Toda Arte é Perigosa

The idea in the film is fantastic but didn't seem to dive deep enough into the story and lacks impact. With most of the characters being pretenious, I was overwhelmed with the use of metaphores and foreshadowing, it became expected throughout the film but doesn't hold enough significance. An origin film on Dease would seem more interesting to me after watching this film.

Dan Gilroy reunites with Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo for his new Netflix cooperation VELVET BUZZSAW.

What saves this film, is the lead performance by Gyllenhaal, who plays art critic Morf Vandewalt and provides for lots of great quotes that had me grinning throughout the movie. In contrast to NIGHTCRAWLER's Louis Bloom though, his character here is written as a more naive and less calculating person.

Gilroy's new film definitely lacks the punch of NIGHTCRAWLER. While especially in the first half of the movie the execution of its core premise, exposing the hypocrisy of the artistic elite, ironically turns out to be mostly superficial, Gilroy basically plays with standard horror tropes in the second half. "No originality, no courage", Vandewalt would probably judge. Last year's THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT definitely had way more to say in that regard.

VELVET BUZZSAW is still a somewhat entertaining film from start to finish, even if it obviously struggles with its narrative at times and didn't turn out to be the masterpiece that NIGHTCRAWLER was.

It's a bit ironic, this film that wants to explore the vapid shallowness of the fine art world in a stylish horror movie setting... ends up inviting the very same criticisms that the finely dressed tastemakers in the film fling about.

Ok. Buzzwords aside. I did enjoy this film more than I disliked it. But in all earnestnest, it was by a hair. Knowing this came from the same guy who made the excellent psochological thriller Nightcrawler. This is like asketchbook of ideas for a giallo-inspired slasher. Each individually awesome. But there's no real throughline to keep us going. People pop up until they die gruesome deaths. It feels kind of slapped together haphazardly.

I expected more from Gilroy

Ever since the release of Nightcrawler back in 2014, Dan Gilroy is a director that I've wanted to keep a sharp eye on. I'll admit I wasn't a big fan of his film Roman J. Israel Esq., but I was still impressed by his talent, enough to continue watching his future projects. Velvet Buzzsaw is his latest work that he both wrote and directed and while I did enjoy some of it, this director only has one home run in my book, which still remains to be Nightcrawler. Some viewers may find this film to be pretentious and others may find it elegant, which will stir up a great conversation, but I personally found that it fell somewhere in the middle. If you're a fan of a unique premises, you may want to check this one out.

There isn't really a main character here, but it could be argued that the central focus of the film is on Jake Gyllenhaal's Morf. After the passing of an elderly man, his paintings are discovered and put on display for all to see. To their surprise, these paintings have minds of their own and they begin to seek revenge against those who study them in the wrong ways. Personally, the concept of this film intrigued me upon first glance, but after watching the film unfold, it felt like more of a way of finding viewers for the movie as a whole. The bizarre turn this film takes didn't feel earned by the time the film concludes. With a strong first act and a weird second act, this movie lost all potential throughout the third.

I must admit that this is one of the better assembled casts I've seen in a long time. From powerhouses like Jake Gyllenhaal and Toni Collette to the always outstanding performances given by both John Malkovich and Rene Russo, down to stellar newcomers like Natalia Dyer and Daveed Diggs, I found myself engaged no matter what was happening throughout an uninteresting scene, due to the fact that they're clearly all devoted. If for nothing else, this cast believed they were making something terrific and it really shows in each and every one of their performances.

Sadly, as I mentioned, this film as a very weak third act that went in many ways that felt easy for the movie to go. Aside from some very cool visuals and great cinematography throughout the entire film, the story, in retrospect, kind of went nowhere. I could see where director Dan Gilroy was trying to go and the final scene of the film definitely showcases an interesting future for the story, but I wasn't engaged in the story enough to care all that much. The characters invested me from the very beginning and the twist pulled me in even more, but the movie unravels in a way that frankly bored me.

In the end, Velvet Buzzsaw is an ambitious film in terms of the notions that it tries to explore and wow its audience with, but I was underwhelmed by it as a whole. I definitely commend the technical aspects of it and the set-up was very well done, so I can recommend it to film buffs, but I truly don't believe this film will find a home outside of that circle. I could be wrong, but I feel this movie is for a very niche audience. Velvet Buzzsaw is an impressively ambitious film that feels a little wasted by the end.

Writer-director Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler) re-teams with co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo on this uneven blend of art-world satire and supernatural horror. When a lowly art gallery worker (Zawe Ashton) discovers her upstairs neighbor dead, she also finds a horde of paintings that the reclusive tenant had been working on for years. Instead of destroying them as the deceased had wished, she steals them and brings them to her gallery boss (Russo), as well as to a highly-influential critic (Gyllenhaal), casuing an uproar in the art world and the declaration of a newly-discovered master. However, those in proximity of the dead man's works start experiencing hallucinations, and soon much, much worse.

The milieu of the high-end modern art world is ripe for skewering, and thus has been the target of derision in many books, shows, and films in the past. This film doesn't bring anything new to that tradition, merely highlighting the pretensions, backstabbing, and crass commercialism that even one as far removed from that world as myself has seen many times. The performances are appropriate for the material, with a few (Gyllenhaal, Collette) pitched to the back row for effect.

The horror aspects are also a bit old-hat, although they are handled professionally enough. They come perhaps a bit too few and far between for hardcore horror fans, though. There's a barely-contained streak of black humor throughout which undermines the more menacing tones of the fright stuff. It's also hard to get too concerned about the well-being of such an unlikable group of snobs, twits and sycophants.