After getting some good news for a change earlier this week, it’s understandable that you may want to keep the mood going, so here are some suggestions for what to watch.
If you have been reading about the death of the beloved Israeli actor Ze’ev Revach and you want to revisit or discover some of his work, you can go to the Israel Film Archive (jfc.org.il/en) and see his two biggest hit films, Charlie and a Half and Snooker, both co-starring Yehuda Barkan and directed by Boaz Davidson, with English subtitles.
They are available to rent for a small fee. Both are broad comedies, but more sentimental than you might guess, and exemplify the style of filmmaking that was popular in the era of burekas films, in the 1960s and 1970s.
If you’d like to see a more modern Israeli comedy, try The Wedding Plan by Rama Burshtein on Netflix, also available with English subtitles. If you enjoyed the recent Keshet series Save the Date, about a single wedding planner who suddenly finds herself courted by four potential grooms, you’ll enjoy this.
It stars Noa Koler, the actress who plays the manager in the series Checkout, as a young woman who has recently become religious and is engaged to get married, but her fiancé breaks it off just a month before the wedding. Filled with blind faith, she decides not to cancel the wedding, but just to find a new groom.
It’s a classic screwball comedy premise, and although I would never have predicted that this kind of comedy would work so well in an ultra-Orthodox setting, it does. Burshtein – who grew up secular and later in life transitioned into stricter observance – knows how to keep the suspense and laughs coming by making her protagonist so likable that you want her to succeed, no matter how crazy she seems.
Two of the men who magically appear on the horizon are a rock star exploring his Jewish roots, played by Oz Zehavi, and the married owner of an event hall, played by Srugim heartthrob Amos Tamam.
Engaging documentary
IF YOU MISSED the engaging documentary by Barak Heymann, Rabbi Capoeira, about a young haredi man who makes it his life’s mission to bring capoeira to Bnei Brak, in theaters, you can see it on YesDocu on January 23 at 9 p.m. or on YesVOD and Sting+.
The hero of this documentary is a likable guy who makes the point that his community has ignored physical fitness and that many young ultra-Orthodox children have attention issues, as he did, and need to get up and move.
For those looking for something even lighter, try the latest Wallace & Gromit movie, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, currently on Netflix. It’s the second full-length movie about the lovable duo, eccentric inventor Wallace and his faithful, long-suffering dog, Gromit.
Created by Nick Park and Aardman Studios, it features the labor-intensive claymation stop-motion technique for which Aardman is famous, as well as the sheer inventiveness that put this studio on the map, especially when it comes to Wallace’s elaborate inventions.
Children and adults will both love this caper film about Feathers Macgraw, a larcenous penguin, who returns to take revenge on the heroes for foiling a diamond robbery years ago.
Besides the jokes at Wallace’s expense, it pokes gentle fun at modern technology, as Wallace comes up with his most annoying invention yet, a “smart” garden gnome called Norbot, which multiplies and eventually is co-opted by Feathers.
The scheming bird uses it to break out of his incarceration facility, which happens to be the penguin enclosure at the zoo. It’s very British, very low-tech, and very enjoyable.
Yesdocu is featuring a week of documentaries about pop music running now until January 25, which are also available on YesVOD and Sting+. The movies include I Will Survive: Gloria Gaynor, a portrait of the singer of the famous disco anthem referenced in the title, as she decides, at the age of 72, to switch genres and make a gospel album.
As is often the case in these kinds of documentaries, the old clips are more fun than the present-day interviews, which tend to be very repetitive. But if you liked Gaynor’s disco music and if you are a fan of gospel music, you’ll enjoy this film. There are also documentaries about Ace of Base, the Pet Shop Boys, ABBA, Donna Summer, and Svika Pick.
Shows with violence and suspense
Right now, you can see several new, very violent shows out there, notably season two of Squid Game on Netflix and the new Dexter prequel, Dexter: Original Sin on YesVOD. If you’d like suspense without all the gore, try the series Protection, about the witness protection program in Britain. It is now available on Hot VOD, NextTV, and YesVOD, and will be shown on Tuesdays starting February 11 on Hot HBO.
It stars Siobhan Finneran as DI Liz Nyles, a dedicated witness protection officer who has to cope with a serious and deadly breach of security while dealing with her father’s dementia diagnosis and an ill-advised romance with a married co-worker. Everything to do with the witness protection program carries built-in tension, since obviously the bad guys are always searching for everyone being hidden.
Finneran, who was in Downton Abbey and Happy Valley, is especially likable as the detective who is great on the job but a mess at home. David Hayman, who played a Holocaust survivor in the Israeli movie My Neighbor Adolf, plays her difficult father, a former policeman himself.
Those who enjoy Yellowstone will be pleased to learn that the prequel series, 1923, is currently available on Cellcom TV. It stars Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as an earlier generation of the Dutton family, dealing with Prohibition, Western expansion, and eventually the Great Depression. Seeing Ford and Mirren together makes you wonder why no one has ever teamed them up before.
An even earlier prequel, 1883, about the Dutton family during the post-Civil War period, will become available in late January on Cellcom. It stars Sam Elliott and country music stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw (the son of former New York Mets relief pitcher Tug McGraw).