Currently Browsing: Ophir Awards
A Tale of Love and Darkness is Natalie Portman’s adaptation of the memoir Amos Oz published in 2004. I consider this film a masterpiece… but you probably won’t hear many other film critics say that. This is no doubt the consequence of two major decisions Portman made as a first-time filmmaker. First, she decided to focus […]
Two sad-sacks meet one day in the middle of a slushy Montreal winter. She is a young woman from a Hasidic family and he is a much older man from a wealthy Christian family. Their relationship is presented as life-altering, but with no backstory and minimal character development, it’s hard to care. Feh! (JLH: 2.5/5) ************************* […]
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem–released in Israel in 2014 as Gett–is the third and final film in “The Amsalem Triology,” co-written and co-directed by actress Ronit Elkabetz in collaboration with her brother Shlomi Elkabetz. Once again, Ronit Elkabetz stars as “Viviane Amsalem” and Simon Abkarian co-stars as her husband “Elisha.” Gett was nominated for 12 awards in […]
Tzivi’s Take on the 2014 Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema The range of options included in CFIC ‘14 runs the full gamut from A to Z, and the bookends—A Place in Heaven and Zero Motivation—are both so good—and so different—that I honestly can’t choose between them. But first a few words about Cupcakes. After a […]
JLH UPDATE: Immediately after this post went live on JUF Online, Chicago friends contacted me to say that while Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem was not on the 2014 CFIC schedule (Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema), it was part of the 2014 CIFF schedule (Chicago International Film Festival). So I contacted Music Box Films & […]
DAY FIVE OF THE 2014 NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL “Sanfur” (Shadi Mar’i) is a Palestinian teen living on the West Bank who has become the informant of an Israeli Secret Service–Shabak aka Shin Bet–officer named Razi” (Tsahi Halevi). Sanfur comes from a prominent Bethlehem family. His older brother “Ibrahim” (Hisham Suliman) is a well-known and very visible terrorist who has […]