Hoarding and its discontents: Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora's sad doc, THY FATHER'S CHAIR

Orthodox Jewish twins, maybe identical, though it's difficult to tell under their very bushy beards and hair that seems not to have been cut in perhaps a year, Abraham and Shraga live in the Brooklyn home they've inherited from their now deceased parents. Over time, they've found it difficult to part with just about everything that most of us would consider trash -- old food to clothes, books, papers, appliances that no longer work to broken furniture. Hence the movie's title -- THY FATHER'S CHAIR -- which is brought up at one point and then promptly let go.

As directed by Alex Lora (shown at left) and Antonio Tibaldi (below) in a cinéma vérité style by which we learn nothing about the background of anything here -- except via the bits of conversation along the way between the twins and the men who come, as an intervention, to clean the apartment and who have, by film's end, pretty much emptied it out.

The head cleaning man, in fact, also turns out to be something more than mere "cleaner," as he bonds with the twins, trying his best to help them understand what is going on here and why

they need to rid themselves of so much that they've hoarded over the recent past.

As the movie's brief 74-minute running time unspools, we manage to learn quite a bit about the emotional state of the twins, shown below, one of whom is an alcoholic -- if not so much about their history. Instead, we meet their upstairs neighbor, who complains -- no doubt rightly -- about the stench coming from the apartment. And we see the several stray cats the pair has brought in to share their space. (These cats groom and keep themselves clean as cats will do -- unlike their hosts -- despite the gross conditions that surround them.)

The documentary is divided into seven chapters (and-on-the-seventh-day-god-rested, maybe?) plus an epilogue that sort of brings us up to date. But don't expect to get much more information here than the movie itself presents via its you-are-there narrative.

The interaction between the twins and their "celeaners" makes up much of the film, and it is oddly sad and even haunting to see how hard the head man tries to makes the problem clear so that our boys understand what's going on and why.

And yes, hazmat suits are worn and indeed appear quite necessary, as bedbugs are among the apartment's unwanted dwellers. One scene shows in passing the arm of one twin, utterly bitten up and scabbing over.

Slowly the apartment begins to look livable again, and just as slowly the twins appear to be maybe learning how to exist with a bit more clarity and purpose. We can hope.

After playing numerous festivals nationally and internationally, Thy Father's Chair opens this Friday, October 13, in New York City at the Village East Cinema, and in Los Angeles on October 20 at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities, and theaters across the country.

THE PICKLE RECIPE: a charming, Detroit-set, (more or less) Kosher comedy from Michael Manasseri, Sheldon Cohn and Gary Wolfson

Pickles have a pretty good provenance so far as movies are concerned. From at least as far back as Crossing Delancey to the recent and quite wonderful short titled Pickle, the briney cucumber has provided movie-goers with tasty fun. The latest addition is a much-better-than-you-might-expect comedy set in modern-day Detroit and featuring a based-on-reality tale of an elderly grandmother whose famous pickle recipe remains a secret that certain of her family members would love to unlock.

Co-written by Gary Wolfson (at left) who jumps off from his own family history (his grandmother went to her grave carrying that prized pickle recipe along with her) and Sheldon Cohn (below, right), the film may be awash with cliches, yet many of these are given a smart little twist that will have you chuckling in appreciation: the goy who must impersonate a rabbi (and does it surprisingly well -- for awhile, at least) or the psychic who turns out to channel the dead, after all.

The screenplay and dialog set up various challenges that must be risen to -- a divorced dad who needs to DJ his daughter's bat mitzvah, a son who desperately wants his mom's famous recipe, and a bit of a developing romance to turn the film toward rom-com territory.  As directed by Michael Manasseri (shown below) with enough style and precision to make the laughs come to life, the movie simply bounces along from one enjoyable scene to the next, and before you know it, you're hooked and quite liking

the whole thing. Much of the enjoyment comes by way of the very good cast that has been assembled here, led by a veteran actress who is most often seen in smaller supporting roles: Lynn Cohen (shown below). How good it is to finally see Ms Cohen in a starring role, which, by the way, she fills out simply beautifully. This actress -- who has shone brightly in everything from Munich to Master of None to that little-seen-but-terrific indie, Hello Lonesome -- knows how to command an entire scene as easily as she does a small moment.

Supporting her are David Paymer (below, left), who plays her son, and Jon Dore (below, right), who plays her grandson. Both are just fine.

Kudos, too, to a couple of splendid further supporting actors who handle what, in other hands, might be paint-by-number roles with finesse and great good humor: Eric Edelstein (below, right), as the grandson's best friend, Ted, who must suddenly assume that Rabbi role, and Jean Zarzour (at bottom, right), who makes a marvelously quirky psychic.

