Tag: Jewish

Are You
There God?
It’s Me,
Margaret.

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 15 May 2023
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There God?
It’s Me,
Margaret.
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All stills: Dana Hawley / courtesy of Lionsgate UK

Director – Kelly Fremon Craig – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 105m

****

An 11-year-old girl navigates the difficult waters of religion and womanhood, talking privately to God as she does so – bestselling novel adaptation is out on digital Tuesday, July 18th and on Blu-ray & DVD Monday, August 7th

Is God there, can you talk to God, and does doing so make any difference? 11-year-old Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) talks to God, beginning with the “Are You There?” question and then continuing to talk to God as if God’s presence were real. Whether God is real or not, the practice of talking with God has a history in certain Christian traditions, and probably in other religious traditions with which I’m less familiar too. It does not, of itself, prove the existence or non-existence of God one way or the other.

In terms of organised religion, Margaret finds herself in a confusing place. She is the sole child of Jewish father Herb (Benny Safdie) and Christian mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams) Simon. It’s a good marriage and the Simons are a very happy family, living in a cramped New York apartment with his Jewish mother Sylvia Simon (an hilariously dour yet joyous Kathy Bates).… Read the rest

Tags 11-year-old, 1960s, Abby Ryder Fortson, adaptation, agnosticism, Aidan Wojtak-Hissong, Amari Price, art teacher, atheism, beehive hairdo, Benny Safdie, bestseller, black church, boy books, boys, bra, bust size, bust-enlarging exercise, Catholic, Christian, Christian traditions, church, class heartthrob, club, club rules, committee, confessional, convert, Dennis Delamar, early developer, Echo Kellum, faith, family, feminine, first period, Florida, Gary Houston, Gazelle Fleming, God, good marriage, Gospel, grandmother, happy family, identity, Isol Young, Jersey, Jew, Jewish, Judy Blume, Karen Aruj, Katherine Kupferer, Kathy Bates, Kelly Fremon Craig, kissing, lying, marriage, menstruation, Mia Dillon, mothers and daughters, moving house, mows the lawn, New York, not wearing socks, novel, organised religion, ostracised, parents and children, period, priest, proselytise, Protestant, PTA, pulpit, Rachel McAdams, religion, school year, sermon, sexuality, singing, suburban, synagogue, their religious heritage, truth telling, urban, urban and suburban, US

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

My Extinction

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 28 June 2023
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Director – Josh Appignanesi – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 80m

***

In which director Appignanesi chronicles both his unease at the climate crisis and what happens when he joins Extinction Rebellion to do something about it – world premiere on Thursday, June 29th at the Curzon Mayfair, out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 30th

As well as making small British narrative features (Female Human Animal, 2018; The Infidel, 2010), Aappignasi makes little diary films about his life. The previous two, in which his wife, the author and academic Devorah Baum, is credited as co-director, chart impending parenthood (The New Man, 2016) and their relationship (Husband, 2022). This third entry sees Josh hit a professional lull after a planned feature film falls apart and he wonders if his career as a film maker is over. Actually, he reiterates variants of this question at various points throughout the film.

At the same time, environmental activists Extinction Rebellion (XR) are on the TV news for bringing parts of London to a standstill. Cue a title sequence montage of collapsing ice shelf, burning tar sands, gridlocked London traffic, industrial pollution, a bewildered kangaroo with outback ablaze behind it, a flooded street with parked cars, a polar bear stranded on an ice floe, the UK government declaring a climate emergency in response to XR and Greta Thunberg’s “I want you to… act as if your house was on fire” speech.… Read the rest

Tags 55 Tufton Street, A.L. Kennedy, ablaze, agent, arrest, belief, car, car commercial, career, Caroline Lucas, celeb, celebrity, climate activism, climate emergency, collective denial, commercial, commercials, David Graeber, Devorah Baum, driving, Esso, Extinction Rebellion, flood, fossil fuel, George Monbiot, greenwashing, Greta Thunberg, gridlock, Hollywood, honest, ice floe, ice shelf, industrial, integrity, Jewish, Josh Appignanesi, kangaroo, Liz Truss, London, Mark Rylance, models, MP, outback, paradigm shift, philosophy, pixelation, polar bear, pollution, protest, protest march, protestors, religion, Simon McBurney, standstill, stranded, Susie Orbach, tar sands, traffic, transparency, TV news, UK, UK Government, Westminster Bridge, working class, XR, Zadie Smith and Juliet Stevenson

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Where Is Anne Frank

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 7 August 2022
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Director – Ari Folman – 2021 – Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Israel – Cert. PG – 99m

*****

In Amsterdam, a year from now, her imaginary friend Kitty sets out to discover what happened to Anne Frank – out in cinemas on Friday, August 12th

Amsterdam, Holland, about a year from now. Early in the morning, the usual tourist queues are assembling outside the Anne Frank House, passing a tent housing refugees on the pavement. Inside, something strange happens as a glass case shatters and the original copy of Anne’s diary is exposed to ink from a pen, affecting the ink writing on the pages and materialising Kitty (voice: Ruby Stokes), the imaginary pen-friend to whom Anne addressed her diary.

