Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

billsoccer A glam rocker quits 'the life' in a spectacular way. He then disappears. Years later a journalist is assigned to find out where the rocker is today. Good premise thus far, then come the flashbacks - how he came to be discovered, how he went off the deep end, etc. We learn the journalist has some relationship with some of the principal characters. The musical scenes were well done, but that's the last good thing I can say about the film. Unless you're really into glam rock or have an unusual ability to concentrate on the banal, I warn you that you may not be able to figure out what the incessant flashbacks and portrayal of debauchery is adding to the plot. I suspect I'm not alone is asking why you'd want to try?! By then end I didn't care if Christian Bale figured it out.

billysheppard76 I happened to be reading Marc Spitz's fanboy bio of Bowie when I saw Velvet Goldmine, and did so because it was mentioned in the book. This movie feels almost like reading a chapter from that book. Bowie is a creation built from the outside in. If I squint a little and doze off slightly watching this film, the correspondence to the preposterous truth and emphatic construction of a façade in the film is just about right. There are videos on YouTube of Bowie interviews which are as much performances as this portrayal. Many details seem to be directly out of the record including the styles of music managers and their demands on venues. Since the subject matter is Bowie, its about right that this world is all Technicolor and Trickle. It's about right. (The impersonation of Iggy is about as good as it gets.)

patrick powell This is the second review I've written, but it won't differ essentially from what I wrote in the first, which was that Velvet Goldmine seems to me more a film for gays and something of a gay manifesto more than anything else. That is not to criticise the film particularly or to denigrate it, just to suggest that in many ways I suspect homosexual men (and perhaps women) will gain more from it than heterosexuals. And I suspect what one takes from the film will, in general, be very different depending upon one's sexual orientation. Although it was made in 1998, by which time the situation gay men and women in the Western world was somewhat easier than it had been ever before (I gather it's still pretty dire in Africa and other parts of the world), Velvet Goldmine strikes me as being a document of gay liberation presented in a manner which likes to see itself as rebellious. Perhaps that has to do with the age of the film's writer/director Todd Haynes, who has made gay proselytising his life's mission and who will have grown up when being gay was not as easy as it might be today. I am not gay, which under the circumstances, is relevant, so I think that should be taken into account in the following comments. It is difficult what to make of the film. It has been said that the central character, Brian Slade, and his career were based on David Bowie in his various incarnations, and Haynes makes a good fist of evoking the whole early Seventies glam rock scene when sexual ambiguity became for some just another fashion and a release for others. And if it is based on Bowie, who had several different pop personae just as Brian Slade had Maxwell Demon, the appearance right at the start of the film and then later on of a 'spaceship' at least has context, however spurious. But over and above that, that spaceship makes no sense and in many ways demonstrates what doesn't really work in Velvet Goldmine. There is a cryptic reference to Oscar Wilde (who was not a foundling as is suggested by the film) and some of his poetry, and some play is made of a sapphire tie pin (or something) which is said once to have belonged to Wilde and is then passed from gay character to gay character as some kind of talisman. All of this is, at worst, pretentious and, at best (which I think is a little more the case), merely rather muddled. And muddle seems to sum up Velvet Goldmine. It is patently not a fictionalised bio pic of Bowie and it is patently not just an account of the 'glam rock years'. For many minutes, interminably long minutes for this non-gay viewer, it is almost akin to gay soft porn, great for gays, I suppose, not so interesting for non-gays. For Haynes those scenes are, presumably, important for the film he is making, but in the overall arc they drag a rather. There is rather less cohesion than one would like, and, it has to be said, whether or not this is a specific gay film or even one primarily intended for a gay audience, Haynes is obliged to make a film which is, at some level, accessible to all. My problem is that there is quite a lot about Velvet Goldmine which isn't half bad, especially the performances by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor (as a gay Iggy Pop type of character), Toni Collette, Eddie Izzard and Christian Bale. The pastiche glam rock songs are generally as good as the real thing, the era is evoked very well, and for stretches Velvet Goldmine is very entertaining. I should imagine it would be enjoyed especially by young lads who know they are gay but are battling with how to come out (my brother was one such, and as I love and like him a great deal, and my heart goes out to others like him who found and find themselves in that situation). In the Christian Bale character they will have a good role model. But on another level Velvet Goldmine is a confused mess, neither fish nor fowl, a film which meanders a great deal and doesn't quite make up it's mind what it is. On balance, however, I would recommend that it is worth watching, whether you are gay or straight, but don't necessarily expect to understand what the bloody hell is going on.

rap53 I saw this movie on Bravo so my comments are based on the edited cable version.A) I think this topic would have been better handled by a director who had lived and experienced this music and era in general as a teen-ager or young adult, unlike Haynes. The director seemed to be making queer theory political points wrapped in glitter rather than presenting an understandable epic of that epoch, probably leaving many heterosexual viewers out in the cold. The reference to Ronald Reagan ( President Reynolds in the movie) is one example. It is absurd to imply that Reagan was somehow responsible for the death of glam as it is for some gay activists to blame him for the spread of HIV. Nevertheless, I found the film enthralling both for the visuals and the recognizable historical figures and events B) I was somewhat connected to the rock scene of that time and to glam in particular so I think I have some insight to offer younger readers, although I am sure Haynes himself has more knowledge of gay history and "inside" glam gossip than myself.C)The "green pin" may combine both alien power as in the Green Lantern comic books that Haynes probably read as a child ( childhood is given strong play in the beginning ) and an icon of homosexual experience passed on from one time period to the next as expressed by Allen Ginsburg. Ginsburg once told of how ,through a series of sex partners going back in time, he was connected to Walt Whitman. Not exactly glam but he was a poet like Wilde, and Whitman's work is known for it's ethereal, pre-maturely modern tone as in "I sing the body electric" ( Alien Anal Probes anybody ? ). That poem was written over 20 years before anybody had electricity in their home. It was also the source of the title of a science-fiction story written by Ray Bradbury. Another film connecting UFO's,bohemian sex and alternative music is "Liquid Sky", which I am sure influenced Haynes.D) The Slade character is obviously based on Bowie, who came to be known to non-glam fans via his title role in the science-fiction movie " The Man who Fell to Earth" . Gay equals alienated equals "alien" may explain the UFO at the beginning. Bowie is much more talented than the Slade character whose vapidity and posing is similar to the now obscure real-life person known as "Jobriath", who like many who led the "drug,sex and rock'roll lifestyle" of the seventies died of AIDS in the 80s. Like Slade and Davie Jones/David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust, Jobriath also performed under a second stage name ( Cole Berlin ) Unlike Bowie but similar to Slade, Jobriath blamed his brief career on the failures of an egotistical manager.E) Ewan's Iggy stage performance was a great impersonation, almost comical in it 's accuracy.F) I could not figure out who Jack Fairy was based on but he reminded me of Klaus Noemi, whose cover of "You Don't Own Me" can still be heard on the Rush Limbaugh program.At last, an actual semiotic signifier that the Reaganites did co-opt glam !!!