Movie Mezzanine

  A film website covering the medium that connects us all, one word at a time. Discourse wanted and welcomed. Opinions solely our own. www.moviemezzanine.com  

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The Emptiness of Days to Come: On Gender Stereotypes and Sex in White Bird in a Blizzard

By Charles Nash

When it comes to exploring themes on sexuality in film, few contemporary auteurs have been more radical, and more divisive, than Gregg Araki. A pivotal figure in the New Queer Cinema movement during the early 1990s, and highly considered to be the “bad boy” of the bunch, Araki made raw, rebellious cult movies early on in his career that were praised by some and abhorred by others, such as The Living End (1992), Totally Fucked Up (1993) and The Doom Generation (1994). He also directed what I consider to be one of the best films of the 2000s, Mysterious Skin (2004), based on a novel of the same name by Scott Haim, which tells a tragic, gut-wrenching story of how the lives of two young men are traumatically affected as a result from being sexually abused by their baseball couch when they were only eight years old.

Now, 10 years later, his second book-to-film adaptation, White Bird in a Blizzard, has been released into theaters. It received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, currently holding a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 46 reviews), and a score of 50 out of 100 on Metacritic (based on 20 reviews), with most critics stating that it’s a film that has no idea what it actually wants to be about.

Take a look at Charles' exploration of the themes in Gregg Araki's latest film!

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Nightcrawler For You: How to Succeed at Capitalism Without Really Trying

By Tina Hassannia

Nightcrawler is supposedly about ethics in news journalism. To be more specific, the film is about the lack thereof. It’s allegedly similar to Network, Broadcast News,Ace in the Hole, and any number of films about journalists doing shady things or being forced to do work that goes against everything they believe in. But what Nightcrawleraspires to be is not a film about journalism, but a film about capitalism. It’s not terribly important that Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), the film’s protagonist, a slimy, conniving sociopath with sunken raccoon eyes and pale skin, happens to fall into television news footage. Director Dan Gilroy could have situated Louis in a handful of other professions, but there’s no denying that journalism is sexy.

Read more on what Tina has to say about how Nightcrawler is actually about ethics in capitalism!

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District Mined: The Gerrymandering of Contemporary Cinema

By Noah Gittell

While concerned citizens and political journalists agonized over the fate of the Senate in the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections, there was a good reason no one was talking about the fate of the House: Due to the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, it would have been virtually impossible for Republicans to lose their majority, despite Congress hovering at record-low approval ratings. While once intended to reflect shifting populations, gerrymandering has become a political tool used to ensure politicians get re-elected. Purple districts are turned into strongly red or blue ones, and, as a result, the politicians who represent these heavily partisan districts are given no incentive to work with the opposition.  Although there are certainly other factors, most political analysts cite gerrymandering as the primary cause of Congressional gridlock, creating an era in which America is more divided than at any time since the Civil War.

Take a look at Noah's examination of the political divisions within film!

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Top 6 Reel Political Moments

By Colin Biggs

With Election Day here at last, we can finally set aside some time from the day to actually vote. When it’s all said and done, go back home and reflect with some of these better politically-themed films and cartoons.

Take a look at Colin's picks for the best political moments on film!

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REVIEW: Rosewater

By Andy Crump

Rosewater is at once everything and nothing like what we expect from The Daily Show host Jon Stewart. The title feels like a political watchword, and the film itself is a furious indictment of governmental oppression and human ignorance. It’s also blisteringly satirical, and often surprisingly funny in the face of its decidedly unamusing subject matter. But Stewart is most often seen operating in these modes in front of television cameras, where he’s playing a role to which he’s well suited in both appearance and wit. In Rosewater, however, he’s behind the lens pulling the strings instead of serving as a personality.

Grade: B

Take a look at Andy's full review of Jon Stewart's directorial debut!

