¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019 [10 of 13] VELVET BUZZSAW (2019)

13 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[10 of 13]

VELVET BUZZSAW

(January 2019)

"Look, I came to the museum because I wanted to change the world through art. But the wealthy vacuum up everything, except crumbs. The best work is only enjoyed by a tiny few. And they buy what they’re told. So, why not join the party?”

Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw takes place in the dangerous waters of the art world, where most everyone is only too eager to deploy a scathing remark or a catty side-eye while they’re busy co-opting an artist’s true passion to make a quick buck.

It’s a world populated not just by artists, but by all the other personalities that tend to accrete around them, like critics or gallery owners.

The former is represented by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Morf Vandewalt, an inveterate critic who’s apparently unable to switch off his being “selective,” even for funerals, while Rene Russo’s Rhodora Haze is one of the latter. Once a self-described anarchist, from her days as a member of the punk band Velvet Buzzsaw, Rhodora is now a “purveyor of good taste,” as the owner of Haze Gallery.

They’re only two of the noteworthy collective of characters (and performers: Toni Collette! John Malkovich!) in this tale of art taking its overdue revenge on the industry that’s savagely exploited it, oh so cruelly and elegantly.

“Let me fill you in.

“All this… it’s just a safari to hunt the next New Thing and eat it.”

As an artist, as someone who creates, that dizzyingly high target you’re always aiming for is to create art that speaks to the audience, that can touch them in ways they never expected.

There’s a moment in the film that encapsulates that feeling masterfully, where Malkovich and Daveed Diggs--who play an established artist who’s seen better days and a new up-and-comer, the old school and the new--stare enraptured (or “ensorcelled,” as Morf would have it) at a piece of art in a gallery.

Velvet Buzzsaw takes that idea, and tosses it headfirst into horror movie territory as the art of one Vetril Dease proves to be art that can touch you hard enough to kill you.

It’s art that--to use Rhodora’s words--charges and mauls and devours.

It’s art that eats its audience.

Or, more to the point, it’s art that eats anyone who tries to profit off it in ethically questionable ways.

“We don’t sell durable goods, we peddle perception. Thin as a bubble.”

As much as Velvet Buzzsaw is a horror movie, complete with gruesome, gory deaths, what I feel is more noteworthy is that it’s also a savagely funny satire of the art world and its denizens.

Gilroy’s script impishly skewers an industry that constantly co-opts new voices and visions into its maw, all in the name of the Almighty Dollar, turning them into Brands and using them until they’re no longer of any worth, then tossing them out for some other bright new shiny talent.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s a world at once terrible and ludicrous, where a bunch of plastic garbage bags or a dead body in pools of blood can be mistaken for contemporary art.

A world where the Critic is God (the one and only Voice that can apparently determine a piece’s beauty and worth, but also a Voice only too ready to spew cruel and merciless invective), a world where true, passionate creativity and artistic integrity are forever haunted by the “money question.”

“So much easier to talk about money than art.”

As Rhodora points out to a Morf who’s already left the room (and as the one sheet’s tagline says), all art is dangerous.

Or at least, art is meant to be dangerous.

Art should provoke and challenge, inspire and elevate.

Instead, it’s become mired in an industry that’s far more interested in “tax issues,” the promise of “significant appreciation,” and “cutting-edge analytics to maximize deal flow and global demand.”

The industry has filed down the teeth of art, all the better to sacrifice it at the altar of commerce.

Velvet Buzzsaw imagines all those teeth grown back, turned into razor sharp fangs.

“Well, I’m going to meet with your board tomorrow and suggest a reduction in the Emerging Artist Exhibit.

“They don’t sell any tickets anyway.”

Parting Shot: Pat Healy (familiar to these parts from past ¡Qué horror! titles Cheap Thrills and Tales of Halloween) appears briefly as the “Man From Perlack.”

(Velvet Buzzsaw OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #12

VELVET BUZZSAW

(January 2019)

"Look, I came to the museum because I wanted to change the world through art. But the wealthy vacuum up everything, except crumbs. The best work is only enjoyed by a tiny few. And they buy what they’re told. So, why not join the party?”

Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw takes place in the dangerous waters of the art world, where most everyone is only too eager to deploy a scathing remark or a catty side-eye while they’re busy co-opting an artist’s true passion to make a quick buck.

It’s a world populated not just by artists, but by all the other personalities that tend to accrete around them, like critics or gallery owners.

