Review of Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) by Hnestlyonthesly — 07 Oct 2019

Velvet Buzzsaw was Netflix’s third time pranking me into seeing an advertisement for their streaming service disguised as a movie suboptimal even as background noise for cleaning your kitchen or doing crossword puzzles (the first times being that **** of a sci-fi movie teased at the Superbowl last year, The Cloverfield Paradox, and more recently the Coen Brother’s cash crab of a made-for-tv Ballad of Buster Scruggs). I say this with full knowledge that I’ve only actually made it through the first hour ten, hour twenty of this film, because at that point Friend and I got a call that the baby was fussy and his colleague needed a relief pitcher, but even after four shots of whiskey, nothing about this yawn of a film did it for me.

Dan Gilroy, director of the lovely Nightcrawler (2014) also starring Jake Gyllenhaal, was able to pull one over on Netflix and possibly this Slate writer when she writes that the film “eventually develops a righteous, rousing kick” (maybe that happens in the last twenty minutes? we’ll never know). It’s genuinely kind of shocking that directors of this caliber working with the exact same actors and even larger budgets than they might for a movie that’s destined for the silver screen can turn out such garbage.

Please Birdbox this movie.