dir. Wes Anderson – filmography rated (1996 – present)

Unexpected stories of whimsy and drollness, propped by their trademark air of melancholy – narratives whose imperfections (and imperfect characters) work against their visual symmetry and neatness. Sentimental and decadent “coolness” in every frame.

9. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

8. Bottle Rocket (1996)

7. Isle of Dogs (2018)

6. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

5. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

4. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

3. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Anderson’s first stop-motion animation, later followed by the Silver Bear-winning Isle of Dogs (2018), is an ingenious adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl novel (of the same name). Every element of this children’s picture is weighed perfectly, not least the eccentric soundtrack and ensemble of character voices. Unusually, Anderson chose to record the voice work outside of a studio: “we went out in a forest, […] went in an attic, [and even] went in a stable.” Aardman-esque in its heart-warming inventiveness, Fantastic Mr. Fox is so much more than another piece of eye-candy in the Anderson oeuvre.

2. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Influenced by the sombre Americana of J.D. Salinger, The Royal Tenebaums chronicles the lives and careers of three siblings – played by Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson and Gwyneth Paltrow – who, in their individual ways, are each racked by disappointment after their childhood glory. Quietly devastating in its reach, Anderson never allows its quick-paced cinematography, or slight gestures of comedy, to overturn the genuine seriousness of the family affairs. Complex and idiosyncratic behaviours.

1. Rushmore (1998)

Holding closely to the memory of François Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959) and Jules et Jim (1962), whilst also being wholly unique to itself, the story of Rushmore is at once a classic bildungsroman and again something else, a minor civil war of sorts. Often overlooked for the bolder and more extravagant later works, Rushmore is a small work of auteur genius – magisterial cameos (Bill Murray, for one) heighten the Wilson/Anderson duet, assuring its tragicomic proportions.

My personal favourite Wes Anderson film, for an abundance of reasons, and one certainly worth watching again.

Joker – review | fierce and underwhelming clowning around

Joker (dir. Todd Phillips, 2019)

✭✭✭✩✩

In the early moments of Peter Weir’s cult-classic The Truman Show (1998), its title character (played by Jim Carrey) is leafing through a photo album, reluctantly, when he discovers a picture of himself as a young child. “Little angel … Oh, my little clown,” speaks his mother, implicitly persuading Truman to uphold the fantasy of his existence. To a beady-eyed audience, he is an easily digested prospect for entertainment – ‘my little clown’, unknowingly, for a generation of television viewers; to himself, however, he is no playful, comic entertainer. Loneliness and confusion pervade: “You never had a camera in my head!” he resolutely declares.

In various ways does Todd Phillips’ Joker resemble the dynamics of such an existence – not least for how easily such a façade is peeled away, a consciousness that unfolds with the development of narrative. Sweeping the Venice film festival in August, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation, the picture has since provoked a momentous surge of backlash: tallying words such as “toxic”, “uncomfortable [viewing]” and “cynical” (more or less from people who haven’t watched the film). It is an exhilarating prospect when a contemporary film generates this kind of reputation before even having had a general release. 

Joker loosely exists in orbit of the DC universe – we glimpse the Wayne family, as well as suggestions of other cultural phenomena – but, fundamentally, it is a character study in psychopathy, clothed in the comic-book tradition. To be surprised by its personality is a naivety on the part of the audience; it is an origins story that holds no pretensions of being anything else. For anyone paying to watch a tragedy, how could you expect not to be shocked? Phillips’ comic figure – seized fervently by the capable hands of Joaquin Phoenix – emerges not as a product of the world (much like Heath Ledger’s portrait in The Dark Knight (2008) instalment) but rather as a pedestrian of it, who by virtue of dressing as a clown is borne into a reactionary wave of anti-capitalist agenda. Not prompted to think any differently, the Joker trades a life of psychosomatic disorder for the effortless “comedy” of killing: “… for my whole life, I didn’t know if I even really existed. But I do, and people are starting to notice.” It is all too natural to be a clown in this society.