The former is represented by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Morf Vandewalt, an inveterate critic who’s apparently unable to switch off his being “selective,” even for funerals, while Rene Russo’s Rhodora Haze is one of the latter. Once a self-described anarchist, from her days as a member of the punk band Velvet Buzzsaw, Rhodora is now a “purveyor of good taste,” as the owner of Haze Gallery.

They’re only two of the noteworthy collective of characters (and performers: Toni Collette! John Malkovich!) in this tale of art taking its overdue revenge on the industry that’s savagely exploited it, oh so cruelly and elegantly.

“Let me fill you in.

“All this… it’s just a safari to hunt the next New Thing and eat it.”

As an artist, as someone who creates, that dizzyingly high target you’re always aiming for is to create art that speaks to the audience, that can touch them in ways they never expected.

There’s a moment in the film that encapsulates that feeling masterfully, where Malkovich and Daveed Diggs--who play an established artist who’s seen better days and a new up-and-comer, the old school and the new--stare enraptured (or “ensorcelled,” as Morf would have it) at a piece of art in a gallery.

Velvet Buzzsaw takes that idea, and tosses it headfirst into horror movie territory as the art of one Vetril Dease proves to be art that can touch you hard enough to kill you.

It’s art that--to use Rhodora’s words--charges and mauls and devours.

It’s art that eats its audience.

Or, more to the point, it’s art that eats anyone who tries to profit off it in ethically questionable ways.

“We don’t sell durable goods, we peddle perception. Thin as a bubble.”

As much as Velvet Buzzsaw is a horror movie, complete with gruesome, gory deaths, what I feel is more noteworthy is that it’s also a savagely funny satire of the art world and its denizens.

Gilroy’s script impishly skewers an industry that constantly co-opts new voices and visions into its maw, all in the name of the Almighty Dollar, turning them into Brands and using them until they’re no longer of any worth, then tossing them out for some other bright new shiny talent.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s a world at once terrible and ludicrous, where a bunch of plastic garbage bags or a dead body in pools of blood can be mistaken for contemporary art.

A world where the Critic is God (the one and only Voice that can apparently determine a piece’s beauty and worth, but also a Voice only too ready to spew cruel and merciless invective), a world where true, passionate creativity and artistic integrity are forever haunted by the “money question.”

“So much easier to talk about money than art.”

As Rhodora points out to a Morf who’s already left the room (and as the one sheet’s tagline says), all art is dangerous.

Or at least, art is meant to be dangerous.

Art should provoke and challenge, inspire and elevate.

Instead, it’s become mired in an industry that’s far more interested in “tax issues,” the promise of “significant appreciation,” and “cutting-edge analytics to maximize deal flow and global demand.”

The industry has filed down the teeth of art, all the better to sacrifice it at the altar of commerce.

Velvet Buzzsaw imagines all those teeth grown back, turned into razor sharp fangs.

“Well, I’m going to meet with your board tomorrow and suggest a reduction in the Emerging Artist Exhibit.

“They don’t sell any tickets anyway.”

Parting Shot: Pat Healy (familiar to these parts from past ¡Qué horror! titles Cheap Thrills and Tales of Halloween) appears briefly as the “Man From Perlack.”

(Velvet Buzzsaw OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

MUTANT CHRONICLES
(Review)

“The Chronicles foretell of the release of the enemy, the ruin of the world, the final days of our age. But, they also prophesy the survival of Man. That Nakhdan the Deliverer, shall walk reborn among us, and deliver us from destruction.
“It is in the service of that prophecy that we are now irrevocably bound.”

Following an introductory sequence that establishes the nature of the film’s threat (an apparently alien machine which first landed here at the end of the Ice Age), we are quickly thrust into the middle of Simon Hunter’s Mutant Chronicles:
The year, 2707; the earth is ruled by four corporations—Capitol, Bauhaus, Mishima, and Imperial—massive entities who wage an endless war over what little natural resources are left on the planet.
But something is about to awaken that ancient, extraterrestrial machine, and only in the face of this all-consuming threat, will mankind unite, in a desperate bid to save the planet, and the entire human race.


