A satirical thriller set in the inane world of Los Angeles’ contemporary art scene, Dan Gilroy’s deliriously garish “Velvet Buzzsaw” is a film that’s every bit as shiny and hollow as those colorful balloon animals that Jeff Koons has sold for millions of dollars. It’s a dull-witted joke about the violent relationship between art and commerce, and the punchline is that it’s therefore the Platonic ideal of a Netflix movie.
Nothing could better define the industry-devouring studio (or its prolific motion picture output) than a star-studded cautionary tale about the fatal danger of assigning value to an abstract thing. Not only is “Velvet Buzzsaw” the kind of batshit insane, fiercely uncommercial gif-factory of a movie that only Netflix could make,…