Velvet Goldmine

Velvet Goldmine takes a fictive look at 1970s glam rock and the sexual ambiguity of the musicians but really seems to boil down to one man's reminiscences of his own experience with the glam rock scene. Christian Bale, as Arthur Stuart, is a journalist tasked with writing a story about the onstage hoax murder of Brian Slade (played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), an event he witnessed at close quarters, on the tenth anniversary of the event. The hoax was Slade's way out of an onstage persona into which he felt cornered. The movie looks at Slade's history, his relationship with Iggy Popesque Curt Wild (played by Ewan McGregor), and, perhaps more strongly, at Stuart's own relationship with the musicians and the world they inhabited.

I thought it dragged a little about 3/4 of the way in but thought it was an otherwise decent movie. I'd give it a B-.