In the streaming universe, as with all entertainment, there’s the stuff that everyone watches and talks about. But that’s just the tip of a vast catalog, a lot of it quite good, that doesn’t get the hype and the buzz. Here’s an eclectic list of accessible Jewish-themed movies that received some hosannas on their initial…
Before she rocketed to 1980s TV fame as sex advisor Dr. Ruth, she was simply Ruth Westheimer. And long before she was Ruth Westheimer, she was Karola Ruth Siegel of Wiesenfeld, Germany. It is those formative early years that provide the most resonant and affecting passages in Ryan White’s solid documentary, “Ask Dr. Ruth,” opening…
“Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” is presently in theatrical release and airs in May on PBS’ “American Masters.” OPB will air the episode twice: noon-1:30 pm, Sunday, May 20, and 1-2:30 am, Saturday, May 26. The film screened at Portland’s Living Room Theater in January and at the Corvallis Jewish Film Festival in April. In…
Movies about Jews evading the Holocaust are, frankly, irresistible. We never tire of these celluloid beacons of hope, not least because we can never forget that the victims greatly outnumbered the escapees. The challenge that filmmakers face in this area is keeping the rays of light in proportion to the vast darkness of reality. The…
Over the course of nearly two hours, “The Settlers” provokes anger, pride, dismay, frustration and sadness. The only emotion it doesn’t engender is hope. A historical overview of the settlement movement, Shimon Dotan’s thoughtful and mostly evenhanded documentary focuses on the status of the West Bank and Gaza in the half-century since the Six-Day War….
For his directorial debut, veteran producer and writer James Schamus chose a Philip Roth novel set during a turning point in the Jewish-American experience. “Indignation” unfolds in 1951, when opportunities and prospects for young Jewish professionals were just beginning to expand. “You discover when you start to inhabit that world that there was a genuine…
Under the influence of consumerism, militarism and the pace of the modern world, the People of the Book have little use for poetry. That’s one reading – and the most obvious and simplistic – of “The Kindergarten Teacher,” Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s unsettling saga of an adult’s missteps when presented with a preternaturally talented child….
In the immortal “Casablanca,” cagey club owner Humphrey Bogart remarks that he came to the titular Moroccan city “for the waters.” When police captain Claude Rains points out that they’re in a desert, Bogart’s Rick replies enigmatically, “I was misinformed.” Michael Botbol, the Moroccan-Jewish protagonist of the picaresque comedy-mystery “The Midnight Orchestra” can identify with…
PJFF: JUNE 21 SUN 7 PM Exceptionally intelligent and resourceful, and supported by a loving middle-class family, the young protagonist of “A Borrowed Identity” has a wide-open future. He does have one handicap, though, that will block his ascent into the upper echelons of Israeli society: He’s an Arab. Adapted by Arab Israeli writer Sayed…
Jewish characters finally joined the impeccably attired throng at “Downton Abbey,” and it’s not an altogether happy day. While Lord and Lady Grantham welcome the new arrivals with exquisite manners and the perfectly calibrated amount of modest warmth, series creator and writer Julian Fellowes is a good deal less hospitable. Fellowes has devised a nuclear…
