There are few things in this thankless life more satisfying than watching a world-class chumpasaurus receive some well-earned comeuppance. This documentary, which chronicles the meteoric rise and nearly concurrent fall of would-be filmmaker/rock star Troy Duffy, raises the stakes on the standard cautionary fable angle by offering up an antihero who still doesn't seem to recognize the degree to which he blew it.

Duffy was an ambitious young L.A. bartender when, in the kind of fluke that really only could have happened in the 1990s, Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein stumbled across Duffy's debut screenplay, The Boondock Saints. Recognizing the possibility that Duffy--a coarse, witless, chain-smoking, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed East Coast douchebag-- might represent a new candidate for the old Quentin Tarantino/Kevin Smith/Damon-Affleck star treatment, Weinstein not only bought the script, he hired Duffy to direct the film and enlisted his rootsy hard rock band (the Brood) to do the soundtrack.

The coup de grâce, however, was the promise that Miramax would also purchase the saloon where Duffy worked as a bartender and bouncer, as a kind of clubhouse for the budding alcoholic auteur and his cronies. This marketing masterstroke bought the project instant notoriety in the film industry, such that a bevy of B+/A- list actors--like Ewan McGregor, Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Patrick Swayze, Paul Reubens, and others--started sniffing around the bar, while a retinue of semi-strangers waited in line to kiss the ass of "Hollywood's new hard-on" (as the artist later describes himself). Meanwhile, his friends and family--and especially his band--looked on in astonished resignation as a guy, who only 24 hours before had been just another charmless dumbass with a goatee, a guitar, and a screenplay, was instantly transformed into that sorriest of sorries: a lucky bastard who believes his own hype.

From the moment he scores, Duffy talks a ceaseless streak of pompous bullshit, waxing portentous about the enormity of his own talent, bluntly alpha-dogging his associates, and offering chestnuts of wisdom about the business called show--a business that any untrained eye can see Duffy has absolutely no understanding of. The more he talks, the dumber and more venal he sounds, the more you wonder: How is it possible for such a knob--a guy who wears his own band's T-shirt everywhere he goes--to have gotten so lucky? This hypnotic document of Duffy's story, shot as events unfolded by a couple of Duffy's partners/coattail riders, offers no straight answer to this question--after all, why does anyone get lucky? Instead, it provides something infinitely more valuable: an extreme close-up of what happens when the dumb luck runs out.

Perhaps the most powerful thing about the film is Duffy's utter lack of humility, even when things start going horribly wrong and his friends and family (and band) finally turn their backs in disgust. He's an unpleasant guy to begin with, but his awareness of the camera and the resoluteness of his pose in front of it qualify Overnight as genuine anthropology, cast to look and feel like contemporary mockumentary or reality TV. Obviously, that doesn't mean it necessarily makes for pleasant viewing; the people onscreen are mirthlessly opportunistic and the overarching tone is somewhat vengeful, which is off-putting. But for anyone who is even remotely interested in the mechanisms of fame, it's a brilliant study in self-delusion--the final irony of which, of course, is that Duffy himself basically commissioned it. "He was really excited about telling 'quote-unquote, the most honest and real documentary ever told,'" explained co-director Tony Montana in a phone interview. "He was like, 'I will give you full access, but I want you guys to go no-holds-barred. And I want you to always be shooting."

You almost feel bad for the guy. Almost. SEAN NELSON

The Machinist
dir. Brad Anderson
Opens Fri Dec 3.

By now it can be no secret that Christian Bale is one of the most intense and committed young-ish actors around, having avoided the appearance of desiring superstardom by appearing in kinky, off-Hollywood films like American Psycho and Velvet Goldmine (not to mention Newsies) that allow him to flex his peculiarly riveting skills while clearly evincing his undeniable star-power. Because he will soon be seen in the role of Batman, the days of Bale seeming like anything other than a mainstream commodity may be numbered. It's almost enough to make one wax pre-nostalgic for the days (i.e. now) when Bale was still insanely committed enough to lose 60 pounds for roles in dumb little psycho-supernatural thrillers like this one.

I know you've probably read by now that Bale lost a bunch of weight for this film, but I kid you not--NOTHING YOU'VE EVER SEEN BEFORE CAN PREPARE YOU FOR THE SHOCK OF HIS APPEARANCE IN THE MACHINIST. His body literally resembles that of a concentration camp survivor or advanced anorexia sufferer. His bones poke out from taut gray skin, under which every vein and striation is plainly visible. He looks terrifyingly unwell, which is appropriate, as his character is an insomniac who basically hasn't slept or eaten in a year as a result of some trauma he can't quite remember. As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that the story is building to a revelation that you can see a mile away. But it doesn't matter what you can see a mile away, because all you'll be looking at is Bale's hyperemaciated corpus. The fact that he has transformed himself for a film that would otherwise be a complete throwaway is somewhat perverse, but the fact that he could do it at all is all the evidence you'll ever need of his commitment to acting. SEAN NELSON