-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films watched this week --
Aziz Ansari: Right Now (dir. Spike Jonze, 2019)
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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)
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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)
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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.
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