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A Comedy in Long Shot: When Comedians Get Behind the Camera 

By Julia Alexander

When The Daily Show host Jon Stewart announced he was taking a 12-week break from his program to direct his first feature-length film, the Internet erupted into cheer. The man we’d been watching for years was finally going to lend his comedic eye to film.

However, the film was not going to be a comedy. When Stewart announced he would be adapting journalist Maziar Bahari’s Then They Came for Me, a memoir about his time as a prisoner in Iran, initial confusion and apprehension from Stewart’s fans about the movie changed into a discourse about high expectations. Critics and commenters argued that if anyone could pull off a film with geo-political commentary, it would be Stewart.

Stewart’s identity as a comedian, which appealed to late-night stoners and political junkies hovered over the public’s anticipation of the film, with many questioning whether Stewart’s first feature-length production would emulate the tone of his show. This collective stubborn attitude of seeing Stewart as a satirist carried into interviews about Rosewater. Questions about when he was going to direct the next great comedic film almost overpowered questions about Rosewater itself.

Take a look with Julia at some of the best comedians and their best films!

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Play Dumb with Me: Looking Back at the Farrelly Brothers' Dumb and Dumber

By Julia Alexander

With The Lion King, The Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Natural Born Killers among its crop of releases, 1994 proved to be a colossal year for American cinema.  It was also the year of Jim Carrey, a B-level comedian from Toronto who had been gaining some recognition for his work on the Saturday Night Live-like FOX sketch show In Living Color. Within the span of one year, however, Carrey would blast his way into the mainstream with starring roles in not just one, but three films: The Mask, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective…and, of course, Dumb and Dumber. Starring Carrey as the romantic optimist Lloyd Christmas opposite Jeff Daniels as the adorably confused Harry Dunne, Dumb and Dumber infiltrated multiplexes all over the country on December 16, 1994. Now, as the original team behind the first film is set to try to work their magic once again with Dumb and Dumber To, it’s worth reflecting on how the original forever changed the modern-day comedy landscape.

Look back with Julia on the legacy of Dumb and Dumber!

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REVIEW: Dumb and Dumber To

By Luke Goodsell

Credit the Farrelly Brothers with this much: given Hollywood’s toxic insistence on character arcs, life lessons, and labored backstories, it’s kind of a relief to discover their signature morons haven’t changed in the slightest. The world may have moved on since “dumb happened,” but Harry and Lloyd remain wonderfully oblivious, and Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey—59 and 52, respectively—have somehow managed to rekindle the infantile chemistry that made these fools so beloved.

Grade: C-

Read more as to why the film didn't live up to Luke's expectations!

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American Psyche: The Best of Frederick Wiseman

By Anna Tatarska

Recently awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 71st Venice International Film Festival, 84-year old Frederick Wiseman has been directing (and producing) his films for more than half a decade, incessantly turning his perceptive gaze towards – predominantly – institutions. In his prolific portrayal of what could be simply summarized as America, he’s saturating things habitually perceived as transparent with significance, often discovering them as cruelly accurate mirrors of humanity.

Whoever was lucky enough to have a chance of seeing the accomplished filmmaker live knows how energetic and entertaining his presence is. Whether during a masterclass at the Zurich Film Festival (where the author had an opportunity of watching mr Wiseman talk about his work) or last years HBO Directors Dialogue series at NYFF, there’s no chance for Wiseman to keep his face straight for too long. Unforced and natural, he’s usually cracking his first joke in third answer the latest. It stands in somewhat of a contrast to common perception of his work – full of gravitas and importance, by many associated with direct cinema, because of its observational nature. But Wiseman, who finds his inspirations in the tangible tissue of everyday reality, is not keen on such comparisons (“cinema verité is just a pompous French term” – he said once) .