The set piece that kicks off Mutant Chronicles—a border skirmish between Capitol and Bauhaus—effectively mires the audience, along with the suffering soldiers, in the brutal conflict that holds the world in a death grip.
Utilizing a grungy steampunk milieu for this particular future, Hunter (working off a script by Philip Eisner, who also wrote Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon) presents this section of the global conflict as World War I trench warfare revisited.
The explosions, the screams, the lethal gas, it’s all here, depicting war in a horribly intimate and visceral light.
There is nothing of today’s video game warfare here, with smart weapons launched remotely from locations insulated and far removed from the battlefield. Instead, this is the brutal combat of the early 20th century, where the blood, the sweat, and the dirt, are all too real.
But this mayhem pales in comparison to the bloodshed which ensues once the alien machine is set in motion, and implacable, inhuman hordes are loosed upon the already ravaged world.


Enter the squad of military personnel—which includes The Mist’s Thomas Jane, Sin City’s Devon Aoki, and Speed Racer’s Benno Fürmann—and the suicide mission that is quickly cobbled together by Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman), who represents the Order of Nakhdan, and is guided by the writings in the sacred Chronicles, an ancient tome protected by the silent Guardian, Severian (Perlman’s co-star in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Anna Walton).
It’s in the hands of this tiny band that the final hope of the human race lies.


What is perhaps the most commendable trait of Mutant Chronicles is, it’s the sort of film that valiantly works around its budgetary limitations.
What we have here is an ambitious genre production that dares to tell a sweeping, wartorn tale of faith in the face of adversity, on a far humbler budget than your average Hollywood tentpole.
There’s quite a lot of green screen, CGI, and other assorted effects work here that, yes, look rather dodgy, but they’re in service to a narrative that boasts subtext, however fleeting, which is more than can be said for any number of big budget Hollywood monstrosities.


At its core, Mutant Chronicles is about how faith can thrive in even the most bitter and desperate circumstances, and that all will turn out right in the end, though perhaps not the way we may anticipate.
Given another pass at the script, a more dynamic action coordinator, and a Hollywood-sized budget, Mutant Chronicles could have stood a chance of turning out to be a genre classic.
As it is, despite its flaws and shortcomings, it’s still nonetheless an interesting, imaginative, and worthwhile watch.


Parting shot: It’s too bad that we see too little of Sean Pertwee and Shauna Macdonald, and John Malkovich’s role here is all but a blip on the film’s running time.

Parting shot 2: The film is loosely based on the Mutant Chronicles RPG originally published in 1993.

(Images courtesy of omelete.com.br [Mutant Chronicles OS and film images] and aintitcool.com [Mutant Chronicles quad].)

reVIEW (43)
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

“Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving picture.
“Because we have the moving picture, our paintings will grow and recede. Our poetry will be shadows that lengthen and conceal. Our light will play across living faces that laugh and agonize. And our music will linger and finally overwhelm because it will have a context as certain as the grave.
“We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory. But our memory will neither blur, nor fade.”
-- F.W. Murnau

Nicolas Cage certainly has an interesting view of vampires.
In 1989, he starred in Robert Bierman‘s Vampire’s Kiss, a black comedy in which he played poor, befuddled Peter Loew, who believes—perhaps mistakenly—that he’s been bitten by a vampire.
11 years later, Cage chose as his feature producing debut, E. Elias Merhige’s brilliant take on Nosferatu, Shadow of the Vampire.

Here, noted German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich) sets off to film (without the widow Stoker’s permission) Dracula, and in the interests of authenticity, has a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) pretend to be an actor named Max Schreck, to play Nosferatu’s Count Dracula stand-in, Count Orlock.
As early as that singular premise—with its funhouse mirroring of truth masquerading as fiction, to play a fiction which is both truth (as Schreck/Orlock really is a vampire) and a double fiction (Orlock is merely Dracula, under a different name); all of this, of course, a fiction of a truth, as we see a behind-the-scenes-look-that-never-was of the making of Nosferatu—it should be plainly evident that Shadow of the Vampire is so much more than your average cinematic blood-sucking experience.
With a script by Steven Katz, Shadow of the Vampire asks the central question, How far is an artist willing to go for his art? And in asking that question, Shadow also explores the double-headed metaphor of art as vampire, and art as a means to immortality.
It also takes the film industry to task. Humourously, by poking fun at how a star’s ego can hijack a production, and darkly, by presenting the camera (in the film, merely an extension of the director) as cold, apathetic observer and recorder, as leecher of vitality and life, an idea which reaches its apex in a chilling sequence that touches on the ultimate disposability of actresses in the grand old Boy’s Club of movie-making.

