Velvet Goldmine

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

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.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

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.

Austin Chronicle Russell Smith

In terms of sheer, unrelenting visual invention, Velvet Goldmine is a wonder.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

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

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's a shimmering, thorny, and consummately self-aware valentine to a paradise, however illusory, lost.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

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

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The music and camera work are dazzling, and the story has solid sociological insights into a fascinating pop-culture period.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Weighed down with self-important messages, but it's also splashily opulent.

Washington Post Richard Harrington

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."

Newsweek David Ansen

A brainy three-ring circus.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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

Slate David Edelstein

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.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

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.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The movie is dramatically limp, running out of narrative steam long before the set decorator runs out of colours.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

After a most promising beginning, Velvet Goldmine's progress grows increasingly labored, stumbling around the structural roadblocks Haynes has erected in its path.

Film Threat Ron Wells

Now the big question: Does this whole thing actually work? Some of the time.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

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.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

One can admire it, but it's hard to get caught up in it.

San Francisco Examiner Craig Marine

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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It wants to be a movie in search of a truth, but it's more like a movie in search of itself.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Quite an achievement: the American director Todd Haynes revisits the world of London glam rock and manages to make it look dull.

Empire Neil Jeffries

On paper, fine; on celluloid, a Rocky Horror Show of nightmarish proportions.