In a Harlem/Brooklyn-inspired Gotham city, Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) works as a professional clown for a living – twirling signs on street corners and dancing for children in hospital – whilst also caring for his aged, bed-ridden mother, Penny. Fleck suffers from a pseudobulbar affect, a neurological condition of involuntarily bursting into laughter; treatment is presented, in the form of counselling, medication and a thought diary, but nothing appears to work (“I just don’t want to feel so bad anymore”). Not unlike the 1920s paintings of Pierrot the clown, by Pablo Picasso, outward happiness is used to colour a complex, inward melancholy, only here the paint runs … even if it is regularly made up. Gotham is alive with societal corruption, witnessed in the beatings and offense inflicted upon Fleck himself – no one could be defeated more. Chance brings about a new beginning with the screening of his botched stand-up routine on the live Murray Franklin Show, helmed by an enigmatic Robert De Niro, and so does a new chapter unfold.

Todd Phillips – previously locked into frat-boy comedies such as The Hangover Trilogy (2009 – 2013) and Due Date (2010) – engineers a pretence of seriousness over levity, closely alluding to the works of Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet (although falling short of both, equally) when finding the tones and locality of his urban, American landscape. It is an homage channelled only superficially, the touchstones of Taxi Driver (1976) or The King of Comedy (1983) – the former gestured twice with a mock-finger headshot – compromised by the pseudo-serious, shallow depths of its script. Phillips’ does not engage his inspiration originally or tactfully (although a Rupert Pupkin-esque performance by De Niro is dazzling alone). Surfaces are important to the grammar of this picture – whether internally or externally.

Joaquin Phoenix introduces a uniquely upsetting performance of the infamous character, most notably during his bouts of laughter – all of which are followed by an equally strained intake of breath, attempting to avoid eye contact as he fumbles for an explanatory medical card. Far removed from the pantomime antics of Jack Nicholson’s 1989 rendition, Joker works somewhere between Jared Leto’s overt conceit in Suicide Squad (2016) and Heath Ledger’s spiritual damage from 2008. Once again it still cannot compare to the latter, but it is a masterful attempt. Phoenix elevates a hastily-drawn stereotype into moments of spectacle, in particular with dance – as observed in the bathroom; descending the concrete staircase; or before entering the stage. Such moments of carefully worked bliss are also indicative of control, the mind and body settled, if temporarily, as they are married to the high-sounding beat of Gary Glitter or the disturbed, throbbing cello of Hildur Guðnadóttir. I am reminded of the classical soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) – “now it was lovely music that came into my aid […] and I viddied right at once what to do” – otherwise a thematic extension to the acts of violence and rape perpetuated throughout.

Arthur Fleck, or the “Joker” (his title assumed with renewed purpose), is a deliberately tragic figure not a comic one – as pointed by Mark Kermode in a recent interview, a line is clearly drawn here between ‘empathy’ and ‘pity’; Joker is without doubt a pitiable figure. And yet for all its absence of character development, poor depiction of mental illness and homage, the second-half of Joker is a breath-taking plunge into the deepest limits of brutality and moral anarchy. It is by no means a dangerous film but it is certainly provocative, and for those unused to comic-books reflecting a glimmer of the world of today, many will be afraid to look again. Fierce and unimaginative craftsmanship.

#byNWR – a delicious streaming platform of unholy cinema

Nicholas Winding Refn is a precious filmmaker – look too hard and you might puncture the surface; look too carefully and the weight of his images could ring hollow. Few contemporary auteurs have gorged audiences so fully with their own vision, committed to their influence as much as to their cinematic label (his credit is now stylised as NWR). Spiritual successor to Lars Von Trier – though “he is envious of everything I have” – and a provocative, enfant terrible in his own right, Refn is a challenging figure to enjoy. “I’m a pornographer. I make films about what arouses me […] what I want to see,” he infamously commented, in an interview with The Guardian, a smile likely playing upon his lips. (Films such as Bronson (2008), Drive (2011) or Only God Forgives (2013) do little to alleviate accusations of misogyny, sadism and pugilistic, adolescent cravings). I, personally, have been unable to resist his work, even if I cannot always understand it – his thirteen-hour lumber, Too Old to Die Young (2019), being a recent epitome of such extravagance.

