Netflix has just released the trailer for its new movie, Unfrosted, directed by and starring Jerry Seinfeld, which tells the story of the invention of Pop-Tarts. Generally, I am not a fan of movies about products, such as Air and Barbie, because they tend to turn into feature-length commercials, but judging from the trailer, this one looks like fun, as it details the competition between Kellogg’s and Post to create the first mass-produced breakfast pastry, in 1963. In addition to Seinfeld, it stars Melissa McCarthy, James Marsden, Dan Levy, Hugh Grant, and Amy Schumer, and it will be released in early May. It looks like it will showcase Seinfeld in his silliest mode – remember the episode on Seinfeld when Kramer made a pasta statue of him called Fusilli Jerry, “Because you’re silly” – and that could be just what we need right now.
IF YOU’RE an Amy Schumer fan, you’ll want to catch her very enjoyable series, Life & Beth, which is available on Disney+ and through Yes and Cellcom TV. The first season came out in 2022 and a second season, which was released recently, continues at the high level of the first. Schumer created and wrote the series and of course stars in it. As its title suggests, it blends humor with a more serious story about a woman trying to change her life, with flashbacks to her tween years, a kind of coming-of-age story combined with a coming-of-middle-age dramedy.
When it opens, Beth (Schumer) is a successful wine salesperson, in a long-term (maybe too long) relationship with a fellow salesman at her company, the entertainingly shallow Matt (played by a very funny Kevin Kane). Everything should be great with her, but nothing is, and you can hear her self-doubt and boredom with her life every time she opens her mouth. She hasn’t seen her father in years, has drifted away from the friends she grew up with, and has a fraught relationship with her mother (Laura Benanti). The first episode features a perfectly depicted, classic fight/not-quite-fight between Beth and her mother while Beth is trying on clothes in a store, which captures the essence of so many mother-daughter relationships.
After the sudden death of someone close, Beth sets out to change her life, moving back to Long Island, reconnecting with old friends and eventually with her troubled father, who is played affectingly by Michael Rapaport in one of the best roles he has had in years.
She also meets a new love interest, John (Michael Cera), a refreshingly blunt farmer who seems a lot like Schumer’s own husband, at least based on the way she has described him in interviews. Much of the show seems to have been inspired by Schumer’s life, and this gives it a ring of truth, and unlike so many series today, it doesn’t seem like it was dreamed up by a committee trying to make a generic crowd-pleaser. It’s also nice that Beth is a secular Jew who has dealt with antisemitism, but whose Jewish identity is simply part of who she is; it isn’t the centerpiece of the show.
How good is this series? It’s so good that even some Irish critics gave its latest season good reviews, in spite of Schumer’s support for Israel. Critic Donal Lynch, writing in Irish Independent, noted that her recent comments “cast a pall” over the season, but acknowledged that he managed to enjoy the series anyway.
The best Israeli series you never heard of
THE BEST Israeli series you’ve never heard of, Kathmandu, just started streaming on Netflix. The show, set in a Chabad House in the titular city, has English subtitles, unlike many of the Israeli series on this streaming service, and tells the story of a young couple who run the place and the travelers who pass through. Gal Gadot gives the best dramatic performance of her career so far, playing a young woman who comes looking for her sister, who has disappeared somewhere in Nepal. Unfortunately, the series only one season, in 2012. Maybe it’s time for a second season, with different characters.
IF YOU don’t remember the details of the Ben Zygier case, or even if you do, the new three-part documentary series, Prisoner X, which will start showing on Hot 8 on April 9 and will be available on Hot VOD, makes for fascinating and harrowing viewing.
Directed by Hilla Medalia, one of Israel’s finest, most prolific documentary filmmakers, and Amos Roberts, it tells the story of Zygier, who was found hanged in his cell in the Ayalon Prison in Ramle at the age of 34 in 2010. The guards there only knew him as “Prisoner X.” A gag order was placed on reporting about the case following the discovery of his body, but three years later, the Australian journalist Trevor Bormann revealed his identity: He was Ben Zygier, a young man from a prominent Jewish family in Melbourne, who moved to Israel, where he became a lawyer and got married, fathering two children. In the early 2000s, according to reports, he was recruited into the Mossad, and carried four Australian passports with different names.
But what did he actually do for the Mossad, and how did it land him in prison? What were the circumstances of his death – was it a suicide, as the prison authorities claimed, or a murder meant to keep him quiet, as others have suggested? And why was the media not allowed to publish information regarding his death – and why, as one reporter interviewed asserts in the film, was there even a gag order on reporting the gag order? Those are some of the questions Medalia and Roberts attempt to answer in the series, which was also a film that was shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
Some of the answers turn out to be that Zygier was sent, on his Australian passports, to countries such as Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, in his capacity as the representative of front companies for the Mossad that sold defective equipment. Later, he was suspected of having been involved in the assassination of Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in a Dubai hotel room, which was carried out by Mossad agents, some of whom used Australian passports. He was also said to have revealed the identity of Mossad agents in Arab countries to a Hezbollah operative, perhaps seeking to recruit the operative, who apparently double-crossed him. Once imprisoned, he was pressured to agree to a plea bargain, but wanted to clear his name completely, his lawyers say. However, there is conflicting testimony by interviewees and there is no way to know exactly what is true.
The biggest mystery at the heart of the case is how Zygier, a likable young man who was an idealistic, committed Zionist, ended up where he did. This part of the film is the most interesting, because it goes beyond what you can read in news reports on the case, and you get more of a sense of what he was actually like. His old friends recall an outgoing guy with a sense of fun, but who, later on, used to boast about being in the Mossad, which they thought was a joke – what Mossad agent would brag about it? The pain his family suffered is also part of the story of this drawn-out, tragic case, and this series will stay in your mind long after it ends.
THE SHOSHANI Riddle, the documentary about a mysterious 20th-century genius, which was set to be shown on Kan 11 on March 30, was postponed because of breaking news and will be shown on April 20.
ANOTHER NEW documentary, Telling Nonie by Paz Schwartz and Uriel Sinai, will be shown on Kan 11 on April 6 (and will be available on Kan.org.il), and tells a gripping story of the first targeted assassination by Israel in the Gaza Strip, which took place in 1956. Many decades later, Geizi Tsafrir, the Israeli Shabak agent who carried it out, gets in touch with the target’s daughter, Nonie Darwish, who now lives in Los Angeles, and gradually reveals his role in her father’s death, hoping to ease his conscience. Darwish has become an activist against Islamic extremism and supports peaceful coexistence between Jews and Muslims in Israel. She recalls her own memories of the assassination, and the story of Darwish and Tsafrir takes some unexpected turns, which the film chronicles.