Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound review – why Top Gun roared

The maestros of film sound reveal the secrets of their challenging job with great frankness and amazing modesty

Here is a valuable and deeply felt documentary, celebrating the work of the sound designers, sound editors and Foley wizards in the cinema, and if it feels like a feelgood in-house promotional video for Hollywood technicians " well, they've got an awful lot to feel good about.

These are the people who create that world of sound, that palimpsest of exquisitely blended noise layers, which is perhaps the thing least consciously comprehended by the movie audience but which is indispensable for fabricating a total world in which a film can live and breathe. It requires an artistry and a delicacy, as well as resourcefulness and make-do-and-mend ingenuity that reaches back to the cinema's beginnings.