Category: movies

Movie: “Paging Hezbollah”

November 1, 2026 • 10:00 am

The movie “Paging Hezbollah” came out two days ago, and it’s a film worth noting, as Liel Leibovitz has done at the Free Press. I don’t know if it will be available on Netflix, but for sure you won’t find it at the local theater, nor will you see it reviewed in the NYT (I hope I’m wrong).

As you might guess from the title, it’s about “Beepergate”, also known as “Operation Grim Beeper” or, as Wikipedia calls it, the “2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks.” And you may remember some details: how, over a ten-year period, Mossad created an elaborate scheme of shell companies and advertising schemes that would sell pagers to Hezbollah, who decided that pagers and walkie talkies were safer than cellphones.  But the Israelis had put 3 grams of a cryptic explosive into each device, and then somehow sold thousands of pagers and walkie talkies to Hezbollah, rigged so that, after Mossad sent a signal to these devices, the receiver would buzz or vibrate, and, when the “notified” Hezbollah member tried to answer or clear them, they’d explode. The devices were set off on September 17 and 18, 2024.

This explosion would normally occur when the device was held beside the head, leading to head injuries, including loss of eyes or ears. They weren’t designed to kill, but to injure, taking Hezbollah members out of action but leaving them alive. Note that the specific targeting avoids injuries to non-combatants, refuting the notion that the attack on Hezbollah was “genocidal.” (Also note that Shin Bet’s current series of attacks to kill Gazans who participated in the October 7 massacre of Israelis is also targeted, again refuting “genocide.” We’ll read about that tomorrow.) At any rate, the ratio of civilians killed to terrorists killed was below 1:2—an extraordinary low figure. As Grok tells me when I asked for the mortality figures:

  • “Total: 42 (Lebanese government/Health Ministry figures; early reports were lower, around 32–37).
    • Pager wave (Sept. 17): At least 12 killed.
    • Walkie-talkie wave (Sept. 18): At least ~25–30 killed.
  • Civilians: At least 12, including two children (reported variously as an ~8–10-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy) and several healthcare workers. Lebanese officials, including Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, stated that most people carrying the pagers were not fighters but civilians such as administrators or institutional staff. Health Minister Firass Abiad emphasized that many victims were in civilian settings (markets, homes, streets), included children and the elderly, and presented as non-combatants.
  • Hezbollah members: The remaining ~30. Hezbollah issued death notices for multiple fighters/members (e.g., at least 8–12 announced early on, including the son of a Hezbollah MP, with more overall). The Washington Post reported that most of the early toll (~37) appeared to be fighters based on the group’s notices. Many were part of Hezbollah’s broader network (reservists, logistics, political, or institutional roles) rather than solely active frontline combatants. Hezbollah has described most of the dead and wounded as its fighters or personnel.”

Despite this targeted operation and low civilian mortality, people were outraged, with some calling it an Israeli war crime.  I would take issue with that, and for sure Hezbollah would have done it to Israel if they had the capacity and smarts. And you won’t find a lower ratio of civilians/combatants killed in any such operation.

At any rate, here’s what Leibovitz says about the movie, starting off with a bit of jingoism (i.e., it’s a “feel good” movie) that I won’t reproduce:

Paging Hezbollah tells the story of how the Israeli military managed to trick the Lebanese terrorist organization into using beepers installed with plastic explosives, pressing the button one day in the fall of 2024 and watching the devices—and with them scores of hands, noses, eyes, and testicles—explode.

It’s a riveting tale, and the director, Justin Folk, enjoyed unprecedented access to Israeli officials, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to David Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israel’s legendary intelligence agency. Indeed, this was the first time that the Mossad chief sat down for an on-camera interview to explain in detail precisely how he and his team pulled off one of the greatest operations in modern military history.

Incredible as these details are, they might’ve, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, made for a mosaic of mere machismo, all boom and bluster and no soul. Thankfully, the man the Israelis trusted with telling their story also possesses a virtue no less important than the ability to spin a great yarn—a sturdy moral compass.

