GOING UNDERGROUND WITH LOU’S VELVETS
EVEN at the time, it wasn’t easy to explain the influential 1960s rock band led by Lou Reed and managed, after a fashion, by the pop artist Andy Warhol. But Todd Haynes gives it a really decent shot in an absorbing but complex documentary, titled simply The Velvet Underground (HHHHI, 15, 121 mins).
The Velvets, as they are known by devotees, were unlike the other seminal bands of the era.
They didn’t produce hit singles, didn’t play at festivals, didn’t appear on television. In a way, that simply inflamed the passion their fans felt for them, and Haynes conveys that very well, using all the cinematic tricks in the book — splitscreen, soft-focus, the whole shebang — to give the film itself a powerful 1960s vibe.
Reed emerges as a strange and disturbed individual (‘if it’s not dark and it’s not degrading, it’s not sex,’ he once said), as deeply insecure as he was wildly charismatic. He is remembered with a mix of love and loathing by the band’s other driving force, Welshman John Cale, whose own background could hardly have been more different. But the middle-class New York Jew and the miner’s son from the Amman Valley (whose grandmother banned him from speaking English in the house, preventing him from communicating with his own father) were a match made in music heaven.
The Velvets were perfectly of their time, and so is Ron’s Gone Wrong (HHHHI, PG, 106 mins) a lively animation about a friendless schoolboy, Barney (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer), whose gloomy life perks up when he gets his own B-Bot (Zach Galifianakis), an interactive robot devised by a tech wizard. Unfortunately, Barney’s bot is lacking the data it needs, leading to all kinds of misadventures, but of course, ultimate happiness. Charming and fun.
■ The Velvet Underground is in select cinemas and on Apple TV+. Ron’s Gone Wrong is in cinemas. For more reviews, visit Mail online.