121 Best Releases Translations Hebrew on Amazon Prime Video (Page 5)

Amazon Prime’s new high fantasy series, The Wheel of Time has arrived, and already a major part of the critical conversation seems to be “how much like Game of Thrones is this?” The answer is “not much,” which will undoubtedly disappoint some. For others (myself included) its differences from HBO’s leviathan dragons-and-politics series are welcome. Firstly, in the six episodes that were made available to reviewers, I didn’t spot a single sexual assault and only two women were tortured, so that’s something. Here, women don’t gain power through marriage or dragon-riding because they don’t have to. If there is anything you should bear in mind heading into The Wheel of Time, it’s the knowledge that this is a world where women already hold most of the power, in every sense of the word. Continue Reading →

Stories revolving around single men suddenly thrust into the father’s role (even if only temporarily) obsess about men’s ineptitude. Whether they think their failure to take naturally to childcare is biological or sociological or better played as comedy or tragedy doesn’t really matter. For whatever reason, the takeaway is still men aren’t cut out for fatherhood of any kind on their own. In a shocking breath of fresh air, C’mon C’mon says, to put it bluntly, fuck that.  Continue Reading →

On April 14th, 2019, Pete Buttigieg announced his campaign for President of the United States of America. This came as a surprise for the public at large. He had little experience--his previous government position was Mayor of South Bend-- and a minimal national profile. Additionally, he was young--just 37 at the time-- and the first openly gay presidential candidate in American history.  Continue Reading →

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is an alternatively madcap and melancholic retelling of the artistic and personal life of the peculiar Louis Wain by making a lot of noise but not saying much. Biographical films have to tread a very difficult line. They must tell their central characters’ life and accomplishments while humanizing them through their rituals and quirks. And they must do this all without turning the movie idealization or fetishization of such things. Narratively, what Louis Wain gets right is that focusing on the man as a deeply troubled individual and melds his artistic work along with the afflictions that he suffered. What it gets wrong is its inability to dig deeper into Louis Wain beyond his whimsies and mannerisms and the surrounding greater Victorian English culture.  Continue Reading →

In 1973, Lois Duncan created the perfect premise for a thriller: a group of teens on a midnight joyride run over a pedestrian and make a pact to keep it a secret. They think they're successful in hiding the crime. Then, a year later, one of them receives an ominous note stating simply, "I Know What You Did Last Summer." While the teens try to solve the mystery of who is harassing them, they soon realize that whoever knows their secret wants them dead.   Continue Reading →

The first two entries in the newest Welcome to the Blumhouse collection are a flawed pair of scary films. Welcome to Welcome to the Blumhouse! This annual anthology collection of four new horror films from Get Out producers Blumhouse Productions, debuting on Amazon streaming, is back after its inaugural run in 2020. Conceptually, this seems like a nifty idea, a way to tackle bold new filmmaking concepts or styles that may not be as broadly accessible as theatrical Blumhouse fare like Fantasy Island. Unfortunately, titles like The Lie made the first iteration of Welcome to the Blumhouse feel like a grab-bag of movies that just weren’t good enough for the big screen. This year, the four movies comprising the second edition of Welcome to the Blumhouse are all apparently fixated on institutionalized horror. The first two installments that have dropped (the other two films will premiere on October 9) are Bingo Hell and Black as Night, each tackling both a different strain of horror storytelling and a unique form of systemically ingrained injustice. A common trait across the pair of features, unfortunately, is a lack of consistently high-quality filmmaking. Here’s to hoping the next final two entries in this year’s collection wrap things up on a much stronger note.  Continue Reading →

The Addams Family characters have existed since 1938 and yet they’ve never felt as tired as they do in The Addams Family 2. A “kooky and spooky” family once known for subverting the norms is now the star of a movie that couldn’t be more ordinary. If you’ve seen one subpar computer-animated kids film from the last 15 years, you’ve probably seen all the worst bathroom and slapstick gags The Addams Family 2 has to offer. Here’s a feature that can’t be called a success unless it’s intended goal was to make one yearn for the sophistication of Hotel Transylvania 2. Continue Reading →