Rather than rush into his story, Folk takes his time explaining to his viewers what’s at stake. And at stake, he realizes, is the fate of our civilization, everywhere under attack by men hell-bent on death and destruction. Hezbollah, Folk reminds viewers who might’ve forgotten or have never really known, was founded in 1982 to murder not only Israelis but also Americans, a task at which the organization, sadly, once excelled: In 1983, the terrorist group bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American service members. That same year, it bombed the U.S. embassy in Beirut as well, claiming the lives of 17 more Americans, before kidnapping, torturing, and executing others in years to follow, including CIA station chief William Francis Buckley. Folk shows us archival footage of these horrors, doing everything he can to help a generation reared on social media and enamored with blowhard banshees like Tucker Carlson realize who are the real enemies of Israel and America, and everywhere in the still-free world.

That history lesson, brief but deeply moving, is worth the price of admission alone. Hollywood these days is hardly known for its excess of moral clarity, which is why its luminaries love wearing the red hand pin, which appears to symbolize the lynching of two Israelis by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah in 2000. Folk delivers more candor and clarity in a few minutes than most of our self-appointed intellectual and moral betters have in decades, giving us an unvarnished look at the merciless marauders at war with the West.

. . .it’s here that reality—and with it, Folk’s film—takes a turn to the fantastic. The solution, like something out of a particularly twisted episode of Mad Men, turns out to be not technology but advertising: What if, quips one female Mossad agent, a would-be Don Draper with a license to kill, what if we could make Hezbollah’s terrorists believe that only large devices could withstand the wear and tear afflicted by real, tough men? What if we could turn comically large beepers into status symbols for the terrorist on the make?

No sooner does the film pose the question than Folk cuts to an actual commercial, produced by Mossad, showing the supersize pager—think about three tins of Altoids stacked on top of each other and encased in black plastic—in a host of manly settings. You can get it wet! You can toss it on the sand! It’s indestructible, just like you! Another recreation of an absolutely true story shows us what happened next: The terrorists, enamored with the well-marketed gizmo, place their orders, giving Mossad a direct supply chain into Hezbollah HQ.

And the end:

Because some things in life, Paging Hezbollah reminds us, really are that uncomplicated. Some cultures cling to life and others sanctify death. Some create and others destroy. And when the two clash—onscreen and in real life alike—we have no other job than to watch with bated breath and applaud wildly when the good guys, against all odds, pull it off.

I applaud the cleverness of this operation—especially the elaborate advertising and sales campaign—and I think it was a good way to target a nefarious enemy. And I’m surprised but pleased that Israel uncharacteristically shared details of the operation with the filmmakers.   But somehow I can’t share Leibovitz’s apparent glee, for it seems to celebrate the very sacralization of death that it abhors. Civilians were killed, and the terrorists had families.  I think of this as a necessary tragedy, but not something that should bring glee. But I will try to see it.

Here’s the trailer:

Pushback on the the movie “NAZA”

September 25, 2026 • 9:30 am

About ten days ago I reported on the first public showing of the anti-Israel film “NAZA,” made by two Israelis. Its premise was the IDF had, during the Gaza war, engaged in the deliberate targeting of civilians using AI, not caring about how many civilians they killed and, in fact, killing as many as possible (the “genocide” trope). The movie apparently used information from 24 anonymous IDF sources, and showing of the movie has been highly restricted. In fact, I wasn’t sure whether it had been shown beyond the Venice Film Festival, where it got  not only a prize but a standing ovation that was 24½ minutes long: the longest in the history of the festival. Grok now tells me that it’s been shown at a festival in Bologna as well, and there are plans for a wider release. But most people haven’t seen it, including the IDF.  Some of its approbation comes from the fact that it was directed by two Israelis, who, of course, couldn’t possibly be showing stuff that was wrong or distorted.

Nevertheless, you can tell a lot about the movie’s premise from this short , 83-second trailer, which has English subtitles. And some of the film’s contents have leaked.

The premise is that there was an IDF program to deliberately kill civilians, whether directly or as “collateral damage” (the meaning of the word “Naza”), and in some strikes up to 500 Gazan civilians were killed.  The video by Natasha Hausdorff and the two articles in the Times of Israel below vigorously dispute this allegation, though you can dismiss them, if you wish, because those sources are either Israeli or sympathetic to Israel.  But before you join the Stalinesque-wave of applause for NAZA (remember from The Gulag Archipelago that the first person who stopped applauding for the Russian leader was arrested), hear them out.

