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 […]
Ferenc Torok’s strong and unadorned film, 1945, opens as a passenger train, its locomotive belching thick black smoke, pulls into into a sleepy station in the Hungarian countryside. It’s a sweltering morning in August of 1945, and a year has elapsed since the end of World War II. As the train hisses to a shuddering […]
The village of Lifta spreads out on the slopes of a steep hill adjacent to the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, which leads directly into the western half of Israel’s capital city. It’s a unique place — the only Palestinian locality abandoned by its residents during the first Arab-Israeli war that was not destroyed by Israel or repopulated […]