Merhige takes all of this weighty material and crafts a tantalizing portrait of the high cost of art and the dangers of obsessively brilliant artists.
And who else to play the narrative’s obsessively brilliant artist, but John Malkovich?
Malkovich’s Murnau is calculating and exacting, a cinema despot who asks his extras not to “act,” but rather, to “be.” In his white lab coat and goggles, he is the mad scientist only too willing to go to extreme lengths to complete his celluloid Monster.
But he meets his nemesis in Schreck, a role that Dafoe clearly dives into with relish. As part of the ruse, his Schreck is apparently the ultimate method actor, appearing to the cast and crew always in costume, and constantly in character.
And if you’ve seen Murnau’s Nosferatu, you’ll note that Dafoe nails the oddly disturbing mannerisms actor Max Schreck displayed in that classic of German Expressionism.
But it isn’t just that peculiar physicality that Dafoe brings to his performance. He also brings a humour, curiously both self-effacing and cunningly self-aware, as when, in one scene, he is at first coached as to his character’s motivation, before taking his first stab at ad lib.
Dafoe also brings a strange air of pathos to his character that serves to inform a role that could easily have been all melodramatic pantomime gesture and Vaudevillian tics, with some genuine longing and emotion.
What gives Shadow even more of a kick is how awesome and effective the rest of its cast is: genre stalwart Udo Kier, Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes, Catherine McCormack, who all go about recreating scenes and sequences from Nosferatu like skilled and particularly respectful grave robbers, making the film, aside from everything else, a wonderful homage to a masterpiece of black-and-white cinema.

Shadow of the Vampire also has much in common with films like John Madden‘s Shakespeare In Love and Ken Russell’s Gothic, films which use actual historical figures to propose a fictional scenario that ultimately informs an artist’s work and creative sensibilities.
Or, as I put it earlier, films that show a behind-the-scenes-look-that-never-was of a film, or play, or novel.
So at this point, I think it should be stated in so many words: Shadow of the Vampire may have fangs, but it really isn’t about neck-biting and blood. It’s a fascinating and complex entry in the vaults of vampire cinema, one that is only willing and eager to be discussed and debated over.
After all, with so many funhouse mirrors around, it makes it that much harder to determine, where is the real Monster of the piece?
The ancient, bloodthirsty creature, only seeking to slake its inhuman thirst?
The despotic director, to whom all are merely a means to an end?
Or the film itself, the aforementioned end, for which all else is sacrificed?

Parting shot: A review of Merhige’s follow-up to Shadow of the Vampire, Suspect Zero, can be found in the Archive, where the article series “The Cinematic (Un)Life of Count Dracula” can also be found. Part I (“A Symphony of Shudders”) discusses F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu.

(Shadow of the Vampire OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by Samuels Advertising]; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

BEOWULF
(Review)

I once thanked Neil Gaiman for helping keep myth alive in our modern age. Rather humbly (and perhaps feeling I was overblowing the sentiment), Mr. Gaiman replied that myth was doing rather well on its own without his help.
Well, regardless of whether Mr. Gaiman is keeping myth alive or simply prodding it enough so it might run the treadmill and do some cardio more often in its old age, Beowulf, much like the beastial Grendel, is certainly a curious and interesting hybrid.
It utilizes the modern technology of mo-cap (or motion capture), to retell an ancient tale, so as to give 21st century audiences a tragic saga of how a father’s sins comes back, not just to haunt the son, but entire kingdoms as well. More potently, it’s also a tale about the humanity of heroes and monsters, and how that can, sadly enough, be their ultimate downfall.

I quite liked Beowulf, let’s be clear about that.
It does have its failings though, and perhaps tellingly, its flaws are rooted in the “modern technology” half of its cinematic DNA.
While mo-cap is the closest computer graphics can come to emulate humanity, it’s still a ways off from conveying genuine emotion. CGI characters can have the prettiest, silkiest hair in the world, but when you need them to emote, you may as well be asking a mannequin to deliver Shakespeare.
The simulated facial muscles still aren’t up to snuff to garner any Oscar acting nods. It’s a criminal waste, when even a great vocal delivery can come off like a Tara Reid performance when the construct on screen zombies its way through the role.
And their eyes…
Admittedly, the dead eye was far creepier in Robert Zemeckis’ earlier mo-cap effort, The Polar Express, but it’s still noticeable here in Beowulf.

