Film Review

Whimsey While You Work

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 12:22:55 +0000

Whimsey While You Work Chet Kozlowski April 4, 2025 - 08:22

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The new film Corina is a candy-colored confection that handles its premise with heart and humor.

Pity poor Corina. Her kindly single mother Renee is an agoraphobic, hasn’t left the house in years. She’s limited her daughter’s life to the radius of one city block in Guadalajara, Mexico. Corina, now 20 years old, clings to routine. She counts the steps to work every morning, to the publishing house where her father used to work. On the way she stops for a coffee—same order every day— at a bodega that she is distressed to see is expanding into the storefront next door. Change is in the air and Corina isn’t comfortable with change.

Even though Corina works in the most harmless editorial department—she’s a “style corrector”—she is swept up in the crisis of the moment. Her boss has received a manuscript from their most successful author, X. Silverman, who has decided to end her popular franchise, and likewise the company’s bestseller. The publishers panic. Mousey Corina covertly reads the pages and rewrites the book, asking her mother, “Do you think cowards can have a moment of courage?” Too shy to take credit, Corina’s version is inadvertently published, and attributed to Silverman, whose intention was to off her beloved protagonist by suicide.

Events take a turn with a road trip, Corina and Carlos—a handsome hombre (Cristo Fernandez) whose mere presence gives Corina a nosebleed—traveling to locate the mysterious Silverman and try to curb the damage. (You’ll recognize Mr. Fernandez from TV’s Ted Lasso.)

The film takes a sprightly tone, matching Corina’s rituals to a drum tattoo. But in quieter moments she delights in the creative process, floridly piling on the metaphors and slashing swathes of punctuation. “Once the red pencil stabs the paper it’s impossible to stop,” the narrator tells us in voiceover.

The acting is as brisk as the mise en scéne. Naian González Norvind plays Corina as wide-eyed, virginal, and skittish, not quite convinced that the outside world is for her yet yearning to participate. Ms. Norvind projects impish appeal and has an impressive list of credits, having worked in TV in the US and Mexico, and with directors like Gus Van Sant. Carolina Politi casts a benevolent figure as mother Renee, a prisoner of her own neuroses. Mariana Giménez and Laura de Ita round out the cast.

Director Urzula Barba Hopfner has said that Corina grew out of her own agoraphobic episodes while working abroad. She’s fashioned something special here. Despite Corina’s lighthearted exterior, it handles some weighty topics: identity, ownership of your ideas, ownership of your own life. She keeps the action buoyant, and the whimsey works. The color palate is Almodovar with notes of Wes Anderson. This is Ms. Hopfner’s first feature film.

Corina is an engaging parable about a bygone era, all the more charming as retro: the computers are clunky and revisions still happen on hardcopy.

Corina. Directed by Urzula Barba Hopfner. 2024. In Spanish with English subtitles. Runtime 96 minutes.

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Why This Snow White Will Outlast Her Critics

Brandon Judell — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 01:48:51 +0000

Why This Snow White Will Outlast Her Critics Brandon Judell March 26, 2025 - 21:48

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A week or ago, after a Snow White screening, I had to force myself not to gleefully skip up Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. Much is overlooked on Manhattan streets, but skipping, grey-bearded, knapsacked gents in Harry-Potterish eyeware are sort of a no-no, especially since that whole Luigi Mangione incident.

So instead, fueled with exhilaration, I, for the next 23 blocks, texted nephews, nieces, great nephews and nieces, friends who were parents, former students, and two pals who had vasectomies and were thus childless, insisting they all had to run see Disney’s latest.

On arriving home, I without delay opened my much-thumbed copy of Ralph Manheim's Grimms' Tales for Young and Old. Why? I was wondering how modern times had transformed the original take the Brothers Grimm had on "Schneewittchen"?

Well, in the primary text from the early 1800s, Snow White’s real mom died on giving birth to her, and the seven dwarfs were very neat and they mined silver. In 2025, the queen hangs on awhile longer than that—for a complete song, in fact—and the dwarfs are now slobs and mine multicolored rocks.

Additionally, in the original folk tale, the evil stepmother, jealous of her mirror's fondness for her stepdaughter's beauty, tells the huntsman in her service: "Get that child out of my sight. Take her into the forest and kill her and bring me her lungs and her liver to prove you’ve done it." The huntsman dispatches a boar instead and lugs that animal's innards back to the palace where the Queen gobbles them down believing they are indeed Snow White's guts. This displays a cannibalistic nature, one that might be a bit off-putting in 2025. Thankfully, Disney came up with a more fruity alternative.

Also, back then, after our heroine bites into the poisoned apple, comes one of my favorite to-the-point lines: "Snow White lay in her coffin for years and years. She didn't rot . . . ." In 2025, she doesn't rot either thanks to a quick rescue kiss.

Finally, while the current offering has a superb comeuppance for the royal villainess, one that just might give your young 'uns nightmares for a few eons, it's hard to compete with what the Grimms recorded on paper. The odious Queen enters the hall where Snow White and the prince are being wedded: "[T]wo iron slippers had already been put into glowing coals. Someone took them out with a pair of tongs and set them down in front of her. She was forced to step into the red-hot shoes and dance till she fell to the floor dead." A perfect scenario for the next the Saw franchise entry.

Which brings us to the Snow White that's directed by Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer), that's scribed by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary), and that has no prince.

Having not viewed the beloved 1937 animated version in complete form since my prepubescent days, I was still enthralled to rehear the classic songs of my childhood resung here ("Whistle While You Work" and "Heigh-Ho") along with instantly hummable additions by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul (The Greatest Showman).

May I just note that while the fair princess and her shorter buddies are touchstones of millions of happy childhoods, not all look upon this account favorably. As NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro noted a few years back: "Snow White is a fairy tale that traffics in some tropes that we might now roll our eyes at: feminine jealousy, unrealistic expectations of beauty, a woman cleaning up after seven ungrateful men."

Wilson's screenplay addresses many of these issues with much more subtle grace than the recent Substance and Nightbitch do. Here the all-male septet learns the delight of household cleaning; kindness to humanity is extolled as a better trait to treasure than vanity; and the princess fights alongside her Robin-Hood-like beau and his merry crew, to restore gaiety to the local populace while dismantling the ruthless reign of a very self-involved despot. No doubt if the film were longer, Snow White would have even rehired a few thousand federal workers.

Truthfully, watching this rendition of Snow White, all I felt was untainted childhood joy, the same joy I imagine I felt when I saw my very first film in the cinema with my dad after my mother died, The Lady and the Tramp.

So please set aside temporarily (or for good) all of the scurrilous commentary circulating about this feature. Here's a film you won't mind your kids streaming over and over again ad nauseam. With charming leads, huggable sidekicks, a scary forest scene, and loveable hedgehogs, who could ask for more?