The materialised Kitty is perplexed. Where is Anne Frank? What has happened to her, to the house? The staff, too, are perplexed. They can’t let the waiting crowds in with the case broken, but those people have been queueing for hours and it seems wrong not to open up for them. After a brief debate a solution is found and the diary moved to Anne’s room where it is placed on the desk where it naturally sits. The concerns of the house staff seem trivial compared to those of Kitty.… Read the rest

Tags 1945, 2D animation, 3D model sets, Aardman, Albert Dussel, Amsterdam, Andrew Woodall, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank’s diary, Ari Folman, attic, attic hideout, Auschwitz, authority figure, capture, Clark Gable, crowds, defeat, dentist, dissolve, Edith Frank, Emily Carey, execution, fathers and daughters, German Occupation, German soldier, glass case, Greek mythology, Greek underworld, handbags, hidden, hidden attic hideout, hide, hiding, Holland, Holocaust, illegal immigrants, imaginary friend, imaginary pen-friend, immigrants, ink writing, invisibility, it can’t happen here, Jew, Jewish, Jewish ethnicity, Jews, Margot Frank, Michael Moloney, migrants, mothers and daughters, museum, Nazi Occupation, Nazis, Nell Barlow, Otto Frank, parents and children, pavement, pen and ink, pen-friend, Peter Van Daan, pickpocket, Ralph Prosser, refugees, Ruby Stokes, Samantha Spiro, Sebastian Croft, Second World War, sheltering, siblings, sisters, Skye Bennett, squat, Stuart Miligan, tent, the Allies, The Third Reich, thief, tourists, Tracy-Ann Oberman, trial, Tristan Oliver, UK, Van Daan, Veronica Lake, visibility, visitors, war crimes, war zone, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Movies

Where Is Anne Frank

Hiding from deportation

Where Is Anne Frank
Directed by Ari Folman
Certificate PG, 99 minutes
Released 12 August

Amsterdam, about a year from now. Inside the Anne Frank House, Anne’s imaginary pen-friend Kitty (voiced by Ruby Stokes) materialises out of the ink from the pages of Anne’s diary. The perplexed Kitty wants to know what happened to Anne, and starts reading her diary to find out, taking it with her when she leaves the premises where she is invisible. Outside the house, she becomes visible.

Asking police ‘Where is Anne Frank?’ she is shown the bridge, hospital, school and theatre bearing Anne Frank’s name and is told, Anne Frank is all around you. [Read the rest at Reform magazine…]

[Read my longer review…]

Trailer:

Tags 1945, 2D animation, 3D model sets, Aardman, Albert Dussel, Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank’s diary, Ari Folman, attic, attic hideout, Auschwitz, authority figure, capture, crowds, defeat, dentist, Edith Frank, Emily Carey, execution, fathers and daughters, German Occupation, hidden, hide, hiding, Holland, Holocaust, illegal immigrants, imaginary friend, imaginary pen-friend, immigrants, ink writing, invisibility, it can’t happen here, Jew, Jewish, Jewish ethnicity, Jews, migrants, mothers and daughters, museum, Nazi Occupation, Nazis, parents and children, pavement, pen and ink, pen-friend, Peter Van Daan, pickpocket, Ralph Prosser, refugees, Ruby Stokes, Sebastian Croft, Second World War, sheltering, siblings, sisters, squat, the Allies, The Third Reich, thief, tourists, trial, UK, Van Daan, visibility, visitors, war crimes, war zone, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Features Live Action Movies

The Keeper
(Trautmann)

Director – Marcus H. Rosenmüller – 2018 – Germany / Austria – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

The (not-so-) beautiful game. A WW2 PoW who becomes Manchester City’s goalkeeper is faced with anti-German prejudice both on and off the pitch – in cinemas from Friday, April 5th 2019

Set in WW2 and its aftermath in Britain, this looks at first sight like a football movie. However, it becomes something else altogether by taking a long hard look at the plight of a person living in another country that’s heavily prejudiced against his own. Sadly one doesn’t have to look very far in present day, hostile environment Britain to see that such attitudes are currently very real and out in the open.

German infantryman Bert Trautmann (David Kross) is captured by the British and sent to a PoW camp just outside Manchester. Despite the presence of a few hardcore Nazis among the prisoners, most including Bert are ordinary Germans caught up in the conflict. Nevertheless, the English sergeant who runs the camp would have all of them shot were the decision his and makes their lives as difficult as possible.

However Bert has something specific in his favour: for as long as he can remember, he’s loved playing football… [read more]

Full review published in DMovies.org… Read the rest