            #byNWR is his latest, cinematic offering. Established as “an unadulterated cultural expressway of the arts”, the streaming platform – working alongside the Harvard Film Archive and MUBI – works to revive and restore a glut of unseen, forgotten content. Quarterly volumes are directed by guest editors (with titles such as ‘Smell of Female’ or ‘You Ain’t No Punk, You Punk’), typically given three chapters, which themselves are plushed with film, mixed-media, interviews and other loosely tailored items. Refn refers to their collection as a hobby – yet it might be more appropriate to term it an obsession, one that is intended to justify, and compliment, his own work over the past few years. “Our times need sex, horror and melodrama,” Refn lays out, art to displace “our comfort zones – of complacency, and, for most of us in the west, an easeful life.” Something to hurt us, something to digest over an extended period, as if high-fibre viewing. Each of the works collected and restored in #byNWR achieves a double-helix of wonder and repellent, ephemeral euro-porn/art house works that unapologetically exist to be seen.

            I can only remark on what I have seen so far. Opening the first volume is Bert Williams’ The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965), a relic of the past whose stimulations go far beyond the carnal, striking something altogether temporal and unidentifiable. Williams buries his sole protagonist, the investigative cop Johnson, deep into the airless swamps of Bible Belt America, where (chiming with the fairy-tale mystique of Night of the Hunter (1955)) spiders, drifters, and crocodiles haunt its recesses. A mysterious young girl, Lisa, is discovered as the captive bird in the nest of “The Cuckoo Inn” – defiled, reportedly, by the wants of her absent father. Volume One continues with Hot Thrills and Warm Chills (1967) – cheap sex scenes interspersed with a dull plot – before concluding with the lurid, racialised Shanty Tramp (1967). Onward: Refn restores cult classics such as Night Tide (1961), featuring a feline-beautiful Dennis Hopper in a story of fairgrounds and mermaids, in addition to Roy Ormond’s fascinating bible trilogy: If Footmen Tire You … (1971), The Burning Hell (1974) and The Believer’s Heaven (1977). In the volumes since, the site has looked beyond to classic and lost punk films, abandoned home videos, and lately to low-budget, grindhouse fare. If you choose to watch these films you will recoil – but it is hard to resist a second glimpse.

            In a time of streaming giants, Netflix and Amazon Prime soon to be eclipsed by Apple TV+, Disney+ and HULU, #byNWR holds its ground as a bastion of alternative creativity. Refn offers a free antidote (as of yet, there is no subscription fee) to the polished, formulaic trends in mainstream cinema. I am determined for the site to reach as many people as possible, and believe that everyone will find something of interest – in one chapter, or another – that reaches deep, with one long hand, and grasps tight onto that feeling you least expected. 

“In a world of the instant,” the bio to the site reads, it is here “where we can share, enjoy, and look to the future – with hope, prosperity, and the idea that culture is for everyone.”

#byNWR can be accessed at https://www.bynwr.com

Ad Astra – review | a secular odyssey of paternal desires

Ad Astra (dir. James Gray, 2019)