Thanks to these fine performances, along with a consistently offbeat screenplay that appears to be tried-and-true but then adds that oddball touch that helps deliver the goods, THE PICKLE RECIPE proves not simply edible but pretty damned tasty overall.

The movie also, in its comedic-but-genuine way, manages to address the Holocaust. In a scene near the finale, with a sudden speech by the character played by Ms Cohen, the film becomes even more interesting and psychologically provocative. Does not what has happened here reflect what a lot of Holocaust survivors would do and feel?

The movie, from Adopt Films and running 98 minutes, opened here in South Florida this past Friday, October 28, and will hit New York and Los Angeles, this coming Friday, November 4. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates with cities and theaters listed.

Argentine Jews on parade again in Daniel Burman's comedy-drama THE TENTH MAN

Like clockwork every two years another fun film from Argentine writer/director Daniel Burman appears on the international scene to garner another award or nomination for him or one of his actors. Starting wth Waiting for the Messiah (from 2000, and his first film to be seen here in the USA and internationally) through this year's little number -- THE TENTH MAN (El rey del once), Burman has shown us, via his signature comic and dramatic quirkiness, the Jewish community in Argentina, generational divides, and parenting styles of all kinds. Most often, though, that style seems to be via a dad who goes absentee in either body, spirit, or both. In his latest endeavor, Dad is present, all right, but he's always been one of those guys more interested in "being there" for others than for his own son. Yes: He's a "pillar of the community."

That dad is also Jewish, as are most of the other fathers and sons I recall from these films -- Lost Embrace and Family Law are two of his best that come quickly to mind -- and Burman's exploration (the filmmaker is shown at right) of that religious community as found in Argentina is one of the hallmarks and strengths of his films. One of the occasional weaknesses of his movies, however, is that this writer/ director sometimes telegraphs a little too obviously where his film is going. This is the most troublesome aspect of his latest work.

Burman's heroes are often named Ariel (they have differing last names, however), and so it is again in The Tenth Man, as Ariel (Alan Sabbagh, above) is about to leave the USA for a visit with Dad, after years and years away. At the last minute Dad asks Ariel to pick up a pair of velcro sneakers for one of his clients in need (Dad runs a charity foundation in the Jewish district). Once arrived, Ariel, who, over the years, appears to have become a mostly non-believing Jew, is sent on errand after errand by Dad, helping here, helping there, aiding this one, abetting that one until -- oh, my gosh: Have you figured out where this movie is going already?!

In a film such as this, in which the destination is never in doubt, it's the journey that counts most. Fortunately, Burman makes the trip reasonably enjoyable, if artfully predictable. Along the way we meet an attractive woman (Julieta Zylberberg, above, right) who's an Orthodox Jew and therefore, it seems, is allowed neither to speak to nor to be touched by an "outsider." Of course our Ariel manages to get to know the gal, anyway.

Though it's been said that You Can't Go Home Again, this movie proves that not only can you, but that the place'll grab you, suck you back in, and change your whole life. If only. Yes, in the scene above, our hero is getting one of those religious ritual baths. (A non-religious person just might view the film as an example of how faith can turn us all into sheeplike vessels.)

There's currently a crisis in the ghetto -- little to no meat or poultry to be had for Purim -- so our boy must handle this one, too. And we meet that oddball patient who needs the velcro shoes, along with a few others bizarre charmers. It's all very cute, not-quite-real, and certainly not very deep. But it is reasonably enjoyable and short enough not to bore (the movie lasts but 81 minutes). But next time, Señor Burman, surprise us a little, please.

The Tenth Man, from Kino Lorber, opens this Friday, August 5, in New York City at the Cinema Village and Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center. Elsewhere? A few more venues are up and coming. Click here and then click on PLAYDATES to see all currently scheduled cities and theaters.

Celebrate the holiday the way they used to: Laskow/Rosenberg's WELCOME TO KUTSHER'S

"The last Catskills resort" is the subtitle of WELCOME TO KUTSHER'S -- the new film by Caroline Laskow & Ian Rosenberg (pictured below, left and right) -- that should prove a walk down memory lane for Jews of a certain age in, oh, so many ways. It's also a surprising documentary. The best-known and most special of those Catskills resorts began as a farming endeavor? Who knew? TrustMovies certainly didn't.

Grossinger's may have been larger and more popular, but after viewing this sweet, charming and sad little doc, I'm inclined to think that Kutsher's was the one to beat. Ms Laskow and Mr. Rosenberg take a different route than that of other Catskills docs I've seen that focus more on celebrities who performed (and often first worked as waiters or bus boys) at the hotel. Ours is increasingly a celebrity culture, and from the looks of this film, Kutsher's was almost the opposite.

