
‘The Death of Stalin’ by Way of Monty Python
Armando Ianucci’s ‘perversely enjoyable’ scary joke film plays fast and loose with the political scramble after the fall of The Red Tsar

Here They Are: The 10 Best Jewish Films of 2017
Gere, Gadot, and gesheftn in Yiddish top the list

Actress Hedy Lamarr, the Real-Life Jewish Wonder Woman Whose Inventions Led to WiFi and GPS
The affecting new documentary ‘Bombshell’ is haunted by recordings of her lilting voice from the 1990s, after her descent into pop-culture hell

Jewish Heroes and Nazi Monsters
Torah scribe, New Deal propagandist, unrelenting anti-Nazi: the many lives of ferocious cartoonist and illustrator Arthur Szyk at a jewel of a show at the New-York Historical Society

Motherless Brussels: Notes on Chantal Akerman’s ‘No Home Movie’
Thirteen ways of looking at the great filmmaker, two years after her death by suicide

Rama Burshtein’s ‘The Wedding Plan’ Is a Halachically-Approved Fable With a Happy Ending, Maybe
An Orthodox woman’s ill-fated engagement sends Haredi rom-com down the path of blissed-out breakthroughs

Gustav Metzger, Pioneer of ‘Auto-Destructive Art’, Dies at 90
In 1939, Metzger escaped the Nazis on a Kindertransport. His radical anti-art, or ‘aesthetics of revulsion,’ often dealt with the rejection of power.

The Settlers Movie
Shimon Dotan’s ‘strongly articulated’ political documentary focuses on the fanatics on the front lines of the battle over the land of Israel

American Noir for the Age of Trump
Darkness! Angst! Paranoia! In the terrified films of the 1940s and ’50s, written and directed by Jewish refugees, hidden dangers lurk where hell is no longer a fantasy, where what’s false is true, and what’s wrong is even wronger.

The Holocaust for Communists
The East German-Bulgarian Holocaust movie ‘Sterne,’ screening this weekend at the New York Jewish Film Festival, is one of a group of visceral films made in Communist countries by or with people who survived the war

The 10 Best Jewish-Themed Movies of 2016
The year’s can’t-miss releases, from Chantel Akerman’s ‘No Home Movie’ and Maren Ade’s ‘Toni Erdmann,’ to a wordless, cinematic graphic novel about fascism and war fever

The Birth of a Nation?
Mel Gibson’s ‘Braveheart’ inspires another version of the many versions of the Nat Turner rebellion story, in a rave-capturing new film part Spartacus, part Exodus

A Polish Director and His Country Possessed By Jewish Demons
The late Marcin Wrona’s dark new Dybbuk parable digs deep into a haunted past

A Brilliant Magpie
The new documentary ‘Eva Hesse,’ opening this week, explores the too short, too beautiful life of an art heroine

‘Son of Saul’ Wins Oscar, Cementing Strength of Holocaust-Themed Films at Academy Awards
Nearly 85 percent of all Holocaust-themed Oscar nominees—going back to the first, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ (1959)—have received at least one Academy Award

Hollywood’s Ultimate Honor Isn’t the Oscar. It’s the Irving.
Who stands taller in film history than the legendary head of production for MGM, Irving Thalberg?

‘Rabin, The Last Day’ Makes Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ Look Stone-Cold Sober
Amos Gitai’s polemical new documentary—opening in U.S. theaters Friday—on the 1995 assassination that rocked Israel sacrifices facts in favor of sensation

10 Can’t-Miss Films of 2015
From Hollywood to Timbuktu, it was a very good year

Growing Up Absurd in Auschwitz
With brutal tact and appalling artistry, the visceral and haunting ‘Son of Saul’ makes little miracles out of the monstrous

Chantal Akerman (1950-2015)
The great French filmmaker died this week, just days before the New York Film Festival premiere of her portrait of her Auschwitz-survivor mother

Nadav Lapid’s Genius Sees Israeli-ness as an Existential Disease
The internationally acclaimed filmmaker’s new ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ takes Jewish insularity to terrific extremes

Jewish Eyes Without a Face Haunt Christian Petzold’s ‘Phoenix’
New German film is a devastating portrait of a ghostly young Eurydice, an Auschwitz survivor who refuses to stay in hell

‘Don’t Your People Got None of Your Own Music?’
Confessions of a Jewish teenage folkie

Rotting Corpse-Brides of Jewish Hollywood
Ari Folman’s sci-fi half-animated ‘The Congress,’ David Cronenberg’s horror comedy ‘Maps to the Stars,’ and the end of movies

‘Ida’ Wins: The Count Is Now 20 Out of 23
Pawel Pawlikowski’s Holocaust film takes home an Academy Award

Occupy Wall Street! The Jewish CP-Friendly 1930s Version
‘The Left Front’ highlights American art made for the Soviet Union’s official “Jewish homeland”

French Mayor Bans Anti-Jihadist Muslim Film
A study in the dangers, and absurdities, of censorship

Péter Forgács’ Memory Art Brings Phantoms of Eastern Europe to Light
‘Letters to Afar’ is the latest of an emergent and haunting new form, Jewish material-memory film