Film & TV

UKJFF 2023: Less Than Kosher ★★★

UKJFF 2023: Less Than Kosher ★★★

Daniel AM Rosenberg’s musical comedy Less Than Kosher follows self-proclaimed “bad Jew” Viv, a washed-up singer at 30. She finds herself deliriously hungover after Yom Kippur, but after a trip to her family’s synagogue manages to fall “ass-first” into a job as a substitute cantor. What…

UKJFF 2023: Queen of the Deuce ★★★★

UKJFF 2023: Queen of the Deuce ★★★★

When someone speaks of the American Dream, the image is usually of a well-to-do white-collared individual returning to their picket-fenced home where a doting spouse tends to two pristine children. Not, heaven forbid, a chain-smoking elderly Greek Jewish immigrant holding court with…

Oppenheimer ★★★

Oppenheimer ★★★

Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer, filmed on 70mm especially for IMAX, is two movies in one, or perhaps even three, which explains the excessive length. The first part is the weakest, telling the story of J Robert Oppenheimer’s background as a physicist in the 1920s…

UKJFF 2022: Cinema Sabaya ★★★★

UKJFF 2022: Cinema Sabaya ★★★★

Watching Orit Fouks Rotem’s uplifting Cinema Sabaya in the week in which Israel elected Benjamin Netanyahu back into power – with the help of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s extreme far-right party – was a bittersweet experience. The film takes place in the working-class city of Hadera in northern…