✭✭✭✭✩

If the genre of science fiction repeatedly finds itself, as the title offers, looking per aspera ad astra – from the Latin, “through hardships to the stars” – director James Gray returns the gaze, turning instead to the onlooker themselves. Brad Pitt is subject to an almost painterly study, his emotional muteness viewed with an intensity that rivals Miloš Forman’s scrutiny to the expressive script of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – the contours of skin, every facial tick, slur, or pause, as fathomless as the gulf between planets. Ad Astra knowingly plays into the traditions and grammar of space opera, its thrilling ambition met with typical unoriginality. Opening in the “near future” – its blazing red typography somewhat Bladerunner-inspired – Gray paves a transcendent, Conradian journey that staggers from planet to planet, eventually settling on the blue expanse of Neptune (a rarely used, planetary set piece). It is a story of fathers and sons, or rather fatherless sons, whose Freudian longings for something more dismantle the stability of their present. Space becomes a harbour for such internal damage, a site for the dispossessed – the lunar plane, for example, a focal point of territory warfare – which, over the course of its two-hour runtime, sees its drifting astronauts yearn for firmer groundings. Inseparable from prior instalments in the sci-fi genre, Interstellar, Gravity and Sunshine the most immediate examples, Ad Astra’s voltage inspires a sense of wonder and uncomplicated mystery with each passing scene.

Brad Pitt continues his year of acclaimed roles with Major Roy McBride, the abandoned son to famed Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) – “the first man to the outer solar system […] a pioneer” – whose career in astronomics seeks to leave the shadow of, and honour, his inherited paternal legacy. In the wake of a series of paralysing, anti-matter surges, Roy is employed by U.S. Space Command to investigate, an operation that leads him to make contact with the resurrected ghost of his father – long since considered dead. (Much like Schrödinger’s cat in a steel chamber, the father is neither dead nor alive, at first, as much a figment of imaginings as he is of reality.) Clifford had originally headed the “Lima Project”, oriented in its quest to find extra-terrestrial life, whilst in orbit of Neptune, though it had since been ruled defunct by its radio silence. Such an allure, as originally sketched in Tarkovsky’s psychodrama Solaris (and its later 2002 remake), opens its protagonist to an intellectual and philosophical risk. In space, no one can hear you scream … or meditate on life, you might also argue.

It is during Pitt’s introspective musings, as captured by a roughly-whispered voiceover (in the style of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life or To the Wonder), that director James Gray distinguishes Ad Astra from the current trend of mainstream blockbusters. Re-treading his arthouse/euro-indie roots, Gray requires more than banal thrills from his audience, daring us to wait out his silences, carefully hold each word, and allow each moment to contribute to a far greater whole. “What did he find out there, in the abyss?” Roy asks hesitantly, a question posed as much to himself as it is to a wider community. Ad Astra, moreover, is not the first time its leading star, Brad Pitt, has acted alongside the use of voiceover. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Andrew Dominik’s 2007 revisionist epic, also engages a similar effect, the dramatization of the titular killing guided with a storyteller-like, third-person narration. If to this narrative it felt supercilious, it can be argued that Gray is more explicitly successful (with the occasional laughable moment) – ponderous thoughts carried with the gradually drawn cinematography of Hoyte van Hoyten, resting finally on day-old stubble or the wrinkles in the corner of eyes. It is a wonderful and highly satisfying effect.

“I've got my wife and children and they're great, and I can find plenty of joy in that,” Gray assured in an interview for Digital Spy, discussing the possibility of encountering alien life, "[but] to rely on false Gods, the idea that there's these little green men out there that'll either save us or eat us, to me that's more horrifying than having to rely on other people." It is by questioning our reliance on myth and conjecture that we are forced, when watching Ad Astra, to re-focus our ideals, if for a moment – the fictions of space exploration revealed to be simply that, fictitious, especially when we come to realise that no other life accompanies our voyage. In this case, and by pulling the carpet from beneath our feet, Ad Astra might be said to be offer a family drama more than anything else, a movement away from cheap fantasy and instead turning inward, looking far closer, far more intently at ourselves. Clifford is a relic of this old ambition, a symbolic marker of what could be achieved, and his son a force to subdue this misanthropy, a lens by which to correct the dreams of another. “The enemy up here is not a person or a thing. It’s the endless void,” a sentiment captured in the recurring image of a helmet visor – at once reflecting space and, again, faintly revealing the profile of its astronaut.

