Velvet Buzzsaw


Velvet Buzzsaw is a 2019 American satirical horror film written and directed by Dan Gilroy and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Toni Collette, Zawe Ashton, Tom Sturridge, Natalia Dyer, Daveed Diggs, Billy Magnussen, and John Malkovich. The film had its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 27 and was released on February 1, 2019, by Netflix and in selected theaters.

Plot

In Los Angeles, art critic Morf Vandewalt attends an art exhibition alongside his friend Josephina, who works for Rhodora Haze, owner of the Haze Gallery and formerly a member of the rock band Velvet Buzzsaw. Unfulfilled in his love life with his boyfriend, Ed, Morf starts a sexual relationship with Josephina. Returning to Los Angeles, Josephina finds a dead man named Vetril Dease in her apartment building and enters his home to discover myriad paintings, some of which are partially destroyed.
Josephina steals the paintings to show Morf and Rhodora, who become fascinated with Dease. Rhodora decides to exhibit several of his pieces in her gallery, where they're an instant success. The artworks enchant Gretchen, Morf's art curator friend, and Piers, a former artist for the Haze Gallery. Rhodora keeps most of the paintings, and Morf and Josephina keep a small portion each.
To ensure the rarity of the paintings, Rhodora orders gallery worker Bryson to transport half of them to storage. En route, a painting catches fire from his cigarette ash and burns him, causing him to crash into a gas station. After he heads inside to clean the burns, Bryson is attacked by a painting of grease monkeys fixing a car and goes missing.
Researching Dease, Morf discovers he suffered from a troubled and abusive childhood that culminated in the murder of his father and a growing mental illness that permeates his works. Jon Dondon, a rival art gallery owner, has hired an investigator to uncover the same story. He attempts to reveal Dease's story to the press but is murdered when a mysterious hand hangs him by his scarf. Coco, Rhodora's former assistant who had just begun working for Jon, discovers his body. Morf sees a hand in a Dease painting suddenly move, which unsettles him, and he later discovers that Dease used blood in his paintings.
Gretchen negotiates display of some of Dease's collection in the city gallery. In exchange, the city gallery will display an interactive piece titled Sphere that is owned by Gretchen's primary client. Meanwhile, Gretchen also sabotages Josephina's relationship with Morf by telling her he still cares for Ed. One night, Gretchen sticks her arm in one of the holes in Sphere, which malfunctions and severs her arm before she dies of blood loss. Despite her death, there is a spike in interest and demand for the Dease exhibit.
Morf and Josephina break up after he finds out she is dating Damrish, a rising artist. Morf's hallucinations worsen, and he urges Rhodora to stop selling Dease's artwork. She ignores him and, knowing he will write a negative article about the artworks, tries to sell them off as fast as she can. Morf hires Coco to dispose of the artworks. After breaking up with Damrish for him choosing not to display his art in a gallery, Josephina is mysteriously transported into a gallery where the paintings melt around her and cover her skin. As Morf puts the Dease artworks into his storage unit, he is confronted by Hoboman, a robotic art piece he earlier critiqued. After a brief chase, Hoboman snaps Morf's neck. Meanwhile, Rhodora is almost crushed by a large sculpture in her garden.
The next morning, Coco finds Morf's body while Josephina's terrified image is seen on a wall of graffiti. Rhodora, now believing the deaths are connected to Dease, has all the artwork in her house removed. As she sits outside her house, the buzzsaw tattoo on her neck begins spinning and slashes her flesh, killing her. On the way to the airport, returning home to Michigan, Coco passes a homeless man selling Dease's paintings. Meanwhile, Piers, who has moved away to a beachside house, draws curving lines on the beach as the waves wash over them.

Cast

conceived the project after Superman Lives, a film which he had a hand in developing, was abruptly cancelled because Warner Bros. was not willing to produce it due to the large budget. He felt that he had wasted a year and a half on the film, but he ultimately made peace with the idea while sitting on a beach, a moment that inspired the final scene in the film. In June 2017, it was announced Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo had been cast in Gilroy's then untitled film, with him writing and directing the film, while Jennifer Fox would serve as a producer, and Netflix would produce and distribute the film. Speaking with Business Insider in November 2017, Gilroy teased the project saying:
In January 2018, it was announced the title was Velvet Buzzsaw. In March 2018, Zawe Ashton, Natalia Dyer, Tom Sturridge, Daveed Diggs, Toni Collette, John Malkovich and Billy Magnussen joined the cast of the film.
Principal photography began on March 5, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.
Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders composed the score for the film, replacing Gilroy's frequent collaborator James Newton Howard.
Director Dan Gilroy has stated that he wrote the Morf Vandewalt character to be sexually fluid because he "believe that sexuality is far more fluid than society does."

Release

Velvet Buzzsaw had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2019. It was released by Netflix on February 1, 2019.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 63% based on 167 reviews, and an average rating of 6.13/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "If you only watch one art-world satire with horror overtones this year — or most others — it should probably be Velvet Buzzsaw." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, writing: "It's a wildly inconsistent film, sometimes disappointingly clunky and as superficial as the world it's mocking, but it's also an ambitious piece of work with unforgettable imagery and an ace ensemble." Emily Yoshida of Vulture wrote: "Writer and director Dan Gilroy is drawing from the same well of a bitter, morally compromised Los Angeles that he did for 2014's Nightcrawler, but Velvet Buzzsaw, as gleaming and sun-drenched as Nightcrawler is dark, is even more of an invective, and even more operatically heightened." Peter Debruge of Variety called it " most cynical movie yet, with most of the venom concentrated in the character of the critic." David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a grade of C, writing "Gilroy's film needed to be 60% better or 20% worse in order to transcend the forgettable silliness of its existence, but it could stand the test of time as a lasting monument to the idea that our own personal taste is the only real thing we ever had."