The Velvet Underground

Reflecting the history and legacy of The Velvet Underground, and the vibrant scene from which the band emerged, Todd Haynes combines its music; interviews with musicians, artists, and collaborators; and avant-garde movies by Shirley Clarke, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Andy Warhol, and others. “This is a dazzling film—not just one of Haynes’s best, but possibly the one that his whole career, with its self-aware generic and formal and historical experiments, has been building toward. I’m jealous of anyone who experiences it for the first time projected on a big screen, with booming sound, because that’s how it should be seen. It’s a spectacle as well as an account of a time and place. It makes you think about what a documentary is, and what film can do, even as it does the things that you want and need” (Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com).