Movie Review: Velvet Buzzsaw

Velvet Buzzsaw *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Dan Gilroy.

Written by: Dan Gilroy.

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal (Morf Vandewalt), Rene Russo (Rhodora Haze), Zawe Ashton (Josephina), Tom Sturridge (Jon Dondon), Toni Collette (Gretchen), Natalia Dyer (Coco), Daveed Diggs (Damrish), John Malkovich (Piers), Billy Magnussen (Bryson), Alan Mandell (Dease).

 

Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw is a brightly lit, pop art satire/horror film and is daring and original enough that you wish it was just a little bit more daring and original, because then you may have something truly special on your hands, or perhaps a little less daring and original, because then you would have a wonderful guilty pleasure on your hands. Instead, it occupies that squishy middle ground. It’s impossible to dismiss – there is something here that will remind you of Gilroy’s brilliant first feature, Nightcrawler, and yet I don’t think Gilroy is ever really able to bring Velvet Buzzsaw to the next level. It’s interesting and unique – and obviously the work of very talented people – and just not quite good enough to be something truly special.

 

The film is set in the superficial art world of Los Angeles, and pokes fun at just about all the players in that world. The main character is Morf Vandewalt – played by Jake Gyllenhall is a deliciously over-the-top performance (when your character’s named is Morf, over the top is the only way to go). He is an art critic, who can essentially make or break an artist, a gallery, a show, whatever with one review (I’m not sure, in the age of social media, anyone has that power anymore, but go with it). He moves around in a world where gallery owners and artists essentially kiss his ass, in the hopes of him making their show, instead of destroying it. He has a special relationship with Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo) an artists agent who represents only the best artists, and has a great reputation. Her assistant is Josephina (Zawe Ashton), who Morf starts sleeping with despite the fact that he’s gay. The story really kicks into high gear when Josephina discovers that her newly deceased neighbor’s massive treasure trove of art. It is the work of a tortured soul – and although he had left instructions for it to be destroyed, she “rescues” it – and of course, it becomes the hit of the art world. Everyone wants a piece. And then people start dying.

 

The death, when the happen, recall a films like the Final Destination franchise. These are not normal deaths, but actual instances of art striking back against those who are trying to exploit it. Critics, agents, gallery managers (like Toni Collette) and other bloodsuckers will become the victim of art striking back at them. It starts out as just the work of the artist in question – but it can really be any art that can be activated.

 

Gilroy’s film is really just asking that we take art seriously – that all the crap around the art, the buzz, the prices, the sales, the influencers, etc. are all just explotiing art for their own purposes, trying to make money, trying to gain prestige or be seen as cool. They don’t care about the art, they don’t take it seriously, they don’t love it – they love the idea of it. The art from the deceased painter we do see is clearly haunting, demented and it’s way, beautiful. Those who can appreciate the art on its meritis are fine. Those who try and exploit, are not.

 

The performances in the movie really help – as most of the characters are fairly one note, more caracicture, than characters. Add this to the growing list of great performances by Jake Gyllenhaal – and considering I just watched him a couple of weeks ago in a subtle, understated, at times very quiet performance in Wildlife, it certainly shows his range as well. When he wants to, Gyllenhaal can go for it – this isn’t as out there as his performance in Okja – but it’s getting there. Actresses like Rene Russo (who did the best work of her career in Nightcrawler) and Toni Collette really do elevate characters that are nothing on the page. Zawe Ashton is the breakout here as Josephina – the one who will get corrupted throughout the film. Young Coco (Natalia Dyer, from Stranger Things) doesn’t get sucked in so easily.

 

As with Gilroy’s other films, the cinematography here is by the great Robert Elswit, and his bright color palette is also one of the best things about the movie. As a whole, Velvet Buzzsaw doesn’t add up to very much. It doesn’t hit you as hard as Nightcrawler did, and for all of its many (many) flaws, I don’t think it will stick in my mind as much as Roman J. Israel, Esq. has (seriously, I didn’t much like that film when I saw it more than a year ago – but I think about it often). But it’s an interesting film by Gilroy just the same.

