The Velvet Underground

"Haynes, a master deconstructionist... delivers the band's much-told story in ways that avoid the obvious while probing pretty deeply."

"A dazzling historical collage, but not a definitive portrait..."

"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. Where perhaps it falls down is on the ordinary, gossipy sense of how exactly the band members could have fallen out so badly, and how painful that surely must have been."

"Everything fans could want, and so much more."

"If Haynes's film is reverent... it also evokes the intoxication of an era and the bloody-minded insistence of its stars on doing things differently."

"Haynes finds an enthralling middle ground between hero worship and ambivalence."

"(Haynes') affectionate documentary about The Velvet Underground is more idiosyncratic than the average rock-doc."

"(A) stimulating and cacophonous tribute."

"It's not some wasn't-that-a-time collection of anecdotes, but a percolating dream of invention made tantalisingly present..."

"A rock documentary as dark, dizzying and decadent as the band itself."

"Todd Haynes' look back at the Sixties downtown-boho rock icons gives the group the exhilarating, experimental portrait it richly deserves..."