The Latest Reviews For The Country Israel

So back in 1982, Harrison Ford was on Letterman promoting Blade Runner (this is gonna make sense, promise), and when Dave asked him to describe the movie's tone, Ford took a long pause and said, “It’s no musical comedy, David.” The most succinct way to describe June Zero, directed and co-written (along with Tom Shovel) by Jake Paltrow, is that it’s no musical comedy. What it is is a subtle, thoughtful, closely observed story about a small moment in history that explores the difficulty in distinguishing justice from vengeance, understanding your trauma versus defining yourself by it, and how hard it can be to find moral equilibrium in a world in constant turmoil. It’s not what you’d call a fun movie (see above re: Ford, Harrison, and Blade Runner), but it is quietly gripping and manages to find a fresh new perspective in one the most wrung-out of genres, the Holocaust Reckoning Movie. One of the most prominent Nazis to survive the war and escape Germany was Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking officer in the SS and one of the primary organizers and executors of the Holocaust. Eichmann managed to escape Allied imprisonment and avoid capture until he was apprehended in Argentina in 1960 by Israeli Mossad agents. He was taken to Israel, tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang, which he did on June 1st, 1962. June Zero is barely interested in any of that very well-trodden ground. What it focuses on instead are the dual problems of keeping Eichmann alive until the state can execute him and what to do with his body after he dies. Burying such a monster on Israeli soil was obviously out of the question, as was the prospect of returning the body to Eichmann’s family or anywhere else out of fear that it could be interred and become a pro-Nazi symbol. The only choice that makes any sense is cremation. And so Israel went about the business of building an oven to incinerate the corpse of a man who planned and oversaw the incineration of so many of their people. Continue Reading →

(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.) Continue Reading →

A motorcycle streaks through the rainy streets of Tel Aviv. Its rider is Ahed Tamini, a Palestinian woman who slapped an Israeli soldier in the face when he was attempting to break into her house. In response, an Israeli parliament member tweeted “In my opinion, she [Tamini] should have gotten a bullet, at least in the kneecap. That would have put her under house arrest for the rest of her life.” Oh wait, that isn’t actually Ahed Tamini. We’re seeing an actress auditioning to play her in an edgy digital video project. The flutter and flurry of disorienting images feel confusing, anxious, and raw. Continue Reading →

Avi Mograbi's documentary is a long, strident presentation on the military occupation of Gaza that does a disservice to the oppression he's highlighting. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival.) A few years ago, during my time at Brandeis University – this country’s premier Jewish institution of higher education – the school’s J-Street club hosted a particularly tense event. The organization had invited a former Israeli soldier to speak about her time stationed in the West Bank and the injustices she had witnessed. Continue Reading →