Critic Reviews

The Bogarin siblings use many methods of storytelling to tell us the tale of their family, creating an atmosphere in 306 Hollywood that is Errol Morris-meets-Wes Andersen. It’s a beautiful documentary filled with magical realism and most importantly the heart and soul of their grandmother.

306 Hollywood is a personal essay! It's a tone poem! It's a biographical collage! It's an embrace of the banal kitschy! It's magic realism! It's such a little story you may wonder why it's being told at all, except that it's a story likely to touch anybody who has ever lost a loved one, which makes it a very big story.

The siblings address their family through a Wes Anderson lens, with a tone so playful and visually poetic that it drops into surrealism. It feels like a fresh new approach to an old genre — a willingness to not just embrace the subjectivity of family documentaries, but to charge into it full-bore.

Despite its tendency to lean upon self-serious reimaginings, it is nonetheless an engaging and tenderly drawn film that is likely to resonate with anyone who has had to do the tireless work of sorting through an estate of a family member.

Elan and Jonathan Bogarín's film blends various tones and visual styles with confidence and infectious exuberance.

306 Hollywood is best when it gets either very scientifically dry, or reaches beyond its liminal cuteness into ambitious visual poetry.

The result feels like an experiment to determine whether sheer creativity can transform the mundane into the magical, and qualifies as a partial success. If nothing else, you have to concede that they tried.

When it works, the movie strongly evokes the feeling of sorting through a loved one’s possessions after their death.

Far from feeling like a eulogy, the tone of 306 Hollywood is magnificently playful.

A family portrait that plunges into what will strike many viewers as T.M.I. territory, the documentary 306 Hollywood makes for morbid, at times insufferable viewing. But its solipsism is part of its message.