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A Powerful Serve

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 14:00:00 +0000

A Powerful Serve Chet Kozlowski March 25, 2025 - 10:00

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It’s a rare film that doesn’t just depict an emotional state but becomes the state. Such a film is the quietly devastating Julie Keeps Quiet.

Start with the poster. The title is intriguing enough, simple and direct. White type over a photo of a figure on a blue background. The photo is a contradiction: a young woman, her features twisted in anguish and rage. If a poster could talk, this one would be screaming.

This simple image captures the restraint of its protagonist, Julie, an up-and-coming tennis star in a Belgian high school. She’s headed for the nationals. Julie is a person of action, and she’s uncommonly reticent since the suicide of her friend and teammate Aline. Julie watches a video of Aline extolling the virtues of Jeremy, their coach. Aline looks bright and hopeful, not like anyone who’s carrying a weight. But she does.

And so does Julie. She has a secret, has internalized it and tries to subdue it. She goes about her mundane day. She goes to practice. She walks her dog. She eats dinner with her supportive parents and tries very hard to keep a lid on her emotions. Regret, desire, loyalty, betrayal…all are balled up inside her. She is young enough to feel but not old enough to process. The only sign of her turmoil is the ferocity of her serve: that hard twack is Julie’s release.

If you think you know Julie’s secret—we’re looking at you, Larry Nasser—you’d be right. But that isn’t the film’s revelation. It’s its state of mind. Belgian director Leonardo van Dijl’s penetrating study delves deep into Julie’s private purgatory: the film’s color palette is earth tones and light is always caught at a midpoint: no sunshine or dark shadows. Julie sees her world as if looking through a dirty windshield, grayed, smudges that blend with other smudges.

That isn’t to say it’s dull by any means. Julie Keeps Quiet is immersive, masterfully composed of empty spaces by Mr. Dijl and director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis. For two hours, they put us in Julie’s headspace, her indecision, the guilt, and the confusion. (The film was chosen as the Belgian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.)

As Julie, actor Tessa van Den Broeck is astonishing. She was chosen from a host of young tennis players and projects serious depth even when still. The camera is right up on her, in extreme closeups of her face, while she stares into nothing. Her teammates suspect but Julie won’t confirm. Her conundrum is not so much Aline’s death as it is her similar circumstances with their coach, Jeremy. He’s been suspended yet still calls Julie, and meets with her, sussing out her version. Will she testify against him? If not for Aline, for herself? They speak in codes, in person or on the phone. “When you told me to stop, I stopped,” he pleads cryptically.

So much at stake for so young a woman. The finals, her team, her sanity, all get mulched together. The images grow grainier. And then the voices in her head: Caroline Snow’s score has the force of an epiphany. Try as Julie does to quell her thoughts, they break through when she least expects them: the rising voices of women, a choir of angry angels that rises as Julie’s path becomes clear. Those voices are a thrilling complement to what we’re watching.

Julie Keeps Quiet is deceptively simple. Not much happens but the everyday, but that’s the point. Julie tries to maintain order. What will break through and what will it mean? The film is an intense and cohesive vision, and a risky one: when you say nothing, the impression is that you have nothing to say. Julie Keeps Quiet, but for its silence, is screaming out loud.

_______________________________

Julie Keeps Quiet. Directed by Leonardo van Dijl. 2024. Belgian with English subtitles. From Film Movement. Runtime 100 minutes. In theaters.

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Chekov in the Pines

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 18:08:12 +0000

Chekov in the Pines Chet Kozlowski March 16, 2025 - 14:08

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Passions erupt in the curious new film Appalachian Dog.

Teddy's home from a war, back to his mountain home, and reunited with his wife, Marion. He and Marion run a tailor shop, and while he was away, a seamstress named Peggy assumed his role. Teddy's hands (and head) suffer PTSD, and he suspects he's been replaced by Peggy in more ways than one.

Appalachian Dog starts out as a chamber piece. The opening scene is the shop Teddy shares with Marion. Peggy's there, and Cate, a neighbor who is comically interested in the carnal. It’s all very casual and genial until Cate’s coat gets torn. Who will mend it? In that quiet way, the drama of Appalachian Dog begins.

This is writer/director Colin Henning’s first feature. He also plays Teddy as an acerbic character who tries to sew, gazing at his shaky hands, willing them to work right. Teddy is all aggravation and non-sequiturs. He grouses, pontificates, and searches for his loyal dog while his steadfast wife Marion negotiates relationships. She discreetly slips Peggy the task of repairing the coat. Teddy's first night back isn't fireworks in the bedroom, either. The best he can muster is to longingly watch his wife undress.

Domestic dynamic established, the action opens up, all the way up the mountain, and soon somebody's expressing secret love, somebody's frolicking in the barn with somebody else's significant other, mothers are dying, and a wedding gown becomes an item of contention. To reveal more details is to ruin the surprises of the movie, of which there are many.

What's striking about Appalachian Dog is its artificiality. The sets are thrift-shop. The actors sometimes veer into community theater territory. There's little attempt at authenticity. No way Teddy looks like he's been through a war. Mr. Henning plays him more like a grad student, appearing in a sports coat with a shock of unruly hair. The women are mismatched as well; Georgia Morgan plays Marion as more refined than she might be, while Cate (Brooke Elizabeth) is too delicate to be convincing as a farmer's wife toting bales of hay. Hayleigh Hart Franklin plays Peggy as a steady presence, biding her time and watching how the wind blows. Cate's husband, Andrew (Aaron J. Stewart), is a specter, seen at a distance for most of the runtime. The actors are mostly newbies, building their reels, appearing elsewhere in bit parts and commercials.

Yet… the inauthenticity works. I accepted the conceit completely and was along for the ride. Much of that has to do with Mr. Henning's filmmaking. Those sound lapses are intentional, part of his style, and happen abruptly enough to send a chill. Crucial dialogue is self-consciously overdubbed, and the sound drops out completely in key sequences. Atmospheric montages are inserted at unfitting moments, diverting the ordinary action in a different direction. Even these leave an impression, especially in one of the best orgasm-by-the-river sequences I've seen lately. Are we in Appalachia? No one's particularly bereft. Life may not look easy, but it is not hard.

Yet, as I say, it works. Appalachian Dog is inventive and original, a quirky little gem. The unreality is hard to put your finger on, but Mr. Henning is obviously in control. Themes of sexuality, desire, love, betrayal, and perfection bounce around like tennis balls. Some good lines, too. "Andrew's best left lonesome." "Velvet's spendy." "You got past the dragon."

