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Filtered By: Jo Clear All

Planetarium

Two séance-conducting sisters from America (the luminous Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp) meet a silver-haired French film producer who vows to capture their communions with the dead on his own cinematographic medium. This handsomely reptilian producer, who is based on the real-life illustrious filmmaker who was executed at Auschwitz, Bernard Natan, may be enchanted by the young and beautiful sisters, but he casts a darker, stronger spell on them.

The Producers (2005)

Max is a Broadway producer with a reputation for consistently churning out flops. Leo is a nebbish accountant. Soon after meeting, Leo plants the idea of embezzlement in Max’s head. Before you know it, their get-rich-quick scheme is born. All they have to do is put together the granddaddy of all flops and they’ll be rolling in dough. However, making a disaster isn’t as easy as it seems.

Rabbi Wolff: A Gentleman Before God

Willy Wolff escaped the Nazis, became a renowned British journalist and didn’t go to rabbinical school till he was in his 50s. Now in his 80s, he leads two communities in Germany and still finds time for yoga, learning Russian and enjoying the racetrack. We go behind the scenes to see the beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking life of a deeply religious man who is rarely seen without a twinkle in his eye.

Red Trees

The Willers were one of only 12 Jewish families to survive the Nazi occupation of Prague. More remarkably, they survived openly as Jews. Red Trees is an exquisitely filmed essay that chronicles the family’s life in the Czech Republic, their narrow escape from the death camps and eventual emigration to Brazil; it is both a testament to the human will to survive as well as a celebration of diversity and acceptance.

Regarding Susan Sontag

Regarding Susan Sontag reflects the boldness of Sontag’s work and the cultural importance of her thought, through extraordinary archival footage and still photographs, riveting interviews with Sontag’s friends and colleagues, and a rich tapestry of artifacts from popular culture. These are combined with creatively culled and manipulated images to create a nuanced, sophisticated portrait of a great thinker. Many Americans know Sontag’s name; the film shows us who she was, and why her thoughts about topics such as illness, photography, war, terrorism, and torture remain vitally important in the new world of the 21st century.

Restoration

Yakov Fidelman struggles to hold on to the antique restoration workshop that has been his life’s work. After his longtime business partner dies, Fidelman rejects his estranged son Noah’s idea to close the business and build an apartment complex on the site. Anchored by Sasson Gabay’s (The Band’s Visit) mesmerizing performance, Yossi Madmony’s first feature yields a complex set of frayed character relations for which restoration proves an apt metaphor. [MINIGUIDE 70/70]

Rewind

Digging through his father's home videos, a young man reconstructs the story of his boyhood and recalls the abuse he suffered through.

Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg

Like Richard Pryor and George Carlin, he influenced a slew of the next generation of comics, and Robert Klein is still really funny! Klein is shown in his daily routines, providing a privileged look at the great comedian as he jokes about everyday life. Klein appeared on the Tonight Show and Letterman more than 100 times and hosted the third Saturday Night Live, appearing in the famous cheeseburger sketch. His spot-on impression of Rodney Dangerfield and his meeting with Don Rickles are some of the many highlights. Interviews with Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, as well as clips from some of Klein’s seminal routines, round out this delightful portrait.—Jay Rosenblatt

S#x Acts

Naïve teen Gili (Sivan Levy) changes schools and is determined to improve her social status by hooking up with the most popular guys.

Sarah's Key

About This Film

Science Fair

Nine optimistic and ambitious high schoolers compete for spots at Intel’s International Science Engineering Fair.

Shalom Bollywood: The Untold History of Indian Cinema

A compelling tale of Jewish actresses who became a dominant presence in Indian cinema for over forty years.

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness presents a riveting portrait of the man who transformed Yiddish from a vernacular language into a literary one and, in the process, gave us much loved characters such as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. Interweaving excerpts from Aleichem’s work with interviews and archival photographs and footage, the film brings to life a lost world of Yiddish culture on the cusp of dramatic change.

Shut Up and Play the Piano

The journey full of megalomania and piano music of Chilly Gonzales: from the Berlin punk scene to the philharmonic orchestras, it's a story of eccentricity which also stars Daft Punk, Drake, Feist, Jarvis Cocker.

Six Minutes to Midnight

Eddie Izzard and Dame Judi Dench star in this thrilling Hitchockian homage to British spy cinema. In the summer of 1939, influential families in Nazi Germany have sent their daughters to a finishing school in an English seaside town where one of the professors soon uncovers their diabolical scheme and races to tell the truth. But who can he trust?

The Amazing Johnathan Documentary | CENTERPIECE DOCUMENTARY

It begins as a documentary about “The Amazing Johnathan,” a uniquely deranged magician who built a career out of shock and deception in the 1980s—but becomes a bizarre story about the unravelling of his documentarian.

The Ghost of Peter Sellers

In 1973, director-on-the-rise Peter Medak nabbed notoriously difficult comic genius and box-office star Peter Sellers for his new pirate comedy, Ghost in the Noonday Sun.

Those People

The lives, loves, scandals and fixations of a tight-knit group of high society Manhattan youth are dissected with humor and compassion in this sexy drama from first-time feature director Joey Kuhn. The story centers on Charlie, a struggling young artist, whose loyalty to—and longtime crush on—his dashing best friend Sebastian are challenged when Sebastian’s swindling father is jailed and Charlie starts falling in love with someone else.

Tiny Tim: King For A Day

The story about the outcast Herbert Khaury’s rise to stardom as Tiny Tim is the ultimate fairytale. And so is his downfall. Either considered a freak or a genius, Tiny Tim left no one unaffected.

Tobacconist, The

Seventeen-year-old Franz journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz), a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music-hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz. As political and social conditions in Austria dramatically worsen with the Nazis' arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud, and Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. Each has a big decision to make: to stay or to flee?

Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me | Opening Night at the Concord Drive-In

Throughout the year we search the universe for films that reflect the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam- repairing the world through one’s actions. This year we only had to look in our backyard. Barbara Lee, the US Representative for California’s 13th District, has spent her life fighting inequality and racism, uplifting the stories of those falling through the cracks and speaking truth to power. The current protests and reactions to George Floyd’s death has only elevated her visibility in Congress and the country as she has called for a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Commission to confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and propose ways forward.

West of the Jordan River

Amos Gitai (Rabin, Free Zone) returns to the occupied territories for the first time since his 1982 documentary Field Diary. West of the Jordan River describes the efforts of citizens, Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to overcome the consequences of occupation.

Working Woman

Orna, is the mother of three young children with a husband struggling to start his own restaurant. To help support her family Orna returns to the workplace, landing a job with a former army superior, Benny who is now a successful real estate developer. While Orna embraces her new position and tries to balance its demands with her home life, she begins to experience escalating sexual harassment from her boss.

The Young Karl Marx

Director Raoul Peck’s (I Am Not Your Negro) finely crafted period drama vividly brings to life the August, 1844 meeting between Karl Marx, a German philosopher and journalist exiled to Paris, and Friedrich Engels, the rebellious son of a wealthy factory owner. After Marx lobs a few barbs at the dandified Engels, a revolutionary bromance is born. Within a few years Marx and Engels founded the Communist League and created its defining document, the Communist Manifesto.

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