There’s a new thriller coming in the fall, and it’s the true story of a team of Nazi-hunting Israelis.

A new heart-pounding trailer introduces us to Operation Finale, a film about the 1960 extradition (OK, illegal kidnapping) of Adolf Eichmann, the Third Reich official who was a key figure in implementing the Final Solution. Its director is Chris Weitz, whose previous credits include producing American Pie, directing a Twilight movie, and co-writing Rogue One— so a bit of a weird pedigree. But if you’re uneasy, know that the cast is top-notch:

First of all, Oscar Isaac both is both a producer of the film, and its star—as Peter Malkin, a Mossad agent on the group that captured Eichmann. Isaac recently backed out of plans to play the Mortara father in a Spielberg film about the kidnapping of an Italian Jewish child by the Catholic Church, so if you had your heart set on him playing a historical Jewish figure, you can still scratch that itch.

Nick Kroll (yep, that Nick Kroll) plays Rafi Eitan, who led the operation… OK. Listen, Kroll is a perfectly capable actor who can do both comedy and drama. But does anyone else feel they’ve been Pavlovian-ly conditioned to laugh any time they see him? Admit it—you snickered when he showed up in Loving.

Mélanie Laurent is also in the film, because can you really go Nazi-hunting without her? Israeli actors in the cast include Lior Raz of Fauda.

And the villain of the piece? Ben Kingsley is uncanny as Eichmann, not only because of the prosthetics to make him look younger in flashbacks (trigger warning: the trailer features Eichmann ordering the mass shooting of a group of Jews), but because of the evenness of his appearance as an old man laying low in Argentina years after the war.

The trailer emphasizes the pressure put on the team to bring Eichmann to justice, though—spoiler alert if you missed history—Eichmann stood trial in Jerusalem, was the only person on whom the Israeli government has carried out capital punishment.

The film is out on September 21st, and in the meantime, check out the trailer for Operation Finale yourself below:

Image via YouTube

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Imagine a bunch of angry Jewish men in the same place, at the same time. Is it a daily morning minyan at a dying Conservative synagogue? Or is it a Noah Baumbach film? Yep, it’s the second one. The trailer is just out for The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), the writer-director’s latest project, fresh off of Cannes.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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In Demon, ghosts refuse to rest, and those who cross them risk possession— Jewish style.

While tales of demons and vengeful spirits pervade Jewish folklore, it’s the notion of the dybbuk that’s ubiquitous, that the soul of a dead person may invade the body of the living, and won’t leave just because you ask them nicely. Now, the dybbuk takes its next turn onscreen in the Polish-Israeli film premiering in the United States after a year of the festival circuit.

The film, as you can see in the trailer, plays into certain well-worn horror tropes. A young couple is terribly in love. The man is excited to build a new summer home for his bride! And hey— maybe they should tear down that creepy barn on their property. From there, it eventually spirals, as you might expect, into chaos, to the couple’s raucous wedding party that takes a turn when the groom starts exhibiting, well, strange behavior.

Perhaps the most famous cultural representation of this folklore is the S. Ansky 1920 play, The Dybbuk, and its subsequent 1937 film adaptation. Demon clearly dips into Ansky’s well—setting the story at a wedding at all is a reference, but does the ghostly bride in the trailer look just a bit like Ansky’s tragic Leah?

The film’s stars include lauded Israeli actor Itay Tiran, perhaps best known for his roles in Beaufort and Lebanon. The film is set in Poland, and of course the Polish wedding-goers faced with literal demons of the country’s Jewish past is a chilling, intentional metaphor that modern Jewish audiences will certainly note.

Unfortunately, it bears mentioning that since the film’s completion, its director, Marcin Wrona, committed suicide. While it’s inappropriate to try to create meaning of the connection between onscreen events and behind-the-scenes tragedy (see: the Poltergeist “curse”), it’s certainly significant that this is his final film. So far, it’s been very well received.

The film opens in limited release in the U.S. on September 9th. In the meantime, you can watch the super-creepy trailer below:

Image: Itay Tiran, center, in Demon

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Daniel Radcliffe is, as it is said, a precious cinnamon roll. The Jewish actor has done everything, from Harry Potter, to Harry Potter for seven additional movies, to a flatulent semi-sentient corpse in Swiss Army Man. And now, in a bit of a turn, he stars in Imperium, a film about an FBI agent, Nate Foster who goes undercover to infiltrate a white supremacist group, uncovering a terrorist plot.

Is it unsettling watching Radcliffe march with a shaved head? Sure, but his motives never seem called into question; Foster spends most of the trailer repulsed by the very people he’s supposed to befriend, and terrified of exposure.

You can watch the trailer below. It’s actually rather intense, with a lot of suspense crammed into two minutes. The film premieres in limited release, as well as on demand, August 19th.

Image credit: Wikipedia

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The new trailer is out for Indignation, the film based on the 2008 Philip Roth novel, and wow, does it look good.

