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Velvet Buzzsaw
Die Kunst des toten Mannes
USA 2019
produced by Jennifer Fox, Betsy Danbury (executive) for Netflix
directed by Dan Gilroy
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Zawe Ashton, Tom Sturridge, Toni Collette, Natalia Dyer, Daveed Diggs, John Malkovich, Billy Magnussen, Alan Mandell, Mig Macario, Nitya Vidyasagar, Sedale Threatt jr, Keith Bogart, Sofia Toufa, Kassandra Voyagis, Mark Leslie Ford, Amy Tsang, Mark Steger, Ruth Gilroy, Joel Patino Corona, Andrea Marcovicci, Time Winters, David Moses, Eugene Nomura, Pat Healy, Patrick Quinlan, Gregory Cruz, Rob Brownstein, Pisay Pao, Ian Alda, Christopher Darga, Valentina Gordon, James Aston Lake, Oz Kalvan, Cass Buggé
written by Dan Gilroy, music by Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders
review by Mike Haberfelner
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In a world where art has become a business, and a multi million Dollar
one, and the determination of what's art is left to snooty art critics,
first and foremost Morf Vandewalt (Jake Gyllenhaal), Josephina (Zawe
Ashton), assistant to Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo), one of the most powerful
art dealers in the world, finds scores of paintings in the apartment of
her deceased neighbour Dease (Alan Mandell), paintings he ordered to be
destroyed after his death - but Josephina can't resist taking them, as she
figures they're too strong not to be shown to the world, and since they
would otherwise be destroyed, it isn't even stealing. And the paintings of
this heretofore unknown artist really create a rave in art circles, are the
latest thing really, and are sold for prices beyond imagination. And Morf
takes it upon himself to research the artist's biography - and he comes up
with some quite disturbing details, including abuse, patricide, and mental
illness ... which of course might only add to the aura of the artist, as
does the fact that actual blood has been found mixed in with the paint of
his pictures. Thing is, eventually people start to die in connection with
the paintings, as if the artist who never wanted to have his buildings on
the market, was exacting revenge from the netherworld ... John Malkovich
plays one of the "darlings" of the art business. Velvet
Buzzsaw is by no means a terrible movie, it features many good ideas,
is slick and well-made ... it just fails to properly decide which
direction to go: On one hand it tries to be a satirical ensemble piece,
like some of the best films of Martin Scorsese or Robert Altman, with all
the accomplished camerawork and lush sets that go with the genre - but
unfortunately it falls short with presenting us with characters to really
relate to, most of them seem just like caricatures ... which by the way is
not the ensemble's fault, the acting for the most part is awesome. On the
other hand though, the film also tries to be a horror movie - but really
fails to create an underlying tension, the horror and suspense scenes only
seem tagged onto the rest of the film, and at times they don't even seem
to affect the main story at all. And also the film never works towards a
proper resolution of things, quite the contrary, it really seems to end at
a random moment in the story, leaving the audience somewhat unsatisfied.
That all said, the film's still totally watchable, it just would have
deserved a better script.
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