A Movie Slate post without Movie Slate? Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time it has happened in the blog’s history. It’s not been a frequent occurrence, but it has happened. Granted, we’ve not had that much of a chance to review movies without Movie Slate, so seeing this sort of thing isn’t all that normal. It’s also not normal at all to have a griffon use a giant Wacom stylus to erase a bug horse from existence. This is a very surreal concept, and I’m quite happy with the final result, though I rushed it in every respect for the sake of expediency. Also you can only spend so much on each picture before you get completely sick of it.
 
This one was fun to do. Do you know what wasn’t fun tho?
 
Sit through all of “Velvet Buzzsaw”. So I went into this movie knowing little about it, other than the trailer and the previous work of the director, Dan Gilroy. I went into it expecting a sort-of slasher horror movie with a paranormal twist, but what I wasn’t expecting were some of the most unlikeable characters I’ve seen in recent films. When I say nobody is worth saving in this movie I quite mean it. Every character fits their trope in the “all the way up their own ass” critics and artists, and this would be fine if the actors gave a shit about humanizing them through their performances, but it’s clear they weren’t really into it. I give the movie credit for having actors who are very full of themselves portray characters who also are, but that doesn’t work in favour of the movie, rather against it because there isn’t a single one you’d want to see make it through to the end! Speaking of which, the deaths of this movie are really bad. The only one with a bit of merit is perhaps the one with the mirror sphere, but it got spoiled in the trailer so that doesn’t count. They’re executed really poorly, nonsensical even with the paranormal element (the graffiti one in the negative space comes to mind), or come so out of left field that you don’t have a moment to figure out what’s happened.
 
What’s criminal about this movie is that I am the perfect audience for it. I hate the hoity-toity-my-fart-don’t-smell-I’m-the-best-and-know-better-than-you sort of artist, as well as hate the I-know-what’s-best-for-you-the-MCU-is-a-bunch-of-bad-movies-mainstream-cinema-isn’t-real-cinema-I-only-go-to-Sundance sort of critic. I hate those types that this movie portrays, so I was rearing up to watch this movie and have a bit of fun, have some carnage in the vein of “Nightmare on Elm Street”, and in a way the subtext of the movie is actually quite alright. I can see this as the spirit of the artist living through their work and outliving everyone who doubted or thought knew better than them. But in the hands of Dan Gilroy it’s like seeing an ant trying to juggle torches. It’s a shame because after “Nightcrawler” it looked like he had a strong career, but with this one and “J. Roman Israel, Esq.” I don’t think I have any hopes left for him.
 
“Velvet Buzzsaw” is the cinematic equivalent of that one artist who put his shit in tin cans and then sold it at an auction. As an oddity it’s not even that uncommon, and as a piece of cinema it’s a rusty can of faeces.