The 26-minute take by Hausdorff, who hasn’t seen the movie, is based on what has been made public about the movie and its trailer. She clearly explains the rule of proportionality as obeyed by the IDF and the ways the IDF warned civilians of imminent attacks.  NAZA apparently ignores Hausdorff’s point: estimating “collateral damage” before a strike is a legal obligation, not a nefarious exercise. As she says:

“And what the filmmakers do is present the modeling of incidental harm to a lay audience as though it were some cold Israeli invention devised for the purpose of justifying slaughter. Well, it isn’t an Israeli invention—it’s the law. And it’s precisely intended  to minimize excessive harm to civilians. Pre-strike collateral damage estimation is the standard practice in every law-abiding Western military—that includes Americans and NATO forces. It’s the procedural tool that compels a commander to confront the presence of non-combatants before a weapon is ever released.”

She goes on to explain what kind of civilian assessment and damage do and do not constitute war crimes. As for the “death of 500 civilians” accusation in NAZA, it’s been strongly denied by the IDF; indeed, no attack was approved to eliminate a Hamas commander, however powerful he be, that would kill more than 100 civilians.  Hausdorff also denies that decisions about where and who are attacked by the IDF are made by machines rather than humans; here the IDF has already published its protocol, which involves three different groups of people.

As for the anonymous IDF souces, Hausdorff avers that, “From an evidential standpoint, these accounts are unverified in every respect that actually matters. We don’t know who these individuals are. We don’t know what roles they had. And we don’t know they are who the filmmakers say they are.” This means that neither Israel nor anybody else can establish whether the accounts are true.

Second, this Times of Israel by Sarit Zehavi (click to read) also casts strong doubt on the film’s premise, for Zehavi, who was willing to be interviewed but wasn’t asked, helped construct the very system of estimating civilian casualties. (She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli IDF reserve.) Click the headline to read.

An excerpt:

The creators of the recent documentary, “NAZA,” about “Naza” (a Hebrew military acronym for Nezek Agavi – collateral damage) did not have to work too hard to discover the truth.

They could have simply interviewed me. I would have stood in front of the camera, without hiding my identity, on the roof of my house nine kilometers (5.6 miles) from Lebanon, where we endured endless barrages of rockets, and explained the reality on the ground.

A little less than 20 years ago, I was one of the founders of the unit within the IDF that deals with warning populations on the other side of enemy lines and preserving civilian lives.

We built the processes that define how to issue evacuation warnings, and how to track evacuations. I was personally involved in formulating target approval processes and operational discussions.

If they had spoken with me, I would have explained that the chart shown at the beginning of the film’s promotional material is not a “killing chart,” but rather a planning chart for a target identified as being used by Hamas.

Its purpose is to determine whether to strike at all, who in the command echelon is authorized to approve the strike, with what munitions, and under what conditions. In stark contrast to the way it is presented in the promotional material, when the words “Naza 500 – collateral damage estimated at 500” appear in the approval process, it means that action must be taken to reduce the collateral damage.

There are a variety of ways to do this, such as issuing an evacuation warning, using precision munitions, or canceling the strike entirely. Noting the collateral damage on the target sheet does not signify an intention to kill civilians or commit “genocide”; it is intended, first and foremost, to prevent civilian deaths.

Our enemies, both Hamas and Hezbollah, deliberately place their rockets and headquarters in the heart of civilian areas, in tunnels under Beirut or in high-rise residential buildings in southern Lebanon. Hamas in Gaza does the same, operating in civilian areas and using children as human shields. They do this on the working assumption that if Israel strikes without warning, hundreds of civilians will be killed. That is exactly their goal. But Israel chooses differently: there are hundreds of soldiers and officers in the IDF whose sole role is protecting civilians in enemy territory. That is what they think about from the moment they wake up in the morning.

I would have expected a serious examination of this subject to include the perspective of former IDF personnel, like me, as well as serving soldiers and officers who are familiar with these procedures and could explain the professional meaning of collateral-damage assessments. Based on the promotional materials I have seen, that perspective is absent.

The promo for the film claims that the IDF “never checks the number of civilians killed.”

The truth is that checking the exact number of casualties in enemy territory in real time is a complex and nearly impossible task. This is exactly why the collateral damage assessment process takes into account factors such as the size of the structure and the estimated number of civilians routinely in its vicinity.

. . .According to IDF officials quoted in the Israeli media, the filmmakers did not seek the military’s response before the film was released, and the IDF learned of its claims through the media. The IDF spokesperson later publicly asked to view the full documentary in order to respond to its allegations. If the filmmakers, both of them investigative journalists, have declined to disclose their film or findings to the IDF, that would be contrary to basic journalistic ethics.

