86% (3)  Foxtrot  113 min,  R,  [Drama]  [Samuel Maoz]  [21 Sep 2017]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 74%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 94%,   Metacritic: 88%,   External Reviews
Awards:  16 wins & 13 nominations.
Actors:  Lior Ashkenazi, Sarah Adler, Shira Haas, Yonaton Shiray
Writer:  Samuel Maoz
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  Hebrew    Country:  Israel, Switzerland, Germany, France
Plot:  A troubled family must face the facts when something goes terribly wrong at their son's desolate military post.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Michael and Dafna experience gut-wrenching grief when army officials show up at their home to announce the death of their son Jonathan. Michael becomes increasingly frustrated by overzealous mourning relatives and well-meaning army bureaucrats. While his sedated wife rests, Michael spirals into a whirlwind of anger only to experience one of life's unfathomable twists - a twist that can only be rivaled by the surreal military experiences of his son.
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81% (3)  Footnote  107 min,  PG,  [Comedy, Drama]  [Joseph Cedar]  [25 May 2011]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 71%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 90%,   Metacritic: 82%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 14 wins & 8 nominations.
Actors:  Aliza Rosen, Alma Zack, Lior Ashkenazi, Shlomo Bar-Aba
Writer:  Joseph Cedar
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  Hebrew    Country:  Israel
Plot:  The story of a great rivalry between a father and son, both eccentric professors in the Talmud department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The son has an addictive dependency on the embrace and accolades that the establishment provides, while his father is a stubborn purist with a fear and profound revulsion for what the establishment stands for, yet beneath his contempt lies a desperate thirst for some kind of recognition. The Israel Prize, Israel's most prestigious national award, is the jewel that brings these two to a final, bitter confrontation.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik are both eccentric professors, who have dedicated their lives to their work in Talmudic Studies. The father, Eliezer, is a stubborn purist who fears the establishment and has never been recognized for his work. While his son, Uriel, is an up-and-coming star in the field, who appears to feed on accolades, endlessly seeking recognition. Then one day, the tables turn. When Eliezer learns that he is to be awarded the Israel Prize, the most valuable honor for scholarship in the country, his vanity and desperate need for validation are exposed. His son Uriel, meanwhile, is thrilled to see his father's achievements finally recognized but, in a darkly funny twist, is forced to choose between the advancement of his own career and his father's. Will he sabotage his father's glory? -- (C) Sony Pictures Classics
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80% (3)  Late Marriage  102 min,  Unrated,  [Comedy, Drama, Romance]  [Dover Koshashvili]  [28 Jun 2002]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 72%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 88%,   Metacritic: 82%,   External Reviews
Awards:  18 wins & 8 nominations.
Actors:  Lili Koshashvili, Lior Ashkenazi, Moni Moshonov, Ronit Elkabetz
Writer:  Dover Koshashvili
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  Georgian, Hebrew    Country:  Israel, France
Plot:  Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza's parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don't know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She's also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Set within the Georgian emigre community of Tel Aviv, a look at what happens when human beings get stuck between the rock of true love and the hard place of family tradition. Lily and Yasha are distraught that their 31-year-old son Zaza has not yet married. He is handsome, intelligent, and charismatic... So why no wife? Zaza humors his parents as they expound on the need for him to marry a young virgin (beautiful and from a good family of course) and suffers as they drag him to meet one "suitable" girl after another. But he is uninterested: In brazen disregard of his parents' strict Georgian tradition, Zaza is in love with Judith, a beautiful 34-year-old Moroccan divorcee. What's more, she has a six-year-old daughter. The family would never approve and he is determined to keep the affair a secret from them. Forced to choose between his familial obligations and his body-and-soul love for Judith, Zaza doesn't know where to turn.
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75% (3)  Norman  118 min,  R,  [Drama, Thriller]  [Joseph Cedar]  [14 Apr 2017]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 61%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 89%,   Metacritic: 75%,   External Reviews
Awards:  1 win & 1 nomination.
