Film Review

New York Jewish Film Festival 2026

Brandon Judell — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 01:36:14 +0000

New York Jewish Film Festival 2026 Brandon Judell January 25, 2026 - 20:36

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The last twelve months supplied us with numerous transportive moments across screens big and small that were very hard to cold-shoulder.

Take the explosive final half hour of the un-kosher Sirāt. Against the backdrop of an unsparing southern Moroccan desert, a father (Seregi López) searches for his daughter, accompanied by four tattered hippies, his son, and a hypnotic techno soundtrack. Motto: No matter how little life has blessed us with, we can still wind up with less.

Meanwhile, Marty Supreme chronicles the overzealous ping-ponging exploits of a self-absorbed, Philip-Rothian Jew (Timothee Chalamet) with an unbridled Type A persona. The film’s tail-end leads to Marty discovering his raison d’être off the table tennis table. Tearing up, I recalled one of my favorite Roth observations from American Pastoral:

“The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride.”

Well, more than a dozen such right-and-wrong moments are scattered among the 30 offerings currently being shared at the 35th Edition of the New York Jewish Festival presented by The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center.

Emily Lobsenz’s documentary short, “A Bit of Everything and Matzoh Balls Too,”boasts enough for several features. Comprised of Jewish families of varying size in the midst of rolling their matzah balls and simmering their chicken soups, the film showcases how this savory concoction has been passed from one generation to another. Recollections of lost ones, of childhoods, of joys yet to be grasped rise up along with a nod to Moses and his peers as the scent of fowl broth rises up from stove tops. A bonus: There’s also a defining of schmalz (rendered chicken fat).

The highlight of A Bit of Everything, though, is great-grandma Minnie Osher, whose ability to smile today was once part of a future she thought she would never experience. Looking straight at us, she recalls:

“My grandmother had 10 kids. She had 35 grandchildren. Hitler killed them all for no reason. They had shaved off all of our hair. No hair on my head. I looked at my sister. My sister looked at me. We couldn’t recognize each other. And Dr. Mengele . . . he was the killer in Auschwitz. He made the selection: who should live and who should die. So I took a brick while Dr. Mengele was in the back, and I rubbed the brick on my cheeks to make them rosy so I’d look good, and he let me live.”

Lobsenz’s offering is clearly a celebration of both Jewish survival and a reaffirmation of community that includes a Mexican matzoh ball recipe and a young woman who delivers the beloved soup to those who are ill.

All of which reminds me that when Marilyn Monroe was wed to Arthur Miller, she was said to have been served matzoh ball soup three meals in a row. After the third time, the star inquired: “Isn’t there any other part of the matzoh you can eat?”

I wish the answer Ms. Monroe received had also been recorded for posterity. No luck there.

And no matzoh here in Native Australian Jack Feldstein’s films that have nothing to do with “fressing,” but they do supply plenty of food for thought. His 30 or so shorts often explore the institutions and inhabitants of the Big Apple with a huge nod towards Judaism. When delving into his oeuvre, expect no less than a Yiddish song or two, a collapsing Golem, the 91-year-old former head of New York Culture Affairs, plus the book and lyrics for something subtitled “The World’s First Theremin Musical.”

But be forewarned: much of Feldstein’s output might trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy. “Why?” you ask. Simply because he’s the master of neon animation or neonism, which has been explained by critic David Jaffer as “cartoonish pop-art visualization. Strange, wonderful, and a must-see for fans of the monologue.” Feldstein himself has been said to describe this technique as “a stream of consciousness narrative with a cartoon aesthetic that takes modernist stream-of-consciousness filmmaking into a post-modern and humorous form.” As for his content, it’s been compared to that of Woody Allen and Spalding Grey.

The humor within Feldstein’s works is often evoked by an interplay between the visual elements and the solemnity of the souls he’s interviewing. With “Animated New Yorkers: Joel,” part of an award-winning series, the focus is on the eponymous Joel, who was born into an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community from which he had decamped four years earlier.

So what do you do when you escape into a modern life that has a totally different set of restrictions and freedoms, most of which you are not yet familiarized with? You join a WhatsApp group with a few other religious Jewish people who are becoming secular.

What ensues is the five-minute story of Joel’s first romantic encounter told in a straightforward manner yet illustrated with ever-changing visuals that borrow from Chagall, Picasso, and maybe even R Crumb.

Joel: “I never felt a woman’s touch and certainly not with women my age, where’s there’s the possibility of this type of intimacy even happening.”

Soon, the pair are watching movies on a laptop in her father’s car and progress to hand-holding.

Joel: “No one had ever told me they liked me before. It exploded my brain. At the same time, I felt this tremendous pressure, like I didn’t know what to do in such a situation. And I immediately begin to worry about whether her level of like is more than my level of like...and do I like...and in what way do I like.”