Without knowing more about the film’s anonymous sources, it is impossible to know what roles the interviewees held within the system, and whether their accounts, assuming they are authentic, are even relevant to understanding the chain of approvals and actions taken prior to striking a target.

The promotional materials released so far present the story from a very narrow angle: they rely on anonymous sources whose level of involvement, rank, and understanding of the process are unclear, while completely omitting the experts who built these systems with one goal: preserving human life. There are such experts. I was one of them.

The article below by Omer Shem Tov is based on an op-ed he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. It’s not all that germane to the film but I’m throwing in the links here for information.

Shem Tov was a hostage kidnapped on October 7, and recounts the lengths Israel went to not to kill him by accident:

Shem Tov, who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, from the Nova music festival near the Gaza border, recounted an instance when the mother of one of his captors received a phone call from the IDF warning her of an imminent airstrike.

“Hamas knew where I was and left me to die. Israel didn’t know my location, but it knew where my captor’s mother was and called to make sure she wasn’t killed accidentally,” he wrote. “There I was — kidnapped, starved and tortured by her son — while my army was trying to keep his mother alive.”

He said his captors in Gaza celebrated death and destruction on both sides: “For Hamas, destruction itself could be victory. As long as there was death on either side, Hamas could win.”

Shem Tov said that “Israel desperately wanted me home. But not at any price. There were Palestinian civilians between Israel and me. So Israel dropped leaflets, sent messages, made phone calls and ordered evacuations. It tried to minimize NAZA, or collateral damage.”

. . The freed hostage suggested that Israel “paid a price” for its efforts to reduce civilian casualties: “They gave Hamas time. They exposed Israeli soldiers to greater danger. And they left hostages like me waiting longer.”

“If Israel had cared less about NAZA, perhaps I would have come home sooner,” he added. “Fewer Israeli soldiers might have died. Fewer hostages might have died. But more Palestinians would have.”

Shem Tov wrote that he is troubled by reports about the documentary film, which he notes that he also hasn’t seen in full.

“In Venice, the film received a standing ovation that lasted more than 24 minutes,” he said. “As a former hostage, those minutes felt like a shower of knives. Not because the film shows Palestinian suffering, which is real and deserves to be seen. What hurts is that the film, as it has been reported, doesn’t seem to see me.”

The former captive said that to the filmmakers, “perhaps I am NAZA too. Collateral damage. A Jewish hostage who could have been left to rot in a Hamas tunnel, or murdered alongside my friends at Nova, because fighting to free me, and to protect Israelis from the people who did this, is itself treated as morally suspect.”

The lengths that Israel went to to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties—the dropping of leaflets, the phone calls to civilians in buildings scheduled for bombing, the “knock on the door”—an innocuous bomb dropped whose noise would alert people to evacuate—and the announcement of “safe areas” for evacuation—all this has been announced publicly and not contested, even by the New York Times. And it gives the lie to the idea that the IDF wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible. If they really wanted to perpetrate a genocide, why the delivery of food and polio vaccine to Gaza? Why these warnings? Why no bombing of the West Bank? What army engaged in a war has ever taken these precautions? And now this film, which apparently stimulates huge approbation by Israel- and Jew-haters everywhere.

I never even thought much about anti-semitism before October 7 three years ago, but now that it’s apparently stimulated a huge outpouring of belief in Big Lies, like the Genocide Myth, I have no choice but to conclude that antisemitism is ubiquitous, and simply was repressed until the Hamas attack gave it an excuse to emerge.

No, it’s not all about Netanyahu (Israel will be hated no matter who becomes Prime Minister), and no, it’s not all about Zionism (“Zionist” has become a euphemism for “Jew”). It’s about hatred of Jews, pure and simple. As I’m a nonbelieving Jew and never banged on about antisemitism before October 7, I am confident in these conclusions. You will never find a purveyor of the Genocide Lie who will admit that they’re wrong, but the evidence shows they are wrong. And the makers of NAZA, and those who so fervently applaud that film, also perpetuate the Big Lie.  As does the British Government with its chowderheaded boycott of Jewish products in false hopes that it will bring about the impossible: a “two-state solution.” I agree with Bill Maher that those who spread the Genocide Lie are at the same time spreading antisemitism.