Appalachian Dog is proudly out of sync, prim, and worth your proper attention. This first production from C.H. Squared Films, the company of Colin Henning and Chad Hylton, shows tremendous promise.

But where is that darn dog?

Appalachian Dog. Directed by Colin Henning. 2025. From C.H. Squared Films. Runtime 100 minutes. Available On Demand.

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Mommy Duress

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 15:00:30 +0000

Mommy Duress Chet Kozlowski March 9, 2025 - 11:00

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Under the Burning Sun is the sort of film usually reserved for mad men: Mad Max, to be exact. Though women have blazed this trail before—Furiosa comes to mind—this violent and surreal trip across a nameless desert is produced by and features a woman. And she has an agenda.

Under the Burning Sun is a dark night of the soul. Director Yun Xie was inspired in writing it by her mother’s harrowing story and fashioned it into a piercing cry for all women. Chinese born and sharpening her skills at SVA in New York City, Ms. Xie has tackled a heavy topic—a woman’s right to bodily autonomy—by crossing Thelma and Louise with El Topo. Under the Burning Sun is Ms. Xie’s first feature film.

Mowanza is a young woman carrying her rapist’s child. On a postapocalyptic landscape she first consults with an outlaw doctor who confirms her pregnancy but refuses to perform the illegal abortion. Mowanza, played with gravitas by Stephanie Pardi, takes her fate into her own hands: she tries to induce a miscarriage—unsuccessfully—and so gets into her souped-up car to find someone in this wasteland who will perform the procedure.

Cue the allegories: Mowanza encounters a plethora of desperate characters, including various assailants, vicious dogs, brutal (male) shop owners, a Handmaid’s Tale -style sect, and a beguiling woman named Mavis (Stephanie Kincheloe). In Ms. Xie’s imagined world, the men are headless: they’re there but reduced to gestures, either seen from the back or their heads cropped out of frame. This landscape is populated by abused mothers and abandoned children; men are dispatched quickly and bloodily.

Under the Burning Sun looks gorgeous. Yun Xie’s composition, aided by Tianyi Wang’s cinematography, is visceral and dreamlike. Each sundrenched frame is stunningly arranged, the detritus and grime of the desert clinging to characters so realistically you might find yourself brushing it off. Each frame is an exquisite film still on its own.

It’s when the images move that there’s problems. Ms. Xie’s overall conceit is unyielding, and it shackles the actors. They are props, physically beautiful but not very skilled actors. Much depends on Stephanie Pardi’s glowering protagonist, and while Ms. Pardi’s mien is striking, her performance doesn’t show much nuance. Dialogue is stilted, with many lines delivered off-camera, dubbed in post. At crucial points, as when Mowanza sums up the theme by telling her unborn child “I just don’t want you to become us,” the actor’s face is averted, the line inserted after principal photography. Likewise, the foley (sound effects) work is grating and inexpert, as if the sound embellishments belong to another movie.

But Yun Xie can’t be faulted for ambition. She has an eye and an attitude. These days, it’s the rare film that displays such blunt politics. She shoots high, and even though the cinematic beauty of Under the Burning Sun is incongruous to its missteps, she should be applauded for taking chances. If she goes on, she will be a force to reckon with.

_____________________________________

Under the Burning Sun. Directed by Yun Xie. 2025. Runtime 75 minutes.

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The Male/Female Gaze

Gary Lucas — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 03:28:05 +0000

The Male/Female Gaze Gary Lucas March 5, 2025 - 22:28

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Izumi Suzuki by Nobuyoshi Araki from his book Izumi Suzuki: This Bad Girl

"I have looked on many women with lust. I have committed adultery in my heart many times." - Jimmy Carter, Playboy Magazine (Sept. 1976)

A historical if not downright heroic statement concerning the "Male Gaze," courtesy of the 1976 Democratic presidential nominee.

This comment was published as part of writer Robert Scheer's interview with Jimmy Carter in the September 1976 issue of Playboy, which nearly derailed Carter's campaign and was leveraged (unsuccessfully) in an effort to smear Carter on the eve of his campaign by such outstanding citizens as Gerald Ford and the Rev. Billy Graham.

But to Jimmy Carter's credit, he was, let's face it, just being honest here—unlike serial groper-in-chief Donald "Women, I am your protector" Trump, greasy Matt Gaetz, phony populist J.D. Vance, and other oleaginous Republicans currently strutting and fretting their hour on the stage.

(It is to laugh, but highly appropriate, that the moralistic Vance's own Hillbilly Elegy memoir—hardly salacious reading—was recently censored and removed from public school libraries in Michigan.)

As someone who, at a tender age, took a stand in favor of Free Speech while attending Syracuse's very public Hurlbut W. Smith Junior High School by often sporting a bright orange button emblazoned with the legend F*CK CENSORSHIP—I also advocated in my AP English class against the suppression of editor/publisher Ralph Ginzburg's artsy stroke-book Eros Magazine. Though relatively tame by today's standards, the publication of Eros sent Ginzburg to prison for 8 months.

Speaking of today, l look askance at the current recuperation of the late Andrea Dworkin's stentorian anti-porn pronouncements from the late '60s—still cringe-worthy after all these years—in which several contemporary literary journals are lauding her views as proto-feminist. I've always found her writing to be strident and tone-deaf, especially her unintentionally hilarious anti-heterosex harangues.

Case in point is the recent republication of her 1981 book Pornography, a book-length critique of the subject in hand (!) in which in the service of her argument Dworkin summarizes the narratives of several cheapo porn paperbacks of the Beeline Books variety that are, in her re-telling of their major plot points, dare I say even "dirtier;" i.e., more erotically charged, than the texts of the original books in question.

(She had a real way with words, our Andrea.)

But do women also enjoy taking advantage of, and is there such a thing as the "Female Gaze?"

The late Pauline Reage (who wrote under that pseudonym and also under the name Dominique Aury, although her birth name was Anne Desclos) came close with 1954's Histoire d'O, which was written to entertain her male lover Jean Paulhan, from the point of view of a female submissive.

Some years later, in 1973, Erica Jong had a bestseller with her novel Fear of Flying and its central conceit of "the zipless fuck." Jong's novel was pre-dated by science fiction author Joanna Russ's steamy The Female Man, which took only five years to publish. And recently, Miranda July has raised the female-centric erotic stakes again with her novel All Fours.

For my money, though, the absolute greatest of all female smut purveyors was my old friend Iris Owens, who, as an ex-pat in Paris, wrote some of the wildest and filthiest erotic novels for Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press under the pseudonym Harriet Daimler—classics including Darling, Innocence, and The Woman Thing—all well worth tracking down, all more than worthy of her friend Terry Southern's (himself a sometime dirty book author) Quality Lit seal of approval.