Maybe if there’s a “Joel: Part 2,” we’ll discover if this chaste romance leads to our young man stepping on a glass and a few years later burping some babes, but sometimes hand-holding is more than enough.

For those seeking a feature-length entertainment that shoehorns in a funeral, a wedding, and a bat mitzvah, you might want to attend the festivities celebrated in Mazel Tov, which, according to Wiki, was the most successful Argentine film of 2025. Directed and starring Adrián Saur, who’s apparently a big deal in his homeland, this mildly comic, sometimes over-the-top, intermittently dramatic exploration of a dysfunctional family delightfully argues that when relationships are deteriorating, Jewish traditions can be the glue that mends.

But if you can’t get to see a screening of Mazel Tov, let me share a bit of it that Rabbi Telushkin shared in his classic Jewish Humor. He labeled this "A Final Jewish Reflection on Antisemitism.”:

“Albert Einstein said: “If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German, and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. If my theory should prove to be untrue, then France will say I am a German, and Germany will say I am a Jew.”

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Last Sátántangó in Budapest

Gary Lucas — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:41:33 +0000

Last Sátántangó in Budapest Gary Lucas January 8, 2026 - 09:41

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Bela Tarr and Gary Lucas in Sarajevo. Photo by Snjezana Milivojevic

Really sad to hear of the death of the great Hungarian art-film director, Bela Tarr, at the young age of 70. The master of the glacially slow take, his singularly dark, visionary black and white fever dreams, especially those made in collaboration with the Nobel Prize winning author Laszlo Krasznahorkai (among them the 7 1/2 hour Sátántangó, Damnation, Werckmeister Harmonies, and The Turin Horse, all with music by Mihaly Vig) are some of the most profound and stunning works of contemporary art cinema. Intense contemplation through repeated viewings of his hypnotic oeuvre is seemingly capable of actually stopping the passage of time. Susan Sontag declared that she would "be glad to see Sátántangó every year for the rest of my life" (all 7 1/2 hours of it. You can laugh at its extreme length–sometimes it's shown with an intermission, but that makes it even longer. Still, I've never seen anyone walk out of it). His films, set in the grimy dysfunctionality of rural post-Communist Hungary, ultimately have a mystical aura about them, a kind of transcendence in the wonder of the universe. Still, you would never confuse Tarr with Terrence Malick. His metaphysical worldview is definitely painted black, laced with touches of absurdist humor–and I think he stands more in the tradition of literary titans such as Celine, Beckett, and Dostoevsky, and painters such as Mark Rothko and Franz Kline (and many old master painters as well), than film makers–although some of the films of Werner Herzog, Carl Dreyer, early David Lynch, and Romanian director Radu Jude have certain affinities with Tarr's output. But his cinema really exists on a plane of its own, and I highly recommend him.

A few years ago, I made a pilgrimage to Sarajevo to meet the Master and hang out with him for the afternoon. He was then heading up a Film Academy with a select group of eight young, fledgling filmmakers. Sadly, he had forsaken the hustle of trying to get his films financed at this point (shades of Orson Welles); it was a dead end for him. His work was still feted at film festivals all over the world, and I went to visit him the very last time he was in New York, when the Film Society of Lincoln Center mounted a retrospective. It was right after a Q&A following a screening of an early film, Family Nest, and he was sitting on the patio outside the Walter Reade, looking a bit jet-lagged and blue. As I approached him, his face crinkled up, and he broke into a big smile. He was quite a lovely guy, a gentle humanist really, with the creative warmth of a blazing sun within him, and we had a pleasant reminiscence about our meeting in Sarajevo.

Despite the over arching bleakness and despair of many of Bela Tarr's films, they still are full of life (especially in the pub scenes) and occasional redeeming points of lightand they are ever more relevant today: Werckmeister Harmonies ends with the terrifying rise and rampage of Fascists triggered at a Dark Carnival in a nameless village presided over by a maniacal "Prince” and its prize exhibit, an enormous dead whale, and Sátántangó depicts the manipulation of the lumpen residents of a broken down collective farm in the middle of nowhere by conmen and spies for the communist government secret police.

Bela Tarr's films are eternal–and are not going gentle into that good night.

(Read The Guardian obit here.)

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How Not to Survive Pre-Adolescence

Brandon Judell — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 13:22:10 +0000

How Not to Survive Pre-Adolescence Brandon Judell January 6, 2026 - 08:22

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"Carrie's got the curse! Carrie's got the curse," sang out the teens stomping onstage in a locker room in the short-lived 1988 Broadway adaptation of Stephen King's ode to menstruation.

Don't be surprised then if "Ben's got the plague! Ben's got the plague," is being chanted likewise in the near future. If "that time of the month" with a dash of telekinetic powers can inspire a musical, why can't a lad with a ghastly rash do the same?