There are but 16 million Jews in the world, with about half of them in Israel, yet that tiny country, the only democracy in the Middle East, and a the only place where women, gays, and ethnic minorities have equal rights, seems to be the focus of the world’s damnation.  The explanation is clear.

“Wild Rose” with Jessie Buckley

July 13, 2026 • 9:00 am

One of the finest new movies I’ve seen in the last decade or so was “Hamnet” (2025), about Shakespeare’s relationship with his family and his writing and production of “Hamlet”.  But Will himself makes very little appearance in the film, as the story is driven by a mesmerizing performance from Jessie Buckley as Agnes Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife, who lives through the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet. While Agnes abides in Stratford, Shakespeare goes off to London to write and produce his plays.

I won’t give much of a spoiler, but I will say that the ending involves Agnes’s unannounced trip to London to see the first production of “Hamlet.”  The most wonderful part is the last ten minutes of the film, which focuses almost solely on Buckley’s face as she realizes that the play is based on her late son.  It is a tour de force of acting done only through facial expression, and it’s mesmerizing, moving rapidly back and forth between grief and elation. When I saw that in the theater, through tears, I thought immediately, “This woman is going to win an Oscar.” And so she did: Buckley took home the 2025 Oscar for Best Actress.

If you haven’t seen “Hamnet,” do so immediately. A few people here haven’t liked it, perhaps because it has a touch of magical realism, but I found it fantastic in both senses. Further, it’s one of those movies just as good as the book that inspired it, the eponymous novel by Maggie O’Farrell (2020).  Two other pairs of great movies made from great books are “The Remains of the Day” (1993 movie based on 1989 book) and “Never Let Me Go” (2010 film based on a 2005 novel). I have a weakness for Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In case you haven’t seen the movie “Hamnet”—nor read the book—here’s the trailer. There is nowhere I can find that whole last crucial scene with Buckley, but this is what’s on YouTube. And the bits of that last scene shown below still make me tear up.

I digress, but today I’d like to recommend a movie brought to my attention by my nephew Steven, who knows of my admiration for Buckley and shares it.  He knows far more about movies than I, watches tons of them, has great taste, is paid to write about them, and calls Buckley, whom he interviewed, “the finest actress of her generation”.

I didn’t know anything about Buckley’s oeuvre, but Steven told me I needed to watch an earlier movie of hers, “Wild Rose,” released in 2018. It couldn’t be more different from “Hamnet.” Here Buckley plays Rose-Lynn, a Glaswegian (with the proper and appealing accent) who’s just been released after a year in jail for having tossed a packet of heroin over the jail fence from the outside. Her dream is to become a country singer, and her dream destination is Nashville. She’s a potty-mouthed single mom with two kids, depending heavily on her mother to take care of them.  Her mother is wonderfully played by Julie Walters, and her employer, for whom she cleans house, by Sophie Ok0nedo, of whom I hadn’t heard but was delighted to see onscreen. Walters is famous, and Okonedo should be. Her background is great:

Okonedo was born on 11 August 1968 in London, the daughter of Joan (née Allman), a Jewish Pilates teacher who was born in the East End of London, and Henry Okonedo (1939–2009), a British Nigerian who worked for the government. Okonedo’s maternal grandparents, who spoke Yiddish, were from families of Russian-Jewish and Polish-Jewish origin. Okonedo was raised in her mother’s Jewish faith.

“Wild Rose” shows Rose-Lynn’s ups and downs as she fights for her dream, and I won’t spoil it save to say that Buckley puts on another bravura and mesmerizing performance. I bet almost no reader has seen it, and it’s surely not widely known in America. Buckley does all her own country singing, and she’s excellent (see below). Steven tells me that the movie’s final song, ““Glasgow (No Place Like Home)”, was written by Mary Steenburgen. Steenburgen, who herself won Best Supporting Actress in “Melvin and Howard”, came to her second career as a songwriter at 47, when after a minor operation on her arm she came out of general anesthesia with her head suddenly flooded with tunes!

I digress again.  If you can see “Wild Rose,” do so. Steven tells me that if you become a Jessie Buckley acolyte, two other “essential” films are “Beast” (2017) and “The Lost Daughter” (2021), which according to Wikipedia “received a four-minute standing ovation from Venice Film Festival attendees in the Sala Grande.”

