Joshua Weinstein has gone where no American movie director has ventured in about 70 years. He has made a film that unfolds almost entirely in Yiddish, with a sprinkling of English and Spanish thrown in. Menashe, which opens in Canadian theatres on August 11, was filmed in Borough Park, a Hassidic neighborhood in New York City. Menashe, […]
Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was a prominent film actress and director in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. In a 48-year career, which began in Britain in 1931, she appeared in 59 movies and directed eight others. As an actress, she was something of a femme fatale, projecting a gutsy persona and playing tough yet vulnerable characters. […]
The “troubles” in Northern Ireland, which for decades violently pitted Protestants against Catholics, were finally resolved when their respective leaders, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, agreed to form a national coalition government. The manner in which these hardened politicians created the conditions for this historic rapprochement unfolds in Nick Hamm’s absorbing film, The Journey, which […]
One of the most serious assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler’s life took place on November 8, 1939, when a time bomb assembled by Georg Elser exploded in a fabled beer hall in Munich, just two months after the outbreak of World War II. Elser, a factory worker and carpenter from southern Germany, was a Communist sympathizer […]
Elsa Dorfman, an American portrait photographer whose subjects run the gamut from Allen Ginsberg to W.H. Auden, was once under-appreciated. Today, she’s sufficiently important enough in photographic circles to rate rave reviews from peers and clients alike. Certainly, filmmaker Errol Morris thinks highly of her, judging by his biopic, The B-Side, which opens in Canada […]
Slawomir Grunberg’s documentary, Don’t Cry When I’m Gone, eulogizes Wanda Sieradzka, a Jewish woman whose life was a mirror reflection of the turmoil that engulfed Poland after Germany’s 1939 invasion and occupation. Premiered at the Polin Museum in Warsaw last year, this absorbing film has since made the rounds of movie festivals and various forums. […]
In the very first scene of Azazel Jacobs’ quiet and quirky movie, The Lovers, which opens in Canada on May 19, an unmarried middle-aged woman, Lucy (Melora Walters), cries as her married lover, Michael (Tracy Letts), tries to console her. Michael’s wife, Mary (Debra Winger), is having an affair, too. Her paramour, Robert (Aidan Gillen), is […]
U.S.- Russian relations are in free fall today, the worst they’ve been since the bad old days of the Cold War. Seven decades ago, however, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, locked in mortal combat against a common enemy, Nazi Germany. This theme is explored by Frank Capra in his rousing 1943 […]
When one thinks of Israel, one doesn’t usually think of pork, the ultimate abomination in food to Jews who keep kosher. But wait. Pigs are bred, slaughtered and processed in Israel, and Israelis by the thousands consume pork products voraciously. This may come as a rude awakening to Jews in the Diaspora, but anyone who’s […]
Daniel Blake is a 59-year-old carpenter who’s had a major heart attack and is now applying for unemployment insurance. “My marathon days are over,” he says in a reference to his long career. But as he becomes enmeshed in a state bureaucracy that’s supposed to ease his transition to good health again, he sinks to […]