If a celebrity happened along -- or would become one after being employed by the resort, as did basketball star Wilt Chamberlain, shown above -- this was due more to the Kutsher family's love of sports and skills and humanity than of mere celebrity or fame.  (Contrast what we see here of Helen Kutsher with what we've seen and know of another "hotel" woman, Leona Helmsley, and the difference will be immediately apparent.)

The resort made its name via its food (both the types and the lavish amounts) and its activities (including many sports, arts and entertainment). Beyond all these, though, seems to have been the personal touch that the Kutsher family had for both its customers and employees.  The specifics we get from everyone from waiters to the ice skating instructor (Celia Duffy, below) to an Asian-American art teacher are intelligent, thoughtful and moving.

The secret may well have been that all the folk connected with Kutsher's simply loved what they were doing. And this showed. All of which makes what eventually happens to the famed resort all the more wasteful and sad.  (You can see this on one of the DVD extras; we skipped it, not wanting to leave on a "downer.")

Along the way, you'll travel from the "farm" beginnings through the period of Dirty Dancing all the way to a youth convention at the resort during its latter days. The movie ends with some very good laughs from comedian Freddie Roman (shown below), who acts as a kind of emcee and guide to our experience here. He's a funny man -- and a fine entryway into the history of what became a century-long American tradition, resort-wise.

Welcome to Kutsher's -- from Menemsha Films and running just 73 minutes -- is available now on DVD and digitally, from most of the usual suspects: iTunes - Amazon Instant - Google Play - Xbox Live - VUDU; and On-Demand via Comcast, TWC, Cox, Bright House, etc.; via  Vubiquity (Verizon, Charter, etc.) and through  ATT and Dish.

Holocaust-lite: Roberto Faenza and Edith Bruck scamper down memory lane in ANITA B.

Its poster heralds this new film as coming from "the producers of Life Is Beautiful." That alone could send many of us running for the hills, as it brings back memories of a truly appalling movie, as well as of one of the most embarrassing acceptance speeches/performances in the history of the Oscars. I might not have bothered watching nor covering this new film, except that I am an admirer of its director, Roberto Faenza, who earlier gave us Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, and his still-unreleased-in-the-USA, The Soul Keeper.

I have interviewed Signore Faenza (shown at right) and heard him speak quite intelligently and well about various matters concerning filmmaking here and abroad, and so -- even though the man is credited as both directing and helping to write ANITA B. (along with others, including Edith Bruck, the woman upon whose supposedly autobiographical novel the film is based) -- I cannot help but think that this may have been simply a for-hire project for the talented filmmaker.

Whatever. The end result is something bizarre in the extreme: a kind of fairy-tale, post-Holocaust film in which its mis-cast leading lady, playing a young Holocaust survivor, keeps a smile on her face through thick, thin and otherwise, while insisting that everyone around her -- including a two-year-old child -- learn and/or remember what happened during those terrible times.

That actress, a young woman named Eline Powell (above, who was much better in a smaller role in last year's Private Peaceful), tries her best to get a handle on her character, but as composited by the various writers, she seems more like a girl who stumbled in from some Disney-level fairy-tale and has decided to act as a therapeutic cheerleader in getting her surviving friends and family to face up to things.

The movie is not uninteresting, so far as it offers up a rather wide range of incidents in the lives of Jewish Holocaust survivors in the immediate post-war years. Yet almost all of these incidents come across as overly sanitized and thus not very believable.

Further, the screenplay manages to over-explain and over-do just about everything we see and hear. This might be serviceable for younger viewers who have little knowledge of history and World War II, but for those of us who do, the film quickly grows tiresome.

Certain lines stand out like the proverbial sore thumbs: "What wrong with being Jewish?!" asks Holocaust-surviving Anita, when her aunt suggests not parading this fact before the new Russian conquerors. Since our girl has been warned about this previously, you begin to wonder if the character has a death wish or has maybe come out of the concentration camp with a few marbles missing.

In addition. the movie tackles everything from the Holocaust to teenage sex, pregnancy and abortion in an utterly simplistic, storybook manner. If this is really how Ms Bruck (née Steinschreiber, who now lives and works in Italy) recalls her history, there is something drastically wrong.

Perhaps the resulting film is more due to its producers' insisting on a Hollywood-ification of Bruck's story. Once you've seen the movie (if you do), click here to read a bit about what really happened -- without the feel-good, fairy-tale overlay. Unlike Life Is Beautiful, which -- for all its glossy, big-budget look -- proved a poor attempt at turning the Holocaust into a feel-good film, Anita B. seems less offensive than just plain silly.