Here’s the trailer for “Wild Rose”:

One final digression, and I’ll quote my nephew:

Another tidbit about [Buckley] is that she first broke through on a U.K. talent show whose winner got to play Nancy in a West End revival of Oliver! Jessie finished second despite having the support of Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was one of the judges. Here she is, at 18 years old, singing a song from Oliver! (She sang about a dozen other songs throughout the run of the show, all viewable on YouTube.)

My cinemaphile nephew’s list of best movies

June 22, 2026 • 9:30 am

Since free will is apparently boring, how about some movie recommendations?  The other day I called my sister to get film recommendations, knowing that she often goes to the movies with her son Steven (my nephew), an ardent cinemaphile who makes his living writing about movies.  I think his taste in cinema is quite impeccable, and so, when he emailed me with some recommendations, I asked if he’d give us a list of his favorite movies.  What he sent me is indented below: a list of his 11 “greatest films ever made”, along with seven runners-up.  I’ve put an asterisk next to the ones I’ve seen and have added links to each movie.

I’d pay serious attention to this list, for Steven’s recommendations have led me to some terrific films.  Here we go (the list is in descending order):

Every ten years, the British magazine Sight and Sound releases two definitive lists of the greatest films ever made, the results of polling hundreds of critics (for list #1) and hundreds of filmmakers (for list #2). Everyone submits their top ten, and the ballots are aggregated. It’s a dream of mine to participate in the critics’ poll. Here, in case I’m ever invited, is my current list of 11 favorite films, presented in roughly descending order. (I’d have to eliminate one, but I can’t do it without rewatching all of them.) The list is more a record of my own subjective tastes (and what’s continued to resonate from childhood into middle age) than a syllabus for a “milestones in cinema” survey course. You’re welcome to use or share it if you think people might find it useful. I think it’s best to present them without explanation, as any buildup or interpretation I provide might color the impressions of first-time viewers.

 

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)*
Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut, 1962)
Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)*
Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)*
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)*
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)*
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)*
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954)

 

Runners-up:

 

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)*
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)*
Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)*
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)*
Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
When I asked where Tokyo Story was (one of my two favorite foreign films, made by Yasujirō Ozu), I got this reply:

 

Probably the very next runner-up. But Make Way for Tomorrow (roughly my #5) is actually the film that inspired Tokyo Story, and I must say I find it even more affecting. Orson Welles said it could make a stone cry.

 

I was appalled to discover that I’d seen only ten of the eighteen films, so I do have some watching to do. In general, the ones I’ve seen on the list are great, and I was glad to see that the largely neglected film “The Last Picture Show” was in the top eleven.  I still think it’s the best American film ever, but I emphasize that Steven ranks three films I haven’t seen higher than that one.

Below is one of my favorite scenes from that movie: Sam the Lion (played by Ben Johnson) reveals a bit of his history to Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) as they’re fishing.  Sam’s son Billy, played by Sam Bottoms (yes, Timothy’s younger brother) is depicted as mentally disabled. For his performance in this movie, Johnson won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1971.

To me—and this will rile people up—this scene is the modern-day equivalent of Shakespeare, but spoken in Texas jargon.  I find it extremely moving when Sam confesses, in a low-key manner, that he was hugely in love with a married woman that they all know. I was so taken with this movie that when I went to a wedding in Texas, I made a special side trip to Archer City, Texas, where the movie was filmed. It’s the same as in the movie. It’s a great film and you should see it.

Many of the actors in the movie were making their first appearance and then went on to do well in movies, though Ben Johnson was already well known from his previous appearance in western movies (he started off as a real cowboy). This casting by Bogdanovich is sheer genius:

Taste is subjective, but my taste in movies is largely congruent with Steven’s.  But please give your reaction to the list, suggest movies that you think should be on it, and note the movies you don’t think should be on it.

“Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi

June 17, 2026 • 10:30 am

The other day I reported on the death of Marjane Satrapi, comic book creator (she preferred that term to “graphic novel”), film producer, and author.  She was only 56, and her family reported that she became depressed and “died of sadness” about a year after her partner, Mattias Ripa, died of cancer.  Wikipedia outlines her accomplishments, headed by the comic book Persepolis, which came in two volumes:

Her best-known works include the graphic novel Persepolis and its film adaptation; the graphic novel Chicken with Plums; Woman, Life, Freedom; and the Marie Curie biopic Radioactive.