In underground comix, Italian graphic artist Giovanna Casotto wrote and illustrated fantastically explicit erotica like her Bitch in Heat collection in the '90s. These graphic novels push the transgressive envelope while celebrating the forbidden and illicit.

In cinema, Candida Royalle distinguished herself in the '60s and '70s as a sex-positive feminist and went on to produce and direct numerous erotic "couples" films.

Most recently, Dutch film director Halina Reijn certainly exercised her droit du seigneur with the recent directorial succès de scandale of her film Babygirl, which I've written about here: http://culturecatch.com/index.php/node/4404

But this expansive female sex-positive attitude has certainly not consistently enough been the case, as the infamous Frank Zappa versus the PMRC congressional hearings spearheaded by Tipper Gore attest to.

Pornography, as we all know, is definitely in the Eye of the Beholder, both male or female or intersex, pace Supreme Court Justice Potter Stevens's landmark ruling of 1964 regarding the banning of Louis Malle's 1958 film Les Amants in Ohio on the grounds that it was pornography:

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ['hardcore pornography'], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so.

But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

Regarding the Male/Female Gaze:

I adored the late Al Goldstein's Midnight Blue cable TV series in the '70s and '80s.

The very IDEA of Al Goldstein (publisher and editor of Screw Magazine)—a loud-mouthed vulgarian, a tummler, a rager, a stand-up comedian, and swaggering teller of hard truths—the living embodiment, in fact, of the anti-semitic Jewish Pornographer stereotype, which hearkens back to Ulysses's first American publisher, First Amendment champion Samuel Roth (a lifelong Orthodox Jew), and Olympia Press major-domo Maurice Girodias (half-Jewish but wtf)—always warmed the cockles of my heart.

No one essayed the role of Jewish Pornographer with a capital P better than Al.

I especially loved his infamous televised "Fuck You!" Department, a staple of Midnight Blue.

Al was a goddamn one-man Consumer Reports, mouthing outrageous take-downs of sacrosanct institutions like the high-end Hammacher Schlemmer department store, who sold him some broken-down crap, or bitching about the staggering bill for inferior food or service at some tony restaurant in Manhattan.

This segment always ended with Al's middle-fingered kiss-off to the product or person at hand deserving of his righteous scorn:

“Hammacher Schlemmer--FUCK YOU!!”

Al took no prisoners—naming names and reporting phone numbers of the folks working at these joints who'd done him dirty that he encouraged his viewers to harass!

This outrageous tactic was to eventually prove his undoing when he went after his ex-wife and her divorce lawyer and gave out their phone numbers. (Bad move.)

Yes, not everyone loved Al.

My life partner, Caroline Sinclair, f'rinstance LOATHED Al Goldstein. She found his show gross, obnoxious, and odious in extremis (all points in the show's favor, IMHO)—and she always demanded I immediately switch channels whenever the show came on over Manhattan Cable's Public Access channel.

This was true also of the other Manhattan Cable Public Access sex-centric cable shows back in the day, helmed by colorful New Yorker characters such as Ugly George, a Polish American emigre who roamed the streets of the boroughs shirt-less in silver lame hot pants with a Sony video portapak strapped on his back who specialized in sweet-talking random hotties he encountered into back alleys and secluded nooks where he (somehow) coaxed them into taking off their tops and bras for his camera—the raw footage of which he gleefully aired every week.

Also, the man known simply as "Dan" (no last name given), a bearded, somewhat portly Jewish erotic connoisseur referred to as "Rabbi" by the mainly male callers-in who watched the show.

Dan was frequently seen cavorting in the churning waters of a hot tub with two nekkid and nubile young ladies, all the while fielding on-air calls over his phone from fans watching the action live—one of whom set him up unforgettably one summer night by asking if he could personally address one of Dan's female tub consorts.

Dan passed the phone to her (all calls were heard over the air):

"Tell me dear…when you're sitting in that hot tub next to Dan...and things start getting steamy and intimate with him...(Dan and his partner both smile and nod here)…and you turn to Dan to kiss him...and you two start getting it on.

Tell me, does Dan smell??"

A faint smile played over Dan's mainly serene and enlightened visage as he hung up the phone with a cool:

"Next caller."

Then there was the Robin "Baby Let Me Bang Your Box" Byrd show, which concentrated on interviews with hot lesbians and gay male models, new ones every week, new kids fresh in town working and dancing at Show World on West 42nd Street—something for everybody!

Photo from Hideaki Anno's 1998 film Love and Pop

It is surprising to me that Caroline was so repulsed by such, in retrospect, innocent TV fun—as once upon a time in a world long ago and far away, she had been an illegal alien in our fair city until she wasn't (Reader, I married her). She had (shhhhh!) occasionally supported herself back in the days without a Green Card by working in the Forty Deuce porno film industry as a part-time editor and set decorator on a couple of films starring Al's good pal with a big schlong, the gross Ron Jeremy.

Let me backtrack a bit here:

My interest in the erotic was stoked via my random discovery at age 10 or 11 of a well-thumbed European pirated edition of Ulysses on my father's bookshelf, which it turned out he'd liberated in the '40s from the Zeta Beta Tau Jewish frat house while a student at Syracuse University.

That, and stumbling on (and eventually going steady with) my older sisters's paperback copies of Mary McCarthy's The Group, Grace Metalious's Peyton Place…and my own close encounter in summer camp with a fellow camper's copy of Roslyn Drexler's I Am the Beautiful Stranger, which we passed around in our cabin in the woods like Russian dissidents sharing samizdat literature in the former Soviet Union.

The truth, though, is that in the current digital moment, things like specifically erotic novels, adult cinemas, x-rated stores, and their like have more or less gone the way of all flesh, vanishing vapor trails in the polluted ether, with the bit-torrent of hardcore porn but a click away on your iPhone (or so I've been told. I have never availed myself of the opportunity—have you? I prefer to patrol the precincts of my own dirty mind—À la recherche du temps pair deux—and need no visual stimulation to "fire my imagination," as Mick Jagger so succinctly put it in the sensational '60s).

I bring this up in regard to a recent viewing of a new restoration of Japanese cult anime director Hideaki Anno's experimental 1998 live-action film Love and Pop, which is now playing at the IFC Center here in the West Village. It's a film that is simultaneously a critique of a porn-centric world and the virtual Thing In Itself—a real Peep Show Bible for obsessive oldsters and "nasty narrow-minded jades" (to quote Vivian Stanshall).

Boasting some of the weirdest camera angles and more outre discontinuous edits ever seen before "on the big screen" outside of certain avant-garde classics, the film is based on the book Topaz II by Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami (often confused with Japanese writer Haruki Murakami—definitely not the same animal), author of the indelibly lewd Almost Transparent Blue (for years available in English translation only in NYC at a Japanese import store on West 57th Street) and other explorations of the soft white underbelly of Japanese decadence. It is a glittering dark jewel with many facets that shimmer in its depiction of wayward Japanese youth coming of age.

