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Rabbi John Rosove's Blog

Category Archives: Film Reviews

“Bosch” to drop on Amazon – April 17 – Comedic Teaser written and produced by my son

12 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in Film Reviews, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

“Bosch,” Amazon’s retro-noir contemporary police drama set in Los Angeles, starring Titus Welliver as hard-driving LAPD detective Harry Bosch, is one of our favorite series, adapted from the Harry Bosch novel series written by Michael Connelly.

My son David, a social media producer at Amazon Prime, wrote and directed this funny teaser focusing on “Detective Coltrane.” David appears ala “Alfred Hitchcock” twice (he sits at a table and walks in front of the dog). Enjoy!

https://twitter.com/boschamazon/status/1249004782775234567?s=21

Shtisel – A Netflix series worth watching

08 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in Film Reviews, Jewish Identity

≈ 1 Comment

Netflix’s Shtisel (created by Ori Elon and Yehonatan Indursky) is a two-season series telling the story of an extended Haredi family living in present-day ultra-Orthodox Geula, a neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem. In Hebrew and Yiddish with English subtitles (the Hebrew is not always accurate as it glosses over religious expressions in a truncated English translation), we watch as life unfolds for the 63 year-old widower and patriarch of his family Shulem Shtisel, his 89 year-old mother who lives in assisted living and is “corrupted” (per Haredi values) by and addicted to her television set, Shulem’s older brother Nukhem who has financial woes and his 23 year-old unmarried daughter Libi who live in Belgium but come to Jerusalem to get a loan from Shulem and find a kosher husband for Libi, Shulem’s 5 children and their spouses with a wide variety of strengths and problems, and his twelve grandchildren the oldest of whom (15 year-old Nuchama) takes care of her younger siblings when her mother Giti struggles to make a living after her husband Lipa abandons her and their children on a business trip to Argentina. Lipa returns and begs forgiveness and they reconcile over the course of the two seasons.

For my complete review, see my Blog at the Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/shtisel-a-netflix-series-worth-watching/

Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin mine aging for laughs in Chuck Lorre’s latest, ‘The Kominsky Method’ – JTA

26 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in Film Reviews, Life Cycle

≈ 2 Comments

For the boomer and older demographics, this is a GREAT series and, I would add that it’s wonderful for younger people too if you want to understand your aging parents.

Alan Arkin and Michael Douglas are superb individually and together. Chuck Lorre writes in virtually everything significant related to aging.

You might not want to watch a sit-com/drama that deals with the last years of one’s life as it can spark a depressive state, but “The Kominsky Method” isn’t like that. It’s highly entertaining and real. My wife and I kept nodding “Yes – that’s exactly right” throughout.

https://bit.ly/2Rf51Ev

Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin mine aging for laughs in Chuck Lorre’s latest, ‘The Kominsky Method’

“Hotel Everest – One Step at a Time” – A Film Review

24 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in Ethics, Film Reviews, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice, Women's Rights

≈ 2 Comments

Hotel Everest Flyer

The Trailer for this moving documentary describes the film this way:

“In Israel and Palestine, the road to peace is a steep climb. For three activists, one Israeli, one Palestinian and one American, the challenges seem insurmountable. And yet they try to see and understand the humanity in “the other” and forge connections that promote empathy, understanding and, in their wildest hopes, peace. Hotel Everest is their story.”

This 40-minute film was created by the documentary film-maker Claudia Sobral with her writer Sophie Sartain [full disclosure – both are friends and members of my congregation] and centers around the conversations of three peace activists, retired Israeli Colonel Eden Fuchs, Palestinian Ibrahim Issa, and Buddhist American Whit Jones.

Eden attended the showing of the film at my synagogue and Ibrahim spoke to the assembled via skype from Bethlehem. We were joined in Los Angeles by 80 Israelis, Palestinian Arabs, Middle Eastern Muslims, American Jews, Christians, and others.

The film opens with Whit Jones flying from Boise, Idaho to Tel Aviv. A brief history of the conflict is reviewed that includes footage showing the 1947 UN Partition vote that called for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine, and then states that in 1948 the State of Israel became independent, a coordinated attack by all the surrounding Arab nations followed, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians went into exile many of whom settled in refugee camps.