Ad Astra is a beautifully simple picture that clothes itself with sustained philosophic reflection. If you choose to watch it, you must look past these obscuring elements to the universality of its narrative – I certainly found myself in several places. Gray undoubtedly built the apparatus of its narrative whilst looking to rival the same grandeur as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and yet, unlike the top-heavy nostalgia of films such as Interstellar, Ad Astra manages to subtly navigate its source material, achieving an effective counterweight to its intelligent agenda. Spectacle is found equally in the dazzling set pieces as it is the lyrical wonderings of Roy McBride, a wonderfully unstrained performance from Brad Pitt. It is possible that some of the ideas and their realisation here will be usurped, possibly even bettered, with later additions to the genre, but what we are given, nevertheless, is a pure example of what the wonders of cinema can achieve.

My Favourite Films: from Paris, Texas to The Wizard of Oz

From latest to earliest release date, these are the films that have affected me the most – cry, laugh, hide – and those that I will undoubtedly watch again, and again.

1. Moonlight (I) (2016)            

2. Valley of Love (2015)

3. Her (2013)

4. Under the Skin (I) (2013)

5. Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013)            

6. The Great Beauty (2013)

7. The Master (2012)

8. Killing Them Softly (2012)

9. The Social Network (2010)

10. Moon (2009)

11. Revolutionary Road (2008)

12. There Will Be Blood (2007)

13. Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

14. No Country for Old Men (2007)

15. Sunshine (2007)

16. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)

17. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

18. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)            

19. Birth (2004)

20. Before Sunset (2004)

21. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

22. 21 Grams (2003)

23. Lost in Translation (2003)

24. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (2003)

25. Elephant (2003)

26. Solaris (2002)        

27. Mulholland Drive (2001)  

28. The Piano Teacher (2001)

29. Donnie Darko (2001)        

30. The Pledge (I) (2001)

31. In the Mood for Love (2000)        

32. Magnolia (1999)    

33. American Beauty (1999)

34. The Thin Red Line (1998)

35. The Big Lebowski (1998)  

36. Fargo (1996)

37. Trainspotting (1996)         

38. Before Sunrise (1995)

39. Chungking Express (1994)

40. Three Colours: Red (1994)

41. Satantango (1994)

42. Groundhog Day (1993)    

43. Orlando (1992)

44. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

45. Dekalog (1989–1990)        

46. Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

47. Alice (1988)

48. Akira (1988)

49. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

50. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

51. Wings of Desire (1987)

52. Evil Dead II (1987)

53. Blue Velvet (1986)

54. Brazil (1985)

55. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

56. Paris, Texas (1984)

57. El Sur (1983)

58. The King of Comedy (1982)

59. Blade Runner (1982)

60. Fitzcarraldo (1982)

61. Vernon, Florida (1981)

62. The Woman Next Door (1981)

63. Raging Bull (1980)

64. Airplane! (1980)

65. The Shining (1980)

66. Stalker (1979)

67. Apocalypse Now (1979)

68. Manhattan (1979)

69. Gates of Heaven (1978)

70. Days of Heaven (1978)

71. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

72. Stroszek (1977)

73. Annie Hall (1977)

74. Eraserhead (1977)

75. Network (1976)

76. The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

77. Taxi Driver (1976)

78. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

79. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

80. The Passenger (1975)

81. The Godfather: Part II (1974)

82. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)   

83. Chinatown (1974)

84. Arabian Nights (1974)

85. Fear Eats the Soul (1974)  

86. The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974)

87. Don't Look Now (1973)

88. Last Tango in Paris (1972)

89. Solaris (1972)

90. Walkabout (1971)

91. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

92. Faces (I) (1968)      

93. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

94. The Graduate (1967)

95. Belle de Jour (1967)

96. Pierrot le Fou (1965)  

97. A Blonde in Love (1965)

98. Red Desert (1964)

99. The Gospel According to Matthew (1964)

100. Le Mépris (1963)

101. 8½ (1963)

