The Best Movie Critic   +  watching hour

Watching Hour Preview: Velvet Goldmine

Thank you, Velvet Goldmine.

Thank you for exposing me to the music of Brian Eno at an impressionable young age.

Thank you for revealing David Bowie as the faker poseur he was. Thank you for still allowing me to love him.

Thank you for getting a mindboggling lineup including Jonny Greenwood, Bernard Butler, Ron Ashton, Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, Mike Watt, and Mark Arm together to form glam and proto-punk cover bands. Thank you for making Thom Yorke’s glam vocals not totally suck.

Thank you for implying that baby Oscar Wilde was left on a Victorian doorstep by aliens.

Thank you for encouraging the first stirrings in my inexperienced teenaged brain that people have agency over their identities. Thank you for making the idea of fluid identities relatable.

Thank you for putting together such an impeccable cast, including Ewan McGreggor, Christian Bale, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers before he was ‘known.’ However, I need to point out that Christian Bale is much more believable as a guy who dresses up in bat pajamas than as gay. Just sayin’.

Velvet Goldmine, even though you are problematic and not a totally great movie, thank you for these things.

Give thanks this Friday and Saturday at the Watching Hour. If you go on Friday, show up early for the 8:30pm glam-rock pre-party with free beer, pizza and other fun stuff, like, oh I don’t know, peacock feathers, glitter, platform heels, feather boas, excessive eyeliner, sequins, and hedonistic orgies I think.

p.s. Dear Director Todd Haynes,

I'm Not There was awful. Get it together.

Sincerely,
Ben

The Watching Hour is a weekly film series at the Starz Film Center, highlighting new and old cult, genre, or otherwise bizarro movies. Quite simply, The Watching Hour is usually the best thing to do in Denver on a Friday or Saturday night. From Giallo to schlock, Blaxploitation to Aussiesploitation, zombies to martial arts to who-knows-what, and everywhere in between. This is good ol’ rock and roll cinema spectacle. Not to be missed. (See the schedule, buy tickets, get directions, etc. here.)