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![]() Relaxed and delightfully deadpan, with several LOL moments, The Band’s Visit works as a perfectly pleasant comedy and as a signpost for how Israelis and Arabs can live together as neighbors. The movie uses a classic fish-out-of-water situation to achieve more than a few moments of inspired comi… |
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![]() Closed Season’s home-front Holocaust drama gets amplified by delving into some serious sexual intrigue. Result? A great movie, one that’s titled Ende der Schonzeit in its native Germany. Google translates that as “End of the grace period”. Hmm, besser in Deutsch. A near feudal German…
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"I need you to impregnate my wife here."
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![]() Judith features Gentile moviestars playing Jewish freedom fighters during Israel’s War of Independence. It’s amazing how glamorous a story centered on early kibbutz life at the end of the British Mandate can be. To that end, Judith is a fabulous Sophia Loren movie. The great Loren stars a…
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Kibbutznick Extraordinaire
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![]() The heart of a battle-tank turns into a heart of darkness for four soldiers – softies – thrust into the horror of war. The obvious comparison to Das Boot captures Lebanon’s ironclad claustrophobia and blinkered view. Yet, Apocalypse Now seems more fitting an antecedent given how these unw…
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Caught in the crosshairs: Major Hardb...
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![]() Still LOL funny after all these years, The Naked Gun’s inspired lunacy retains its comedic potency. Leslie Nielsen’s obtuse police detective played off a rogue’s gallery of evil archetypes, from the Ayatollah and other 1988 Axis of Evil bastards, to a local crime lord, earning legendary stat…
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Taking down an Axis of Evil
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![]() London Has Fallen is a distinct improvement over Olympus Has Fallen, making it a 1st-rate action movie. The sequel improves the original by having a plausible villain, albeit amidst an equally implausible story. Throw in several well-earned laughs – amid the carnage – and you’ve got a helluva…
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How They Made It
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![]() More than just the chariot race, Ben-Hur virtually defines big screen epic. At three and a half hours, it’s a lot of movie, full of bravura performances, grand visuals, and tasteful religious symbolism. One of only three movies to win 11 Oscars,1 it deserves the acclaim that accompanies the…
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Ben-Hur: This, in widescreen Technico...
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![]() A mashup of Israel’s bravura capture of Adolph Eichmann and the moral confusion of Munich, The Debt pays off almost completely, missing perfection by ceding reality. Well that and because the Mossad agents’ reluctance to kill the fictional Surgeon of Birkenau annoys as much as it galvanizes….
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The two visages of Rachel Singer.
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![]() The Arab Spring comes alive in Tyrant, the most politically important TV series to come along in – well – a long time. Palace intrigue swirls around the fictional Al Fayeed family, tyrannical rulers of the fictional Arab country Abbudin. Their prodigal son returns from Los Angeles in the prem…
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The Sopranos have got nothing on them
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![]() Saddam Hussein’s elder son Uday savaged Iraq for decades until US Special Forces took him out in 2003. The devil gets his due in The Devil’s Double, a high octane biopic based on his body-double’s memoirs. From outrageous tragedy a magnificent movie emerges, momentous as a hurtling Mercede…
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Pacino's Scarface? Cooper's Funnyface.
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