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March 29, 2024, 12:07:41 AM

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Velvet Buzzsaw

Started by fucking ponderous, February 03, 2019, 01:32:38 AM

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fucking ponderous



This came out yesterday. Art world satire/thriller from Nightcrawler man Dan Gilroy and other Nightcrawler man Jake it's right above on the poster there.

The overwhelming response has been negative, which is a bit surprising to me. I think people expected something more like Nightcrawler, which can't really happen. I haven't seen that one since it came out, but I remember it being near perfect. I'd rather Gilroy make something like this, a messy weirdo horror/comedy thing, something I guess more low brow and fun, then try to repeat himself with another dead serious thriller (although I haven't that other film he made last year with Denzel Washington). It definitely has a "Netflix movie" vibe to it, i.e. clearly not the highest budget and sometimes not great to look at, but the digital film look works better here than it did on Buster Scruggs where it was a little jarring. Overall I thought it was good. I was also very drunk and it was 5:30am when I watched it so I could be wrong and it could be total shit.

Wrote a few more thoughts about it here: https://letterboxd.com/rhysp/film/velvet-buzzsaw/1/

What say you all?

Crabwalk

Terrible script.
Looks like shit.
Career-worst performances from many of the leads.
Jarring mismatch of genres.
Pretentious.
Stupid.
Incoherent.
Preachy.

Quite entertaining.


Crabwalk

Basically, it's a cross between The Player and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, written and directed by Tommy Wiseau.

Mister Six

#3
I rather enjoyed it for the most part, but it spoiled itself by not having an actual ending, just sort of running out of characters to kill.
It felt like a Chris Chibnall who episode in that respect. What's the problem at the start? Art is trying to kill people. What's the problem at the end? Art is trying to kill people. And then there's some credits.

There really needed to be a bit before the end where Gylenhall's character attempts to round up and destroy the artworks, or something similar - some change in direction that gave the characters some agency beyond endlessly betraying each other. Also they didn't make enough hay out of Rene Russo thinking she'd escaped by getting rid of all her art, so the tattoo thing just comes across as "Oh, okay" rather than some grand twist.

And as an ostensible horror-comedy it's neither scary not especially funny. Mrs Six, who's usually terrified of horror films, remained unbothered by this, although she works on fashion with more or less exactly these kinds of people, so she found it rather therapeutic.

Still! Despite that - and the need for some properly imaginative and grisly deaths, and the uninspiring direction - I still liked it. Gylenhall and Russo put in the too performances out of a generally great cast. I properly fancied Natalia Dyer as Coco, although that might be because she's like a Zooey Deschanel who doesn't annoy the shit out of me.

The characters are all well-sketched and their relationships and dialogue both entertaining and plausible. A friend of mine who's an artist (but a very small-time one) said that the art world's representation was spot on (with caveats for exaggeration, cartoonishness etc), so it looks like Dan Gilroy did his resarch. I was engaged with that side of the film the whole way through.

But crikey, if only the horror half were better executed...