One of the most intriguing footnotes of World War II comes to light in Shadows of Freedom, a vivid documentary by Canadian filmmakers Amos Carlen and Aline Robichaud now available on VOD/Digital platforms. On November 8, 1942, in Operation Torch, a flotilla of more than 100,000 American and British troops landed in Algeria and Morocco, […]
Can Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, given their record of mutual strife, get along? Dror Zahavi, an Israeli filmmaker living in Germany, puts this confounding question to the test in his latest movie, Crescendo, which opens on May 1 in a virtual cinematic release throughout the United States. Zahavi’s impassioned drama is loosely inspired by […]
Michael Winterbottom’s biting satire, Greed, which opens in Canadian theatres on March 6, is a caustic portrait of a fictional self-made British billionaire and a blistering commentary on the fast fashion industry whose downtrodden workers he exploits mercilessly. Retail mogul Sir Richard (Greedy) McCreadie (Steve Coogan) has decamped to the Greek island of Mykonos to […]
Upwards of one million Polish citizens were deported to Siberia by the Soviet Union following its invasion of eastern Poland more than 80 years ago. But in an astonishing twist of fate, some 20,0000 of these refugees left Siberia shortly afterward and migrated to six African countries, bringing a chunk of Poland in their baggage. […]
Matt Ratner’s comedy, Standing Up, Falling Down, often plays out like a doom-laden drama. Wisecracks abound because the central character is a young Jewish standup comedian trying to break into the limelight. Since he’s having trouble carving out a viable career in a crowded and competitive field, levity inevitably gives way to darker moments. The […]
Far from being original, Jojo Rabbit, which won this year’s Academy Award for best adapted screenplay, is the latest film in the past seven decades to poke fun at Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Lest it be forgotten, Nazi Germany was satirized by Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, Ernst Lubitsch in To Be […]
Barnabas Toth’s richly-textured Hungarian-language feature film, Those Who Remained, echoes with the grief and pain of the Holocaust in Hungary, where more than 400,000 Jews were murdered during Nazi Germany’s occupation. Two of the traumatized survivors, Aladad (Aldo) Korner and Klara (Sunny) Wiener, meet by chance and provide each other with warmth, empathy, comfort and […]
Marco Belloccio’s fast-paced crime drama, The Traitor, hums with raw energy. Focusing on Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), a top-ranking Cosa Nostra mobster who turned on his colleagues in a series of sensational trials in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, it is reminiscent of some of the finest movies of its genre. Richly steeped in Italianate […]
Marcus Rosenmuller’s absorbing drama, The Keeper, based on a real story, is framed by two related scenes early in the movie — a dance party in the British town of St. Helen’s interrupted by a German air raid in 1944, and a group of German soldiers captured on home ground by Allied forces in 1945. […]
Despite her status as one of America’s greatest movie critics, Pauline Kael was regarded as a persona non-grata by certain Hollywood movers and shakers. Diverging from mainstream tastes, she would pan popularly acclaimed films such as The Sound of Music, Lawrence of Arabia and West Side Story, thereby enraging high-powered film executives, who barred her from […]