To speak of No Time to Die is to speak of what came before it. Of course, that sounds obvious in theory; the Daniel Craig era of 007 comes to an end here. They lightly tied into each other until Spectre drunkenly tried and failed at deepening the mythology. While the quality of the films varied, at least they were all distinct. It's been fifteen years and five movies -- now it all comes to a head, the stakes ostensibly high and the emotions primed to be deeper. And yet, against all odds, Cary Joji Fukunaga's offering to the franchise is derivative enough of its most recent predecessors to fumble conceptually and concretely. Continue Reading →

(This review is part of our 2021 coverage of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival./) Continue Reading →

The country soundtrack kicks in. The plain, honey-coated lens flairs coat the screen. A truck parks and out steps Mike Milo (Clint Eastwood), met with the distance of his once-good friend Howard (Dwight Yoakam) who, like a soda machine someone’s kicked loose, dispenses copious exposition about Mike’s past. The man was a great rodeo rider before dabbling in pills and drink, and, according to his old pal, his rising age doesn’t help either. Howard wants fresh blood, but it seems the movie doesn’t. The delivery, the detachment, Yoakam’s thoroughly disinterested performance—the film borders on worrying at first. Continue Reading →

Melanie Laurent's adaptation of Victoria Mas' novel about a young woman's incarceration in a cruel asylum is disappointingly flat. With its literary pedigree and reasonably lavish trappings, The Mad Women's Ball wants to be seen as a sweeping and powerful drama that examines the subjugation that women suffered in the past in large part because of their gender while suggesting that too little has changed between the late 1800s and today. In practice, it feels more like a period version of those old Women-In-Prison movies that Roger Corman produced back in the early 1970s that blended obvious exploitation elements (Nudity! Sadism! Sex! Violence!) with unexpected moments of satire and social commentary and, depending on what up-and-coming filmmaker was at the helm, perhaps even a sense of genuine cinematic style. Unfortunately, this effort from writer-director Melanie Laurent is a well-appointed, well-meaning but ultimately misfired take on an all-too-familiar narrative. Eugenie Clery (Lou de Laage) is a feisty young woman rebelling against the restrictions placed on her because of her gender. This causes a great deal of consternation for the members of her well-to-do family. And yet, despite her sneaking off to the smoke-filled cafes of Montmartre or to attend Victor Hugo's funeral, it is when Eugenie claims to be able to speak to spirits that her father elects to do what was too often done to women who refused to politely follow society's conventions—commit her to the Salpetriere Asylum.Salpetriere, a "hospital" run by noted real-life French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, swiftly proves to be little more than a warehouse in which the patients are treated for their alleged maladies with a variety of brutish quackery. Continue Reading →

As sparse as it is specific, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman feels like falling into a nightmare. It has the context, but the context feels increasingly shifted. It has the gravity, but the weight at hand seems to fall onto its audience in slow motion. It has a sense of remove but also a sense of intimacy, and as the picture develops, those schisms manage to lean into one another. Bernard Rose’s 1992 original was about the outsider looking in. DaCosta’s, on the other hand, is about the insider being forcibly removed from himself, and it’s a film as attuned to its own legacy as it is the legacy that’s been hoisted upon it. Continue Reading →

As if chomping at the bit to show its true self, Annette immediately disrobes. Director Leos Carax, off-screen during the opening credits, tells the audience to stay silent. Audio tracks spray over shots of Los Angeles and, in a studio, he asks his musicians, “So, may we start?” He’s now speaking not to us but Ron Mael and Russell Mael of Sparks. Both of them share a story by credit, the latter having written the screenplay, and already, the film has dived feet first into its own joke. But Carax’s latest doesn’t just strip itself naked. It takes off its own skin, as a rock opera and as a movie. Continue Reading →

