Currently Browsing: Film 61 articles
It’s ‘Shirley’ Something to Remember: Airplane! 40 Years Later
Emilio Audissino celebrates the classic spoof Airplane! and its creators Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. An apt way to seek some solace and distraction in this virus-laden 2020 is to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Airplane! Released in the US and UK theatres in the summer of 1980, the film was the directorial debut of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, […]
Borat Sequel is a Modern Jewish Fairy-tale
Sean Alexander offers another view on the Borat sequel. Fourteen years have lapsed since Kazakhstani reporter Borat Sagdiyev first came to global attention in the hands of Sacha Baron Cohen’s fearless, audacious and at times cringe-inducing reporter. The world at large – and specifically for Borat – have not been kind since 2006: while right-wing politics […]
Borat 2’s Hilarious Holocaust Chutzpah
Borat is back and the new movie is chock full of Jewish jokes and humour some small, some writ large. As the titular Borat Sagdiyev, the Jew-hating, yet paradoxically Hebrew-speaking, Kazakh reporter, Sacha Baron Cohen again treats us to a gloriously jaw-dropping, hilarious exercise in physical slapstick and verbal humour. Take the chameleonic performances of […]
A Musical Epic: West Side Story
Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the classic musical, West Side Story. In this new book on the classic movie, West Side Story. The Jets, the Sharks, and the making of a classic, Richard Barrios describes West Side Story as ‘a musical epic’ that took a big approach like other movies of its time […]
A Great Film but Strangely Washed of Jewishness
Jack Shamash reviews the new release The Trial of the Chicago 7. Last Friday, the film The Trial of The Chicago 7 was released in cinemas and on Netflix. It depicts the Chicago Conspiracy Trial that began in 1969 and ended in 1970. It stars, among others, Jeremy Strong as Jerry Rubin and Sacha Baron […]
Churchill and Alexander Korda
Peter Lawson finds flaws in the fascinating documentary Churchill and the Movie Mogul A fascinating documentary about Hungarian-Jewish émigré director, Alexander Korda (1893-1956), was screened on 25 September on BBC4. (It is still available to watch on BBC iPlayer. Titled Churchill and the Movie Mogul, it relates the relationship between Korda and Churchill from the […]
Borat is Back
Nathan Abrams looks forward to Borat sequel and how it will deal with contemporary antisemitism. It has been fourteen years since the release of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) but the trailer for the sequel has just dropped. In that initial installment, Sacha Baron Cohen treated us to […]
The Jewish Films of Michael Lonsdale
Nathan Abrams celebrates the Jewish films of legendary French actor, Michael Lonsdale. The French actor Michael Lonsdale, who has died, aged 89, may not have been Jewish, but he left behind some key films dealing with Jewish issues. Here are the top five. The Trial (1962) The Trial was the attempt by legendary auteur Orson Welles to adpat the 1925 novel of the same name by the Jewish […]
Remembering Ronald Harwood, the Jewish Writer with a Strong Jewish Sensibility
Nathan Abrams remembers the work of Jewish playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood. Sir Ronald Harwood, who is perhaps best known for writing the screenplay to Roman Polanski’s Holocaust film, The Pianist, died yesterday of natural causes. He was born on 9 November 1934 in Cape Town, South Africa to Isobel (née Pepper) and Isaac Horwitz. […]
Antisemitism and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’
The Shining, which marks its fortieth anniversary this year, is probably the ur-horror film. Its template for pyschological horror has been much copied over subsequent decades. Given its director’s ethnicity, which has been established by various authors (including myself), we can also view The Shining through the lens of Jewishness and Judaism. In so doing, […]