Monday, February 04, 2019

Stroke Me Off

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I've never been able to decide whether the Kandinsky being painted on both sides -- Chaos, Control, Chaos, Control, you like, you like -- in Six Degrees of Separation is whiff too obvious a metaphor; especially when they cut back to the painting spinning side to side later on in the film as Stockard's having her little world-changing breakdown. But at least there are two sides, the characters live and breath and love their pink shirts and they fall apart... which brings me to Velvet Buzzsaw. A pile of fabulous pink shirts, price tagged, begging for a buyer.

With character names like "Morf Vandewalt" and "Rhodora Haze" and "Jon Dondon" it is impossible, from the moment we meet this movie's characters, to take them seriously. But it should be a hurdle that writer-director Dan Gilroy and his actors, led by Jake Gyllenhaal, face front-on -- Six Degrees does after all tell us the story of Flan and Ouisa Kitteredge, names that drip with pretension that nonetheless unravel gold sheaths to reveal creamy centers underneath.

Gilroy keeps Morf and his Darger-adjacent menagerie of fellow looky-loos at arm's length, which allows for some good belly laughs before letting a plucky slasher vibe take hold -- Who Will Die Next And What Will Be Village Voiced Of Them -- and he seems content with keeping it at that surface level; at that level of surface snark then, Velvet Buzzsaw is a perfectly good enough time. As hollow as its targets, but a clever goof with some of my favorite gorgeous people letting loose in ways they don't always get to do. 

I do wish it cut deeper, though. Not only intellectually or emotionally -- if it is going to go broad then on the killings-front it weirdly ends up pulling its punches, as if its slightly skeptical of being all the Final Destination movie it clearly wants to be. If you're going to have your actors play it this big you're going to need to go full Guignol. (Imagine what Paul Verhoeven might have done with that sequence between Jake and the hobo robot and weep for the pervy freakshow that might have been.)

The Toni Collette sequence (glimpsed in the trailer) is really the only place you feel Buzzsaw's combative tones flashing like fireworks -- needless to say Toni's an actress that understands how to mix her paints, her pathos and camp, to get just the right strain of blood red performance. She is chaos, control, chaos, control -- contrarian canvasses twistering up some true, meaty satire. I liked, I liked.


12 comments:

Simon said...

I liked the movie but had the same issues with you, but onca again I loved Toni Collette’s performance. Making me remember how frustrated I am with her lack of Oscar nomination for Hereditary.

P.s. I also went there with Jake and the robot ;)

David said...

I had a ton of issues with the film, not the least of which being Jake as an effete, snobby queen who sleeps with a woman for the whole movie. The Hobo Robot scene could absolutely have gone Guignol...we didn't even get to see the final result of it, though I imagined Jakey being strained through chain link fencing. It wasn't funny enough to be a comedy; not gory enough to be a horror film; and not witty enough to be a parody.

I completely understand why Malkovich went back on the sauce.

Juliet said...

It was a little hit-and-miss for me, but I honestly can't recall a more woeful, inept performance than whatever the female lead was doing.

Anonymous said...

This was a big misfire for me. Jake was flamboyantly wonderful until he goes full on hetero for no apparent reason. But that's not the (only) turnoff: it didn't know what it wanted to be. High-art? Drama? Comedy? Horror? When the credits rolled, my husband and I turned to each other and almost simultaneously muttered, "I don't need to see that again."

Basti said...

i feel you. after having watched velvet buzzsaw my first thought was "why is this not a netflix series instead of a netflix movie". because they way it was crafted it was just very very shallow and quite hollow too, for a 2 hour movie. maybe it would have been better as an original series. but then again it really was quite bla.
it kind of wanted to be american psycho, a bit of final destination, a witty crticial look on the art-world etc. etc. but it never managed to be good and insightful and clever with any of those attempts.
i feel like the cast was not very good, except jake, toni and rene. zawe ashton was really not good in this (very undecided and wierd acting choices) and john malkovich?? who wants to see him in movies anymore??
it's again one of those movies where you feel really unstatisfied on many levels. it has such big potential to be something really good. Like really go bonkers with the death/killing scenes or have the focus on the crazy insane capitalist ridden art world. Or make it really philosophical and existentialist. or make it a black comedy with more naked jake gyllenhaal :)) but decide for one direction and craft that one direction into a good movie! SO MUCH POTENTIAL!!!! but again, like so many movies, it just scratches the surface and does not dig deep.

Anonymous said...

So much squandered potential. Also, in both Velvet Buzzsaw and Nightcrawler, director Dan Gilroy manages to make Jake Gyllenhaal physically unattractive, which is criminal.

Anonymous said...

Sooooooooo glad I didn't watch the trailer before I saw the film. Geez, it gives away everything.

Anonymous said...

Toni in a mashup of Phantasm and Tenebrae? What's not to like?

Anonymous said...

I thought the satire elements were fun and hilarious. Toni was great! As per usual. However the horror elements were just not HORROR enough, if that makes any sense.

Jason Adams said...

Anon 4:18 -- it def. worked better as comedy than horror; I think it's satire would've been sharper if it done a better job at the latter, is all. But I liked watching the movie, I had a good time -- it's just one of those ones that's frustrating because you can see What More It Could Have Been, but isn't.

magusxxx said...

The sphere immediately reminded me of the Wood Beast from Flash Gordon. From there the movie just went downhill.

Aquinas1220 said...

*SPOILER ALERT*
I actually kind of liked it and found the satire worked (I mean, c'mon; Toni's gruesome demise and the folks the next day thinking it was part of the art installment was HILARIOUS). Parts were pretty creepy and I wish the film had laid that on a bit thicker. The one thing I HATED with a passion was the gay bating. Jake was such a flouncy queen and yet got all butch to bang his girl. His boytoy wasn't even allowed a snog nor a snuggle with Jake.