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…
In 1933, the Viennese actress Hedy Keisler sparked an international furor by swimming nude in a provocative melodrama called “Ecstasy.” Alas, it was the tragic fate of Hedy Lamarr, as she was renamed when she arrived in Hollywood, to be perpetually judged by her face and figure rather than her intellect. A riveting portrait of…
Legend notwithstanding, the unforgettable image of Moses dividing the Red Sea in the 1956 epic “The Ten Commandments” was not handed down at Mount Sinai. Nor was it the product of director Cecil B. DeMille’s imagination, although he assuredly basked in the oohs and aahs of audiences and critics. In fact, a gifted Jewish storyboard…
When Leonard Nimoy announced in 1949 that he wanted to be an actor, and was leaving Boston for Hollywood, his Russian-Jewish parents were stunned. “My grandfather said that he should take up the accordion,” says Adam Nimoy, Leonard’s son and the director of the new documentary “For the Love of Spock.” “You could always make…
A Tale of Love and Darkness” may seem like a nondescript and even coyly evasive title, but in fact it expresses the essence of Natalie Portman’s textured film of Amos Oz’s book. An unfailingly sensitive though necessarily compressed adaptation of Oz’s acclaimed 2004 memoir, the movie portrays the author’s nurturing yet fraught childhood with his…
Americans of a certain age fervidly recall the “miracle on ice” at the 1980 Olympics. Three years earlier, Israelis celebrated their own iconic sports moment – also involving the Soviet Union. Los Angeles-based filmmaker Dani Menkin grew up in Tel Aviv, so he was naturally a fan of the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team. In…
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. “Indignation” opened Friday, July 29, in various markets and opens Aug. 4 at Shea…
Ruth Weintraub has mastered the art of keeping her Jewish past at bay. But now, evicted from her beloved Berlin apartment of 35 years and placed in ugly, unwelcoming public housing, she opts to stop struggling. Jonas is nearly half a century younger and less skilled at evading the future (and his girlfriend). So he…
As a high school student in the 1990s, Lucia Puenzo was fascinated and mystified by an open secret: Hundreds of Nazi war criminals found refuge in her native Argentina. “I was intrigued that so many families knew what was going on because they had a German man on their block or somewhere in their neighborhood,”…