102. Vivre Sa Vie (1962)

103. L'Avventura (1960)

104. The 400 Blows (1959)

105. Vertigo (1958)     

106. The Night of the Hunter (1955)

107. The Third Man (1949)

108. Paisan (1946)

109. Dumbo (1941)

110. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

111. M (1931)

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood – review | queasy, male chauvinism that tires more than it dazzles

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

✭✭✩✩✩

Confident and brash in every scene, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a picture that could have only been made by Quentin Tarantino, steeped in a heady, jukebox-charged milieu. In past interviews Tarantino has noted that he makes films he would like to watch himself, the making of films otherwise a way in which to satisfy his preference for certain sights. Something of this self-delight in his own work does translate into the glorious spectacle of LA 1969 that is so artfully reconstructed on the screen. It is a world that has perhaps been lived less than it has been dreamt, but Tarantino nevertheless displays a close attention to a certain moodscape of Hollywood cinema, a transition from the old style into that of the new. (In thematic likeness, Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind works as a unique point of reference.) However, beneath the surface of this dazzling collection of moments, it is little more than another pulp story, cardboard thin and unenthralling. Uneven scenes intersect with indulged, over-drawn moments of dialogue, before climaxing 140 minutes in with an unbearable moment of violence that is without doubt the worst element overall. Little more than one of many exploitation movies conceived in the wake of Sharon Tate’s murder by the cult Manson “family”, Tarantino guises truth with a revisionist fairy-tale that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Leonardo Di Caprio plays Rick Dalton, a buffoonish cowboy figure who lands role after role as the “bad guy” of pilot television episodes, ‘Bounty Law’ being his most successful, as well as cheap studio westerns. Glued to each of his creative endeavours is his former stunt-man double, Cliff Booth, now a valet and handyman around his luxury pad in the hills. Over a couple of days in February, the duo discover that Dalton is neighboured by the newly-famous film director Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a familiarity that becomes all too worrying when the narrative skips ahead 6 months to the time of her supposed murder. Hollywood is a playground of expectations that all but breaks the ailing spirit of Dalton, propped up by the compliments of Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) and the wake-up calls of Booth: “You’re Rick-fucking-Dalton. Don’t you forget it!” Tarantino’s most successful moments are when the two characters interact, not dissimilar to the brotherhood of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Tarantino conjures a pulp fantasy with Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, a seeming randomness, or carelessness, to narrative development that is met by comparably aimless events. An incredibly personal topic, it is also one that allows the personality of its maker (Tarantino) to swamp its cinematic landscape – once again, everyone speaks like a Tarantino avatar – carrying us alongside his ego more than anything.

Tarantino admitted in a recent Picturehouse interview to having worked on the script on and off for several years, moving it between script and novel form, before eventually deciding on cinema as the required medium. As a consequence of such revision, the product of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood feels incredibly unformed, almost as if we were following a process of thought more than a sense of narrative. Actions have no follow through, scenes appear incoherent against one another, and its list of characters (Sharon Tate being the remotest of all) are given almost no development. Reservoir Dogs was successful because it found urgency in the scenes that took place either side of a failed heist, inviting myth to the core of its narrative, and likewise The Hateful Eight used poisoned coffee to provoke new reactions amongst a blizzard-refuged ensemble. In this instance, with the exception of the nearby Manson cult, nothing provokes change and nothing appears to ask for it. Aesthetics reign over plot development for Tarantino, the geeky, nostalgia-fuelled era a wonderful stage to reimagine … but just a little hollow when given any true grounding. Thom Andersen’s 2003 video-essay Los Angeles Plays Itself anticipates LA’s devolvement into a set of tired, iconic images – landmarks typically used in filming, such as the giant “HOLLYWOOD” sign, governing its presentation and sentimentality. Tarantino is one of many directors who plays into the ideals of this aesthetic.