The success of Persepolis established Satrapi as one of the most widely read Iranian authors in the world, and her role in co-directing the film adaptation led to her becoming the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Yesterday I finished the first volume of Persepolis, and was greatly moved by the illustrated account of Satrapi’s life in Iran, both under the Shah and thereafter.  Her disillusionment with 1979 Iranian Revolution is the centerpiece, and the illustrations are instrumental in conveying her feelings.

Below, the volume I read; click to go to the Amazon link, where it’s only about eight bucks. The publisher’s website is here, where you can buy both volumes in hardback.

Since I started reading this book, which won many awards, I’ve been surprised at how many people also know of it and have read it.  Besides Maus, which I thought was a masterpiece, and two volumes of The Rabbi’s Cat, which was also superb, this is the only “graphic novel” I’ve read.  I recommend it highly, and have asked Interlibrary Loan at the University of Chicago for the second volume.

Here are two pages from the book as reproduced by Emma Knopik , who gave it a favorable review on Medium.  Knopik’s explication of each page is indented:

I found page 43 particularly interesting. After a series of massacres and revolts, the Shah finally fled Iran and sought refuge with Anwar Al-Sadat in Egypt. Satrapi’s parents explain that although the Shah has left, people’s celebration will be ephemeral as long as the Middle East has oil. In this panel, her father’s expression shifts from his regular reassured, pleased look to a more cynical, concerned expression. Satrapi achieves this shift by raising his eyebrows, lowering his eyes and simplifying them, and turning his mustache downward as in a frown. The black background of the panel intensifies the unfortunate realization. Perhaps the most compelling panel on this page is the bottom left panel, that depicts Satrapi and her parents along with a dragon figure. The dragon represents the former Shah, and even though Satrapi’s parents are glad that the “devil” has left, this dragon figure exerts an invisible claw before the family. The dragon’s body acts to outline the panel, suggesting these figures unclenching control over Iranian’s lives.

This page below made a big impression on me. It depicts the death of many Iranian boys, age 14 and up, who were used as cannon fodder and trotted through minefields to find the mines (by being blown up, of course). Some of the boys were given plastic keys to wear around their necks, and assured that if they became “martyrs,” the key would let them into Paradise.

Knopik:

Additionally, page 102 illustrates the complex political situation in Iran that Satrapi was forced to process while also experiencing the staples of adolescence. The two panels on this page break from Satrapi’s smaller, more grid-like panelled pages. The top panel occupies a majority of the page, and it illustrates the young, impoverished children who were convinced to sacrifice their lives for religion. The figures are shown with the keys to paradise around their necks as they are dying in explosions. The figures are blurry and dark, with no distinguishing features, which illustrates the high degree to which they were robbed of their lives. The bottom panel depicts Satrapi going to a party and experimenting with a punk rock style that many teenagers cycle through. Unlike the children in the previous panel, Satrapi and her friends have distinguished facial features. Her friends’ poses while they dance mirror the children who are dying in the panel above.

The book is sad and moving in recounting Satrapi’s disillusionment with both the Shah and the mullahs, and the tales of her friends and relatives she lost who were tortured and executed. It’s a short read, and I recommend it highly.

Here’s Satrapi talking about Persepolis (she could speak six languages).

Although Satrapi was doubtful about whether her work could be made into an animated movie. In 2007 it was, directed and written by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, and it’s supposed to be good. It certainly got a lot of awards and acclaim, including the Jury Prize (tied) at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.

Here’s the trailer.

Bill Maher’s New Rule: Oscars so wrong

March 16, 2026 • 11:00 am

Well, the Oscars have been awarded, and you can see the winners here. In this latest news-and-comedy bit from “Real Time,” Bill Maher argues that the Oscars have finally succeeded, through both social pressure, appeals to reason, and changes in Academy rules, in making their awards so diverse that one can no longer argue that Oscars are biased towards white people. The Awards last night make that pretty clear, but dissents are welcome in the comments.

Maher’s point is not just the attainment of equity, but also that historically the Oscars have messed up in who or what gets awards. For example, he lists historical cases in which great films have lost to “much more forgettable, trifling sentimental stuff” (an example he gives: “Citizen Kane” lost to “How Green was my Valley”). He also lists directors who never won a directing Oscar, including Bergman, Fellini, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Terantino, Rob Reiner, and Kurosawa.  In his diatribe about “wrong” Oscars, Maher also gives examples of actors who were overlooked in great movies and then awarded a “consolation” Oscar for a forgettable movie (example: Al Pacino).  Finally, he singles out aspects of movies that bias choices, like characters with handicaps, actors who gain or lose weight, actors who make themselves ugly, actors who play admirable characters (“Gandhi”), and actors who may die before they get another chance (e.g., John Wayne in “True Grit”).

