Penn Badgley saunters around with an air of spooky self-possession, and he does a dead-on impersonation of Buckley's high-vibrato wail.

Algrant’s film — which he co-wrote with Emma Sheanshang and David Brendel — is really about Tim Buckley’s son, Jeff, an equally adventurous rocker whose fame ultimately eclipsed his father’s, though he too died young.

Badgley, best known for playing "lonely boy" Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl, is a revelation. He wears his role like a second skin.

Dan Algrant’s lyrical recreation of a father-son relationship seen over time, through memory and music, has a sense of urgent originality that works even apart from its great Tim Buckley score.

The film articulates this dimension of the story, regrettably, in little more than biopic platitudes and daddy-issue clichés...But it's not all bad. Badgley delivers a nuanced performance of such ferocity he almost singlehandedly makes a conventional film seem loose and improvisatory.