In fact, the only performance that manages to punch its way through the pixels is Brendan Gleeson’s Wiglaf. His stubborn refusal to acknowledge anything that might tarnish the idea of Beowulf the Hero is just heart-breaking.
And while Sir Anthony Hopkins’ vocal delivery is fine, there‘s just something about the character of Hrothgar on screen that doesn’t quite capture the sad tragedy of the aged and broken king. The role of John Malkovich’s Unferth meanwhile, is kept to a woeful minimum.
Beyond that trio, nearly all the other actors are pretty much sabotaged by the limitations of mo-cap. And I say “nearly all” since, again rather tellingly, Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie have some of the more questionable vocal deliveries*; Winstone because he sometimes eats his words, occasionally leaving us with a growling mess where he sounds like a WWE superstar, while Jolie’s strange accent (was Grendel’s mother Romanian?) can’t quite mask the fact that it’s Angelina Jolie.
What can I say? So all-pervasive is its power that we can feel the Hollywood Star Syndrome as far back as the 6th century. (And apparently, women’s fashion is just as powerful, as Grendel’s mum seems quite taken with high heels, enough to shapeshift her feet into them…)
Of course, part of that fault also lies in the decision to make Grendel’s mum look exactly like Angelina Jolie.

I mean, when you’ve got the tools to play around with physiognomies—look at Beowulf, ‘cause that body certainly doesn’t belong to Ray Winstone—why keep to the real thing? And why keep to it when there’s the real possibility of a disconnect that endangers the suspension of disbelief? (Even Hrothgar is not immune to the Syndrome, since, damn, but doesn’t he look like Sir Anthony Hopkins?)
Why use this technology if you aren’t really going to fully play around with it? Why not just do it live-action, that way, you get the full benefit of the actors’ performances. Or, there’s always the Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow/300 greenscreen gambit.
It’s kind of frustrating when all Zemeckis seems content to use the presumably liberating freedom of mo-cap for is to do some fancy “camera” work, something he was already toying around with as far back as Contact. (Sure, the sea monster battle was a doozy, but there were a hell of a lot more “ooh, let’s follow this rat, which gets pinched by a bird, then soar dizzyingly through the air, till we reach the poor monster with the acute hearing so far, far away” sort of shots.)

But to be fair to Zemeckis, like I said, I quite liked Beowulf.
Some sequences just work. Like Grendel’s first attack on the mead hall, strobelit courtesy of some mystic fire. That stretch successfully conveys the danger and savagery of a mythic time of monsters, when there was clearly much to fear beyond the light of the roaring camp fire. (On that note though, Grendel might have done well if he’d just opened a club somewhere. Hire a killer DJ, and the gold would’ve come rolling in.)
The battle between Beowulf and Grendel also kicked some bare a$$. Not only was it a commendable sequence, but the synthetic Beowulf also gave Viggo Mortensen some competition for Best Buck Nekked Fight for the Year 2007. (I fought valiantly to stop myself from using the word “stiff” in that sentence. Sorry.)

See? I’m being snarky. If Beowulf had done its job properly, the snark would be kept to a minimum.
Still, and this stands to be repeated: I quite liked Beowulf.
Once we hit the point where the shared deception of Beowulf and Hrothgar is acknowledged, and the subsequent madness comes to pass, I for one, stepped fully into the story. And the reason for that, I think, is two-fold.
One: at that point, the narrative enters fascinating territory.
And two: enough running time had passed that I’d acclimated myself to the limitations of current mo-cap tech, so I could adjust my expectations accordingly.

In the end though, I’m quite happy that after Stardust, there’s another film Mr. Gaiman worked on that I can say I enjoyed. (For Mirrormask lovers, see my Stardust review in the Archive.)
Mo-cap may not have been entirely successful in breathing proper life into the legend, but in this 21st century of ours, it’s allowed a creaky old myth to flex its pixellated muscles just enough to make it look viable—and gosh darn it, pretty cool!—to scores of PS3- and Xbox-attuned eyes.

* Actually, even Crispin Glover’s vocal delivery of Grendel is troublesome as his words are so garbled sometimes as to be nearly unintelligible. I’ll be so thankful for the subtitles when the DVD is unleashed upon the land…
On the plus side, good on Winstone! I mean, from voicing Narnia’s Mr. Beaver to Beowulf…
Talk about a step up.

Parting shot: Though I didn’t mention him at all in the review, Roger Avary co-wrote Beowulf’s script with Neil Gaiman. My apologies.
Unless you had anything to do with Grendel’s mum’s high heels, in which case, you should probably be grateful, as I’d rather not be mentioned at all, than be mentioned in relation to a bit of anachronistic women’s fashion.
To quote Bryan Fuller in an all-together different context: Let the snark reign!

(Beowulf OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)