Watching Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, the problem of onscreen violence (typically male, typically glorified) again resurfaces – only, unlike the period works of Django and The Hateful Eight, Tarantino might be said to have a more appropriate stake. Violence is again celebrated, not met with consequence – and does he care? No, not really … and maybe we shouldn’t either. Such violence, however, was the source of most laughter in the screening I attended. Incidentally, I found myself tuned into the audiences’ laughs more than my own – desensitised to the ultraviolence of his career, laughter for many seems to be the only resort to any display of aggression or brutality. Maybe the least funny Tarantino picture so far, I strained to find anything to laugh at across its entire running time. 

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is another very watchable picture from an illustrious and extraordinarily original director, but creative mannerisms now slouch into somewhat overfamiliar, stultified moments. 

The Week in Cinema: 29.07 -- 04.08

-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films watched this week --

Aziz Ansari: Right Now (dir. Spike Jonze, 2019)

✭✭✭✩✩

Cushioned either side by the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes”, Spike Jonze directs US stand-up Aziz Ansari, on softly-grained Kodak 16mm film, whose allegations of sexual misconduct are at the fore of his show. Ansari is one of several comedians whose career has demanded revaluation in the wake of the #MeToo movement – an unannounced performance by Louis C.K., in New York, was widely considered to be premature, making no reference to his troublesome past – so it is unsurprising where the material opens, here, and where it ultimately leads us. Sincere apology is felt towards his accuser (from babe.net), undoubtedly, but the succeeding conversations slightly mar this attitude, offering excuse, doubt, speaking in whispers before lunging into high-pitched screech. Jonze shifts between tight close-ups of Ansari’s face, hand-held and, for the greater part, graded to old VHS tapes, and the occasional laughing audience member. It is a choregraphed return to basics, a stripped-back performance where laughs and truths can only hope to intersect.

The Machinist (dir. Brad Anderson, 2004)

✭✭✭✭✩

In the OED, a ‘machinist’ can be defined twice: it is both ‘a person who operates a machine, especially a machine tool or a sewing machine’ as well as ‘a person who makes machinery’. After viewing The Machinist, it is unclear which its protagonist, Trevor Resnik (beautifully acted by Christian Bale), is supposed to resemble exactly. Trevor is both machine maker and operator, person and tool. “I haven’t slept for a whole year,” Trevor tells his prostitute and friend, Stevie, an insomniac condition captured in the grey hues and slow-burning movement of his miserable existence. An accident at the factory leads to the dismembered arm of a work colleague, whilst sowing the seeds of paranoia and doubt as to the various mysterious happenings. Bale reverse channels Robert de Niro’s Raging Bull performance, shedding 60 pounds to attain the Pterodactyl-thin physique, skeletal to the point of almost fading away. Oddly reminiscent of Sam Rockwell’s wasted character, as the old clone of Sam Bell, in Moon, so does Bale persuade us of his devotion to the role. Filled with Hitchcock, Dostoevsky and Kafka-esque flourishes, The Machinist is an artfully-made mystery thriller, upsetting and unrelenting.

The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (dir. Bert Williams, 1965)

✭✭✭✭✩

Opening the selection of film restorations on streaming-site #byNWR – personally curated by contemporary provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn – The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds epitomises the kind of bad-taste strangeness, the repellent allure, by which viewers are secretly mesmerised. Although Refn claims he wants “the future [of film] to be different […] an uncontrolled place of beautiful chaos,” it is a wish uniquely satisfied by this relic of the past; a picture whose stimulations go far beyond the carnal, striking something temporal and unidentifiable. Williams buries his sole protagonist, the investigative cop Johnson, deep into the airless swamps of Bible Belt America, where (chiming with the fairy-tale mystique of Night of the Hunter) spiders, madmen, and crocodiles haunt its recesses. A mysterious young girl, Lisa, is discovered as the captive bird in the nest of “The Cuckoo Inn” – defiled, reportedly, by the wants of her absent father. Ethereal in its poorly-lit, staccato set pieces, Nest of the Cuckoo Birds is every bit as dream-like as you might expect.