THE REVIEW CORNER

     Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the Palm Springs Jewish Film Festival.  This was a festival I had heard about purely by accident.  I was waiting in line to go into a screening at the Palm Springs International Film Festival back in January when I heard about the Jewish Film Festival happening in March.  I decided immediately that I would put it in my calendar and make sure I could go.  This is the first Jewish film festival I have attended, and while I may have been the youngest person perhaps in attendance the day I went, the festival did not disappoint.  I saw three feature films, all of which highlight different aspects of the Jewish experience in today's complex world.  Being Jewish myself, I felt like I had a particular appreciation for these films.     The first film was a documentary called Germans and Jews.  The film highlights the Jewish experience in modern day Berlin, which has one of the fastest growing Jewish populations in the world today

    Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the 5th annual Pasadena International Film Festival in Pasadena, California.  This is the only film festival I have attended more than once since I began writing about festivals for this blog last year.  Similar to last year, I got to see many great short films and one feature length documentary.  These films all covered a variety of topics, some of which happen to be quite relevant to themes in the news today.  They also take viewers through a wide array of emotions throughout the screening blocks.  Here are some of my highlights:      The first short film I saw was Bella Donna, a story of a husband and wife who don't see eye to eye on their ideas of perfection.  The film opens up and we see the wife only from the neck down as she prepares a dinner and sets a table for what is sure to be a beautiful date night.  She is faithful to her husband and has prepared a delicious dinner for him.  But when he walks in and sits dow

Starring: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, Tessa Thompson, Benedict Wong, and Oscar Isaac Directed by: Alex Garland Screenplay by: Alex Garland Based on the novel by James VanderMeer     I walked out of the theater after this movie and I had two reactions to it.  The first was, wow this is totally amazing.  The second, which came some time after I left and had digested some of what I had seen was, well this is a weird movie.  In any sense, this is a film shrouded in mystery.  Don't expect to receive many answers from all the questions you might have about the story.     The film opens up with Lena (Natalie Portman), a biologist being interrogated by a man named Lomax (Benedict Wong).  He and all of the spectators (of which there seem to be many) of this interrogation wear hazmat suits, yet Lena does not.  It becomes clear that she has survived something that may have been catastrophic and it appears she is the only one who has survived.