By turns irritating, confounding, and endlessly fascinating, the animated Israeli documentary Waltz with Bashir is, at the very least, not the kind of movie that comes along all that often. I can’t say that it’s unlike any movie you’ve ever seen before, not knowing what movies you’ve seen, but it’s certainly unlike any movie I’ve […]

The jellyfish does not swim, but instead drifts through the ocean on the currents, gently moving through the waves with no aim other than to encounter its food as it floats. So too does the charming and sensitive Israeli film Jellyfish, the 2007 winner of the Cannes Camera d’Or, drift without much in the way […]

I really did think I had Dear Mr. Waldman pegged early on. A flashback to a little boy who falls in love with American movies, and loses sight of his own culture as a result? And he has a torturous relationship with his parents? And it was co-produced by notorious Yoram Globus, late of Cannon […]

My only explanation is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hates the Israeli film industry. Thanks to the stringent enforcement of an arbitrary rule involving how much of what language is spoken onscreen, the fairly brilliant comedy The Band’s Visit was rendered ineligible for the arcane Foreign Language Film Oscar, leaving a […]