Colonel Fuchs explained that at the age of 45 he realized that he knew no and had never known any Palestinians personally. It was then that he discovered the Everest Hotel in Beit Jala, an Arab village between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. There, Palestinians and Israelis meet freely, talk and listen to one another, learn of each other’s losses, fears, despair, and dreams, and discover that they share the same fate and must find a way to live together in peace.

When he was 14, Ibrahim was shot by Israeli soldiers in a demonstration. He grew up to understand, however, that violence is not the way to peace. Sitting in Beit Jala alongside Eden, Ibrahim said: “Eden is my brother and I trust him.” Eden responded simply with a full and loving heart: “Thank you!”

In the Q and A I asked Ibrahim how he came to love and trust Eden given their different histories and identities. He said that having a safe space at Hotel Everest opened their hearts to compassion and friendship.

The film did not address the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I couldn’t resist asking what each of them believed to be the best political solution. They agreed that peace can only come when there are mutual respect and acknowledgment of the dignity of the other, when compassion replaces hatred, and Israelis and Palestinians meet as human beings and not as enemies.

Ibrahim said that he believed once in the two states for two peoples resolution of the conflict, but now believes that settlement expansion in the West Bank has foreclosed a two-state solution. A one-state solution, he says, is the way forward, a state in which Palestinians and Israelis share equal rights and acknowledge the dignity and humanity of the “other.”

Eden confessed that he is not a politician and would not express a political position. Rather, he believes that trust, respect, and compassion will result in the right political solution whatever that may be.

Each man has faced dangerous challenges. Eden has been characterized by fellow Israelis as a traitor and as the “seed of Amalek.” He often despairs about this unending conflict, but when he reaches out to his Palestinian partners and they accept his hand with friendship, he knows that “peace can come and my dreams are restored.” He seizes each of the moments as they come.

The film shows Eden arranging for permits with Israeli security services to allow 15 Palestinian Arab women to travel to the Mediterranean Sea to swim in the waters, fully clothed, for the first time in their lives. Though he was gratified to arrange this outing, he felt that his actions forced him to participate in the occupation that he abhors.

Eden worries that the young generation of Israelis who as children were once open-hearted and pure have become hardened as a consequence of serving as occupational soldiers in the West Bank.

Ibrahim too was accused by Palestinian extremists of being a traitor. These extremists regard any Palestinian who cooperates with Israel as contributing to “normalization” of the occupation. Ibrahim rejects the charge explaining that the only way to peace is to engage with and speak to those with whom we disagree.

Hotel Everest is a heart-wrenching and inspiring film that ought to be seen by every Israeli and Palestinian, and especially by their political leadership.

 

Hotel Everest Ad

See http://www.fjproductions.com/hoteleverest/ and http://www.hoteleverestthemovie.com/

 

 

 

 

“The Gatekeepers” – a Must-See Film

30 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Film Reviews, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Social Justice

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

American Jewish Life, Film Reviews, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Social Justice

The film “Gatekeepers” was made, according to Director Dror Moreh, for Israelis who do not think much about the lives of Palestinians living in the West Bank under Israeli occupation nor about the negative and corrosive impact the occupation has had on the moral and political character of the people and state of Israel. It is also intended for those American Jews who love Israel in their kishkes, who understand that Jewish history in light of the Holocaust compels them to appreciate the central importance of the Jewish state in their lives, but who have come to the wrong conclusion, that in order to love Israel they have to support her policies right or wrong.

The film has been nominated for an Academy Award at this year’s Oscars, and I am personally mixed about whether I want it to win or not, because winning means even wider exposure of this disturbing story before the world at large.

The film features interviews of six retired Directors of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security services. These are hardened, pragmatic men, people with blood on their hands, who have seen it all, who have been the chief practitioners in the fight against terrorism, and who understand that though there are things Israel’s military has had to do to protect Israeli citizens, there is still something “unnatural” about this fight.

Why are these Shin Bet former directors speaking out now? After all, anyone working in Israel’s intelligence services historically has been closed-mouthed about what happens there. They agreed to be interviewed and part of this film because they believe that the direction of Israeli policy is leading the Jewish state towards a catastrophe, that the continued occupation of one and a half million hostile Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank is doomed for disaster, that the occupation is eating away at Israel’s political and moral heart and soul and threatening the survival of the Jewish democratic state of Israel.