It concerns a quartet of cute teenage girls living in the Shibuya district of Tokyo who are devoted advocates of "sugar dating"—lining up dates with creepy older men through a phone service specializing in connecting such erotic hook-ups, the goal of the girls being to obtain the maximum amount of gifts from their furtive male patsies without actually putting out.

(And btw, I've never seen such repulsive male marks as portrayed in this film, two of whom the main female protagonist Hiroshi has to endure in one endless long day's journey to the end of the night in the hope of scoring enough yen to purchase an expensive ring.)

The film, while exposing the machinations of both sexes in this twisted Japanese mating ritual, lingers lovingly Tarantino-like on plenty of close-ups of bare, barely pubescent female feet, ankles, legs, etc.—all the better to make the viewer complicit in the whole seedy story—a voyeur, if you will, of the film itself; a regular Peeping Tom.

We're kinda in Ghost World film territory here, but way more in-your-face and outrageous.

As an objet du cinema, I've never seen anything like this film, frankly—other than—thematically, anyway—the 2009 Polish film Mall Girls, directed by Katarzyna Roslaniec—which tells a similar tale of young Polish girls from poor families who semi-prostitute themselves hanging around in large bustling malls hoping to pick up older sugar daddies to basically "buy them stuff."

Well, it is a "mean old world," to quote Little Walter, if not a dog's life, for 98% percent of the human population hereabouts, vis-à-vis hierarchic capitalist exploitation based on the old in-and-out, top man/bottom man dialectic.

Three cheers then for Sean Baker's audacious and hilarious film Anora, which, as I write this, just swept the Oscars —and his acceptance speeches (two of them) wherein he praised the lives of sex workers.

(Although, hey, Love and Pop's bourgeois teenage Japanese girls are hardly "sex workers." These grrrls just wanna have fun, i.e., go shopping).

Love and Pop is definitely worthy of the attention of cinephiles of any persuasion, especially as the film has never had a proper release in North America (and it's been a 27-year wait).

It looks like it should be playing on and off at the IFC on 6th Avenue in the West Village for a while in any case, and it's set to open in other U.S. cities later this year.

And while I'm grazing in the "Asian Babes" section:

All broad-minded literati are recommended to check out the recent publication of new English translations of Japanese novelist/model/actress Izumi Suzuki's superb books Terminal Boredom, Hit Parade of Tears, and Set My Heart On Fire—all of which might well be filed under the Love and Pop category, dealing as they are with complicated and claustrophobic male/female relationships and romantic agony in Tokyo in an age of disposable chintzy popular music and glitz.

All were recently published by (go figure) Verso Books, devoted mainly to leftist political and philosophical writings, such as our friend Cineaste editor Richard Porton's important study Film and the Anarchist Imagination.

And Izumi Suzuki's books are decidedly not that in any way, shape, or form. Suzuki was both a brilliant writer and a stunning-looking woman (I'm exercising my Male Gaze prerogative again here—sorry!).

She achieved much notoriety in Japan as both a radical science-fiction author and film actress—as well as an erotic model for famed Japanese photographer/one-time lover Nobuyoshi Araki—but her flame burned too brightly, she suffered mental health issues, and eventually, Izumi Suzuki took her own life at the tender age of 36. Perhaps in the mistaken belief that at that point she was over the hill in a Houelllbecque-ian "Female as Commodity" sense.

Her books are fascinating, and her writing is a profound glimpse into the female psyche, like the work of Elena Ferrante.

Both Izumi Suzuki's books and Hideaki Anno's Love and Pop should be a lot better known in the world.

Hopefully, this essay is a beacon pointing you, the voyeur, in their direction.

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Is The Binding one of the most Daring Israeli Gay Films Ever Made?

Brandon Judell — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:56:37 +0000

Is The Binding one of the most Daring Israeli Gay Films Ever Made? Brandon Judell March 5, 2025 - 13:56

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Yes, indeedy! At least that's what The Tel Aviv International LGBTQ+ Film Festival is swearing, and who are we to disagree? The Fest also notes with steadfast certainty that The Binding's director, Eyal Kantor, is "without a doubt the most prolific queer independent filmmaker in Israel at the moment" with six shorts and three features listed on IMDB alone.

The still active Eytan Fox, the Israeli director of such daring worldwide hits as Yossi (2012), Walk on Water (2006) and The Bubble (2007), might tut, tut, tut at that. The latter a Romeo-and-Romeo romance between an Israeli reservist assigned to a checkpoint and a closeted young Palestinian, might be considered even more triggering nowadays than upon its initial release. However, The Binding is also quite timely, way more graphic, and "electrically" perverse.

The film opens with its blindfolded hero, Binyamin (Yoav Keren), handcuffed to a wall while being body-slapped upon a scarlet-sheeted mattress. It takes a few seconds to realize this is a consensual S&M exchange. After some choking, a bit of on-screen penile manipulation, and tummy kissing, the top unlocks Binyamin and moves in for some Frenching, from which our hero immediately sways away.

Jump shot to Binyamin smoking at a kitchen table. Still nude, he watches a news report on the sighting of a shivering baby seal on an Israeli beach. The bearded top, still unclothed, strides over.

Top: Did you enjoy that?

Binyamin: Yeah, I think so. How about you?

Top: I was afraid I’d break your bones or something. I went easy on you. (Playfully punches Binyamin on the shoulder.) I can go harder next time.

Binyamin (smiling): It was totally fine.

The top then admits he’s new to the BDSM scene as he fondles and smooches with Binyamin. Then the slightly rough stuff begins once again.

(Please note both are wearing beaded jewelry, accessories that might not work so well in the States-side leather scene.)

At about 8 minutes, 30 seconds, into The Binding, we finally see Binyamin in clothing. He's working as a bartender at a bar owned by an Orthodox Israeli settler, Avinoam (Shimon Mimran), who teaches Bible classes to young men on the side.

The 49-year-old, eyeglassed, slightly stocky, yarmulked Avinoam at first appears to be the most delightful of bosses. Putting a God-centric spin on life, he seems to be protective of his young employee who’s out to be screwed by every gay man in Tel Aviv, especially those willing to hurt him a little. Binyamin, a proclaimed atheist, is even getting spanked in doorways.

But as Binyamin learns, some spankers might get carried away. Don't worry. Breathe easy, dear reader. The weaponized Avinoam, a settler who's served in the military, is always prepared for what might saunter around the corner: "If there's anything I've learned from my service, it's that a gun and a first aid kit are like pants. You can't leave your home without them."