Let me start by saying this: Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time is the best film I have seen in 2021 so far. It's a gorgeously animated conclusion to one of 20th and 21st-century science fiction's great works. It executes both its quiet, still moments and its grand setpieces with care and precision. The voice cast (who have been playing these roles for decades, going back to the original 1995 television series Neon Genesis Evangelion) and the animation team give the cast an excellently detailed life and liveliness. 3.0+1.0's editing—particularly during its extended, tone-jumping climax—is downright sublime. The imagery? To paraphrase Sam Peckinpah, I will not be forgetting what I've seen in Evangelion 3.0+1.0 any time soon. I do not think I could. From a ruined piece of pre-Impact infrastructure twirling in a patch of broken gravity to one of the titular gargantuan combat androids going to work on a swarm of bizarre, disturbing opponents, it's indelible. Whether familiar or bizarre, beautiful or horrifying, 3.0+1.0's imagery is, without fail, flabbergasting. Continue Reading →

It’s no more than a few minutes into its 132-minute runtime that The Green Knight lays its cards on the table. It doesn’t really subvert expectations here; it’s not like it immediately carves out its identity. Rather, it makes itself clear in the most literal of ways, although in one that doesn’t register as such immediately. After an opening in which Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) wakes up hungover and half-naked, the camera tracks him from behind through sweaty medieval corridors and out into the cloud-covered morning. As he walks through the village, text flashes across the screen declaring itself “a filmed adaptation.” Continue Reading →

It's clear from the starting gun that Paramount originally intended to push The Tomorrow War as a major summer theatrical release. But given the pandemic, Amazon Prime Video has stepped up to rollout this 140-minute sci-fi action romp starring Chris Pratt of Marvel’s Cosmic corner and Jurassic World fame. Continue Reading →

It can’t be overstated how much the mid-90s belonged to Jim Carrey. Largely a stand-up comedian and supporting actor at first, Carrey shot to stardom thanks to In Living Color, and the grotesque characters he played on it, including the disfigured Fire Marshall Bill, and ponytailed lady bodybuilder Vera de Milo. His leap to leading roles in comedy features was swift and wildly successful, with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber all released the same year. There hadn’t been a comic actor much like Carrey before, someone who did childish things like pretend to talk out of his butt, but also had a wild look in his eyes that suggested a hint of danger with the body contorting nonsense. Continue Reading →

Several movies into the Conjuring universe, we’ve mostly separated the real life grifters Ed and Lorraine Warren from the America’s Mom and Dad version of them on screen. If the movies work, it’s because stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga bring warmth and gravitas to them. They sell the hell out of the bullshit their characters are peddling, whereas the real-life Warrens often came off as prickly and defensive in interviews, offended that anyone would dare to question their dubious authority. Wilson and Farmiga can only do so much, however, and it’s not enough to save The Conjuring: the Devil Made Me Do It, a by-the-numbers snooze that trades in haunted house horror for a supernatural police procedural. Continue Reading →

It doesn’t take more than a minute or two for Port Authority to start dangling its main theme right in front of the audience. On probation and having just gotten off the bus in New York City, Paul (Fionn Whitehead) roams the station, showing strangers a picture and asking if they’ve seen a woman. But you see, it’s not like she’s missing. He’s the one who’s missing, the woman in the picture being his sister, Sara (Louisa Krause), who’s refused to pick him up and take him in. He has no family. The movie really wants to make sure you get it. What makes it hard to buy is how inorganic Danielle Lessovitz’s feature debut is. Continue Reading →

Before he passed away at the age of 46, Philip Seymour Hoffman starred in 52 feature films. Starring roles, character pieces, chameleon work—he left a legacy nearly unmatched in both quality and quantity. Now, with P.S.H. I Love You, Jonah Koslofsky wafts through the cornucopia of the man’s offerings. Continue Reading →

In Four Good Days, when heroin-addict Molly is asked what her triggers are, what could get her to use again, she replies, “My life’s a trigger…” Fellow addict Amanda Wendler takes things a step further, though, proclaiming, “Reality’s a trigger.” But Amanda isn’t another character in Molly’s story—she’s the inspiration behind it. In 2016, the Washington Post chronicled a few days in her fight for sobriety in their much lauded article, “How’s Amanda? A Story of Truth, Lies and American Addiction.” Continue Reading →