Film
Val
Val is less a biography than a scrapbook: forty years of Val Kilmer's own home movies, sifted by his son into one of the strangest, funniest, saddest star-portraits ever made. It's frank about the vanity and wreckage of fame, and about the throat cancer that took his voice. Watch it for the man behind Iceman and Doc Holliday, not the man you thought you knew.
If you liked this
Listen to Me Marlon2015
Brando's own audio diaries assembled into a ghostly self-portrait, the direct ancestor of what Kilmer does with video - an actor becoming his own archivist and confessor.
But No new interviews, no outside voices - if you want context or judgement, this film refuses to give it.

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond2017
Jim Carrey's own making-of footage from Man on the Moon, decades later, showing how far an actor can vanish into a role and what it costs to come back.
But Carrey's philosophising can feel indulgent, and it's more about one film than a whole career.

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind2018
A generous, clip-heavy portrait of another beloved, complicated performer whose public joy masked private struggle - warm, funny, and eventually devastating.
But Fairly conventional talking-heads structure, lacking the raw first-person texture that makes Val distinctive.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Dick Johnson Is Dead2020
Both are self-documentary projects where the camera becomes a way to face illness and mortality head-on rather than look away - Kilmer with his own throat cancer, Johnson with her father's decline.
A filmmaker stages her own father's death, again and again, before it happens, using the camera as a way to hold onto him - one of the most moving films about mortality and the making of art ever put on screen.
But It's about death, plainly and directly, with none of the movie-star gossip or humour that makes Val easy company.

More like this (8)
Cobain: Montage of Heck2015
Built from the subject's own diaries, art and home tapes, this is grunge's answer to Val's confessional method - intimate to the point of discomfort.
But Cobain's story ends where you know it will, and the film doesn't flinch from that darkness.

Amy2015
Amy Winehouse's rise and collapse told almost entirely through phone footage and answerphone messages, a masterclass in letting the archive do the talking.
But There's no relief in this one - it's a tragedy from the first frame, with none of Kilmer's dry humour to leaven it.

Life Itself2014
Roger Ebert filmed his own decline with the same unsentimental curiosity he brought to criticism, turning illness into one last great subject.
But It's frank about physical suffering in ways some viewers will find hard to sit with.

TINA2021no page yet
Tina Turner, in her own words at last, reclaiming a story the press told for her for decades - triumphant where Kilmer's film is more ambivalent.
But Polished and authorised, it's a tidier piece of storytelling than Val's scrappy home-movie chaos.
David Lynch: The Art Life2017no page yet
Lynch narrating his own childhood and early years over his own paintings and photographs, another artist explaining himself entirely on his own terms.
But Glacially paced and short on incident - it's mood and memory, not a career overview.
The Last Movie Star2018no page yet
Burt Reynolds, playing a version of himself, confronts old clips of his own younger face at a fan convention - fiction doing what Val does with footage.
But It's a much smaller, sappier film, and the fictional frame softens what Kilmer's documentary leaves raw.
Sunset Boulevard1950
Kilmer literally screens his own past glories to a dwindling audience at fan conventions; Sunset Boulevard invented that image of the star haunted by her own footage, decades before home video made it possible for real.
The original story of a Hollywood face the industry outgrew - Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond watching her own old films is the blueprint for every faded-star story since, including Kilmer's.
But It's melodrama, not documentary - stylised and theatrical, seven decades old in its manners as well as its film stock.

Grizzly Man2005
Like Val, it's a life narrated back to us almost entirely through the subject's own camera - one man's self-mythology handed to another filmmaker to shape into something like truth.
Werner Herzog builds a portrait entirely from a dead man's own obsessive self-filming, turning amateur footage into a meditation on ego, nature, and the stories we tell about ourselves.
But It's grimmer and stranger than a star biography, with a real death at its centre that Herzog doesn't soften.

People
Cast
Val KilmerSelf
Jack KilmerSelf / Narrator
Mercedes KilmerSelf
Joanne WhalleySelf
Kevin BaconSelf (archive)
Fairuza BalkSelf (archive)
Marlon BrandoSelf (archive)
Nicolas CageSelf (archive)
Jim CarreySelf (archive)
CherSelf (archive)
Tom CruiseSelf (archive)- Nelson de la RosaSelf (archive)
Production
- Tiffany SoliahAccountant
- Zachary WileyAccountant
- Britnee ForrestAccounting Supervisor
- Emilee SmithAdministration
- Alex VelascoAssociate Producer
- Jack KilmerAssociate Producer
- Lauren BleiweissAssociate Producer
- Mercedes KilmerAssociate Producer
- Emily OsborneCo-Executive Producer
- Sarba DasCo-Executive Producer
- Christopher NovielloCo-Producer
- Suzanne GreenfieldCo-Producer
- Chris BowyerCoordinating Producer
- Mary MoranDirector of Operations
- Ben CotnerExecutive Producer
- Lauren BleiweissExecutive Producer
- Lauren CascioExecutive Producer
- Scott FriskeExecutive Producer
- Thatcher PetersonExecutive Producer
- Bruce BrentlingerLine Producer
- Rebecca AltenhofenLine Producer
- Ali AlborziProducer
- Andrew FriedProducer
- Brad KoepenickProducer
- Dane LillegardProducer
- Dustin LaForceProducer
- Jenny BrightProducer
- Jordan WynnProducer
- Leo ScottProducer
- Ting PooProducer
- Val KilmerProducer
- Allison KeoghProduction Assistant
- Dante DiBelloProduction Assistant
- Hazel BryanProduction Assistant
- Natalie MorrelProduction Assistant
- Hazel BryanProduction Coordinator
- Kim KookendofferProduction Coordinator
- Emily OsborneProduction Manager
- Julie HookProduction Manager
- Sara Lynn KrupnickProduction Supervisor
Recommended by
Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Amy, Listen to Me Marlon, Cobain: Montage of Heck, Deadpool & Wolverine, Nature Boy, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, Life Itself, The Movies That Made Us