Writer/director Charlie Polinger's The Plague, with its current 100% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, is a raw, painful look at pre-adolescence based on the director's actual journals from when he was 12, a time he notes "when social anxiety is so visceral that every day feels like life-and-death." He labels his mesmerizing film "psychological horror."

With its trauma-inducing score (Johan Lenox), its eerily immersive cinematography (Steven Breckon), its perfect casting of both awkward and bullies (Rebecca Dealy), plus its riveting pacing (editors Henry Hayes and Simon Njoo), The Plague does for pre-teens what Jaws did for sharks and The Shining accomplished for recovering alcoholic authors with writer's block. You'll want to keep them at more than an arm's length.

Although shot in Bucharest, Romania, the film takes place somewhere stateside in the summer of 2003 at the Tom Lerner Water Polo Camp, 2^nd session.

Opening shot: a huge, uninhabited swimming pool. A screen of discomforting, gurgling blue. Suddenly, one boy jumps in from a distance. Then a multitude follows. Within seconds,s all we see are dozens of headless, flailing tweens kicking to and fro. Sound: disembodied blasts as if from a ship leaving port.

Cut to the boys' torso-less heads bobbing up and down above water as they clap hands in the pool, rather reminiscent of a Synchronized Swimming Olympic event as choreographed by Sweeney Todd? Fear not. It's a cheerful visual. Not a slaughter. The chaps are having fun. It's only the soundtrack that's at times rather worrying, plus your own memories, especially if you hid in bathroom stalls during your junior high years.

(Warning: After watching The Plague, be prepared for the rising up of flashbacks of some of your most traumatic pubescent trials by fire that you once thought were submerged forever. One of my own: After school was out, Howard B., who lived in my building, gleefully told me in the elevator that everyone in gym class that day noticed that my testicles were hairless. How they saw, I didn't ask. Worn-out undies? Anyway, I hadn't yet read Questions Children Ask by my mom, who borrowed the book from Susan Rosenhouse's mother across the street. Consequently, I didn't know I was supposed to be hirsute down there. By the way, the first two questions in that pragmatic guide were "Why don't I have one?" and "Why is Daddy's bigger than my own?" Thankfully, my father, who exposed me to many mental horrors throughout the years, avoided exposing himself, so I never even thought of asking that final one, and clearly I had no need to ask the first. But wait! They come in sizes? Clearly, a lack of sex education was just another reason in the Bronx in the early '60s to ridicule someone already blessed with a higher voice, uncoordinated limbs, and an inability to play punchball. Don't worry. Gyms and facial hair rid me of the taint.)

Back to critique: Class time. Coach Daddy Wags (Joel Edgerton), who himself had a depressive youth, understands lads and is forgiving even when someone draws a penis with an unerasable red marker on the whiteboard he's utilizing for instruction. The probable artistic villain of this dastardly deed and the apparent leader of all non-scholastic on-campus delinquent doings is the ever-smirking Jake (Kayo Martin, nominee for several Breakthrough Performance awards at the moment). He's been around the whole summer and knows the ropes.

Not so for the new boy, the fragile Ben (Everett Blunck, who was so brilliant in last year's Griffin in Summer). He's walking through life as if feeling his way across a newly frozen lake. Every step can be a fatal misstep. But so far, the in-crowd is accepting him even if Jake immediately unearths Ben's flaw. The youth pronounces "stop" as "sop" and "Boston" as "Bosson." That's teasable, but not enough reason to be ostracized.

Happily, Ben is accepted at the "popular" lunch table, and he's even asked his opinion on such heady philosophical questions as would he rather have sex with a dog without anybody knowing or not have sex with a dog with everyone thinking he did.

Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) isn't so lucky. This quirky, shapeless youth, who's been around since the beginning of summer, has suddenly broken out with a body rash which Jake and pals have deemed a highly contagious form of leprosy. Don't touch Eli or sit where he has sat, or you'll have to run to the shower and soap up rigorously.

Ben feels both the absurdity and the injustice of this ostracization, but can he both befriend the boy with the dermal eruptions and still pal around with locker-room elite who lie about their sexual exploits when the lights go out? Of course not.

Edward Burne Jones, the pre-Raphelite painter, once noted: "I can only come near to what I wish, and am unhappy in consequence." Ben could wear that on a T-shirt.

In the end, what might at first sound like a Netflix 8-episode trek through the agonies of acne and the want to be accepted is instead a nigh-perfect film that is terrifying from beginning to end without the need of monsters because we, intentionally or not, are the monsters.

(Please note: the appropriately named Spooky Pictures is one of the production companies involved here.)

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Missing No More

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 01:48:25 +0000

Missing No More Chet Kozlowski December 27, 2025 - 20:48

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I’ve been a fan of Jared Harris since seeing him as John Lennon in the 2000 TV film Two of Us (to Aidan Quinn’s Paul McCartney). He’s done a lot more since (and before) then, of course, but I remember him most as King George VI in Netflix’s The Crown, and Lane Pryce in Mad Men—his lined face, gruff demeanor, and throaty growl mask a pained tenderness. So I looked forward to seeing him in the new film Reawakening.

