The Velvet Underground
Apple TV+ | Release Date: October 15, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Wall Street JournalMark RichardsonOct 14, 2021
The Velvet Underground is a beautifully poetic meditation on the emotional and cultural power of rock and the allure of making a life in art. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 14, 2021
As a documentary, it’s wonderfully informative. It’s also a jagged and powerful work of art in its own right, one that turns archaeology into prophecy. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleOct 14, 2021
The spiritual truth of Haynes’ spellbinding The Velvet Underground is that ultimately it’s about the thing that can’t be described, that defies parsing when gifted outcasts make great art — it’s to be experienced. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzOct 13, 2021
This is a dazzling film—not just one of Haynes' best, but possibly the one that his whole career, with all of its self-aware formal and historical experiments, has been building toward. Read full review
100
Time OutChris WaywellSep 30, 2021
If you already love the Velvet Underground, this is two hours of visual and aural bliss. If you don’t, same. Read full review
100
ObserverStephen GarrettJul 13, 2021
A sonic-boom look at a seismic band, The Velvet Underground dissects one of the most influential 1960s musical acts with dizzying visual flair and a structural academic rigor refracted through a showman’s prism. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJul 12, 2021
Making ingenious use of split-screen, experimental montage and densely layered images and sound over two fabulously entertaining hours, Haynes puts his distinctive stamp on the material while crafting a work that could almost have come from the same artistic explosion it celebrates. Read full review
100
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJul 12, 2021
The VU feels like it’s told from the perspective of the band members and is always veering far away from talking-head doc standards. Read full review
94
TheWrapSteve PondJul 12, 2021
It’s a dark, disturbing and glorious film about a dark, disturbing and glorious band, and another sign that Haynes knows how to put music onscreen in a way that few other directors do. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubVikram MurthiOct 13, 2021
Haynes simply uses the tools at his disposal to get the job done. Ultimately, he captures the inspiring spirit of The Velvet Underground, a band built on the principle that marching to the beat of your own drum is a righteous, rebellious artistic act. Read full review
90
SlateCarl WilsonOct 18, 2021
Even viewed on a small screen at home, I found it rapturous. I can only imagine what it’s like in a theater. All of which makes it exactly the kind of documentary that fulfills Eno’s dictum, the sort that after you encounter it, makes you want to go out and create art yourself. Read full review
90
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganJul 12, 2021
In short, The Velvet Underground is a documentary that meets the Velvet Underground eye-to-eye and enriches it. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleTim StegallOct 14, 2021
The Velvet Underground is exactly the movie the Velvet Underground deserves. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePat BrownJul 9, 2021
Todd Haynes’s documentary excitingly captures an era’s explosion of creativity, one that bespoke new and challenging kinds of freedom. Read full review
83
Original-CinKim HughesOct 15, 2021
It may not be quite as thrilling as Edgar Wright’s brilliant The Sparks Brothers, which had the benefit of two still-living, sharp-as-tacks protagonists to interview, but it’s a must-see for fans and a highly interesting two hours for music junkies. Read full review
83
The Film StageLuke HicksJul 20, 2021
It isn’t the most entertaining version of a Velvet Underground documentary, but it’s the truest to the group. Haynes hones in on character and new elements they brought to the table which, like elements of modern art, are best captured through philosophies and conceptual understanding, as they are here. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJul 12, 2021
At its best, Haynes’ film is neither a dry accounting of who the Velvets were nor a heady evocation of their work; it’s a movie about the fires these people set inside each other and how they spread to anyone else who was burning and gave them the same permission to push back against expectations. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Simran HansOct 16, 2021
A more conventional director might have chosen to focus on their most famous member, Reed, but Haynes smartly structures the film as a group show, giving space to the women in the ensemble. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerOct 15, 2021
The Verdict Underground is hypnotic but clear-eyed, finding a different way to put a musical biography on film. And for all its radical formalism, it never forgets to be entertaining. Read full review
80
Little White LiesMichael LeaderOct 14, 2021
As with both Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, Haynes finds an enthralling middle ground between hero worship and ambivalence. There’s no thrill, no intrigue in hagiography. It’s the music, and where it takes you, what it opens up for you, that’s the thing. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJul 12, 2021
The Velvet Underground is not the kind of music documentary that dutifully walks the viewer through the greatest hits and bitterest feuds. Instead, it re-conjures the moment that made the hits possible and the feuds inevitable, via a whirl of archive footage and interviews new and old. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanJul 12, 2021
As a collage of the period, The Velvet Underground is dazzling: a hypnotic act of high-wire montage. You can tell that Haynes wants to take us as close to this band as possible, and if that means his entire documentary is going to have to be a kind of poetic sleight-of-hand trick, then so be it. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawJul 12, 2021
This is a great documentary about people who are serious about music and serious also about art, and what it means to live as an artist. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleJoel SelvinOct 18, 2021
Over the years, the Velvets’ slim but potent catalog has been elevated into the pantheon of classic rock, but only now Haynes has appropriately enshrined their deeds in a rock documentary as dark, dizzying and decadent as the band itself. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyOct 14, 2021
What makes a rock band worth attending to a half century after its breakup isn’t its personalities or backstory or context, interesting as those can be, and here they’re all highly interesting. It’s the music. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckOct 13, 2021
Whatever your level of familiarity, Haynes’ doc — the first for this accomplished director — is so stylistically compelling, it doesn’t really matter what you knew coming in. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 12, 2021
There’s not enough of the music . . . . Immersive and informative as it is, that keeps “The Velvet Underground” from being definitive. And that in turn lets it fall short of making its case, backed up by musicians and music critics, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, of their seminal status. Read full review
75
ConsequenceJesse HassengerOct 1, 2021
Todd Haynes obviously loves rock and roll, which makes it all the more impressive that he’s spent his career making movies about key figures in its history while avoiding the usual lionizing cliches. Read full review
70
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaOct 24, 2021
Torn between the avant-garde and the traditional, Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground is an intentionally fragmented documentary that’s less about facts, and more about the feeling of being alive in a specific time and place. While more accessible to those in the know, it’s still hypnotic enough to be inviting. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsOct 15, 2021
The movie makes you wish you were there. Lights darkened, dots and rays and Reed flickering before us, we nearly are. Read full review
70
Paste MagazineBrianna ZiglerOct 1, 2021
The Velvet Underground will leave one less acquainted with the band with an incomplete picture in mind, but it’s unfair to say that the film is only for true enthusiasts. Instead, Haynes is interested in capturing a mood: A feeling of creative interconnectedness, of change, innovation and of a revolving door of people and art that will never again be replicated. Read full review
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