Noah Berlatsky

Next Year Jerusalem offers little insight into its putative protagonists, and even less into Israel.

The autobiography and the politics don’t always fit together perfectly. Vargas has been extremely successful in his profession by any standard, and that success can tend to push him into the foreground to such an extent that the collective issues he’s talking about get erased. Vargas is aware of this, and works against it to some degree.

The film isn’t so much a vision as a conversation, and it isn’t revelatory, but it’s engaging.

A pallid romantic comedy possessed of neither imagination nor heart, it stumbles, like its star, from one familiar setpiece to another with a kind of dutiful, joyless resignation.

In a spy story, Bethlehem insists, there are no good guys or bad guys, and no victor—just day-in, day-out deceit and betrayal, the weary work of hate.

The pretense of concern, combined with the cynical manipulation of the plot for cheap thrills, is both transparently hypocritical and broadly repulsive.

The New Black is unabashedly pro-gay marriage, but it treats the other side respectfully. Opponents of gay marriage in the community are given their say.

The film is hyper-aware of the ridiculousness of the patriarchal obsession with masculinity-as-penis-size—and yet, in the end, and rather helplessly, it’s still mired in a banal narrative of masculine self-actualization.

Though it’s tempting to resent every moment not given over to her singing, the documentary succeeds in conveying not just the bare facts of her life, but something of her magic, both to longtime fans and to those less familiar with her work.

The semi-documentary format and the cast’s age could have been used to undermine or examine the ways male bonding in films is used to erase or denigrate women. Instead, the twists are simply used to excuse the usual tropes.