Absolutely the worst movie.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

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.

I've actually been looking forward to seeing this film for a really long time, and finally got round to it this weekend. It should have been great! It had all the right ingredients; great cast, fabulous outfits, it's about GLAM ROCK for goodness sake! But alas, what this film was seriously lacking in was plot. Velvet Goldmine tells the tale of Brian Slade, a pop icon in the 1970s bearing an uncanny resemblance to David Bowie, whose career takes a severe nose-dive after he fakes his own death on stage. The picture revolves around a newspaper reporter ten years later (Who was once a fan of Brian Slade, and was at the gig of the 'shooting hoax'), assigned to find out 'exactly what happened'. What follows are an hour and a half of confusing and seemingly irrelevant flashbacks, poorly scripted and dull interviews, leading to a dull and fairly predictable finish. I should stress again that I am a big fan of both the Glam Rock era, and all of the actors in this film, so I didn't begin watching this film with any preconceptions of bad-ness. Worth a watch if you, like me, are usually into this kind of thing, but only so you can say that you've seen it, and perhaps for the cameo from Placebo (Probably the high-light). A generous five stars.

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 ----

I saw Goldmine years ago and it remains one of my favorites. Everything about this movie is amazing- from the music, to the costume and the actors. Here we get a young Christian Bale as a struggling kid trying to grow up in the age of glam rock. The confusion of trying to be who you are and the confusion of trying to figure out who that person is, something that is understandable to anyone who has ever been a teenager. Like so many, he finds himself in music- that of Brian Slade. Meyers is outstanding as a lowly boy who makes it with the big boys. He plays the climb to fame brilliantly and the demise of glam rock with emotion. Toni Collette adds the flare that is necessary and shows the true strength in what a woman will do/put up with for love. She is a delight and she plays well with Meyers. Ewan McGregor is also terrific as Curt Wild, the perfect half to Slade's glam. The music is what Goldmine is really all about. Meyers and McGregor sing some of the tunes themselves, but the addition of Radiohead's Thom Yorke to the mix as well as the boys from Placebo are an excellent addition to an already great soundtrack. Adding Lou Reed seems like over kill, but I'll take it- if there is anything that I learned from watching Goldmine many times- is that the bigger the better.This is a great coming of age movie- it is a bit adult. There are heavy issues here such as drug abuse, alcoholism, adultery, homosexuality, orgies...be aware-