Movie Review: Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Roman J. Israel, Esq. ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Dan Gilroy.

Written by: Dan Gilroy.

Starring: Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.), Colin Farrell (George Pierce), Carmen Ejogo (Maya Alston), Lynda Gravatt (Vernita Wells), Amanda Warren (Lynn Jackson), Hugo Armstrong (Fritz Molinar), Sam Gilroy (Connor Novick), Tony Plana (Jessie Salinas), DeRon Horton (Derrell Ellerbee), Amari Cheatom (Carter Johnson).

 

The first thing I noticed about Denzel Washington is Roman J. Israel, Esq. is that the character does not have Washington’s trademark strut. Washington has one of the best struts in cinema history – he moves through the space with utter and complete confidence – he’s in control and he knows it (or at least that’s the impression he wants to give). But his Roman here doesn’t strut as much as shuffle. Unlike almost any other Washington character, he doesn’t walk with his head held high – instead, he mainly looks down, his old fashioned Walkman headphones on as protection from the outside world. Here’s he is playing a lawyer who has essentially got to hide from the outside world – live inside his head – for decades. He is partnered with another lawyer – but that other lawyer is the fact of the operation, does all the court appearances, meets clients, etc. Israel has a genius legal mind, but no social skills, so he stays in the office writing briefs – doing the grunt work – while his partner does the rest. It works for Roman – that is, until his partner has a heart attack, slips into a coma and dies. With nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and in desperate need of money – he ends up working for George Pierce (Colin Farrell) – a slick, criminal defense lawyer who thinks he can use Israel’s genius mind to help his own, already thriving practice. But in a matter of weeks, Israel will essentially destroy himself.

 

What precisely is wrong with Roman is never really discussed in the film. He’s clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum – but if he’s ever been diagnosed, it doesn’t come up. He is, in many ways, a genius – but thrust out into the world without protection, he makes one bad decision after another.

 

Washington is in nearly every scene of the film, and luckily for the film, you cannot take your eyes off of him. I’m not sure it’s a good performance or not, but it’s an interesting one. Everything around him in the movie is a complete and total mess – none of the other characters make a whole lot of sense, the plotting makes less sense, and nothing in the film really coheres into a whole. I’m not quite sure what the film is trying to say about, well, anything.

 

The film was written and directed by Dan Gilroy – whose directorial debut Nightcrawler with Jake Gyllenhaal is a truly great neo-noir, with terrific performances, and a killer look. It was one of the great debuts of recent years. Here, though, I never got the sense of what Gilroy wants to do or say in the movie. He clearly doesn’t like the criminal justice system, which has turned into one in which everyone pleas out, without going to court, because the consequences of not doing so are so dire.

 

But of all that gets lost in a plot that involves a murder, and reward money, and Israel deciding to sell out, that regretting it – and a subplot involving Carmen Ejogo’s character – who works for some ill-defined Civil Rights group whose mission is never stated, who is drawn to Israel, for reasons that don’t make a lot of sense. Farrell’s character is worse. He has turned into a terrific actor over the last few years, but there is little you can do with a character who seems to be different – and have different motivations – every time we see him. The fact that this all takes place over the span of a mere three weeks makes no sense either – there’s simply too much going on.

 

Washington is as committed as ever to his role – and it’s a strange choice for him to play, and I admire him for doing it. Like the movie itself, I don’t think the performance entirely works – and yet I don’t see how it could have gone any better. Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a disappointment because it is the type of movie I wish Hollywood made more of – and because this one doesn’t work, that’s further proof for them to stop trying to do movies like this at all. It shouldn’t be. This is an odd film – and not a very good one. But I don’t think I’m going to forget it any time soon.

Movie Review: Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler
Directed by: Dan Gilroy.
Written by: Dan Gilroy.
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal (Louis Bloom), Rene Russo (Nina Romina), Riz Ahmed (Rick), Bill Paxton (Joe Loder), Michael Hyatt (Detective Fronteiri), Price Carson (Detective Lieberman), Rick Chambers (KWLA Anchor Ben Waterman), Holly Hannula (KWLA Anchor Lisa Mays).

