Attn: Dylan fans -- this movie is a blast. First of all, it's amazing enough that someone made a movie inspired by a ghostly, unreleased Dylan track rather than churning out "Like a Rolling Stone: The Movie" or whatever. But the scenes that use particular songs as set pieces (especially "Blind Willie McTell, "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Going to Acapulco") brilliantly capture the spirit of the music with distincly uncommon creativity. I wasn't such a fan of Velvet Goldmine but Haynes really pulls off a high wire act here. Not all of it works -- the Christian Bale stuff lapses into (bad) caricature and the Heath Ledger/Charlotte Gainsbourg, Blood on the Tracks divorce scenes are mostly (but not all) boring -- but there's usually a moment around the corner that pulls you back in whenever it seems like Haynes is losing the thread. A movie like this coming along with, among other things, Stephen Malkmus providing Cate Blanchett's singing voice, is like a one-in-a-million shot, folks. See it!
And no, I'm never going to get tired of that Andy Milonakis joke.