He’s an avid editor of the onscreen content, equally preoccupied with the truth as with the form of presentation, dramatic structure being one of his priorities. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to claim that Wiseman is THE American Documentary Filmmaker. At least from a perspective of someone, who wasn’t raised in the US his films are an open invitation to a complex inner world of american psyche, with all its wonders and flaws, a fascinating and challenging one. Wiseman’s artistic oeuvre consists of over forty feature docs. Here’s a subjective selection of the best (or most memorable) of them.

See what else Anna had to say about Wiseman and check out her list of his best work!

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Wait Until Dark: 9 Unconventional Scary Movies

By Movie Mezzanine Staff

Watching horror movies is a standard and exciting Halloween tradition for many. But sometimes rewatching the same old films can get a little boring. You can certainly try to shake things up by watching something new or foreign, like Hausu or an early Cronenberg flick. But even those taps can run dry. Genre, by definition, is supposed to be repetitive, and though this predictability is part of its charm, sometimes we need a little something new.

Is it possible to find a scary film that escapes the traps of such genres? At Movie Mezzanine we say yes, yes you can. We’ve done the hard work for you and compiled a list of recommended films for your alternative Halloween movie marathon. Though these films occasionally veer in the direction of horror/thriller (generally more thriller), they tend to be frightening for other reasons. Whether it’s the boiling tension underlying a crime-ridden Brazilian neighborhood or the trademark atmospheric gloom of David Lynch, these films may not live up to the gore or jump-scare quotient of your typical horror movie, but they offer a completely different kind of eeriness and creepiness altogether. — Tina Hassannia

Check out what scary films are on the list here!

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Woody Allen: The Dramatist

By Jason Bailey

Movie Mezzanine is proud to bring you an excerpt from Jason Bailey’s latest book, The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion. If you enjoy the following passage, be sure to purchase it here. 

  “I can never bear seeing a headline like ‘Woody Dying to Be Taken Seriously.’ It misses the point entirely. I don’t want to be taken seriously. 
I have to be taken seriously.”

—Woody Allen

Looking back on the afternoons when he would dash off dozens of jokes during the subway ride to his first paid writing job, Woody told Richard Schickel, simply, “If you can do it, there’s nothing to it. You know, it’s like drawing. I can’t draw, so I’m astonished at a kid sitting next to me in class who will draw a rabbit or something. I’m amazed by it. For him it’s nothing, and he wonders why I can’t do it. . . . Well, I could write jokes, so there was nothing to it.”

That something so remarkable came (and continues to come) so easily to Woody Allen goes a long way toward explaining why, from almost the beginning of his career, making people laugh has never been enough. As early as 1976, he was confessing his desire to do “more serious comical films and do different types of films, maybe write and direct a drama.” The aim was clear: to “take chances—I would like to fail a little for the public.

See the full excerpt from Jason's superb book here!

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REVIEW: Goodbye to Language 3D

By Jake Cole

From TIFF: Jean-Luc Godard has been making films for five decades now, and he has spent four of them largely toiling away from the attention of critics, who have ignored much of his post-Week-End career and mocked what little they’ve made an effort to see. But the fact remains that Godard, who has chased his muse through multiple permutations and a constantly evolving moral, thematic, and aesthetic sense, is one of the few filmmakers who has ever deserved the label of “genius.” Like all geniuses, Godard is imperfect, but also leagues ahead of any peer, to say nothing of those of us who simply view his work and attempt to extract meaning from it.

Read more on what Jake has to say about Godard's newest film here!

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REVIEW: Nightcrawler

By Andy Crump

Meet Lou Bloom. He’s a young, ambitious go-getter, a diehard professional always on the lookout for good career opportunities that offer plenty of upward mobility. He’s also a charming psychopath, which is a nice way of saying that he’s a snake wrapped up in Jake Gyllenhaal’s clothing. Lou is a passionate man, but he’s passionate for one thing only, and over the course of Nightcrawler, Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut, you’ll find out exactly what that is. Be warned, though, that by the time the film ends, you may find yourself wishing you could forget his leering, bug-eyed visage and dismiss his superficial graces.