Nightcrawler has already been compared to a lot of previous films – Network, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, Collateral, Drive, Peeping Tom and many others. Writer/director Dan Gilroy has obviously been inspired by many of these films, but the one I couldn’t help but think of after watching the film was a strange – the documentary The Corporation, which applied the standard diagnosis of psychopaths to the actions of corporations, and found that many of them would be psychopaths. In America, where corporations are now legally treated like people, I couldn’t help but think of the main character in Nightcrawler – Louis Bloom – as the reverse - a person who behaves like a corporation. Bloom is clearly a psychopath – none of the pain or misery he films throughout the movie has any sort of effect on him or his emotions whatsoever. He basically exists solely to make money – and he will do whatever he needs to do to get that, no matter what ethical lines he has to cross. He treats everything as a business transaction. He is constantly spouting corporate speak – inspirational quotes that we normally apply to people who are successful – who we admire for working so hard to make something of themselves. But when taken to the extremes that Bloom takes them in Nightcrawler, it becomes deeply disturbing. The movie is many things – but that is what sticks with me.

 When we first meet Bloom, he’s breaking into a construction site to steal cooper wire, chain link fence and manhole covers to sell for a little bit of money. Cruising the streets of L.A. at night, he comes across a bloody car accident –and meets Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), filming it. He is a so-called Nightcrawler – a freelance cameraman who gets footage – the bloodier, the better – and sells it to the highest bidder. Bloom figures he can do the same thing – so he gets a cheap camera, a police scanner and heads out into the night to start filming. He isn’t particularly good at filming at first – but he has an advantage over the rest of the nightcrawler – he has no scruples, and gets in closer than the rest of them – and if that means he gets in the way of the police, firemen or paramedics doing their job, so be it – he needs the footage. He establishes a relationship with Nina Romina (Rene Russo) – an aging news director on the graveyard shift at the lowest rated channel in L.A. – who wants the bloodiest footage she can get to put on the morning show. She senses in him a kindred spirit – and so they are, at first, until Bloom starts pushing her even further than she wants.

The movie follows Bloom as he gradually ratchets up his actions to get the best footage – first just getting in closer, then moving things around – including bodies – around at scenes, before the police get there, to make for a better shot. In a mesmerizing, and disturbing sequence, he enters a house where a triple murder just happened – and films it all before the police get there, and then flees – keeping the identity of the culprits to himself – so he can use them later to stage even more bloodshed.

This is the best performance Gyllenhaal has given to date – and the fact that he continues to top himself each time out is impressive. He is charmingly amoral at first – and just gets worse from there. But he’s also likable – and somewhat funny. He’s like Rupert Pupkin, from The Kind of Comedy, in a man who won’t take no for an answer – and also doesn’t quite understand why no one else sees the world as he does. Not that he cares that much about other people. But he’s also like Patrick Bateman, from American Psycho, in that there is a charming surface, but the deeper you go, the less there seems like anything there but the surface. The movie is a pitch black comedy, and it gives Gyllenhaal some great laugh lines. We root for Bloom, in spite of ourselves, and then the movie leaves us to figure out what that means. Gyllenhaal is matched by Rene Russo (and it’s nice to see her in a movie again) – as the two become the central couple in the movie, and the sexual tension between them – despite their age difference – is palpable, even if it is really more of a business transaction for both of them.

Nightcrawler is a lot of things – a modern L.A. set noir, with brilliant cinematography by Robert Elswit, that makes the city look even darker, and creepier, than Drive or Collateral. A satire of the media, who sell fear to their audience even though crime is actually going down. A satire on our current culture of over documentation, where everything is immediately available for public consumption, even if it shouldn’t be. A character study of a psychopath. And it’s all wrapped up in a supremely entertaining, disturbing, funny, violent package. That it pulls this all off is what makes it one of the year’s best so far.