But what’s really going on here? Is the Boss just friendly and caring or trying to bring his faithless employee back into the Sabbath mold? Maybe he's trying to bed Binyamin? Or is there a third goal that might be a lot more discomforting? Really discomforting!

You might also wonder at this point who's walking Binyamin's dog named Putin throughout all this, a mutt that elicits one of the finer lines of dialogue of the past year: "Roll over, Putin!"

Whatever you guess, The Binding will surprise you. Possibly even "electrify" you.

The screenplay delves into self-hatred, sex addiction, damning dads, animated camel accidents, nipple play, closet cases, and even a new method of conversion therapy that hopefully won't gain in popularity.

Yes, Binyamin's gay spirit is shown at times being hammered down by life forces, misshaped by the kosher prejudices he was born into, and drowning in the guilt he's thrust upon himself. That he's still orgasming several times daily might make him forget he’s cemented to a woeful soul. Then there's all the photos of himself narcissistically hanging on his living-room wall. Probably, we should no doubt call Binyamin up to remind him he's miserable.

Billed as a thriller, with its two highly committed leads and a finale that a very young Hitchcock might have appreciated, The Binding is a solid reminder that although LGBT rights in Israel "are considered the most developed in the Middle East," anti-LGBT incidents are still on a steep rise over there as there are in so many countries.

No matter, The Binding argues quite persuasively that queer love can still survive.

(The Binding is available on Amazon.com for both rental and DVD purchase and on AppleTV.)

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Somewhat Enchanted Evening

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 01:40:05 +0000

Somewhat Enchanted Evening Chet Kozlowski February 23, 2025 - 20:40

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Being an auteur is easy these days. Digital technology quickens and makes less expensive production and distribution. So when a first film is the product of a single sensibility that is writer, director, cinematographer, and editor, we have to consider the distinctiveness of what they choose to put in front of us.

In One Night in Tokyo, Joshua Woodcock's first feature, Sam, a 30-something American, has just arrived in Tokyo. It's Sam's first time in Japan, and he's set for a week with his equally American GF Becca, whose job has taken her there. They've been separated for six months. But something's off: Becca isn't there at the airport to meet him. When he arrives at her apartment, she seems distracted, pleads prior commitments, and gives him the key to a hotel room. Hmmm. Sam's Japanese friend Jun is indisposed as well. He suggests Sam join his girlfriend Ayaka for beers with her friends. The evening is awkward; Sam doesn't know Ayaka or the language (one of the best scenes is Sam trying to make small talk, his new acquaintances explaining references). When the friends disperse, Sam is left alone with Ayaka, who is indifferent.

An event bonds them, and Sam resolves to return home on the morning flight. The pair spends time in funky bars and neon streets, and they warm to each other. They compare favorite films (spoiler alert: his is Chaplin's City Lights; hers is Ozu's Tokyo Story). Confidences are shared and affection blooms.

Notice I don't say "love." One Night in Tokyo is not exactly a romcom. It has a conspicuous lack of passion. Its stakes are pretty low, which is surprising for a first film over which the maker has full creative control. The film looks professional; it’s not a knockoff. Joshua Woodcock writes and directs confidently, coming from advertising and shorts. He's the cinematographer and editor, too. Mr. Woodcock is based in Tokyo, as are his cast and crew.

But while One Night in Tokyo is endearing in the moment, it adds up to a shrug. Its characters are attractive but bland and pretty ordinary. The dearth of passion appears intentional, despite a bossy score by Topher Horn, which is designed to guide our emotions and provide whimsey that is not on the screen.

Mr. Woodcock's scenario has neither the clever dialogue of Linklater's "Before" series, or the quirkiness of Coppola's Lost in Translation. The cast works and is appealing. Reza Emamiyeh plays Sam as a likeable hangdog. Tokiko Kitagawa has an endearing smile and plays Ayaka with quiet skill: her conversion from impassivity to interest is convincing. The cast also includes Cailee Oliver as Becca and Shinichiro Watanabe as Jun.

One Night in Tokyo is an enjoyable enough Fish-Out-of-Water cum Opposites-Attract picture. But it’s pretty thin and not very unique. Even the streets of Tokyo seem ordinary: only a few distinctive locations are visited and not much is made of Sam being a stranger in a strange land. Mr. Woodcock serves up cautious helpings of emotion.

As in most contemporary films, the phone is a character. Time that could be spent considering each other is spent checking the screen. The language barrier is breached by a verbal translation app. After they use that, Sam and Ayaka speak fluently to each other.

Doesn't anybody just stare into each other's eyes anymore? In a movie like One Night in Tokyo, bells don't have to ring, but they could at least vibrate.

______________________________________

One Night in Tokyo. Directed by Joshua Woodcock. 2024. From Buffalo 8. Runtime 95 minutes.

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She Feels As If She’s In A Play

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 21:58:13 +0000

She Feels As If She’s In A Play Chet Kozlowski February 10, 2025 - 16:58

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The new Spanish film Something is About to Happen focuses on Lucia, an ordinary woman leading an ordinary life until she’s fired from her 20-year IT job. Her father is dying, neighbors argue through the cheap walls of her apartment, a big black bird haunts her. Luci yearns for a richer life. She gets it in the form of a neighbor, a handsome actor named Calaf who lives above her and plays a recording of Puccini's opera Turandot. She takes a chance, knocks on his door, and is swept up into his world. Then, the next time she visits, another person is there. Calaf's left the apartment without a word.

Rather than being crushed, Lucia is optimistic. She buys a taxi and drives the city (Madrid). She dresses as the Chinese heroine of Puccini's opera. She's convinced that one day Calaf will enter her cab and they will be reunited.

Something is About to Happen is engrossing but perplexing. Director Antonio Méndez Esparza is known for the features Here and There (2012), Life and nothing more (2017), and the documentary Courtroom 3H (2020). Having written the screenplay with Clara Roquet he shows subtle control and maintains suspense. Mr. Esparza is served well by Zeltia Montes' propulsive string score, which propels the action by keeping us on edge.

But the best reason to see Something is About to Happen is to watch Malena Alterio as Lucia. Ms. Alterio offers an open-faced performance, confronting the world armed with a smile. Nothing phases her. She has a wonderful profile and a bubbly view of life: gray skies are gonna clear up. Lucia is reminiscent of Sally Hawkins in Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky: she is almost infuriatingly upbeat. But she is not naive. She flirts with and even occasionally beds her taxi riders, sometimes as an act of mercy, as with a man freshly diagnosed with cancer, sometimes to scratch a carnal itch. Eventually, a theater producer (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) comes into her cab, and then a scriptwriter (José Luis Torrijo), both of whom might know Calaf the actor (Rodrigo Poisón). The coincidences pile up, the narrative noose tightens, and Lucia begins to suspect their presence is not so much serendipitous as, well…scripted.

