The director’s admiration for The Velvet Underground is obvious but that doesn’t blunt his critical edge.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 16, 2025

Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground is everything the band was: experimental, unique, energetic and, above all else, hypnotic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 18, 2024

The Velvet Underground is a solid and well-made showcase of the group and will surely please diehards and may offer an opportunity for beginners to dive into the group's back catalogue.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2023

In The Velvet Underground documentary, Todd Haynes shows the music catapulting across time and space to Andy Warhol’s Factory, where the alchemy worked its magic.

| Jan 14, 2023

Haynes' use of the documentary medium is as remarkable as one might expect from the acclaimed director. The use of sound and image revolts against the traditions of the music documentaries genre, opting instead for an appropriately creative journey.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 20, 2022

A piece of pure cinema that exemplifies its genre while transcending it.

| May 19, 2022

Without belaboring the point, The Velvet Underground also makes the case for Warhol’s enduring significance.

| Mar 25, 2022

The resulting pastiche feels tailor-made for The Velvet Underground, a group that took influence from different genders, sexualities, artistic scenes, disciplines, mediums and cultures.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 13, 2022

The Velvet Underground offers an interesting look at the band and its era that will, for the fans, at least, be essential viewing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 3, 2022

Todd Haynes documentary, sculpted largely from vintage materials, persuasively presents the Warhol-abetted, New York-incubated band as avatars of an enviable rock-and-roll authenticity.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 3, 2022

This documentary film focuses on the band, and its members, to a fault. What the film does well is to describe the band, the environment in which it was formed, and the cultural milieu of that time and place.

| Original Score: B | Jan 22, 2022

Cooler than you'll ever be.

| Original Score: A | Jan 15, 2022

Director Todd Haynes's portrait of the influential U.S. rock band is a welcome change from more staid fare. If ever a more experimental approach was needed in a music documentary, it is this one and this band.

| Dec 29, 2021

This bracing collage is pure rock bliss and a poke in the eye to old-style storytelling.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 22, 2021

It adopts the ecstatic visual style of an Andy Warhol picture and the spelunking delight of an academic deep in his thesis to render a story about one of the more iconic, if not chronicled, bands of the 20th century...

| Dec 21, 2021

The bombardment of archival footage, home movies, and Andy Warhol's 16mm films all enhance this dense and textured documentary.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2021

The Velvet Underground may not offer the same joy as listening to its eponymous band, but does a great job of reminding the audience why that band remains hugely influential and unique so many years later.

| Original Score: B | Dec 3, 2021

If you already love the Velvet Underground, this is two hours of visual and aural bliss. If you don't, same.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 3, 2021

Claims for the eternal qualities of any music are dubious at best, but what Haynes exhibits through his own complex, textured documentary is that the Velvet Underground's music remains fertile ground for inspiration.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 3, 2021

Captures both why Warhol was so taken by the band, and the reason the Velvet Underground were not made for factory settings.

| Dec 3, 2021