Currently Browsing: Jan Lisa Huttner
Tzivi reviews Morgenthau and Fire Birds By Jan Lisa Huttner Hello, Readers. Did you miss me? My first post for Tzivi’s Cinema Spotlight was way back in August 2011, and in all the intervening years, month after month, I have always found something worth recommending. But in December 2016, I had nothing. And I had […]
Black Comedy from Israel about a man determined to crash “the world’s most exclusive club” of wealthy Tel Aviv widows who also happen to be Holocaust survivors. Trust me, this is a “laughing thru tears” experience worthy of Sholem Aleichem with finely-drawn characters and an infectious “tickle the ribs” plot. (JLH: 4/5) Review by FF2 […]
In 1866, German-Jewish businessman Lazarus Morgenthau arrived in the USA, in tow. Alas, Lazarus never found fabled streets paved with gold in New York, but his son Henry (ten years old when he arrived), became extremely wealthy and then used that wealth for great humanitarian purposes. Through the generations, his son Henry Morgenthau Junior and his […]
Ewan McGregor’s new adaptation of Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Pastoral is a noble failure. The screenplay has a complicated structure which keeps Nathan Zuckerman (Roth’s alter ego) two steps removed from his subject Seymour Levov (aka “Swede”). Thus reduced in the screenplay to a framing device, the Nathan Zuckerman character is unable to provide adequate context for a […]
Dani Menkin’s spin on the traditional road trip movie, Is That You? delivers a poignant bittersweet quality as a man searches far and wide for his long lost sweetheart. In the vein of An Affair to Remember, Menkin’s film captures vulnerability and hope in a quiet way that makes the audience reflect on their own […]
Based on the novel by Philip Roth, Indignation explores the complexities of a young man’s coming of age journey as he attempts to reconcile his place in the world. Despite glimpses of our protagonist challenging the establishment, the film falls short of delivering on its most basic promise, indignation. (EML: 3.5/5) Review by FF2 Associate […]
An ascetic Haredi student living with his parents in Jerusalem devotes himself to ritual, until God Himself literally strikes him down in a freak accident. The Hebrew word “Tikkun” means improvement or rectification. Jewish Americans usually combine it to create “Tikkun Olam” (repair the word) as an injunction for social justice. But in this case, the filmmaker’s theme is […]
Director Benoît Jacquot’s new adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s novel (co-written Hélène Zimmer) is likely the most faithful to date, but that doesn’t make it much fun to watch. Although Mirbeau’s fin de siècle concerns are highly applicable to today’s economic inequality and the global disarray in the wake of the Great Recession, Jacquot and Zimmer fail to achieve […]
Filmmaker Marcie Begleiter has turned artist Eva Hesse’s tragically short life into something luminous. For every year she was alive, Begleiter shows Hesse as an indefatigable woman with unforgettable incandescence. (JLH: 4/5) Review for JUF News by FF2 Managing Editor Jan Lisa Huttner On paper, artist Eva Hesse’s biography reads like a 20th century nightmare […]
That Anthony Weiner should have been brought low by something as petty as a sexting scandal is a national tragedy. And yet, this documentary arrives in theatres at the perfect time, just as we are at the midst of a Presidential contest that is already consumed by “reality show” antics. Let the buyer beware! (JLH: 4.5/5) […]