#‘Happy Holidays’ Director Scandar Copti on Finding Love Across the Israeli, Palestinian Divide

#‘Happy Holidays’ Director Scandar Copti on Finding Love Across the Israeli, Palestinian Divide

Scandar Copti doesn’t like polemics. In his Oscar-nominated debut Ajami (2009), Copti, a Palestinian director and Israeli citizen, avoided easy answers, and obvious finger-pointing, to tell a story of crime and corruption, family belonging, and political divisions set in his hometown of Jaffa, a mostly Arab city just south of Tel Aviv. Co-directed with Jewish…

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#‘Without Blood’ Review: Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir in Angelina Jolie’s Overly Cautious War Parable

#‘Without Blood’ Review: Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir in Angelina Jolie’s Overly Cautious War Parable

A woman (Salma Hayek Pinault) walks into a plaza sparsely occupied by patrons enjoying an afternoon coffee and a magazine and lottery ticket kiosk. She approaches the booth and fingers a stack of newspapers before asking the attendant (Demián Bichir), an older man with rounded shoulders and reading glasses perched on his nose, a question….

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#‘Nutcrackers’ Review: Ben Stiller Stumbles Onto an Unexpected Paternal Side in David Gordon Green’s Sweet but Flimsy Fish-Out-of-Water Comedy

#‘Nutcrackers’ Review: Ben Stiller Stumbles Onto an Unexpected Paternal Side in David Gordon Green’s Sweet but Flimsy Fish-Out-of-Water Comedy

In what seems almost like a cleansing ritual after wrestling with studio horror franchises, David Gordon Green’s Nutcrackers sees the director return closer to his indie roots, observing characters that sprout organically from their rural or small-town environments. This cute fish-out-of-water comedy about the unexpected rewards of a found family tries to approximate the naturalism,…

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