If you stop for five minutes to actually think about the plot, Velvet Goldmine falls apart, but if you just think about how off-the-charts wonderful all the individual aspects are, you'll be just fine. _Final rating:★★★½ - I strongly recommend you make the time._
With the swinging sixties finally on the wane, "Brian Slade" (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is starting to feel redundant. His career seems doomed - until that is, he is inspired by the potency of a "Curt Wild" (Ewan McGregor) concert and like a caterpillar to a butterfly, is reborn as the sexually ambiguous "Maxwell Demon" a glam rock icon inspiring adulation the world over. Just as he reaches his zenith, however, it all ends rather suddenly. Ten years after that shocking performance, journalist "Arthur Stuart" (Christian Bale) decides to investigate just what did happen. Todd Haynes has created quite an hedonistic display for us, here. The three lead performances - especially Meyers - really embrace the ethos of the period. The sex, drugs, rock and roll mentality where anything and everything goes is really well reflected. It's not the characters that let this down, though - it's the shambolic narrative and the initial theme just seems to become subsumed in Haynes' desire to show us something that might have been shocking then, but kind of isn't now. Shades of David Bowie, Elton john, Iggy Pop - you name it; but sadly - very little originality. Still it's enjoyable to watch and the actors keep the whole things suitably messy for what did feel like an over-long 2 hours.
Upon the death of his mother, a gay man in blue-collar America returns to his childhood home. There he discovers a cardboard time machine that he made when he was a boy. As he uses it to get glimpses of his future, he ponders the weight of his life's choices.
Ali is a gay Lebanese probationary constable and kicking against her Muslim brother's controlling behaviour. When she attends a 'concern for welfare' and discovers the body of an elderly man who died alone and unnoticed, she realises the value of a loving family, even if they can be misguided.
A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.
Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with virtuous doctor Alec Harvey. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.
After his best friend disappears following a violent argument, a troubled marine must wrestle with his identity and guilty conscience.
A bored bisexual millionaire picks up a young destitute street artist and whisks her away to her villa in Saint Tropez. They meet a dashing local architect and both fall for him, setting in motion a ménage à trois of deception and betrayal.
Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent.
The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.
In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.
A group of dancers congregate on the stage of a Broadway theatre to audition for a new musical production directed by Zach. After the initial eliminations, seventeen hopefuls remain, among them Cassie, who once had a tempestuous romantic relationship with Zach. She is desperate enough for work to humble herself and audition for him; whether he's willing to let professionalism overcome his personal feelings about their past remains to be seen.