Most artists and critics would tell you they’d die defending their work, but they probably didn’t mean like this.
In “Velvet Buzzsaw,” Jake Gyllenhaal plays a snobby art critic in the wealthy, contemporary Los Angeles art scene who discovers a breathtaking new artist, only to discover that his paintings are alive and out to kill.
“You ever notice anything about this painting,” a character played by Daveed Diggs says in the trailer. “You look at it long enough, it moves.”
Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but that’s the point. Dan Gilroy’s film is a horror satire, playing on how art collides with commerce in often violent ways, and in this case, not metaphorically speaking. It reunites both Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo with their writer/director on “Nightcrawler,” and it also stars Toni Collette, Daveed Diggs, Natalia Dyer, Billy Magnussen, Natalia Dyer, Zawhe Ashton, Tom Sturridge and John Malkovich.
This is Gilroy’s follow-up to “Roman J. Israel, Esq.,” starring Denzel Washington, and it is just Gilroy’s third film after his debut on “Nightcrawler.”
“Velvet Buzzsaw” will make its premiere at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, and then it will debut for streaming on Netflix on Feb. 1.
Watch Gyllenhaal in the first look trailer above.