Ushpizin

Does what the best movies can do: take viewers to what might be unfamiliar places, into a culture with unique customs and traditions, and show, through drama and comedy, how the fundamental truths of the human experience need no translation.

The Israeli comedy Ushpizin begins something like Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" and ends like the Coen brothers' "Raising Arizona" – in between it's a wholly original movie.

The new Israeli movie Ushpizin, a film about man's clumsiness and God's grace, is a touching and amusing tale that expands our horizon and also should open our hearts.

A good-hearted movie aimed at Orthodox Jews who don't normally go to the movies.

A gently humorous fable about the power of faith and the possibility of change, Ushpizin not only takes place in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, it was filmed with that media-shy group's cooperation and followed religious law at all times.

Stylistically Ushpizin belongs to a classic tradition of raucous Yiddish comedy that is easy to enjoy if taken lightly. At the same time, it sustains a double vision of ultra-Orthodox life.

An enjoyable seriocomic tale of a poor couple whose holiday-time miracle becomes a test of faith.