Valued assistant or obsequious stooge? Tony Zierra’s documentary answers the question. On the surface, Leon Vitale was to Stanley Kubrick what Jilly Rizzo was to Frank Sinatra: a camp-following aide-de-camp, always eager to empty the boss’s ashtrays or gratefully accept another twenty lashes from his master’s flailing tongue. (According to Vitale, the proper approach is to not absorb to abuse, but to simply wait patiently for the outburst to end.) It had long been Vitale’s dream to work for the famously exacting director, and when the call came, he didn’t hesitate to abandon a promising career in front of the camera to play the real-life role of the Kubrick’s human chopping block/gofer/archivist/what-have-you. But after a 30-year working relationship with the maverick maestro, Vitale proved that he wasn’t just preparing to serve as a corporate spokesman for the Kubrick archives. Turns out, he paid attention: next time you watch a Kubruck movie, take note of the high-contrast black and white, or of how consistent the colors have remained over the decades. Thanks, Mr. Vitale! (2017) — Scott Marks