As watchable as it is, Something is About to Happen is both sophisticated and facile. The scenario is rife with symbols: the cab equals freedom, connection and caprice; the big black bird means death, the sequence of deaths lead to rebirth. The film is meant as a parable. But of what? What human behavior is it calling out? It's based on a book titled Let No One Sleep (Que Nadie Duerma), which points us in a whole other thematic direction, giving extra meaning to the nocturnal route of Lucia's taxi.

Something is About to Happen's resolution gives off a whiff of deus ex machina as if Mr. Esparza didn't know how to end it. Lucia turns mean. And, the parable turns from one of loss and love into one of betrayal and retribution. And, in place of smiles, there is blood.

____________________________

Something is About to Happen. Directed by Antonio Méndez Esparza. 2023. Spanish language with English subtitles. From Film Movement. 122 minutes.

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What Is It to Be a Jew? A Bushel and a Peck of Answers

Brandon Judell — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 22:36:00 +0000

What Is It to Be a Jew? A Bushel and a Peck of Answers Brandon Judell February 7, 2025 - 17:36

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A Soul On Fire

"It's hard being a Jew nowadays," began my 2023 coverage of this annual fest. Well, it's still not a breeze, but not just for the Jews. Ask the Angelenos, the Ukrainians, the Yemenis, and the Palestinians whose plight is so shatteringly captured in the documentary No Other Land, screened at last year's New York Film Festival.

At the critics' screenings that September afternoon, an odd juxtaposition occurred. No Other Land was immediately followed by Jesse Eisenberg's nigh-perfect comedic drama, A Real Pain, which captures the lingering effect of the Holocaust on present-day Jews, a memory expiring far too swiftly. From the Middle East to Auschwitz within four hours, that's a handful.

Which got me thinking, can you compare pain? Or the memory of pain? The posthumously declared anti-Semite Joseph Campbell sidestepped the issue and advised: "Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain." Does that work against prejudice in the long run? Against genocide?

Maybe.

I do have a black-and-white snapshot of my stepmother smiling while sitting on a park bench in 1930s Berlin, a bench bearing a sign: "For Jews Only." She shortly escaped to the States but not before aborting what would have been her second child. Gerda Eisner Baum, as she was known then, refused to submit another soul to such a precarious future.

Our current future seems to be again approaching that sense of precariousness, and the 34^th edition of the annual New York Jewish Film Festival perfectly captures that trembling-in-the-balance uneasiness through works of humor, nostalgia and tears. Works disclosing anti-Semitism past and present, interfaith coupling, and sectarian conflicts. [No wonder the author of Night, Elie Wiesel, once asked, "I'm a Jew, but I don't really know what it means to be Jewish."

Maybe the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who was knighted by the Queen in 2005, best captures the gist of this year's NYJFF: "Jews have survived catastrophe after catastrophe in a way unparalleled by any other culture. In each case, they did more than survive. Every tragedy in Jewish history was followed by a new wave of creativity." Here, the creativity is on view.

Starting the Festival on a highly cheery note is Joe Stephenson's wry biopic of the man who discovered the Beatles, Midas Man, transforming them from a scraggly quartet playing in a Liverpudlian club for naught into the world’s most consequential band. Yes, Brian Epstein. He rose like a firework into the heavens for five years and then took permanent residence up there at age 32. Why?

John Lennon might have been recalling Brian when he put forth: "The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?"

Well, Brian was both a Jew and a homosexual in a country that rewarded both with an outsider status. Queerdom could also get you arrested, beaten, and blackmailed, but for some, the double whammy might also spur you on to succeed at any cost, as it did with the gent who gave us Help (1965).

Midas Man commences with the future entrepreneur working out of his father’s furniture store where he created within several square yards the hippest, most successful record store in Liverpool.

One day several customers requested "My Bonnie," a recording from a small German company by an unknown band. "What's this?" Brian wondered. Discovering the group was a local one, he sought out the lads, became their manager, replaced their drummer with Ringo, and after being rejected by Decca and a gaggle of other record companies, he got the Beatles a record deal. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" became their first number one hit, and the rest is part of our history.

Yes, those executives who laughed when Brian insisted, "My boys will be bigger than Elvis," laughed no more. Without this tortured Jewish homosexual, there might not have been a British Invasion, and we’d still be listening to Perry Como.

With a vivid recreation of all this hoopla, the superb Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Brian, Emily Watson as Mom, Jay Leno as Ed Sullivan, and four lookalike, often sardonic Beatles, Midas Man is a never-less-than-engaging look at not totally surviving the sixties, a perfect Brit counterpart to A Complete Unknown.

Moving on to the more disquieting, writer/director Oren Rudavsky's devastating, necessary documentary, Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, concerns being a witness to history and then disseminating the horrors that the world means to forget or maybe worse . . . distort and make light of.

"I'm sure that many people went to their death not even believing afterward that they were dead," Wiesel wrote of the Holocaust.

Utilizing archival footage, interviews both new and old, salvaged photographs, and the blistering animation of Joel Orloff, Soul on Fire is a biography of a teen survivor of the concentration camps who when freed refused to weep: "We didn’t cry maybe because people were afraid. If they were to start crying, they would never end."

Wiesel, who died in 2016, was a winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize for his defense of human rights and his crusade to prevent the Holocaust from being forgotten through his plays, 57 books, and teachings. Describing himself as "a storyteller, a teller of tales," not unlike the Ancient Mariner, his journey's end is still far in the future, as this documentary proves again and again.

Phinehas Veuillet's Neither Day Nor Night focuses on the Gabais, a French family of Sephardic heritage, who have resettled in Israel within an ultra-orthodox Ashkenazi community. For the uninitiated, this could be a cause of some tsuris.

Ahuva (Maayan Amrani), the mom, has gone whole hog with the religiosity. The only remnants of her wild, bare-midriff youth are snapshots hidden in a cardboard box under her bed. Her once flowing locks are now concealed in a tightly wrapped headscarf. Her smiles are now fleeting and forced.

Shmuel (Eli Manashe), the dad, spends his days renovating apartments, apparently an unorthodox vocation. He also embraces his Judaism, but his dress, prayers, and temperament avoid the severe restrictions that his wife embraces. Spin-off: trouble on the mattress leading to sleepless nights.

The center of this story, however, is the bar-mitzvah boy, Rafael (Adam Hatuka Peled), the couple's oldest son. The lad is a brilliant scholar, the best in his Talmud Torah class, which should easily earn him a spot in the best Yeshiva in town, but it's not to be so.

