Toronto. Lou Reed's Berlin.

"Berlin is especially controversial among Reed-ophiles, both for its prog-rock pretensions - it's a song cycle about a drug-addicted German prostitute and her children, with contributing performances by the likes of Steve Winwood and Jack Bruce - and for its fashionable nihilism," writes Noel Murray. "Lester Bangs bashed it as 'a gargantuan slab of maggoty rancor,' and fans of the more pop-minded Transformer by and large didn't care to take Reed's journey into the colossally morose in 1973. Me though, I've always loved Berlin.... If nothing else, Julian Schnabel's concert film Lou Reed's Berlin presents the album's ten songs with a force they've rarely shown before.... I'd hardly place Lou Reed's Berlin in the pantheon of great concert films.... But for Reed fans - heck, for rock fans - the movie is an essential document of a noteworthy event."

"Praise due again to Jonathan Demme's groundbreaking Stop Making Sense, which convinced directors like Schnabel to keep the cameras tight on the stage and treat moviegoers as the audience," adds his AV Club colleague Scott Tobias.

"Julian Schnabel's supple visual instincts perfectly preserve Lou Reed's own rock-opera concept album in Lou Reed's Berlin, a deeply satisfying record of his live performances at St Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, 33 years after the album's failed initial release," writes Stephen Garrettt at indieWIRE.

The San Sebastian Film Festival's got the trailer.

Posted by dwhudson at September 25, 2007 12:17 PM