Shoah (1985), Baraka (1992), The Message (1976), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), The Holy Mountain (1973), The Ten Commandments (1956), Lord of War (2005), Lenny (1974) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Judaism movies.
Storyline: Claude Lanzmann directed this 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without using a single frame of archive footage. He interviews survivors, witnesses, and ex-Nazis (whom he had to film secretly since they only agreed to be interviewed by audio). His style of interviewing by asking for the most minute details is effective at adding up these details to give a horrifying portrait of the events of Nazi genocide. He also shows, or rather lets some of his subjects themselves show, that the anti-Semitism that caused 6 million Jews to die in the Holocaust is still alive and well in many people who still live in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere.—Gene Volovich <volovich@netcom.com>
Plot Keywords: holocaust, world war two, war crime, jew, nazi, genocide, testimony ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred Balinese Hindu men perform kecak, the monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: trippy, environment, holocaust, time lapse photography, human skull, fast motion scene, canyon ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In the 7th century, Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him, is visited by Angel Gabriel who urges him to lead the people of Mecca and worship God. But they're exiled in Medina before returning to Mecca to take up arms against their oppressors and liberate their city in the name of God (Allah).
Plot Keywords: prophecy, muslim, religion, islam, based on true story, judaism, day for night ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews and Orthodox Christians live in the little village of Anatevka in the pre-revolutionary Russia of the Czars. Among the traditions of the Jewish community, the matchmaker arranges the match and the father approves it. The milkman Reb Tevye is a poor man that has been married for twenty-five years with Golde and they have five daughters. When the local matchmaker Yente arranges the match between his older daughter Tzeitel and the old widow butcher Lazar Wolf, Tevye agrees with the wedding. However Tzeitel is in love with the poor tailor Motel Kamzoil and they ask permission to Tevye to get married that he accepts to please his daughter. Then his second daughter Hodel (Michele Marsh) and the revolutionary student Perchik decide to marry each other and Tevye is forced to accept. When Perchik is arrested by the Czar troops and sent to Siberia, Hodel decides to leave her family and homeland and travel to Siberia to be with her beloved Perchik....
Plot Keywords: jewish, russia, fiddler, arranged marriage, immigration, judaism, based on stage musical ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful people, each representing a planet in the Solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide's assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.
Plot Keywords: male frontal nudity, breaking the fourth wall, absurd humor, male nudity, gold, female frontal nudity, symbolism ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: To escape the edict of Egypt's Pharaoh, Rameses I, condemning all newborn Hebrew males, the infant Moses is set adrift on the Nile in a reed basket. Saved by the pharaoh's daughter Bithiah, he is adopted by her and brought up in the court of her brother, Pharaoh Seti. Moses gains Seti's favor and the love of the throne princess Nefertiri, as well as the hatred of Seti's son, Rameses. When his Hebrew heritage is revealed, Moses is cast out of Egypt, and makes his way across the desert where he marries, has a son and is commanded by God to return to Egypt to free the Hebrews from slavery. In Egypt, Moses' fiercest enemy proves to be not Rameses, but someone near to him who can 'harden his heart'.
Plot Keywords: bare chested male bondage, camel, remake by original director, ancient egypt, exodus, remake, chosen one ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: This movie charts the rise and fall of Yuri Orlov, from his early days in the early 1980s in Little Odessa, selling guns to mobsters in his local neighborhood, through to his ascension through the decade of excess and indulgence into the early 1990s, where he forms a business partnership with an African warlord and his psychotic son. This movie also charts his relationship through the years with his younger brother, his marriage to a famous model, his relentless pursuit by a determined INTERPOL Agent and his inner demons that sway between his drive for success and the immorality of what he does.
Plot Keywords: arms dealer, prostitution, sex standing up, government agent, helicopter, husband wife relationship, interrogation ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Interview-style biography of controversial and pioneering stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce. The film traces Bruce from his beginnings as a Catskills comic to his later underground popularity based on his anti-establishment politics and his scatological humor.