He plays John, an itinerant electrician. John and his wife Mary live a quiet working-class life in England. Their daughter Clare stormed out of the family home a decade ago. She was fourteen years old and presumably left to live on the streets. Mary mourns. John canvases neighborhoods, showing Clare’s photo, chasing phantoms, and tracking down leads that, over ten years, have gone nowhere. He sits on a TV stage to plead for clues on the tenth anniversary of Clare’s disappearance and slips into a trance while looking at a photo of her face.

And now, suddenly, Clare has returned. No fanfare, she’s just there on the doorstep. The years have left her lean. She asks forgiveness and wants to come home. Mary takes her in, no questions asked. But John is suspicious. Is it really her?

Juliet Stevenson plays Mary. She’s best known for Truly, Madly, Deeply and one of the best screen Noras in a 1992 TV production of A Doll’s House. Erin Doherty, who appeared in Netflix’s The Crown and Adolescence, whose delicately elongated features would inspire Modigliani, is Clare.

John and Mary’s conflict is played out in terse remarks courtesy of writer/director Virginia Gilbert’s literate script. John implores Mary to see the cracks in Clare’s story. “You must feel it isn’t right,” he says, to which Mary replies, “Don’t tell me what I feel.” When John asks Mary what this imposter could want, Mary cries, “Why should she want anything from us? We’re nobody! We’re nothing!” For her part, the woman skitters around the edges, there but practically not in the frame.

The return of the Prodigal lends itself to a thriller motif, often leading to violence and mayhem. And in fact, Reawakening is being marketed as a thriller of that stripe. But Reawakening isn’t that; it’s more modest and more thoughtful. The suspense comes from what the characters won’t or can’t do, how they are helpless. The ensemble plays an understated cat-and-mouse game of passing glances and conflicting emotions that addresses the loneliness of loss and what we’d do to relieve it. In the end, Reawakening gives poignant meaning to its title.

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Reawakening. Directed by Virginia Gilbert. 2024. Runtime 90 minutes. In theaters and on VOD.

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Enigmatic Enlightenment

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 17:20:56 +0000

Enigmatic Enlightenment Chet Kozlowski December 21, 2025 - 12:20

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Universal is an odd little movie. It seems to be made up of codes. First, there’s that title. Universal is hardly universal in any sense. It takes place in one setting, and the action is essentially a dialogue among three characters; no one else appears in the cast. It sets up situations and then doesn’t follow through, at least in an expected way. Are these missed opportunities or parts of the design?

Basically, in Universal, three people in a cabin in the woods confront the mysteries of the universe. Leo and Naomi are US-based British academics. They’ve been dating for three years. They arrive at a holiday rental, ready for relaxation. Leo has a wedding ring and is ready to pop the question. His plan is scuttled by Rickey, a graduate student at his college, who appears at the door. Rickey has been working in their mutual lab and made a startling discovery about “junk DNA,” Leo’s field of study, whose research will bring him tenure. Rickey drove hours to see him and avoids leaving. Remarkably, Leo and Naomi warm to Rickey’s discovery, which we see as primitively animated monochrome diagrams on her laptop.

Everybody is onboard with the premise. The actors give engaged, relaxed performances: Joe Thomas is appealingly nerdy as Leo, Rosa Robson softens convincingly to circumstances as Naomi, and Kelley Mack has an impish charm as the intruding Rickey. They talk, and they talk. There is precious little conflict yet several opportunities for it: a drug-fueled party; surprise nudity; a gun suddenly revealed. But little comes of them. And then the end credits roll. The ninety minutes have flown by, but to quote David Letterman, “It’s a long way to travel to find out the store is closed.”

Yet I would recommend Universal as a pleasant, low-impact experience. Weeks after seeing it, I think back on it fondly. The performances are shar,p even if it’s hard to figure out just what the film’s stakes are.

Writer/director Stephen Portland seems earnest and deals in clues here, but to a mystery only he can solve. Universal is pokey, and its arc is inconclusive, but it feels “organic,” very much intentional, and leaves you wanting more. Mr. Portland directed another film with a similarly generic one-word title, Something, in 2018.

In some respects, Universal feels like a prelude to a longer film. I wonder if there was more to it, and if the production was truncated by the tragic death of one of the actors. The film is dedicated to “the late” Kelley Mack, who plays Rickey, and who suffered a brain tumor, aged 33. Ms. Mack had a starring role in a season of The Walking Dead and did voice work for animated films. She might well have gone on to a solid career.

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Universal. Directed by Stephen Portland. 2025. Runtime 90 minutes. Available on demand.

