LOOKMOVIE

Tag: judaism

  • The Disputation

    In 1263, King James I of Aragon organizes a debate between representatives of Judaism and Christianity regarding whether or not Jesus was the Messiah.

  • The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick

    The early 1960s: In preparation for his Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish boy, Max Glick (Noam Zylberman) from a small Manitoba community with an overbearing family tries to navigate his coming-of-age with his family’s condescension and bigotry using his sarcastic, Jewish humour. The town’s rabbi dies, and a sub-plot develops in which Max’s father (Aaron Schwartz) and grandfather (Jan Rubes)-both synagogue leaders-are saddled with a traditional Hassidic rabbi who sticks out like a sore thumb among the otherwise assimilated Jewish community. To make matters more difficult, Max likes a Catholic girl (14 year old Fairuza Baulk in just her third film), whom he later competes with in a piano competition. The quirky, fun-loving rabbi tries to help him with his problems, yet harbours a secret ambition of his own.
    Filmed in Winnipeg and rural Beausejour, Manitoba, Canada.

  • School Ties

    When David Greene receives a football scholarship to a prestigious prep school in the 1950s, he feels pressure to hide the fact that he is Jewish from his classmates and teachers, fearing that they may be anti-Semitic. He quickly becomes the big man on campus thanks to his football skills, but when his Jewish background is discovered, his worst fears are realized and his friends turn on him with violent threats and public ridicule.

  • Bee Season

    Wife and mother Miriam begins a downward emotional spiral as her husband avoids their collapsing marriage by immersing himself in his 11-year-old daughter’s quest to become a spelling-bee champion.

  • Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story

    Actor Dustin Hoffman narrates this decade-spanning documentary that highlights the contributions of Jewish Americans to the most American sport of them all: baseball. Highlights include a rare interview with legendary pitcher Sandy Koufax.

  • The Sessions

    Though a childhood bout with polio left him dependent on an iron lung, Mark O’Brien maintains a career as a journalist and poet. A writing assignment dealing with sex and the disabled piques Mark’s curiosity, and he decides to investigate the possibility of experiencing sex himself. When his overtures toward a caregiver scare her away, he books an appointment with sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene to lose his virginity.

  • The Believer

    A hardcore US racist skinhead who, because of his intelligence, leads a gang dedicated to fighting the enemy: the supposed American-Jewish conspiracy for domination. However, he’s hiding a secret: he’s Jewish-born, a brilliant scholar whose questioning of the tenets of his faith has left him angry and confused, turning against those who he thinks have a tragic history of their own making.