Dough Movie Review

It feels almost obscene to speak negatively of a film like Dough. It has only the best intentions. It is not malicious and takes on several noble subjects that are both particular to its London setting as well as universal in the multicultural 21^st century.

Jonathan Pryce is a wonderful actor who has made a career of flying just under the radar of superstardom. Here he plays Nat Dayan, proprietor of a kosher bakery that is on the brink of failure alongside the corporate one-stop shopping convenience next door. He’s hardly recognizable behind a thick beard and gristled locks of hair, and a yarmulke. Nat clings to an old way of life in which the family business passes from father to son and the Jewish community thrives in perpetuity. But time marches on and change comes. His son became a successful lawyer and the Jews are fleeing (most likely to the suburbs as they earn their continued financial successes), being replaced by immigrants and refugees, many of them African Muslims.

Woman in Gold Movie Review

I’m a big “West Wing” fan, so excuse me if you don’t know what I’m referring to when I say, “Crime. Boy, I don’t know.” That is a line from “Posse Comitatus,” the season 3 finale and the lynchpin moment when President Bartlett decides he’s going to take it to his opponent in the election. Woman in Gold is the Holocaust equivalent of that sentiment, an empty gesture at acknowledging something inexplicably awful.

Phoenix Movie Review

There’s a current movement in German cinema. I’m not sure if it’s acquired a catchy name yet. “The Berlin School” is the closest I can find, but that’s not descriptive in the way that “film noir, “French New Wave,” or “Italian neo-realism” were. From my own observations it’s something like neo-German historical realism. But that’s a little clunky. At any rate, the movies, which tend to focus on post-war Germany or Communist Bloc East Germany, have been making their way stateside, illuminating the ways in which a new generation of German filmmakers and their audiences are responding to the important historical markers that shaped Gemany and its people today.

Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin was ahead of his time in most respects when it came to his filmmaking. The greatest irony being that he was late to the game when it came to making talking films. His first film conceived and made completely with dialogue was The Great Dictator, released in 1940 – more than a decade after the advent of synchronized sound and dialogue. But even if he was the last significant holdout clinging to silent film, The Great Dictator was well ahead of the curve in terms of world politics.

The Debt Movie Review: Questions on Jewish Justice and Vengeance

Vengeance is not Jewish. This is an idea that people throughout history have had difficulty reconciling with their own (at times) warped views of Jewish people. A sense of fairness and justice has primacy in Jewish intellectual and political history. From Shylock to Steven Spielberg’s Munich the question rages on: What is fair and just punishment for a crime and when do we cross the line in to pure revenge.

John Madden’s The Debt, based on the 2007 Israeli film Ha Hov (unseen by me), treads similar ground to Munich, although with far less cunning insight. And I’ve never viewed Steven Spielberg as a particularly insightful or challenging filmmaker. The Debt concerns a fictional Mossad mission to capture The Surgeon of Birkenau, a Nazi war criminal obviously modeled on Josef Mengele, who performed grotesque medical experiments on Jewish and Roma men, women, and children at Auschwitz.

Defiance Movie Review: A Tale of Jewish Vengeance

First published on American Madness on 11 January 2009.

Republished here unaltered.

Defiance, one of several Third Reich-themed films arriving in cinemas this awards season, is a marginally enthralling Hollywood entertainment. Director Edward Zwick has proven a capable hand over the years at making solidly entertaining action films (The Last Samurai; Glory) that also strive at a message of slightly greater importance. Written by Zwick and Clayton Frohman based on a book by Nechama Tec, it tells the true story of the Bielski partisans – a group of Jews led by the Bielski Brothers (Tuvia, Zus, Asael and Aron) who resisted the Nazi occupation of Poland and survived in the forest for 4 years until the war’s end.

Barney's Version Movie Review: Jewish Angst in Montreal

Paul Giamatti is an actor who throws himself into his roles, becoming completely absorbed by his characters. Without the looks and stature of a traditional leading man, he has built an impressive resume of characters including John Adams in the eponymous HBO mini-series and has been ruefully passed over for a Best Actor Oscar nomination twice. No, make that three times now.

In Barney’s Version he plays Barney Parnofsky, a television producer and faux intellectual from Montreal who recalls the past decades of his life after the release of an incriminating book by a retired detective that implicates him in a 20 year old missing persons case. It’s little surprise that Giamatti and the film missed out on the Oscar season (with the exception of a nod for makeup) because it was barely marketed, had no wide release until earlier this year and simply wasn’t put on the radar of enough Academy members. That’s a real shame because despite the film’s flaws, and they are many, it is more than deserving of both audience and critical attention.

Okay Christians, Will You Knock it Off Now?

Pope Benedict XVI on his Jewish goodwill tour after exonerating them of the charge that they murdered Jesus.*

Although the headline has a dangling modifier suggesting that Jesus died in a new book and the Jews are exonerated for it, we'll assume what it really means is that the Pope has written a book and in that book he exonerates the Jewish people for the death of their Savior.