Plot Keywords: stand up comedian, jewish, self destructiveness, drug addiction, courtroom, law, judge ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Jewish-American writer Jonathan Safran Foer is a collector of his family's memorabilia, although most of the items, some which he takes without asking, would not be considered keepsakes by the average person. He places most of those items in individual Ziploc bags, and hangs them on his keepsake wall under the photograph of the person to who it is most associated. He has this compulsion in an effort to remember. He is able to tie a photograph that he receives from his grandmother, Sabine Foer, on her deathbed - it of his grandfather, Safran Foer, during the war in the Ukraine, and a young woman he will learn is named Augustine - back to a pendant he stole from his grandfather on his deathbed in 1989, the pendant of a glass encased grasshopper. Learning that Augustine somehow saved his grandfather's life leads to Jonathan going on a quest to find out the story at its source where the photograph was taken, in a now non-existent and probably largely forgotten town called Trachimbrod that...
Plot Keywords: ukraine, anti semitism, firing squad, vegetarian, wedding ring, homosexual, eastern europe ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In NYC's Chinatown, recluse math genius Max (Sean Gullette) believes "everything can be understood in terms of numbers," and he looks for a pattern in the system as he suffers headaches, plays Go with former teacher Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), and fools around with an advanced computer system he's built in his apartment. Both a Wall Street company and a Hasidic sect take an interest in his work, but he's distracted by blackout attacks, hallucinations, and paranoid delusions..
Plot Keywords: cult film, independent film, conspiracy, nosebleed, computer, obsession, headache ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In the early 1960's, sixteen year old Jenny Mellor lives with her parents in the London suburb of Twickenham. On her father's wishes, everything that Jenny does is in the sole pursuit of being accepted into Oxford, as he wants her to have a better life than he. Jenny is bright, pretty, hard working but also naturally gifted. The only problems her father may perceive in her life is her issue with learning Latin, and her dating a boy named Graham, who is nice but socially awkward. Jenny's life changes after she meets David Goldman, a man over twice her age. David goes out of his way to show Jenny and her family that his interest in her is not improper and that he wants solely to expose her to cultural activities which she enjoys. Jenny quickly gets accustomed to the life to which David and his constant companions, Danny and Helen, have shown her, and Jenny and David's relationship does move into becoming a romantic one. However, Jenny slowly learns more about David, and by association ...
Plot Keywords: 1960s, age difference, coming of age, teenage girl, loss of virginity, girls' school, culture ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: At the age of 38, Mark O'Brien, a man who uses an iron lung, decides he no longer wishes to be a virgin. With the help of his therapist and his priest, he contacts Cheryl Cohen-Greene, a professional sex surrogate and a typical soccer mom with a house, a mortgage and a husband. Inspired by a true story, The Sessions, follows the fascinating relationship which evolves between Cheryl and Mark as she takes him on his journey to manhood.
Plot Keywords: pubic hair, breasts, oral sex, female pubic hair, ejaculation, sex in bed, female nudity ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Alexandria, 391 AD: Hypatia teaches astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy. Her student Orestes is in love with her, as is Davus, her personal slave. As the city's Christians, led by Ammonius and Cyril, gain political power, the institutions of learning may crumble along with the governance of slavery. Jump ahead 20 years: Orestes, the city's prefect, has an uneasy peace with the Christians, led by Cyril. A group from the newly empowered Christians has now taken to enforce their cultural hegemony zealously; first they see the Jews as their obstacle, then nonbelievers. Hypatia has no interest in faith; she's concerned about the movement of celestial bodies and "the brotherhood of all". Although her former slave doesn't see it that way.
Plot Keywords: roman empire, ancient egypt, atheism, atheist, astronomy, slave, miscarriage of justice ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: On the run and hiding in the deep forests of the then German-occupied Poland and Belorussia (World War II), the four Bielski brothers find the impossible task of foraging for food and weapons for their survival. They live, not only with the fear of discovery, contending with neighboring Soviet partisans and knowing whom to trust but also take the responsibility of looking after a large mass of fleeing Polish Jews from the German war machine. Women, men, children, the elderly and the young alike are all hiding in makeshift homes in the dark, cold and unforgiving forests in the darkest times of German-occupied Eastern Europe.
Plot Keywords: partisan, nazi occupation, year 1942, anti semitism, hiding, shot in the arm, binoculars ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: "The Believer" explores a Jewish student's private journey to understand the meaning of Judaism in his life. Set in New York City, the Plot follows a morally confused young adult struggling with the conflict between his beliefs and his heritage. "The Believer" examines themes of religion, family, and self-loathing. It is a psychological examination into the forces of intolerance, both on the individual and society as a whole.
Plot Keywords: skinhead, synagogue, anti semitism, racism, nazism, jew, vomiting ...
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