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MARTY SUPREME LIVES UP TO ITS TITLE

Gary Lucas — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:03:26 +0000

MARTY SUPREME LIVES UP TO ITS TITLE Gary Lucas December 9, 2025 - 10:03

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It's kind of humorous, given the Jewish-American hustling theme, if not downright appropriate that A24 are rolling out Marty Supreme on Xmas Day in theaters nationwide, as in this Josh Safdie joint Timothée Chalamet, who I hitherto dismissed as not really up to snuff in his assumption of the Bob Dylan mythos in A Complete Unknown, here ascends to full God-head status as Marty Mauser, Young Jewish Ping-Pong Hustler extraordinaire.

Ostensibly based on the real-life exploits of '50s table tennis hustler Marty Reisman, the half-Jewish-on-his-mother-side's Chalamet astonishes in this shaggy-dog version of Reisman's life and times in a 2-1/2 hour exercise in pure cinematic poetry that easily qualifies as Oscar-bait for Best Film of 2025. It's at the top of my list, in any case. And if there is any justice in the world (there isn't, but hey), Chalamet should win the Best Actor category hands down (and Gwyneth Paltrow as Marty's older woman girlfriend, the slightly faded actress Kay Stone, as well).

An advance screening at the Director's Guild here in Manhattan last week set the breathless tone of the film more or less with an audacious sequence concerning a graphic closeup in situ of one of Marty's sperm cells, after a furious competition with a whole gaggle of spermatozoa, breaking away from the pack to furtively fertilize the egg of his longtime married lover Rachel (played by a winsome Odessa A'Zion), which called to mind a similar transgressive sexual intra-vaginal closeup in French cinema badboy Gaspar Noe's 2010 psychedelic fever-dream Enter the Void.

The film documents the fall and rise of preternaturally gifted self-centered smartypants Marty Mauser, brimming with self-confidence and chutzpah aplenty, with the determination to establish himself as the GOAT ping-pong champion of the known universe by hook or by crook, to rise from the muck of his shabby genteel Jewish Lower East Side milieu, lovingly delineated by production designer Jack Fisk and cinematographer Darius Khondji.

Marty will not take "No" for an answer, and brashly motormouths and/or connives his way over, under, around and through one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after another–lying, cheating, stealing and seducing down the door to advance his career and make his way into the Table Tennis Championship of the World Finals held in London, where he is initially defeated. Obstacles overcome on the way to plotting his comeback include general impoverishment (we see him initially working half-heartedly at a shoe store); filial disapproval (a great comic turn by Dylan sidekick Larry "Ratso" Sloman as Mauser's uncle Murray Norkin and his mother played by Fran Drescher, who refuses to take seriously the notion of table tennis as an actual sport); ritual humiliation by predatory paddle-wielding fat-cat sponsor/enabler Kevin O'Leary (a regular on Shark Tank and a dead ringer for Bill O'Reilly); deus ex machine of an ancient bathtub literally falling through the rotting timbered floor of a grotty slum hotel (an appropriation of a bit in Ronald Neame's The Horse's Mouth) onto the southpaw of super-cult director Abel Ferrara, playing a seedy mobster named Ezra Mishkin (and what's in a name, Myshkin being the central epileptic character of Dostoevsky's The Idiot)—the dognapping and liberation of Mishkin's prize pooch entrusted to the safekeeping of Marty and Rachel; and numerous other picaresque episodes piling up one on top of another at breakneck speed which in the hands of a lesser director would prove both beyond belief and human endurance, but in the ambit of Safdie's assured story-telling mastery totally enthralled the audience at the DGA, who were mainly silent throughout this longish film, but dazzled and astonished by Marty Supreme's sheer humanity, wit and pathos, broke into cheers at film's end.

There are numerous cameos from the likes of Sandra Bernhard, Penn Gillette, David Mamet, Pico Iyer, and other notables who populate the world of Marty Mauser. Again, what's in a name—one thinks of both Art Spiegelman's holocaust-centric graphic novel Maus with its plucky Jews as mice, Paul Terry's uber-mouse superhero Mighty Mouse, whose persona Chalamet embodies, and the Mauser itself, a deadly German bolt-action pistol and rifle designed by Peter Paul Mauser in the late 19th century, a favorite of hunters and soldiers which saw plenty of action in both World Wars. An apposite choice of name for the pugnacious Chalamet, self-styled in newspaper interviews in the film as The Chosen One, who refers to himself as "the ultimate product of Hitler's defeat" and who gets off a jaw-dropping line about his first major ping pong opponent Bela Kletzki, a saintly Auschwitz survivor: "I'm gonna do to him what Auschwitz couldn't!" After gasps from reporters all around, he appends that with: "I can say that, because I'm a Jew." Shameless scoundrel that he is (although—spoiler alert—he gets a shot of redemption at the very end), Mauser basically is a more energetic, younger, brighter sexier version of the Safdie Brothers's protagonist the hapless and embarrassing diamond merchant/schlemiel Howard Ratner played by Adam Sandler in their previous film Uncut Gems (written by both Safdies and their regular collaborator Ronald Bronstein). There are many other references to and echoes of that earlier film within Marty Supreme (besides the titular characters' surnames: Ratner vs. Mauser). I loved Uncut Gems, but here, Josh Safdie, going it alone without his brother and with a much more expansive budget of 70 million bucks, has upped the ante by delivering what may be the last word on sports hustling.

