Film

Velvet Goldmine

Todd Haynes' glitter-drenched glam-rock fantasia imagines a Bowie-shaped star's rise and vanishing, told through a journalist's fractured, Citizen Kane-style search for the truth. It's less biopic than fever dream — mirrored surfaces, alien spaceships, a green pin passed hand to hand. Gorgeous, horny, structurally audacious, and unapologetically artificial. For anyone who wants their rock nostalgia dressed as myth rather than history, and doesn't need clean answers.

TMDb rating6.9

If you liked this

Almost Famous2000

Cameron Crowe's love letter to rock journalism and the intoxicating, dangerous glow of being near fame — warmer and gentler than Velvet Goldmine but chasing the same high of wanting to belong to the myth.

But It's sunnier and more sentimental, with none of the queerness or formal daring; if you wanted more glitter and ambiguity, this plays it straighter.

Almost Famous poster

24 Hour Party People2002no page yet

Michael Winterbottom's cheerfully unreliable history of Manchester's music scene shares Velvet Goldmine's appetite for myth-making over fact, narrated by a host who admits he's exaggerating as he goes.

But Post-punk grime instead of glam sparkle, and its scrappy mockumentary humor is a different animal from Haynes' operatic style.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch2001

A glam-rock musical about a fractured identity told through songs and confession, as theatrical and gender-fluid as anything in Velvet Goldmine, with a genuinely aching heart underneath the wigs.

But More intimate and stagebound, built around one performer's monologue rather than an ensemble mystery — a smaller, punkier scale.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Citizen Kane1941

Velvet Goldmine lifts its investigative structure wholesale from Kane — a reporter interviewing people who knew a vanished, mythologized man, each testimony reshaping the truth.

The blueprint for every "journalist reconstructs an enigmatic icon" story since, including this one — cold, dazzling filmmaking that invented tricks Haynes is still stealing.

But Black-and-white 1940s pacing and total absence of rock music or camp will feel like a different planet if you came for glitter.

Citizen Kane poster
More like this (7)

Rocketman2019

Elton John's rise gets the full fantasy-musical treatment, embracing spectacle and unreality the way Haynes does, complete with musical numbers that abandon literal biography for feeling.

But Far more conventional in structure and warmer in spirit — it wants you to love its subject, not decode him.

Rocketman poster

The Rocky Horror Picture Show1975

Cult glam camp with gender-bending performance at its core, made in the same decade Velvet Goldmine is obsessed with, celebrating artifice and desire without apology.

But It's a midnight-movie musical comedy first, with none of the melancholy or investigative structure — pure glorious excess.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show poster

Control2007no page yet

Anton Corbijn's monochrome Ian Curtis biopic sits in the same British music-scene lineage, tracing another self-destructing frontman, though its beauty is stark rather than jewelled.

But Somber, restrained, and shot in near-monochrome — the opposite emotional temperature from Velvet Goldmine's saturated glam theatrics entirely.

Bohemian Rhapsody2018

A crowd-pleasing arena-rock biopic that, like Velvet Goldmine, treats a flamboyant frontman's persona as the real story, hitting the beats of reinvention, secrecy, and spectacle.

But Tidier and more triumphant, sanded down for mass audiences — it resolves questions Velvet Goldmine prefers to leave open.

Bohemian Rhapsody poster

I'm Not There2007

Todd Haynes again, fracturing Bob Dylan into six different actors and identities rather than answering "who is this man," the same trick played on a different icon.

But Denser and more elliptical, assuming a working knowledge of Dylan's mythology that not every viewer will bring.

I'm Not There poster

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert1994

Drag, glitter, and reinvention across the outback — a joyfully camp cousin to Velvet Goldmine's belief that identity is a costume you build in public.

But A road-trip comedy at heart, broader and funnier, with none of the mystery-structure or wistfulness for a lost golden age.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert poster

The Man Who Fell to Earth1976

Bowie's own screen performance as an outsider constructing a human persona is the real-world hinge between his glam mythology and Velvet Goldmine's fictionalized one, same idea filtered through science fiction instead of rock biopic.

Bowie himself, playing an alien wearing a human disguise that slowly cracks — a sci-fi meditation on performed identity that Haynes clearly had in his bloodstream when building Brian Slade.

But Slow, cold, and genuinely science-fiction rather than music-drama; it trades glam spectacle for alienation and dread.

The Man Who Fell to Earth poster

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Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I'm Not There