Meyer Lansky (1902-1983) was one of the dominant figures in the American underworld from the 1930s until his death. He was a key figure in the National Crime Syndicate, a confederation of Italian, Irish and Jewish gangsters, and one of the founders of Murder Inc., the enforcement arm of the mafia. Lansky, whose friends and […]
Jaguar, a six-part Netflix series set in Madrid in 1962, unfolds against the backdrop of World War II, Nazi concentration camps, and German war criminals enjoying the fruits of immunity in postwar Spain. A small band of Spaniards whose lives were upended by Nazi oppression plot to kidnap and bring to justice Aribert Heim, a […]
Vilified and idolized, William Randolph Hearst was the first media mogul in the United States, a larger-than-life figure brimming with arrogance and hubris whose appetite for power was limitless. A man who prized innovation and was always in search of the next big thing, he accumulated an empire of daily newspapers, magazines, radio stations and news serials. […]
Thousands of people were killed or injured when Arab terrorists acting on behalf of Al Qaeda crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, a date that will live in infamy. What were their lives worth in terms of hard, cold cash? Sarah Colangelo’s generally absorbing Netflix movie, Worth, […]
Lior Raz, the actor who played the Israeli army commando Doron Kavillio in Fauda, reinvents himself credibly in Netflix’s new nine-part series, Hit & Run, which unfolds in Israel and the United States. He portrays Segev Azulai, an Israeli tour guide whose second wife, Danielle Wexler (Kaelen Ohm), is killed in a hit and run […]
Julia Haart, formerly known as Julia Hendler, is at the core of My Unorthodox Life, a new nine-part Netflix reality series. Haart, 50, is a success story, one of the founders and the co-owner of the Manhattan-based Elite World Group, a global modelling and talent agency. A liberated women today, she once lived a cloistered […]
Canadian aficionados of Israeli television dramas will be pleased to hear that the Toronto Jewish Film Festival is streaming the first nine episodes of the latest one, The Chef, in its North American premiere. It will be available online until July 11. Created and directed by Erez Kavel and Orit Dabush, it is mostly set in […]
Jews, Muslims, immigrants and left-wing politicians have faced an upsurge of violence in Germany in the past five years, reports Evan Williams in his gripping documentary, Germany’s Neo-Nazis & The Far Right, which will be broadcast on the PBS network and on YouTube on Tuesday, June 29 at 10 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time). Williams, a […]
The Last Days, the winner of the 1999 Academy Award for best documentary feature, is coming to Netflix on May 19. James Moll’s moving film, a profile of survival against all odds, is presented by Steven Spielberg and the USC Shoah Foundation. It traces the lives of a handful of Hungarian Jews who survived the worst […]
Shortly after Germany’s conquest of France in 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill instructed his intelligence services to send spies behind enemy lines. In a departure from past practices, women were recruited, supposedly because they were more inconspicuous than men. A Call To Spy, a thriller now available on the Netflix streaming network, tells their […]