Marty Supreme is possibly the most canny portrayal of the American side of the Jew as Striver (a/k/a The Ordeal of Civility) since, well, since Uncut Gems, and before that, the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man. I can't say enough good things about this film, which rockets from one jaw-dropping reversal of fortune after another like the whiplash back and forth of an epic ping-pong match. In Marty Mauser, Josh Safdie has crafted an enduring and ultimately likable despite himself character somewhat reminiscent of Paul Newman's blue-eyed pool shark "Fast Eddie" Felson in Robert Rossen's 1961 The Hustler (although Fast Eddie was never distinctly identified as being Jewish in that film), and of course, Richard Dreyfuss in Ted Kotcheff and Mordecai Richler's 1974 The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

Just unstoppable, like the title character himself.

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Tree People

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 17:01:57 +0000

Tree People Chet Kozlowski November 28, 2025 - 12:01

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We see them all over Manhattan just after Thanksgiving. They come in, set up impromptu villages, and are gone in 35 days. Their mission: they're the folks who want to sell you a Christmas tree, and they are the subject of the sweet and exuberant new documentary The Merchants of Joy.

Think about it: you pass by them in the joyous Christmas season but rarely consider what drives them. Director Celia Aniskovich and writer Owen Long profile five families—Greg Nash and his son Little Greg, Heather Neville, Ciree Nash, George Smith, and Jane Waterman and George Nash–and follow them from planting to harvesting to sales on the street. We're with them as they transport goods, negotiate, and seal the deal. Selling trees is not an easy gig: the big stores (i.e., Whole Foods) underprice them ("We have to make four times what we paid for our tree to break even"), yet they keep coming as reliably as the holiday season.

Greg Walsh of Greg's Trees—who resembles Santa with his full white beard (and who plays that role to the hilt)—anticipates his son, little Greg (over six feet tall and camera-shy), taking over the business while diversifying into selling roses during the rest of the year. "You'll never make it just selling trees," Greg contends. George Smith shares the story of finding his soulmate. Tough-as-nails Heather Nevelle holds firm and takes names. Ciree Nash is the information center of the operation. George Nash and Jane Waterman run a family business from which George, at least, is about to retire.

We spend time with them on the lots, making deliveries, and at home. What emerges is a look at a subculture of folks who resemble vagabonds but are, at heart, serious businesspeople. The Merchants of Joy shows them off to great advantage: We see squabbles over turf when a rival tree company sets up across the street, and are given a window into interpersonal relationships. Each of them has a particular area of expertise. Ciree is especially proud of hiring the "the unhireables," folks who have been in jail, offering them the unique opportunity to make an honest return to society on terms they can live with.

The Merchants of Joy's pacing is jaunty. We move quickly from one issue to the next. It's a measure of the documentarians' skill that we get to know these people quickly, so when one is felled by a cancer diagnosis, it gives us pause. Discussion of long-term goals as well as criminal records keep things lively in the brisk 90-minute runtime.

The Merchants of Joy ends up being a celebration not only of Christmas but of New York City as well. "You're only as happy as you choose to be," one of the sellers asserts. The film trusts that adage, as well as the philosophy that there's "a person for every tree."

__________________________________________

The Merchants of Joy. Directed by Celia Aniskovich. An Amazon Prime Original. Runtime 90 minutes. On Prime Video.

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Awkward in the Heart

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 22:21:19 +0000

Awkward in the Heart Chet Kozlowski November 26, 2025 - 17:21

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We lost John Prine to COVID in 2020, the final stop on a long journey of ill health. He’d suffered bouts of cancer that left him stooped and crooked, a mere shadow of his former self. But, except for a brief respite, he never stopped writing songs and singing them.

The new film You Got Gold documents the time in Nashville, TN, on the occasion of what would have been his 76th birthday, a weeklong celebration that culminated in an all-star concert at Ryman Auditorium, his favorite venue. The party/memorial was put together by his wife, Fiona, and his son, Tommy, who sings “Paradise” with Dwight Yokum.

It’s a joyous tribute that befits his influence. Brandi Carlile, Steve Earle, Bonnie Raitt, and Jason Isbell are amongst the artists who took time out of their schedules to sing his songs and share anecdotes. Good feelings abound. The show includes many standout performances, as Bob Weir and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, The Milk Carton Kids doing “Storm Windows,” Swamp Dogg’s version of “Sam Stone,” and a rave up of "Knockin’ on Your Screen Door" by The War and Treaty.

