It does very little good to talk about Billy the Kid - to parse its beautiful, humane portrait of an amazing young man with asperger’s syndrome, to dissect its ethically sound approach toward collaboration as a means of minimizing the exploitative effects of the documentarian’s lens (suffice it to say it approaches the same territory as Goodbye CP and How’s Your News - if these titles mean anything to you, then you’re probably already on line to see this film). Jennifer Venditti’s loving tribute to Billy Price, a brave kid who’s “always at war with” himself, might be, in a year filled with noteworthy contributions to documentary form (Zoo, Manda Bala, Into Great Silence, Sicko (the most elegant and incisive of Michael Moore’s essay-films)), the single most compelling and most engrossing. To say too much would be unfair to the delicate artistry of Venditti’s film.

I saw it on Friday and it’s still with me completely. A miraculous film and an absolute 100% make-or-break must-see. Films like this don’t come out very often, and I implore you to see it if you get the chance.

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Oh, and for those who have seen it, here’s that Kiss song.

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