The story is right in Roth’s wheelhouse: a Jewish young man from a traditional family in Newark is ambivalent about his heritage (he’s an atheist), so he breaks away from his family (and avoids the draft into the Korean War) by enrolling in a college in Ohio. There, he struggles with adjusting, including mandatory attendance for Christian services, an antagonistic dean, and, of course (this is a Philip Roth story), a relationship with a troubled young woman.

Logan Lerman, a woefully underrated young actor (from a Conservative Jewish family), is getting early critical buzz as a breakout in the lead role of Marcus Messner.

The film’s exciting cast also includes Danny Burstein as Messner’s father, a kosher butcher, which is apt, since Burstein is currently Tony-nominated for playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway.

(Fun fact: Burstein once shared the Broadway stage in Cabaret with Linda Emond as his love interest in a doomed Weimar interfaith relationship. Emond plays his wife in this film.)

The film’s director is Jewish screenwriter James Schamus in his directorial debut (he also adapted the screenplay).

Indignation is in theaters July 29th, but feast your eyes in the meantime on the trailer below:

Image Credit: YouTube

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Of course you do. But you’ve never seen it like this.

The trailer is out for Weiner, a new documentary about the former Congressman’s mayoral campaign. And while the film itself is getting buzz, the teaser practically works as its own short. This is no cobbled-together assemblage of news clips; the directors (Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg) got amazing insiders’ perspectives as their team got intimate access to the Weiner campaign, a decision which the politician and his crew seem to periodically doubt.

The trailer itself is a work of art, practically operatic (score included) as it builds to a crescendo of high-drama and teases the amazing footage these filmmakers captured.

Already, Weiner seems like a fascinating, compelling figure. Throughout his ups and downs, he’s always been passionate to the point of volatility, but with a persistent sense of humor. This trailer pushes that one step further (his facial expressions, for example, are punchlines of themselves).

The film is out May 20, but in the meantime, you really, really should watch the trailer below:

Image credit: YouTube

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The teaser trailer for Zach Braff’s new Kickstarter-funded film, Wish I Was Here, has just been released. It contains very little dialogue (there is one notably twee line at the beginning—Braff’s character tells his daughter she can buy any costume wig she likes as long as it’s “unique and amazing, like you”*), and it doesn’t reveal much about the plot of the film, but the sound and aesthetics are pretty much Garden State redux—which is either the most amazing or worst thing on earth, depending on your feelings about Garden State.

Kate Hudson is cast as Braff’s wife, Mandy Patinkin as his ailing (possibly dying) father, and there are lots of lovely, sun-dappled shots of Los Angeles/California. At one point, we see Braff looking uber-serious as he follows a kippah-wearing man (rabbi?) down a hallway. And it’s all scored by The Shins’ “Simple Song,” from their 2011 album Port of Morrow.

The movie will be released on July 18.

Compare and share, guys:

WISH I WAS HERE

GARDEN STATE

*Does anyone actually talk like that?

Related: Zach Braff On His New Role In “Bullets Over Broadway” And Being An Emo Kid

(Image: Youtube)

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Sketch comedy group Half Day Today! just released a brilliant parody of the Wolf of Wall Street trailer, with the outrageously successful social news website Buzzfeed as its target. Instead of watching Jordan Belfort fling hundred-dollar bills into a wastebasket, we see Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti skimming the cream off the internet to create a viral content farm, without crediting any of his sources—because it’s a blog-eat-blog world out there, ya dig?

Writer/director/actor Brad Woolf is grossly luminous as the Donnie Azoff/Jonah Hill stand-in, and there are hilarious one-liners (“I love nostalgia, I love cat pictures, and I love getting people hits”) and Buzzfeed-style headlines (“21 Things You Forgot You Remembered”) peppered throughout.

Enjoy, share, and if you’re feeling generous, throw us a h/t!

(h/t my friend Adam who emailed me this video)

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In what seems like the next logical step for the stoner comedy rat pack, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and James Franco have dropped the whole playing characters charade and instead just play themselves in This Is the End, Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s bro-pocalypse comedy out next summer. It’s kind of perfect, though, since we get to see Danny McBride make fun of Seth Rogen for The Green Hornet and voice our collective uneasiness about the fact the Jonah Hill is now Academy Award nominee Jonah Hill.

The premise of the movie—something terrible happened last night, the details are hazy and drug-clouded, and now we’ve got to face the consequences—is hardly novel (though to their credit, they’ve added the whole world-is-ending thing), but these guys are funny enough that they can pull off the improv-heavy narrative. Plus, they seem like they’re really friends, which is pretty awesome. Anyone who is friends with Craig Robinson is a friend of mine.

It’s no Sephardic Judd, but let’s be real, nothing is.

Movie: This Is the End
Release Date: June 2013
Stars: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Rihanna (allegedly)
Spoiler alert: Michael Cera’s dead.

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