Thanks Pope Nazinger! I suppose this exonerates HIM from the charges that he was a Nazi (although he actually was a Nazi).

Well, that takes care of the Catholics. Now to turn around the rest of the Christians and the Muslims, and like just about everyone.

*I should totally write for The Onion.

This Is How Democracies Behave

Not that I think this will go any length toward silencing critics, Israel has done what any responsible democracy does when its soldiers commit war crimes or engage in misconduct in a war zone - they handle it internally, fairly and justly.

For all the blather from the "International community" and from the ridiculously biased Goldstone report about Israel's atrocious actions in Operation Cast Lead, the 2008 military incursion into Gaza as a result of a year of constant rocket attacks and the cross-border kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, these indictments demonstrate that Israel is serious about conducting itself appropriately. This is more than can be said for the terrorist organization Hamas, which now controls Gaza, who committed such war crimes as stashing munitions in civilian locations like schools and mosques, hiding behind civilian shields, and disguising themselves as civilians. Lest we forget, these are all crimes under the Geneva Conventions.

But no one ever talks about war crimes committed by terrorists. The reason is that democracies and the UN know they have virtually no control over such groups. They would reveal themselves as feeble by drafting a resolution against Hamas because Hamas is going to pay absolutely no heed to it. However, drafting resolutions against Israel and accusing them of war crimes gets the attention of lots of people and serves to delegitimize Israel as a sovereign nation until people have this backwards idea that Israelis are the "real terrorists" in the Middle East and Hamas is a democratically elected government just trying to survive and bring peace.

Uh-huh. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

If You're Jewish, Who Do You Root For?

The obvious choice was the USA with 3 members of the tribe (Jonathan Bornstein, Benny Feilhaber, Jonathan Spector) on the squad, but now that we've lost out to Ghana where can you turn?

Tablet Magazine has a quick rundown for you. Hint: It isn't Germany (my second favorite in this WC after my birth country), nor is it "The Inquisition (Let's Begin) / The Inquisition (Look out sin) / We've got a mission / To convert the Jews (Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jewwwwwws)" Spain (my home country).

Classic Movie Review: Billy Wilder's The Apartment

Billy Wilder made a great career out of handling delicate subject matter in surprisingly frank ways. From murder for profit and marital infidelity in Double Indemnity (1944) to sexual politics in Some Like It Hot (1959). In his last great film, The Apartment (1960), he deftly crosses the serious subjects often present in his previous directorial efforts (most, if not all, of which he also wrote) such as infidelity, sexual politics, attempted suicide with a light-hearted and well-intentioned touch. This film, which pushes its 2 hour running time along at a brisk pace, brought Wilder his second directing Oscar, his third for screenplay and his first as a credited producer of a Best Picture winner (his The Lost Weekend won Best Picture, but Wilder did not win a statuette).

Jack Lemmon earned his third Oscar nomination as C.C. Baxter, a low-level accountant in a firm that boasts a city’s worth of employees in one building (so many that the start and finish times of the workday are staggered by floor so as not to overrun the elevators). He is a pushover for several executives to whom he lends the key to his Upper East Side bachelor pad so they can engage in their extra-marital flings. He enjoys a carefree lifestyle and the eventual benefits of being in the good graces of company execs until he witnesses firsthand the damage that can be inflicted on the young women who are led to believe (however naively) that these men might leave their wives.

Protests and the Power of Propaganda

I saw a nice propagandizing poster while I was out this morning.

It was advertising a protest against Jews...sorry...Irael for the encroachment on Palestinian territory. The poster showed 4 maps each of which had two colors: one representing Palestinian land and the other representing Jewish land.

The first was dated 1946 and basically all of modern Israel was shaded as Palestinian land with a few smatterings of invaders...sorry again...Jewish land.

Next was the UN partition plan which, when compared with the 1946 map is a drastic difference in the proportional allotment of land to Palestinians and Jews.

Next comes 1948-1967 showing a shrinking of Palestinian land without any reference to the 2 defensive wars Israel fought in that time in which they acquired that land.

The final map was Today. This was the best one because nearly all of the West Bank was now shaded with the cloven hoof...dammit!...Jewish color. I suppose this was meant to represent Israeli (Jewish in the minds of the protesters, to be sure) settlements in the West Bank. Although I find it hard to believe that the shadings provided on this map were anything close to accurate. But of course, the final map completely fails to take into account the fact that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected offers of a two-state solution in which they would have the whole of the West Bank.

I'm so tempted to go to this protest on Saturday with posters of my own declaring that they're peddling propaganda and they know nothing of the history they're so vehemently protesting. I'd like to see how long it takes for someone to make an anti-Semitic remark toward me. As I'm still in the process of sorting my legal status here I think I'll leave it all for now.