The six characterized Israel’s policy in the West Bank as short-sighted, based on tactical matters and not reflective of a cogent long-term strategy. To a man they are soured on Israel’s political leaders who they say have failed to grapple with the core of the conflict and who have not demonstrated the courage necessary to find a two-state solution. They do not understand, for example, Prime Minister Netanyahu who on the one hand says he is for a two-state solution and on the other embraces the most extremist elements within Israeli society that are against a Palestinian state anywhere west of the Jordan River.

One can only hope that there will be a more moderate Israeli government that forms in the next few weeks reflecting the Israeli public’s rejection of extremism and a renewed effort by the United States to bring the parties together to talk and negotiate in good faith.

“Gatekeepers” is a must-see film for anyone who cares about Israel as the democratic state of the Jewish people.

The following link is a 25 minute interview with Dror Moreh, the Director of Gatekeepers by The Huffington Post.

http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/dror-moreh%27s-documentary-the-gatekeepers-on-israeli-heads-of-shin-bet/50f941c22b8c2a2169000416

“The Other Son” – a Film Review

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in Film Reviews, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Stories

≈ 1 Comment

The French film-maker Lorraine Levy has told a provocative and moving story in “The Other Son” about an accidental baby-switch in a Haifa hospital during a Scud missile attack in the first Gulf War. A Muslim Palestinian-born baby boy consequently came to be raised in a Jewish-Israeli home and a Jewish-Israeli baby was raised in a west-bank Muslim Palestinian home.

The error was discovered when Joseph (now 18) went for a blood test before entering his mandatory Israeli military service, and his mother, a physician, found that her son’s blood type was unlike either hers or her husband’s. The hospital administration sought out the records and discovered the error, brought the two families together and the drama unfolds.

Many critics found the scenario forced and unlikely. Perhaps! However, the drama poses the existential question – “Who am I?” Am I the product more of nature than nurture, biology than environment, DNA than religion/culture/nationality?

The confusion is palpable for the central characters in the film. The two fathers (played by Pascal Elbe and Areen Omari) first want to hide the newly discovered identities of their sons and bear quietly the pain and confusion to avoid public embarrassment and shame. The mothers (played by Emmanuelle Devos and Khalifa Natour) yearn to hold and kiss their birth sons. The two younger sisters are thrilled to have new brothers. The older Palestinian brother Bilal (played by Mahmood Shilabi) suddenly regards his formerly beloved younger brother Yacine (played by Mehdi Dehbi) as his enemy.

The film-maker avoids spending much time on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in lieu of telling the personal story of two families struggling to comprehend and integrate a new and confusing truth.

Yacine (the Palestinian raised Israeli-born son) standing next to Joseph (the Israeli raised Palestinian- born son – played by Jules Sitruk) says “Isaac and Ishmael, sons of Abraham!” thus shining a light on their Biblical familial ties.

Joseph, the best student in his rabbi’s yeshiva who had strongly identified as an Israeli Jew, is now no longer certain who he really is. His rabbi tells him that Jewish identity is a “state” and he can convert, but he is offended and alienated. He tells his mother, “You mean I’m the other one? And the other one is me?…I’ll have to swap my kippah for a suicide bomb.”

He says to Yacine, “I can’t feel Jewish anymore. I don’t feel Arab either. What’s left?”

Yacine muses, “I’m my worst enemy, but I must love myself anyway.”

Both sons are drawn to know their birth parents and siblings, and they travel to the other side. The women’s hearts open immediately. The men, burdened by pride, machismo and hate melt more slowly.

The mid-part of the movie has Joseph and Yacine exploring each other’s worlds and becoming friends. The two young actors successfully play layered characters who wonder about the lives they could have lived and the parents they would have known and not known. Their situation reveals the absurdity of arbitrary divisions defined by religious and national identities.

The question before each young man is who they are and what they will become?

The director allows them to be quiet on screen, to not react explosively, and to dwell in their confusion and crisis that they might find greater clarity and a new way to think and be in the world.

The movie concludes with an act of violence against Joseph by street toughs on a Tel Aviv beach. Both Yacine and his older brother Bilal (who has come around to accept Yacine and Joseph as his two brothers) rush to the injured brother’s aid. In the hospital, Yacine told Joseph, “I called your parents.” Joseph asked, “Which ones?”

I loved this film for the hopeful possibilities it offers for Israelis and Palestinians once a two-state solution is achieved and peace is given a chance – Imshallah/B’ezrat haShem!

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