Tag: Zawe Ashton

Who doesn’t love a good period piece about ROMANCE and some spicy aristocrat British drama? Emma came out so long ago. Why did Jane Austen only write a handful of novels for people to adapt?!

Fine. I guess someone else will have to write some. It doesn’t have to be from someone who was living from the time. We know the history of the era, we can add new stories pretty easily.

And that is what Suzanne Allain did. She wrote a book called Mr. Malcom’s List in 2009, and also a screenplay, that took a long time to get going. In fact, once she got some people on board, they still couldn’t finance a film. So they made a short film instead. Except this one isn’t a whole story. It is just like the beginning of a movie, with a note to be continued at the end. To see if there was interest.

And apparently there was interest. A lot of the main cast from the short was signed on to the real film, Gemma Chan was not for whatever reason, and now they hope the fact that people watched a nicely produced intro to a movie on YouTube, that will translate to big bucks at the theaters.

Maybe Bridgerton helped? Unless that was just due to the sex. 

Who is Mr. Malcolm (Sope Dirisu) and why does he have a list? Well first, what is the list at all? Is it a mystery? No, it is not a mystery his rumored list. You see, it is a list of traits and qualities in a woman that his potential wives must meet, or else they do not deserve him and his money. Damn, pretty shitty.

The last woman he dated and ended a relationship with is Julia Thistlewaite (Zawe Ashton), potentially because she wasn’t smart enough! Well, that devastated her. And Malcolm’s friend, Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is over it as well. So they devise a plan.

Cassidy learns about the aspects of the list, so that he and Julia can set up Julia’s cousin, Selina Dalton (Freida Pinto), as the perfect woman in Malcolm’s eyes. They will make Malcolm fall in love with her. And when he proposes? She will turn him down! And produce her own list of things that he did not fulfill or live up to.

Hooray! No longer will this man ruin so many ladies in his path, he will know what it feels like. Yep. Fool proof plan.

Also starring Naoko Mori, Divian Ladwa, and Theo James.

I think Mr. Malcom’s biggest worry needs to be the tightness of his pants. 

To start off with a good thing, that clearly some assholes will hate, I love the diversity of this cast. This is a made up story, in a real time period sure. But who cares. We got so many people making up this cast from different backgrounds, that it is honestly refreshing to see on the screen. If someone went into this movie wanting historical accuracy when it came to casting, well, I don’t know what to tell you I guess. Get over it.

But lets face it. The people mostly clamoring for the movie (if they are the same people who liked the short), won’t care about that. They want romance and drama. They want witticism in the screenplay. They want to be swooned.

And sure, if that is all that they need for the film, then they will like it, I bet. But this movie doesn’t feel any level of unique. It seems like something I have seen before, in plenty of contexts. Hell, it has similarities to John Tucker Must Die, technically. Nothing in the plot really surprised me, nor did I really feel captivated by the romance. None of the actors did bad, per se, but it was just as expected for the type of movie. I don’t think a single character stood out as someone to really watch for, or any moment that I look back and think “Wow, that was interesting!”

This is a by the numbers Victorian romance film, so don’t expect some new level of art form. The diversity is nice, but not enough for me to care about watching it again.

Before Velvet Buzzsaw, Dan Gilroy has directed only two movies, and he is the writer of both of those films. The first one was Nightcrawler, a genius film and clearly one of the best of the year. It is haunting, and Jake Gyllenhaal gives one of his best performances of his life.

The second one was Roman J. Israel, Esq., which people like to ignore. I mean, Denzel Washington was nominated for acting from it, but it didn’t have Gyleenhaal so no one cared. It was not was well received as his first film.

This brings us back to Velvet Buzzsaw, which Gilroy again wrote and directed on his own. And because it is more horror based and has Gyllenhaal in it, people were notably excited and declared it would be just as good as Nightcrawler! Being released on Netflix isn’t an issue, because Netflix movies can be good!

People like to hype, I guess I am saying.

Nothing scarier than hearing I would have to analyze and judge pieces of art.

It is really hard to pick a main character to really talk about in this movie, but they want us to focus on Gyllenhaal with advertising, so I will. Morf Vandewalt (Gyllenhaal), probably a fake name, is an art critic in LA, one of the most famous and prestigious. He does fine work, people like him, he knows how to describe things like any elitist art man.

One of the galleries he tends to review at has a young fledgling art dealer, Josephina (Zawe Ashton), who is having a stressful time in life. To top it all off, some man dies in her apartment, she finds the body, it makes her late for work and she is demoted. After finding out that all of his items are to be destroyed per his wishes, she checks on his cat and finds hundreds to thousands of pieces of art, all originals, all haunting and powerful.

This? This could be her chance. You know, to deceive some people, act like it is her client, sell his art, get big in the community. Everyone is instantly amazed by the art, including her boss (Rene Russo), they want in on the action, want a piece of that huge jackpot of money they are about to create.

But as soon as more research goes into the now deceased artist, they find he had a troubled past, and has a good reason to have wanted all of the artwork to be destroyed.

Also starring Billy Magnussen, Daveed Diggs, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Natalia Dyer, and Tom Sturridge.

Everyone uses the same Gyllenhaal staring picture in their reviews,
I WANT A DIFFERENT ONE OKAY?

Velvet Buzzsaw, both the title, and the premise, is one that is able to draw you in slowly. It is set in a world that most of us are not a part of, dealing, making, selling art and making it a focal point of their lives. The rich, the elite. And that makes it a good film to have people die in.

Too many horror films are killing off our teenagers at record numbers. What about these rich people? The snobby elites? Why not watch them die in creative art fueled ways?

The concept is fine, but it definitely lacks the creep factor. It doesn’t seem to fully embrace the thoughts of horrors, and instead we get a strange drama/horror hybrid, where enough people definitely die, but never in ways that really seem exciting to talk about. The final death was a bit wicked, but other than that, it is mostly generic crazy death things.

It would be more memorable if it just went harder in the genre, but this movie plays it safe. We don’t have enough horrors set in museums, which are clearly some of the creepiest places to be. This adds to the list, but doesn’t top that list.