In UNMASKED JUDEOPHOBIA, Gloria Greenfield tries to fog our thinking

I suspect there is some very good information in Gloria Greenfield's new documentary, UNMASKED JUDEOPHOBIA: The Threat to Civilization (that sub-title alone should raise a red flag), but the repetitive, ham-handed manner in which it is presented is enough to make aware and thinking people -- anyone, that is, who might find and be willing to admit as reprehensible some of the state of Israel's current behavior toward its Palestinian residents -- run for the exit.

The movie begins with a statement by Eli Weisel (above) that is so blatantly naive as to be unbelievable (unless Mr. Weisel is being misquoted, but, no, there he is actually making that statement in a speech): "I am afraid because antisemitism, which I had thought belonged to the past, has somehow survived."  Hello: Antisemitism -- which has been around ever since Jews have been around (just as homophobia has since homosexuals first appeared, and racism since Blacks, Asians and Caucasians hit the scene -- is here to stay, at least until human beings lose their fear of "the other."

Yet Mr. Weisel and another maybe 20-odd talking heads (including everyone's favorite stand-up guy Joe Lieberman) join the fray to convince us how horrible it is that this antisemitism is growing. The approach is to show us how the Muslim states that surround Israel want nothing more than its destruction. Another "hello": Has this not been true since the day Israel became a state? And has not Israel demonstrated pretty conclusively, via this war and that, that it could and would defend itself quite well? So much for anything new. Power may keep changing within those surrounding Muslim states, dictators (often sanctioned by the USA) will come and go, but nothing really evolves regarding the attitude of Israel's neighbors. So Israel and the western world be must be ever vigilant.

I can find no other reason for the existence of this documentary -- which in purporting to show us how antisemitism is suddenly growing by leaps and bounds must go back decades to get its "current events" (1980s France, for instance) and make its point (it also shows us various and very old propaganda posters (above) -- than to somehow and none too subtly take the world's mind off the current and growing appearance of Israel as an aggressor state in terms of its treatment of the Arab population living within its borders.

There are a lot of good things to be said for the state of Israel, but this kind of Jews-as-victims! Jews-as-victims! rabble-rousing should be beneath some of the people involved in this documentary. The worst offense, it seems to me, is claiming that the current human-rights protests against Israel (the filmmaker doesn't even dare go into the specifics of what these protests are about) are some conspiratorial plot against Israel by its "enemies." Oh, golly, everyone's against us! Well, don't take it so personally. It's not you we're protesting, it's your behavior. That not-so-faint tinge of whole-hog ideology hangs over this film: If you're not completely with us, then you're our enemy.

The silliest part of the documentary features an anti-United Nations screed led by, who else, that ol' UN-lover John Bolton, while its most trenchant section involves feminism, and why the western feminist world has not arisen en masse to protest the Muslim states' treatment of women. Why indeed?! And just when we're convinced that France is the single most antisemitic country in Europe, Spanish journalist and former politician Pilar Rahola (below) informs us that -- nope! -- it's Spain.

Unmasked Judeophobia plays tonight in Manchester, New Hampshire (click here for details) then opens this Friday for a week's theatrical release in New York City at the Quad Cinema.  You can click here to see all currently scheduled screenings of the film.

Straight-to-DVD: Dave Rodriguez's AMERICAN BULLY embarrasses badly

American Bully? More like a psychotic asshole who needs to be incarcerated forth-with. The original title of this shock-ingly unnecessary movie was Anytown (click on the link for the original poster), which should pretty much alert you to the subtlety-level on display through-out. (You mean, it could happen here? Sure could, kids!) Still, the movie is timely. Just this weekend, the new Mr. Norway snuffed out around 100 lives on the basis of some loony-tune political non-thinking. In his "new" film (made two years ago), director/co-writer (with Zak Meyers) Dave Rodriguez, pictured below, pulls out all the stops regarding bullying, immigration, terrorism, 9/11, the "Muslim menace" and America the ugly, and in the process creates so much noise and nonsense that you'll soon cry uncle.

Yes, bullying in high school can certainly lead to some nasty stuff, both at the time and later on, and you might even take our lead character (played with pretty much a single grim expression by Matt O'Leary, below) as a metaphor for the "red" half of our country. But so what? You'd still have to come up with a story that contained more than one thud-dingly obvious cliche after another in order to keep your audi-ence half-satisfied.

Here, the set-up is all bully, all the time, and Mr. O'Leary is as yet nowhere near an interesting, versatile or charaismatic enough actor to carry off a role like this. Consequently, his three friends (below) and the two girls who go off for a fuck-fest/trash-talk-the-immigrants afternoon are so poorly conceived that no real people can be developed. Lines of dialog are dropped into their mouths with little regard for consistency or character.

What we get for the first half of the movie is the usual boys behaving (very) badly scenario, followed by a second half that hands us kidnapping, murder, suicide, betrayal, the works. Except that, since we haven't remotely believed what's come before (except as a primer of cliche's seen in earlier, better films), putting us through the horror of what follows is like a near-constant slap in the kisser.

Technically, and construction-wise, the movie is a wasteland, too. The opening scene, involving an uncredited John Savage and a couple of sleek, lawyer-looking broads, seems inserted only to let us immediately know that something horrible has happened so we'll hang on through the slop that follows. Night scenes are so dark as to be a complete mystery, through which we have only some bad dialog to guide us. And the deserted house (below)? Is there a building in the movies of late that has called more attention to itself?

I cannot claim to fathom the motives of the people who made this movie, perhaps with what might be called the best of intentions. I can say, however, that what they've ended up giving us is a "kill-the-immigrants" movie that will most appeal to folk who want to do exactly that and who will happily watch and shout, "Right on!  But we're a lot smarter that these bozos, so we'll get away with it."

From Green Apple Entertainment, American Bully makes its straight-to-DVD debut this Tuesday, July 26 -- for sale or rental.