Paul S. Mezey Movies

Dreams and disappointment bring two young people together in this independent drama. After being abandoned by his mother, seventeen-year-old Dilawar (Mohamad Imran Tapa) was taken in by his uncle Ali (Ali Mohammad Dar), a strict and unforgiving man who earns his living as a mason. Dilawar dreams of finding his mother and being reunited with her, but until that day he works as Ali's apprentice, having been forced to quit school and earn his keep. Dilawar wants to make enough money to move away, and he earns extra cash by doing homework for wealthy kids and though petty theft. One day Dilawar steals a purse from an attractive twenty-something woman named Bani (Taniya Khan) only to discover she works at a shipping company Ali does business with. Bani doesn't recognize Dilawar and the two strike up a friendship; he learns she's recently returned to India after receiving a degree in physics in the United States, and she wants to quit her job and return to America. Finding a kindred spirit, Dilawar brings Bani into his homework-for-hire business, although she doesn't realize the math and physics problems she helps him solve aren't his own homework. Zero Bridge was the first feature film from writer and director Tariq Tapa. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Filmmaker Josh Fox offers a troubling look into the hearts and minds of American fighting men in this independent drama. Memorial Day opens with a bunch of college students and off-duty soldiers drinking and whooping it up at a beach party in Ocean City, MD, and as the liquor flows, the hijinks become less good-natured and more threatening until several women are raped by the men. We next catch up with the culprits when they're on patrol in Iraq, ferreting out insurgents and passing their spare time playing practical jokes and watching porn movies. The men are then assigned new duties as guards at a military prison, and much as they showed a troubling enthusiasm for assaulting women at home, they clearly enjoy heaping abuse on the prisoners they're supposed to watch until their actions become a clear parallel to the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib. Adapted from a theater piece by Fox and featuring actors from his International Wow Company, Memorial Day was created without the approval or participation of the United States military, though Iraq War veteran Jason Christopher Hartley was a technical advisor on the production. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An inner-city teacher struggling with addiction forms an unlikely bond with a young student who catches him in a compromising position in director Ryan Fleck's feature-length adaptation of his own award-winning short film Gowanus, Brooklyn. Despite his dedication to the junior-high students who fill his classroom, idealistic teacher Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) leads a secret life that the majority of his students will never know. When Dunne's drug-soaked nightlife begins to bleed over into his daytime hours and troubled student Drey (Shareeka Epps) makes a startling discovery, the tenuous bond that forms between the pair soon leads to a warm friendship that could either lead them down a dangerous path or provide the human companionship needed to see things from a fresh perspective and start life anew. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Cultural conflicts threaten to derail the relationship between a determined youth counselor and her headstrong young charge in this drama from Girls Town director Jim McKay. Despite being labeled a delinquent by the child welfare system, African-American inner-city youth Angel (Jonan Everett) is in reality just a troubled teen attempting to survive in his harsh surroundings. When Angel is kicked out of his home on the heels of a heated argument with his father, Angel's pregnant, thirtysomething counselor, Nicole (Rachel Griffiths), warmly accepts the troubled boy into her home until the birth of her baby. As Angel begins to drift back into the self-defeating patterns that led to the rift with his father and Nicole ponders the effect that childbirth will have on her identity, the pair's already fragile relationship threatens to crumble amidst these weighty issues. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

New York-based writer/director Joshua Marston makes his feature film debut with the coming-of-age drama Maria Full of Grace, with a script developed at the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab. Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Maria Alvarez, a teenager living in Bogotá, Colombia. Along with most of the other able-bodied people in her community, she works a perilous job in a flower plantation. She wants to quit, but her large family depends on her meager salary. One day, Maria meets a smooth-talking young man named Franklin. He offers her a business proposition to make some money and travel. However, the task involves her acting as a drug mule and smuggling heroin into the U.S. Maria Full of Grace premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 as part of the dramatic competition. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Ramblin' Jack Elliott, a self-styled folk musician, was an important transitional figure between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. This documentary serves as both a chronicle of his colorful life and an attempt by his daughter, director Aiyanna Elliott, to reconnect with her often-absent father. Born Elliott Adnopoz in Brooklyn, Jack ran off as a teenager in 1947 to join a traveling rodeo troupe after seeing them perform in Madison Square Garden. He returned to New York and took up singing, first cowboy songs, then traditional and contemporary folk music. He and Woody Guthrie traveled through the South in the 1950s, learning songs from blues artists such as the Reverend Gary Davis, Elizabeth Cotton, and Jesse Fuller. Elliott remained one of Guthrie's truest friends all through Guthrie's long battle with Huntington's chorea, the congenital nerve disease that killed him in 1967. In 1955, Elliott and the first of his four wives decamped to England, where his reputation was made with fans of the skiffle music craze. He returned to New York in 1961, just as the folk music boom was producing its biggest hero, Bob Dylan, who aped both Guthrie and Elliott in his early recordings. Among the interviewees are Nora and Arlo Guthrie, singers Pete Seeger and Dave Van Ronk, and ex-wives and managers, who all agree on Elliott's carefree attitude toward schedules and money. His almost pathological determination not to conform to any kind of bourgeois lifestyle eventually crippled his chances for wider recognition, though in the mid-'90s, he won a Grammy and a National Medal of the Arts, awarded by President Bill Clinton. The vintage clips are interspersed with Aiyanna Elliott trailing her father around with a camera and microphone, hoping to capture some admission of past mistakes, but as always, Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a tough man to pin down. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Nick Efteriades directs this coming-of-age movie about a youngish Greek-American guy looking for some point in his useless existence. Nick (Rick Stear) is pushing 30 and feels as if his soul is slowly going to wither and die as he slings burgers day in and day out at his dad's diner. In a desperate attempt to forestall his impending spiritual and emotional demise, he longs with aching intensity to join an archeological search for Alexander the Great's tomb. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

A teenager finds himself torn between his loyalty to his friends and possibly destroying his own future in this drama. Danny (Peter Facinelli) is a high school senior who has been offered a chance to play football for a college scholarship; while the offer is tempting, at the same time he doesn't want to leave his girlfriend behind. However, all the bets in his life are off when one of his best friends shoots his father, who had a history of violence. Danny and his friends know their buddy would not survive in prison, so they steal the body and try to hide all the evidence before the police get wise. Their plan proves to be neither as simple or as effective as they hoped. End of Innocence features a strong supporting cast, including Amy Irving, Chris Isaak, and Tom Arnold. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In the tradition of neorealist films like Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief comes an American film (in Spanish) about Latin-American immigrants living in New York City. La Ciudad, which was screened in the American Spectrum series at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, was directed by David Riker, who spent five years researching the project and working with the non-professional actors in the film to capture the impoverished authenticity of life on the streets in New York's Latino community. All four stories concern the lives of poor, working-class people. In the four segments, a young bricklayer is killed when a wall collapses on him; two teenagers fall in love at a Sweet 15 party, only to lose each other in a housing project; a homeless man cannot enroll his daughter in school because he lacks proof of residency; and a seamstress in a sweatshop cannot pay for her daughter's medical treatments. The stories have tragic endings, reflecting the harsh realities of life in the ghettos of New York. ~ Arthur Borman, All Movie Guide