This is a hard movie to watch if you know what's going on. I knew of the tragedy and was glued to the screen from minute one, as it shows how Nick Cave, his family and his friends react to one of life's most difficult moments. It is a harrowing, depressing and emotional ride. But you have to know what's going on. My companion didn't and she had a totally different experience, especially in the first half, where it just seemed a boring aimless mess of a movie. And this is the film's fault as it doesn't contextualize anything and assumes you know what's going on. So for me and for Cave fans this is a must, but be warned, if you are not familiar with the man's tragedy it will be a dull, confusing and self indulgent experience.

I wouldn't call myself a Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds fanboy, more like a passer-by who appreciates what he has heard of their works especially Cave and Warren Ellis's works providing film scores over recent years, so perhaps One More Time with Feeling doesn't mean as much to me as it would to long serving fans that have been with the band since their inception.

This music documentary that centres almost entirely around Cave in the recording studio working on the Skeleton Tree album is directed by Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik and the Chopper and Assassination of Jesse James overcomes the disappointing reception of his last feature film Killing Them Softly to deliver a beautifully captured documentation of the album making process that also happens to touch upon the tragic loss of Cave's son Arthur that turned his world upside down.

There's nothing typical about Cave the musician and Cave the human and Dominik's film follows the mantra to a tee with Cave allowed to provide rambling voice overs and deep life pondering monologues on camera to fill in blanks but it would've been more effective for a watcher like myself had Dominik and Cave himself toned down the ponderous to instead talk more to the everyman as much of the diatribe or deep musings end up becoming a little too much to bare.

One thing that never gets hard to bare however is Dominik's directing style (unfortunately the version of the film I watched wasn't in the intended 3-D format) and the filmmaker uses his cinematic senses to great effect as the camera invades and wanders the recording studio. There is also little denying the power of some of Cave and his bands work here with members like the majestical Warren Ellis combining with Cave to deliver some heart-wrenching and soul searching songs born out of unimaginable loss and if nothing else, these musical moments make One More Time with Feeling worth the price of admission.

Final Say –

An absolute must for fans of Cave and his music, this anything but a by the numbers music doco is an intimate look into the bands creative sensibilities and a sometimes touching portrait of a man touched by grief. If however there was a little less airplay given to various and overlong ramblings, One More Time with Feeling would've been a film for everyone, not just those willing to nod in approval to every little word Cave speaks.

3 forgotten piano chords out of 5

Don't get me wrong I was willing, urging this film to be magnificent. But will as I did, it isn't.

In fact it's like the ultimate home movie utilising the finest cinematographers money can buy (Benoit Debie and Alwin H Kuchler - I suspect one was on 2D duty, one on 3D - I saw it in 2D).

The back story is important here. The documentary was commissioned to film the making of Cave's brilliant new album, Skeleton Tree, (I know it's brilliant because it was played in full on its release 11 hours ago on the BBC 6 Music Mary Anne Hobbs Show). What nobody predicted was that it would become a film about grief because, as I understand the timing, no sooner had filming started than Cave's 15 year old son, Arthur, died in a climbing accident. The chronology of this is not clear in the film's narrative.

When I read of Arthur's death I was devastated for Nick Cave (I truly love the man) and so I expected the film to be an emotional roller coaster.

It isn't.

Instead what we get is a strung out self indulgence piece. And I don't mean Nick Cave's self indulgence, I mean Andrew Dominik's. (Director of Cave-soundtracked, and awesome, movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.)

It is sumptuously photographed and of course the music is stellar but the glue that binds it, the storyline, is fragmented, dull and seemingly endless. OK, I accept Cave is a private man and he doesn't want to spill his grief out on camera, his wife too, but when he describes breaking down in the arms of a virtual stranger on the High Street in Brighton we get a glimpse of what he is going through.

But that's it.

My companion fell asleep several times. Thanks partly to the heat in The Filmhouse, Edinburgh where we saw this. Extremely uncomfortable. Did they not know they had a sell out audience?

I don't like being negative about a film of this nature but if Dominik had an Executive Producer with a firmer hand we might have seen a more pared down and rewarding experience.

If you want to see Nick Cave at his very best on film watch the far superior 20,000 Days on Earth, directed by Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth. It's magnificent.