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Velvet Goldmine
Metascore
65 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 25 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 25
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 25
  3. Negative: 2 out of 25
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  1. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    90
    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.
  2. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Elvis Mitchell
    90
    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.
  3. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Russell Smith
    89
    In terms of sheer, unrelenting visual invention, Velvet Goldmine is a wonder.
  4. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    83
    Velvet Goldmine is no masterpiece, but, at its best, it's a ravishing rock dream.
  5. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    80
    It's a shimmering, thorny, and consummately self-aware valentine to a paradise, however illusory, lost.
  6. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    75
    The plot only slows a film that works best as a feast of sight and sound.
  7. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    75
    The music and camera work are dazzling, and the story has solid sociological insights into a fascinating pop-culture period.
  8. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    70
    Weighed down with self-important messages, but it's also splashily opulent.
  9. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    70
    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.
  10. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    70
    A brainy three-ring circus.
  11. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    70
    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.
  12. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    70
    A constantly imaginative, stylistically lively but dramatically inert chronicle of cultural and sexual rebellion.
  13. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Richard Harrington
    70
    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."
  14. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    70
    Conceptual to a fault, writer-director Todd Haynes (Poison, Safe) realizes one of his oldest and most cherished projects -- a celebration of the glam-rock era and the bisexuality it turned into an opulent circus -- with wit, glitter, and energy, but with such a scant sense of character or period that it leaves one feeling relatively empty as soon as it's over.
  15. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    63
    The movie is dramatically limp, running out of narrative steam long before the set decorator runs out of colours.
  16. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Ron Wells
    60
    Now the big question: Does this whole thing actually work? Some of the time.
  17. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ernest Hardy
    60
    Writer-director Todd Haynes (Safe, Poison) still makes movies like a first-time filmmaker afraid he won't get another chance; he crams every idea, every image ever dreamed, onscreen.
  18. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    60
    After a most promising beginning, Velvet Goldmine's progress grows increasingly labored, stumbling around the structural roadblocks Haynes has erected in its path.
  19. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    60
    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.
  20. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    50
    It wants to be a movie in search of a truth, but it's more like a movie in search of itself.
  21. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    50
    One can admire it, but it's hard to get caught up in it.
  22. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Craig Marine
    50
    On the one hand, you want to praise it for its stylishness and originality in tackling some fascinating subject matter. On the other hand, it's frustrating because it could have been so much better.
  23. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    50
    Director Todd Haynes' (Safe) much-anticipated look at the "glam rock" scene of two decades ago, is like a jigsaw puzzle with half of the pieces missing.
  24. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    30
    Quite an achievement: the American director Todd Haynes revisits the world of London glam rock and manages to make it look dull.
  25. Empire
    Reviewed by: Neil Jeffries
    20
    On paper, fine; on celluloid, a Rocky Horror Show of nightmarish proportions.
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