I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A presumptuous movie that hasn't grown old well. It could have been more bold or daring, but it is just sentimental and nostalgic in a strange way: I got the impression that the movie doesn't fully respect it's characters or their actions, which is not a problem if it creates a feeling of objective distance, but such detachment is broken by the sentimentalism: should we miss glam rock or laugh at it? The movie is about glam rock as a musical and a social movement, as an attitude, but the general tone is closer to an elegy than to a defense without actually being neither.I liked the movie, though, specially Ewan McGregor and the performances by bands highly influenced by glam rock.

This is a fairly entertaining (if rather silly) film that is very loosely based upon David Bowie's career as Ziggy Stardust and his relationships with Iggy Pop, Angie Bowie, etc. Some of the scenes depicted, such as Bowie's performance for the actors from Andy Warhol's Pork, ARE based on true events. The writer, Todd Haynes, incorrectly portrayed other true events: for example, it was probably Lou Reed Haynes was thinking of who received shock treatments to supposedly discourage homosexual behavior; Iggy did NOT, nor did he even HAVE a brother; he is the only child of schoolteacher parents. He DID grow up in a trailer near Detroit, although at the time trailers were more of a novelty, not the symbol of white trash that they are today. Ewan McGregor didn't do much for me trying to portray the Iggy character, Curt Wild (and the Rats? Ha ha ha, there WAS actually a glam band called The Rats but Iggy's band was, of course, The Stooges). Apparently Iggy co-operated at least to an extent with the filmmakers since they used the Stooges' song "T.V. Eye". Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays the part of the Bowie character, Brian Slade, does a terrible job singing it; the New York Dolls "Personality Crisis" is also butchered. David Bowie refused to allow his music to be used (showing his usual intelligence and taste). Some good tunes from Roxy Music, Brian Eno, and Slade (the actual glam band… not the fictional title character) are used, however. "Needle in the Camel's Eye" is especially effective for the opening of the film. All in all, this COULD have been a great movie but instead is just so-so. There are some great tunes and clothes to admire; glam rock fans will enjoy those! But perhaps one should just watch footage of Ziggy Stardust or the New York Dolls or Marc Bolan...

The Citizen Kane of rock & roll movies, almost literally - even the framing sequence evokes Kane, with a present-day reporter charged with the task of rediscovering the rise and fall of a long-gone Ziggy Stardust-type rocker. Christian Bale is the closeted reporter, seen in the present as living in an almost monochromatic world, while his 8-track flashbacks to the tri-sexual '70s are painted on a palette of liquid LSD.The story was originally intended as a sort of Bowie bio-pic, but ended up a mix of urban legends cut from tales of Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain, Bryan Ferry, Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Jim Dandy, David Johansen, and others. The soundtrack mixes classic glam tracks by Lou Reed with new songs done for the film, performed by various super groups with members of Placebo, the New York Dolls, and others."Follow the brooch" to trace the reincarnated spirit of Oscar Wilde, the world's first pop star, through the movie - (SPOILERS ALERT)First, Jack Fairy finds Wilde's brooch as a boy, seeming to be guided by Wilde's own tendency toward bawdy bacchanalia and pop creativity. Fledgling rocker Brian Slade steals the brooch from Fairy during a love tryst, and thus takes Fairy's place in the pop culture zeitgeist.Slade gives the brooch to Curt Wild and subsequently finds his own star falling, as Curt takes on the task of epitomizing a modern day Wilde. However, Curt implodes (much like his historical antecedent), and ends up giving the brooch to - who else? - the Writer, Arthur Stuart, in search of what really happened to the glittery-glam world he once thought his generation had (re)created.Wilde's life rather than his work seems to be the story template. Curt only becomes (briefly) articulate and dandy-fied after he gets the brooch, and in fact is wearing it at the staged press conference where he and Brian Slade essentially dance a gay minuet, dressed as French royalty and announcing their personal and professional pairing - with a public kiss, no less, Curt now living out Oscar Wilde's unrestrained and in-discrete libido alongside Slade.When a similar sort of public brou-ha-ha landed the real Wilde in prison, that all but broke him for the rest of his life, the same way fading punk-star Curt Wild seems to lose all inspiration and muse, withdrawing from bravado to whimper to "whatever happened to....."I like to think Arthur Stuart ends up with the story of his career after the movie wraps, and that he eventually becomes a well-known and respected writer.If he ends up far more celebrated in death than in life, well, then he will have lived out Wilde's own final chapters --- Arthur was probably buried wearing that effin brooch ---Maybe it's not the REAL story of '70s glam rock, but it represents that scene better than any ten eps of VH1's "I Love the '70s" ---- I've played the entire soundtrack album at least once a month since I saw this flick on its first video release ----

As music video (rock, glitter, glam,or whatever), parts of it might work. As a full-length feature film, none of it works. A film requires a story. There might be one here, but I couldn't find it.Even a visual fantasy needs some kind of structure, if for no other reason than to propel the fantasy forward. But this "film" seems to have multiple beginnings, a chaotic, nonsensical middle, and a non-resolution. Scenes are put together apparently in random order. Hey mister director guy, help us out here. Is this someone's idea of an inside joke? If so, I didn't find it amusing.None of the characters are worth caring about. They're all cardboard cutout dolls, stick-figure mannequins, two-dimensional caricatures. Self-proclaimed as artists, they're more flimflam than paragon. Maybe that's the point.The underlying concept is intriguing. A music star fakes his own death. What ever became of him? And so, the Christian Bale character goes on a Citizen Kane journey, of sorts. But all that glittery glam, or glam-glitter, gets in the way. We're lost in a phantasmagoria of colorfully bizarre images. Along the way we come to the conclusion that the "star" is so shallow, so immature, so unlikeable we lose interest in him and his destiny. The only message I got out of this cinematic mess was that mod music audiences are duped into thinking that image is reality. But that's hardly original. And I doubt that was the director's intent.Aimed at a pubescent crowd, "Velvet Goldmine" is hardly more than a flashy, moment-by-moment distraction. Lots of films, perhaps most, can deliver a higher quality, more mature form of distraction because they tell a coherent story that requires an attention span of greater than two microseconds.