The headmaster, Rabbi Shimon, who teaches that true scholarship brings its just rewards, will betray his own precepts. There is only one opening at Rafael’s preferred Yeshiva for a Sephardic student, and the good rabbi allows a dull-witted youth with a rich dad to weasel his way in.

So where will all this unkosher hypocrisy lead? Well, what you expect from life? A little tragedy, some shopping, a rethinking of past joys, a lot of prayer, some geschrei-ing, and an unanticipated finale. With fine thesping throughout, especially from Peled, a bubbe’s dream with his sorrowful eyes and pinchable cheeks, Neither Day Nor Night, described by an Australian festival as a “crime-thriller,” is a pleasing tale of overcoming adversity in an unsuitable manner.

Moving back in time once again, Annette Insdorf, in her classic Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, wrote: "Filmmakers and film critics confronting the Holocaust face a basic task—finding an appropriate language for that which is mute or defies visualization. How do we lead a camera or pen to penetrate history and create art, as opposed to merely recording events? What are the formal as well as moral responsibilities if we are to understand and communicate the complexities of the Holocaust through its filmic representations?"

Writer/director Yoav Potash seems to have the answers with his 13-minute short "A Great Big Secret." The film opens in October of 2023 with Anita Magnus Frank standing by a screen, clicker in hand, addressing a group of attentive San Franciscans: "I am a Holocaust survivor. I survived the war as a child in hiding. I lived under a false name."

Born in 1936 to an Orthodox Jewish family in the Netherlands, Ms. Frank had an ideal childhood, and the photographs prove it: "My father adored me, and by his description, I was a bright, delightful child. I was also a tough little girl."

But then Hitler invaded her wonderland on May 10, 1940. At this point, this teller of tales morphs into an animated white-line drawing on a black background, the only color being the yellow Jewish star she must wear. Worse, at the same time, her Jewish classmates began disappearing one by one.

Finally, one morning, her family was forewarned that unless they wanted to wind up in a concentration camp, that night was their last chance to escape the fate of their Jewish neighbors. "I remember my mother saying to my brother and me, Anita and Norman . . . you're going to go and live with a family that you don't know. . . You never will tell anyone you're Jewish, or you will die."

"I lived in constant fear, and I learned to hide my Jewishness," Ms. Frank admits. Then, from that first shelter, she was moved to a farm where a group of boys sexually violated her multiple times. She submitted out of fear of being exposed. Weeks passed, and she was reunited with her mother; the Americans showed up, and the war ended only to expose that post-war anti-Semitism had flourished among the gentile Dutch populace.

Still forced to hide their Judaism, the family moved to the States, and Frieda, at age 16, got a job taking care of a director's brood on the West Coast, gained 50 pounds, went to Harvard, got a job with the Rand Corporation, married, became a mother, and now within her final decades, shares a story again and again. Why become a memory for others?

Mr. Wiesel once noted, "Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future."

What survives longer than a memory? Buildings, of course. Just ask Ada Karmi-Melamede, the subject of her daughter’s unflinching documentary, Ada: My Mother the Architect. As a voiceover notes: "She is the Madonna of Israeli architecture."

Ms. Ada, who's designed Jerusalem’s Supreme Court building, Ben Gurion Airport, and the Open University of Israel, is, at times, a slightly prickly soul who, after not receiving tenure from Columbia University, packed her bags and moved back to Israel, taking everything she needed with her except her three children and spouse. As she herself notes, "Maybe I'm really not that much of a Jewish mother. I have never really worried about you."

Catch the look on her daughter's face when Ms. Ada shares that. It’s priceless.

Well, she wanted a career and not to be stifled, and she succeeded. Now in her 80s, she is considered "one of a group of architects who built Israel from the ground up." Some of her mottos for designing: "The feet look for the shortest dimension. The eyes look for the longest." "Today, there are buildings with no art." "Architecture is not necessarily about harmony."

Talking about harmony, Ms. Ada is a bit distressed with the leadership of her country's leadership, which she calls "a bad dream now." That aside, for anyone with an affinity for a career involving light, glass, stone, and chutzpah, this is essential viewing.

As essential as Joan Micklin Silver's 1975-Oscar-nominated Hester Street. Yes, it's been 50 years since Carol Kane taught herself Yiddish to play Gitl, a young woman with a child who travels to New York City to join her very Americanized, now philandering, husband Jake (Steven Keats).

Can the head-scarfed Gitl win him back when she speaks not a word of English? Plus, her attire and stance are totally Eastern European. It's not sexy for this man who once loved her and is now ashamed of the same.

And what about her boy Yossele, whom Jake's renamed Joey? Will he soon distance himself from his "Momala"? Well, Dad snips off his payes while Momma puts salt into his pockets to ward off the evil eye whenever he leaves the apartment.

So you're asking, "What chance do centuries-old traditions have in the New World?" Who am I to tell you?

Discovering who wins is the delight of this beautifully textured recreation of a time when being an immigrant had its challenges, although winding up in Guantanamo was not one of them.

As for you TV bingers, don't feel left out. There are six award-winning episodes screened of German TV's answer to Dallas, The Zweiflers. Imagine that the Ewings were uncommonly Jewish, lived in the Düsseldorf of today, and instead of owning an oil company, they dealt with pastrami and potato salad.

Yes, there are four generations of Zweiflers, from concentration camp survivors to deli entrepreneurs to chronic kibitzers, each embracing their Judaism in a distinctive but overlapping manner. One might use ketamine and paint surrealistic group family portraits that are a bit graphic. Another might fall in love with a lovely Caribbean chef who's anti-circumcision." A third might insist: "Only money can free you from the ugliness of the world . . . . A defenseless Jew is a dead Jew."

And how's this for a marital chat?

Husband to his kvetching wife: "Isaac Beshiva Singer once said, 'Life is God's novel. Let him write it."

Kvetching wife: "You're trusting in God? When did he last help us?"

She later brags to her hubby, who suddenly wants an open marriage: "I never had an uncut penis in my life."

With a first-rate cast, a stunning male lead, an often-hilarious sendup of Jewish stereotypes, blackmail, a mohel, plus platters upon platters of delicious edibles, the Zweiflers never forget for long that even in the Germany of today, especially in the Germany of today, they are seen always as Jews.

Without a doubt, this festival is a tribute to Primo Levi's words: "The injury cannot be healed. It extends through time."

(Presented by the Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center, the films for the 2025 New York Jewish Film Festival (January 19-29) were astutely selected by Rachel Chanoff, Founding Director, THE OFFICE performing arts + film; Lisa Collins, director, writer, special correspondent, programmer, and events/film producer; and Aviva Weintraub, director, New York Jewish Film Festival, the Jewish Museum; with assistance from Cara Colasanti, film festival coordinator, the Jewish Museum.)