The movie -- via DigiNext and Four-of-a-Kind Productions and running just 88 minutes -- opens this Friday, April 24, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and on April 30 at the Pelham Picture House.

OFF-WHITE LIES: father-daughter bond is tested in Maya Kenig's Israeli "family" film; for the holidays, a new Jewish Film Club

The term con artist has been tossed around (it even appears on the poster, at right) regarding the new Israeli movie OFF-WHITE LIES, about an Israeli father, the sudden appearance of his early-teenage daughter, and how the pair end up getting room-and-board under false pretenses. But "con artist" is really not who either of these characters are, certainly not the daughter, who is pretty much forced into this situation. Even her dad (to whom the description comes closer) is more a smart and creative man who needs to grow up and accept responsibility than any out-and-out crook.

The film's director and co-writer (with Dana Diment) is a young woman named Maya Kenig, shown at left, who has been an actress, editor and is now a first-time, full-length filmmaker. The result of her work is a movie that's quietly provocative and thoughtful, as it takes a look at the country of Israel around the time of the second Lebanon War (the summer of 2006) and finds a wealth of interesting characters that in every case rise above any easy cliches.

This is as true of the father (Gur Bentwich) and daughter (Elya Inbar, in her debut role), shown below and further below, whom we learn the most about, as it is of the family with whom they stay -- a mother, father and older teenage son, played respectively by three fine actors: Salit Achimiriam, Tzahi Grad and Arad Yeni. (Mom and son are first-timers who acquit themselves surprisingly well.)

The plot, such as it is, is less interesting that the various situations the characters get themselves into, how they handle these and what each does to them. Nothing is entirely predictable here, although, finally, everything is quite believable. Most predictable, I think, is the "given" that daughter will finally bond with her father, and how and why this happens provides the movie's mature and intelligent surprise.

The children here appear more mature than the adults, and yet it is also clear that this can be so because they have not yet had to compromise in the way mature adults usually must. Compromise and responsibility are everywhere here, a kind of reflection on Israeli life, I expect.

What is also rather unusual and actually charming about Off-White Lies is that this easy-going movie, really more of a comedy than a drama, is set in wartime. Of course, one could suggest that, for the state of Israel, its 60-plus-year history has been almost constant wartime of a sort.

The movie opens theatrically this Friday, December 7, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. Other playdates? Nothing scheduled yet, but click here to view any playdate updates.

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A propos, Off-White Lies, this film is part of a relatively new venture from the folk who also bring you Film Movement. This group has recently embarked upon a new film club with a decidedly Jewish slant. It's The Jewish Film Club, an every-other-month offering from which you receive award-winning Jewish-themed films from the world’s premiere festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Tribeca, Toronto and the New York Jewish Film Festival, without, of course, having to leave the comfort of your own home. And, as with Film Movement, members can also enjoy free streaming of their club selections anytime.

The first club of its kind for Jewish independent and foreign festival gems, The Jewish Film Club offers something unique and appealing for anyone interested in Jewish culture coming at you in the form of drama, action, adventure, thriller, comedy -- in both English-language and foreign-language films. And, as with Film Movement, club members receive these prized films before or while they’re playing in theaters—months before they’re made available to the general public for in-home viewing.

Unlike Film Movement, The Jewish Film Club is, as of now, a kind of film-of-the-every- other-month club, in which some of the past titles have included FREE MEN which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival (featuring French star Tahar Rahim, from the Oscar nominated A Prophet,); the French family comedy, THE DAY I SAW YOUR HEART featuring Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds); and the just-out, critically-acclaimed German-Israeli documentary, HITLER’S CHILDREN, about the descendants of the Nazi’s inner circle (including Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler). Additionally, every feature film disc includes a short film from a hot, up-and-coming director. Each feature and short is selected by The Jewish Film Club’s executives, who travel the world in search of great cinema to share with the Club members.

The cost? Memberships are available in a 6-month package ($55.00 + $3.25 per DVD for shipping and handling or a 12-month package ($95.00 with free shipping and handling). Though there was some early crossover -- a film or two that appeared both in Film Movement and The Jewish Film Club -- I am told that the two film clubs will attempt to have as little crossover as possible. Since that same high level of taste and entertainment that Film Movement almost consistently achieves will also be applied to The Jewish Film Club, a membership, to my mind, would be a very smart move. (And with Chanukah just around the corner, the new club makes a nice gift idea, too!)