[5] The Telegraph headlined the series' initial broadcast in September 2011 as the "cinematic event of the year", describing it as "visually ensnaring and intellectually lithe, it’s at once a love letter to cinema, an unmissable masterclass, and a radical rewriting of movie history.

[7] The programme won a Peabody Award in 2013 "for its inclusive, uniquely annotated survey of world cinema history.

Contrasting the project with its "important precursor (and also, perhaps, an implicit interlocutor)", Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma, Scott commended Cousins' film as "the place from which all future revisionism must start".

[12] Shawn Levy, writing for The Oregonian, compared it to "a tour through a museum with a deeply passionate and engaging guide.

"[12] Mark Feeny, in The Boston Globe, described it as "wildly ambitious, often extremely good, occasionally maddening, and always stimulating.

[16] Writing for Film Comment, Jonathan Rosenbaum was specifically critical of Cousins' view of experimental film, stating "Cousins has a weakness for overwrought yard sales, as his unswerving devotion to Baz Luhrmann, Christopher Nolan, and Lars von Trier repeatedly demonstrates — as well as an obvious lack of ease and fluency when it comes to experimental filmmaking in general, a discomfort that someone like (Matthew) Barney banks on by providing a “digestible” mainstream alternative, rather as Nolan’s Memento provides an unthreatening crossword-puzzle version of the early features of Alain Resnais.