The show is bookended with filmed performances by Mr. Prine himself, the first from 1978’s Austin City Limits, in which he is a young, scruffy troubadour doing "Six O’clock News," and later from 2019, with his family.

For those of us old enough to remember his debut album, promoted by Kris Kristofferson, it’s a reminder of the subtle, sensitive lyrics for which he’s known (Bonnie Raitt calls him Country music’s Hemingway: no word wasted).

Stars too numerous to mention pay tribute with Mr. Prine’s songs and, as in Lucinda Williams’ "What Could Go Wrong" and Kacey Musgraves’s "Walk in Peace," songs written about or dedicated to him. The film of the event is fresh and lively, well directed by Michael John Warren, and full of good cheer. It’s well worth the time spent to remember one of the most exuberant and prolific talents in folk and country music.

The title of this review comes from a story about Kurt Vile meeting Mr. Prine for the first time. His wife, knowing how much he admired him, expressed his discomfort with that turn of phrase.

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You Got Gold. Directed by Michael John Warren. 2025. Runtime 90 minutes.

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Justice For The Living And The Dead

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:55:48 +0000

Justice For The Living And The Dead Chet Kozlowski November 20, 2025 - 19:55

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documentary

Time is running out for the girls — now women — of the Magdelene Laundries scandal. Over 10,000 women and girls were confined in the Irish institutions between 1922 and 1996. There they were pressed into slavish work, incarcerated and tortured by the Roman Catholic nuns who ran the places. Since these homes were exposed as a cottage industry of trafficking, the survivors have grown old and infirm. Many have died. If they are to attain justice, it has to be soon.

There’s a desperation to the story of the Magdalene Laundries, which are now in danger of vanishing into history. The remaining survivors of this abuse are ageing, elderly, and vulnerable women who see this as a last chance for redress. Identities have been obliterated, searches have been undertaken, and the statistics are astounding_:one count contends that 57,000 children were separated from their mothers and trafficked to adoption.

The film Testimony uses as its starting point a small cemetery that stands in the way of the sale of High Park, one of the ”Mother and Baby homes” recently sold by the order. Exhumation revealed more bodies than documented, many unknown remains of women and children, marking the site as a clandestine mass burial ground. The incident opened new investigations, primarily by an intrepid group of academics, archivists, and activists. “Time was the one commodity these women did not have,” says Jim Smith of Boston University, who wrote a book about the “architecture of containment,” and never imagined it would launch a cause.

Testimony is more than just a document. It is a call to action, part of a campaign to recruit more women and bring justice to all. Many survivors tell their heartbreaking stories here on the premise that stories = testimony = evidence to counter the unwavering stubbornness of the Irish government to accept accountability.

Testimony follows an intrepid band of lawyers, academics, and volunteers known as Justice for Magdalenes. Mr. Smith is joined in these efforts by archivist Catriona Crowe, legal advocate Maeve O’Rourke, and activists Philomena Lee (about whom the 2013 film Philomena was made) and Mari Steed, one of the survivors, to name a few. Midway through the film, a busload of survivors is cheered by protestors, stigmas shaken off, in an exhilarating display that implies something has been won. But it’s only being acknowledged. Long overdue. Proverbial other shoes fall at a rapid rate from there, accompanied by new revelations and shocking statistics, one of which contends that 57,000 children were separated from their mothers and trafficked to adoption during the reign.

Testimony is directed by Aoife Kelleher, who deftly weaves interviews, news footage, and home movies into a damning indictment and vividly displays the frustration that the Magdalene matter has yet to be resolved. Ms. Kelleher has Irish TV series and movies to her credit, and feature films like One Million Dubliners (2014). Testimony is co-written by Ms. Kelleher and Rachel Lysaght.

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Testimony. Directed by Aoife Kelleher. 2025. Runtime 105 minutes.

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If inspired by Mr. Kozlowski's solid review . . .

you should also check out several stirring fictional films on this topic, such as Small Things Like These and Philomena.

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Nicolas Cage is Jesus’s “Daddy” in The Carpenter’s Son

Brandon Judell — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:56:44 +0000

Nicolas Cage is Jesus’s “Daddy” in The Carpenter’s Son Brandon Judell November 17, 2025 - 10:56

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religious

Making a film is seldom easy. Ask any director. You have to work with or against studio heads, screenwriters, agents, vegan actors, unsympathetic caterers, and those Porta Potty folks. Then, if you're hitched up, at the end of the day, you're obligated to go home and make believe you're interested in what your spouse and kids and their Lububus did all day.

