Blu-ray Review – An Evening with Rodney Ascher

Rodney Ascher is a filmmaker. He’s created several documentaries over the last 13 years, but he’s primarily known as the director of 2012’s “Room 237,” which explored various forms of analysis and conspiracy theories surrounding the making of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” Ascher went deep into the 1980 release, working with interviewees to generate an odyssey into insanity, offering access to the far reaches of the human brain as these “experts” and admirers were offered a chance to share their fixations, trying to solve a cinematic puzzle that’s intentionally missing many pieces. The world of obsession is key to Ascher’s work, also examined in 2015’s “The Nightmare” and 2021’s “A Glitch in the Matrix,” and that grip of compulsion carries into “An Evening with Rodney Ascher.” It’s a mixtape of sorts, presenting various short films, videos, and visual essays, investigating the labor of passion and its all-consuming ways. Ascher doesn’t get too serious with the offering, but for those who enjoyed his previous adventures into fascination, there’s more of the same here, presented in bite-sized helpings of lunacy and artistry. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com