Actors:  Lior Ashkenazi, Michael Sheen, Richard Gere, Steve Buscemi
Writer:  Joseph Cedar
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  English, Hebrew    Country:  Israel, USA
Plot:  Norman Oppenheimer is the President of New York based Oppenheimer Strategies. His word-of-mouth business is consulting work largely in American-Israeli business and politics, that focus due to being Jewish. Most of that work is as a fixer: doing work that others don't want to do and with which they don't want to be officially associated. In reality, Norman is a shyster, and not a very good one at that. His office is comprised of his cell phone and whatever is stuffed in his satchel which is usually slung over his shoulder as he wanders the streets. What he promises is making connections, setting up a meeting between his guy and the other guy. Generally, "his guy" is non-existent, he dropping names of people he usually doesn't know to make connections. A usual tactic he uses is to say that his deceased wife was personally connected to so-and-so, such as being a babysitter, those stories always untrue. All he needs is for one of the people that he approaches to believe a story to build that network. Not so much a story, but an act of kindness with that ulterior motive does eventually pan out as the connection of which he could have only dreamed. He is able to build off that connection to become the toast of the town, a status upon which he tries to parlay into being an even bigger fish in the pond. But the greater his exposure, the greater the potential scrutiny about him as a person, which could bring his fragile network come crumbling down around him.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Persistent wheeler-dealer Norman (Richard Gere) falls in with an Israeli politician (Lior Ashkenazi) on the rise. When the politician is elected prime minister, Norman rises in esteem with the New York Jewish community, even though his social connections might only be a sham.
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70% (3)  Walk on Water  103 min,  R,  [Drama, Mystery, Thriller]  [Eytan Fox]  [29 Apr 2005]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 74%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 72%,   Metacritic: 65%,   External Reviews
Awards:  4 wins & 10 nominations.
Actors:  Caroline Peters, Gideon Shemer, Knut Berger, Lior Ashkenazi
Writer:  Gal Uchovsky (screenplay)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  English, German, Hebrew, Italian, Turkish, Arabic    Country:  Israel, Sweden
Plot:  Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide, he befriends his grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia. The two men set out on a tour of the country during which, Axel challenges Eyal's values.
Rotten Tomatoes:   An Israeli agent with a license to kill is thrown off his game by two people who challenge his deeply held assumptions in this drama. Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi) is an agent with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence and security force. A man capable of making snap moral judgments but unwilling to reveal his emotions, Eyal has been burying himself in his often bloody work since the death of his wife. Eyal's latest assignment is to try to learn the whereabouts of a Nazi war criminal; as it happens, his granddaughter Pia (Carolina Peters) is in Israel spending time on a kibbutz, and when he learns that her brother Axel (Knut Berger) is coming to visit her, Eyal goes undercover as a tour guide in order to get to know them without arousing suspicion. Eyal finds himself taken with Pia, who displays a warmth and openness he's never expected to find in a German. At the same time, Eyal discovers Axel is gay and doesn't care who knows about it, and as Eyal gets to know him he finds himself torn between his genuine fondness for Axel and his long-standing homophobia. Walk on Water was directed by Eytan Fox, who earned international acclaim for his story of two gay men in the Israeli army, Yossi & Jagger. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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69% (3)  Big Bad Wolves  110 min,  Not Rated,  [Drama, Horror, Thriller]  [Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado]  [15 Aug 2013]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 68%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 77%,   Metacritic: 64%,   External Reviews
Awards:  16 wins & 14 nominations.
Actors:  Doval'e Glickman, Lior Ashkenazi, Rotem Keinan, Tzahi Grad
Writer:  Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  Hebrew, Arabic    Country:  Israel
Plot:  A series of brutal murders puts the lives of three men on a collision course: The father of the latest victim now out for revenge, a vigilante police detective operating outside the boundaries of law, and the main suspect in the killings - a religious studies teacher arrested and released due to a police blunder.
Rotten Tomatoes:   In BIG BAD WOLVES a series of brutal murders puts the lives of three men on a collision course: The father of the latest victim now out for revenge, a vigilante police detective operating outside the boundaries of law, and the main suspect in the killings - a religious studies teacher arrested and released due to a police blunder. (c) Magnet
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