Grade: B+

Read more on what gave Andy "unnerving chills" in his full review here!

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REVIEW: The Great Invisible

By Andy Crump

“We were in the dark. It was quiet. Nothing. I only had enough time to tell my guys that we’re in trouble. ‘Something’s wrong, guys, and we’re in trouble.’ And then the first explosion hit us. It picked me up and flung me, it flipped me through the air like a rag doll. I couldn’t move. Alls I can hear was screaming, incoherent screamings of pain, screaming, ‘I’m dying, I’m hurt, somebody help me’.”

If you heard this quote out of context, you might assume it can be sourced back to a Vietnam vet or 9/11 responder. But you would be wrong, and more than that, you would be shocked; this is the testimony of Doug Brown, chief engineer on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and one of the survivors of the 2010 explosion that led to the now notorious BP oil spill. Every syllable Brown enunciates sets him on the verge of quivering. Each moment he spends reliving the memory cuts like a lash. It’s a somber moment, a grim moment, and a moment we should all feel privileged to have access to.

Grade: B-

Read more of what Andy had to say about the film here!

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REVIEW: The ABCs of Death 2

By Charles Bramesco

2012’s anthology film The ABCs of Death set out with a noble mission: to assemble an international crack team of the finest under-the-radar directors in the scare-‘em game, assign each one a letter of the alphabet, and tie a blood-soaked ribbon around 26 self-contained frights. Though it brought viewers some breathtaking kernels of nightmare fuel — Marcel Sarmiento’s “D Is For Dogfight” was brutal and balletic in equal measure, while “O is for Orgasm” turned unwitting horror nerds on to the neo-giallo stylings of Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet — many shorts came up, well, short. The plain-and-simple verdict on the newly released sequel arrives as surely and anticlimactically as its predecessor: Some of the shorts are good and some are bad, rendering it nearly impossible to make general statements about The ABCs of Death 2 as a whole. A film so determinedly discrete in the way it doles out frights practically demands to be broken up and reviewed piecemeal. So, without further ado...

Grade: C

Read Charles take a look at all 26 of the shorts in his full review here!

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REVIEW: Horns

By Jesse Knight

In a time when cinema has become almost exclusively a cynical and pat medium, in which marketability foregoes the quality of the product being sold, originality has become a mythic, widely discarded possibility. The concept that every story has already been told fuels a culture of laziness by coughing up films that feel like they’re made by people who are hardly trying to do little more than keep their jobs, or worse, shill for awards. The measure of a film’s success is limited to its box-office take, or how often it’s mentioned in the same sentence as the words “Oscar buzz.” Though its name won’t be uttered within rock-throwing distance of the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood come February, and likely won’t crack the top ten opening weekend, the success of Horns is immeasurable.

Grade: A

Read more on why Jesse thinks the film "is one of the best and most exhilaratingly unclassifiable films of the year" here!

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REVIEW: Low Down

By Monica Castillo

Opening with a line from The Night of the Hunter really sets the tone for your movie. It isn’t going to be a happy one.Low Down is not a happy movie, but it is haunting, like a song that lets its notes linger in the air. Its small-scale human tragedies come across so often, it becomes a narrative melody. You expect the next note to drop to the pit of your stomach, bracing for the next turn of events. It’s the mid-70s, and Amy (Elle Fanning) is watching out a window for her father when he is taken by two men. Joe Albany (John Hawkes) is an accomplished jazz pianist struggling to kick a crippling drug habit. Stints in jail are not uncommon. Her mother, also an addict, stumbles in and out of Amy’s life with little notice. Life is once again on the move after Joe’s arrest, and despite Joe’s mother (Glenn Close) stepping in to help, there is almost no solace for the young teen adrift between music, drugs, and desperation. There’s very little light outside Amy’s window.

Grade: B+

Read more of what Monica had to say about the film in her review here!