Netflix Instant Picks (9/27/13—10/3/13)

Every week at Movie Mezzanine, we pick some of the best films currently on Netflix Instant. Whether they are big releases or hidden gems, these movies make your subscription worth the price. Read on for this week’s picks.

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Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

With October nearly upon us, it’s high time to start getting one’s horror films together, and you can’t do much better than Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Fragmented into a montage of impressionistic juxtapositions, Don’t Look Now is no ordinary horror film. Its monster is grief itself, an all-consuming trauma that turns the living world into a nightmare by breaking people from their normal cognitive awareness. The cyclical movements of Roeg’s editing create an anchor in the bewildering imagistic display, but they also hint at the manner in which trauma locks those affected by it into doomed spirals. – Jake Cole

Fear City (Abel Ferrara, 1984)

Abel Ferrara’s ‘80s period marks his one (and likely only) grab for some semblance of mainstream work, from some episodes of Michael Mann-produced TV to a number of trashy flicks that seemed to exist to fill time slots on the burgeoning cable market. Fear City appears to be very much of this streak of work, but even what passes for Ferrara’s workman years has a raw, revealing edge to it that rewards a curious viewer, if not nearly to the same extent as his more experimental, free work of the ‘90s and ‘00s. And really, no ‘80s movie with Melanie Griffith in her prime can be a total waste of your time. – Cole

Louie (2010—)

At long last, the third season of Louie has hit Netflix. In an age where inexpensive, high-quality digital cameras have nominally evened the playing field between the big and small screens, Louis CK’s show is one of the precious few that has any right being called “cinematic,” unfurling as a series of short films united by their maker’s curiosity regarding family, pop culture and the contours of his narrow worldview. In other words, it is about the forging of CK’s stand-up act, though to peg it as such ignores A) how much more unpredictable it is than CK’s increasingly straightforward stand-up and B) how the show continues to expand in surreal, complex directions far beyond the limits of secondary inspiration. The third season, with its plots of backstage TV politics, decidedly manic Manic Pixie Dream Girls and paternal anxieties (as both a father and a son), pushed an already acclaimed show into the stratus, and it’s a delight to finally have it on hand. – Cole

Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)

Though Darren Aronofsky’s troubling and stylishly astute sophomore feature may have lost some luster over the years, Requiem for a Dream still holds up as one of the very best films about addiction, as well as one of the most influential films of the last decade. The film is a frank and disturbing look at four individuals constantly hampered by their next fix. Aronofsky’s often nauseating film is aided by a landmark score by Clint Mansell and anchored by a career best performance from Ellen Burstyn. – Ty Landis

Room 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2012)

Room 237 is a potent, one-of-a-kind exploration into obsession and fanaticism that calls into question the underlying value of art and those who seek to unearth it. Whether or not you’re a fan of Kubrick and his films is moot. Rodney Ascher’s documentary serves up mind-boggling theory after another, absorbing the viewer into a bubble of references and theories surrounding Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining. While it’s not a masterwork by any stretch, its topic certainly is, propelling film fans and Kubrick aficionados into a maze of illuminating realizations and ideas that would otherwise never be clear to the untrained eye. – Landis

Side Effects (Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

Steven Soderbergh’s hot streak over the last two years culminated with Behind the Candelabra, but his penultimate directorial effort ranks up there as one of the director’s best. Side Effects is corporate thriller that hopscotches around traditional genre confines while speaking to the in vogue dealings and usage of prescription drugs; it’s also a film about cold and impenetrable blurred surfaces that feed the viewer intel solely through the vernacular of its own predominant subject. There’s even a little De Palma DNA found here  as a flash of eroticism works itself into the saturated proceedings. By the end, Soderbergh’s digital photography and signature brio only up the ante, resulting in a finely tuned and vastly satisfying near exit point for the director. – Landis