NYFF Critic's Notebook: The Velvet Underground and The Girl and the Spider

Peter Buck, the guitarist for R.E.M., is often quoted as saying, “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought one formed a band.” Now it seems, all those bands are the subjects of documentaries. Finally, even the Velvet Underground. The eponymous film is one that Todd Haynes appeared destined to make. Popular music, rock'n'roll mythology and the vagaries of self-invented personas are a core of the director's filmography, going back to the Super-8 trans...