Director/writer Lotfy Nathan, best known for his 2013 documentary on West Baltimore's illegal dirt bikers, had most of that to contend with, plus the Lord, in The Carpenter's Son. Shooting in Greece because Egypt was not welcoming to the subject matter, he and his crew had to reckon with more plagues than a Passover dinner. Thankfully, firstborn sons were spared, but according to press notes:

"Swarms of relentless flies took over the set, followed by an infestation of lice and fleas. To avoid the insects, the film began night shoots, plunging the set into darkness. Fierce storms disrupted filming, closing roads, flooding locations, and killing local wildlife. Frogs arrived en masse and suddenly died . . . . [Then] the day of a major shoot in the leper colony, thousands of wasps descended on the site. Nicolas Cage was surrounded, and multiple crew members were stung. The set had to be evacuated and ultimately abandoned." Almost makes Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote shooting sound like a picnic.

So what got the Lord into such a tizzy?

Well, the film, inspired by the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, opens with rather disconcerting groans. Apparently, Christ's virgin birth was a painful one. Shortly thereafter, his foster dad, Joseph (Nicolas Cage), and his genuine mom, Mary (FKA Twigs), atop a donkey with baby Jesus hidden, escape from the vicinity of Bethlehem. Why? Because King Herod had ordered the slaughter of all boys aged two and under. Known as the "Massacre of the Innocents," Giovanni Boccaccio, centuries later, took a break from writing The Decameron to swear that 140,000 tykes were slaughtered. Wikipedia notes that "most scholars reject the historicity" of the extermination. Ah, there those historians go again. Needless to say, Mr. Nathan showcases one bundled tot torn from his mother's arms and thrown onto a flaming pyre.

[An aside: While researching this review, I came across a discussion concerning whether Jesus burped as a baby and could have suffered from colic. Intrigued, I phoned the noted literary scholar Felicia Bonaparte, author of Will and Destiny: Morality and Tragedy in George Eliot's Novels. The good professor replied, the answer was definitely "Yes!!!" Christ was both completely man and completely God and thus exhibited normal tot behavior.]

With crickets a-chirping and goats a-bleating, years pass by. Wary of their son's identity being discovered, the nomadic family is constantly on the move until Joseph lands a job carving idols.

Well, Jesus (Noah Jupe), now a hormonally charged, strapping adolescent, one day in his new home, ganders through a window hole to witness his neighbor, a mute, lovely lass named Lilith, cleansing herself in the open completely nude. Guiltily awestruck, yet clearly enjoying what he views, he gazes on and on. But at that point, Jesus doesn't know who he is or how he came to be. That will be remedied shortly.

After the above-mentioned ogle, the teen begins teaching Torah classes with a menacing rabbi; brings a crushed bug back to life; is pushed onto a sleeping leper whom he cures to his own surprise; and is almost seduced into evil by a young Satanic temptress (Isla Johnston) who likes to hang from tree branches. Evenings aren't more peaceful. The teen dreams nightly of his own future crucifixion and learns that his real father is not the one he's been sending Father's Day cards to.

If that isn't enough for one Biblical epic, there are peaches poisoned by live scorpions; hills stirring with Satanic whisperings; the breaking of an idol; horror scenes that will freak out viewers suffering from ophidiophobia; and a sightseeing trek to view those already being crucified. Most enjoyable, though, is the feverish confrontation between Joseph and Mary, where she is asked whether Jesus was fathered by a Roman.

Truly, the reason most of us skedaddle nowadays to a Nicolas Cage film is that we're hoping to view another episode worthy of being added to his already top-heavy collection of absurd thespian moments. Or as Ben Walsh titled his Independent review of Season of the Witch (2011), "Nicolas Cage: From the sublime to the ridiculous."

May I here cite the too-oft-requoted Cage evaluation of his own career that opens Walsh's article: "I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion."? Mae West might have responded: “That's the right attitude, boy! Mmmmmm. Be like me. When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better." With scraggly tresses, an untrimmed beard, mournful eyes, and a mouth besieged by woe, Cage's Joseph, attired in a ratty toga, does let loose several times. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" he screams on learning Jesus has committed a miracle in public. "Without my protection, you would be dead." The screenplay even has Joseph explaining to the questioning Jesus why he's pouring some dirt in front of his hut: "If an evil spirit were to enter the house at night . . . the footprint of a rooster will appear in the sand." And one does.

Now, how you react to all of this depends possibly on how many films you've seen over the past 12 months. For example, the Metro's Tori Brazier shouts: "Nicolas Cage's Jesus horror movie is the most profound film I've seen in 2025." She's probably seen too few. If you are a devout Christian, you might scream, “blasphemous!" or be totally intrigued by this at-times bloody fantasy of Jesus' formative years. If you are a bit cynical, you might just chuckle a bit or look at the carryings-on with disdain. Is The Carpenter's Son too campy or too sincere? It's probably both.