Velvet Goldmine Critic Reviews

There are moments when Velvet Goldmine threatens to collapse under the weight of writer/director Todd Haynes' (Poison, Safe) ambition. But, sometimes amazingly, it doesn't, becoming in the process one of the year's freshest, most exciting films.Read the full review

Brilliantly reimagines the glam-rock 70's as a brave new world of electrifying theatricality and sexual possibility, to the point where identifying precise figures in this neo-psychedelic landscape is almost beside the point.Read the full review

Velvet Goldmine is no masterpiece, but, at its best, it's a ravishing rock dream.Read the full review

The plot only slows a film that works best as a feast of sight and sound.Read the full review

Dazzling and dizzying, confusing and even annoying, Velvet Goldmine is a feverish dream of a film, a riot of color and attitude that is all pop decadence, all night long.Read the full review

A constantly imaginative, stylistically lively but dramatically inert chronicle of cultural and sexual rebellion.Read the full review

Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please.Read the full review

The film is a visually beautiful but clumsily plotted mishmash of "Citizen Kane," "Eddie and the Cruisers" and England's last overblown movie musical, "Absolute Beginners." Read the full review

In trying to compose a poetic love letter to a time of liberation and freedom, Haynes has merely conjured up memories of druggy excess, egotism and tight trousers. The only mementos worth saving from the experience are available on the soundtrack.Read the full review