The guests include Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, investor Anthony Scaramucci, and banker Lloyd Blankfein.

Short takes: An excellent movie and a mediocre book

January 21, 2026 • 11:30 am

In the last week I’ve finished watching an excellent movie and reading a mediocre book, both of which were recommended by readers or friends. I rely a lot on such recommendations because, after all, life is short and critics can help guide us through the arts.

The good news is that the movie, “Hamnet,” turned out to be great. I had read the eponymous book by Maggie O’Farrell in 2022 (see my short take here), and was enthralled, saying this:

I loved the book and recommend it highly, just a notch in quality behind All the Light We Cannot See, but I still give it an A. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been made into a movie, for it would lend itself well to drama. I see now that in fact a feature-length movie is in the works, and I hope they get good actors and a great screenwriter.

They did. Now the movie is out, and it’s nearly as good as the book. Since the book is superb, the movie is close to superb. That is, it’s excellent but perhaps not an all-time classic, though it will always be worth watching. Author O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay with director  Chloé Zhao, guaranteeing that the movie wouldn’t stray too far from the book. As you may remember, the book centers on Agnes, another name for Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway, a woman who is somewhat of a seer (the book has a bit of magical realism). And the story covers the period from the meeting of Shakespeare and Agnes until Shakespeare writes and performs “Hamlet,” a play that O’Farrell sees as based on the death from plague of their only son Hamnet (another name for Hamlet; apparently names were variable in England).  I won’t give away the plot of the book or movie, which are the same, save to say that the movie differs in having a bit less magic and a little more of Shakespeare’s presence. (He hardly shows up in the book.)

The movie suffers a bit from overemotionality; in fact, there’s basically no time in the movie when someone is not suffering or in a state of high anxiety.  But that is a quibble. The performances, with Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Shakespeare, are terrific. Buckley’s is, in fact, Oscar-worthy, and I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t win a Best Actress Oscar this year.  The last ten minutes of the movie focuses on her face as she watches the first performance of “Hamlet” in London’s Globe theater, and the gamut of emotions she expresses just from a close shot of her face is a story in itself.  Go see this movie (bring some Kleenex for the end), but also read the book.  Here’s the trailer:

On to the book. Well, it was tedious and boring, though as I recall Mother Mary Comes to Me, by Indian author Arundhati Roy, was highly praised. Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize and I loved it; her second, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was not as good.  I read Mother Mary simply because I liked her first book and try to read all highly-touted fiction from India, as I’ve been there many times, I love to read about the country, and Indian novelists are often very good.

Sadly, Mother Mary was disappointing. There’s no doubt that Roy had a tumultuous and diverse live, and the autobiography centers around her  relationship with her mother (Mary, of course), a teacher in the Indian state of Kerala. The two have a tumultuous connection that, no matter how many times Roy flees from Kerala, is always on her mind.  It persists during Roy’s tenure in architectural school, her marriage to a rich man (they had no children), and her later discovery of writing as well as her entry into Indian politics, including a time spent with Marxist guerrillas and campaigning for peaceful treatment of Kashmiris.

The book failed to engage me for two reasons. First, Mother Mary was a horrible person, capable of being lovable to her schoolchildren at one second and a horrible, nasty witch at the next.  She was never nice to her daughter, and the book failed to explain (to me, at least) why the daughter loved such a hateful mother. There’s plenty of introspection, but nothing convincing. Since the central message of the novel seems to be this abiding mother/daughter relationship, I was left cold.

Further, there’s a lot of moralizing and proselytizing, which is simply tedious. Although Roy avows herself as self-effacting, she comes off as a hidebound and rather pompous moralist, something that takes the sheen off a fascinating life.  Granted, there are good bits, but overall the writing is bland.  I would not recommend this book.

Two thumbs down for this one:

Of course I write these small reviews to encourage readers to tell us what books and/or movies they’ve encountered lately, and whether or not they liked them. I get a lot of good recommendations from these posts; in fact, it was from a reader that I found out about Hamnet.