it. As a feature-length documentary it's rather underwhelming. The filmmaker adds a sentimental soundtrack, but doesn't really have the vision to expand on the trivial basics of the subject.

Beautifully honest. It's at once funny, insightful, and heartbreaking.

No, *you* cried throughout the entire movie.

Gleason, organized and edited by director Clay Tweel from four years of video diaries often shot by the sports hero himself, is a document -- sometimes shocking, sometimes shockingly funny -- of Steve's life from the time of his diagnosis in 2011 when he was 34. We see everything -- not just the devastating effects on Steve's body and mind but on his marriage to the artist Michel Varisco, who learned around the same time that she was pregnant with their first child.