Critic
‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ Review: An Oddly Optimistic Film About Deadly Art
The murderous new Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo film has an unexpectedly rosy take on the art world.
Illustration: Tim Lahan
There’s a lot of bad art in Dan Gilroy’s horror movie, Velvet Buzzsaw, and not just the kind of bad where people see it and walk away muttering “derivative.” Here, the art is evil.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because before we get to killer paintings, we have to watch Jake Gyllenhaal, who stars as the influential art critic Morf Vandewalt, murmur gibberish in front of canvases. “They’re visionary,” he says at one point, flipping through a folio of works on paper. “Mesmeric! An absolute indelible mix of mediums!”