56 | DECEMBER 19 • 2019
Arts&Life
celebrity jews
MOVIE NEWS
Opening Dec. 20 is Star Wars:
The Rise of Starwalker. Advance
publicity promises this film will be
the final part of the nine-episode
Skywalker saga. I won’
t go into
plot details. I will simply note that
this one, like the last three really
big Star Wars films, was directed
and co-written by J.J. Abrams,
53. A sad note: Carrie Fisher,
who died in 2016, does appear as
Princess Laia one more time via
footage from the two Star Wars
films she made just before her
death.
Bombshell follows several
women at Fox News as they set
out to expose Fox News founder
Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) as a
serial sexual harasser. Two well-
known Fox newscasters, Gretchen
Carlson and Megyn Kelly, were the
most prominent of Ailes’
victims
(played by, respectively, Nicole
Kidman and Charlize Theron).
Margot Robbie co-stars as Kayla,
a composite figure whose story
combines the harassment stories
of several other women. Jay
Roach, 62, directed. His many
credits include the Austin Powers
and Focker films. He converted to
Judaism around the time of his
1993 marriage to Susanna Hoffs,
60, the lead singer of the Bangles,
a pop group most popular in the
’
80s. (Opens Dec. 20; Robbie and
Theron are 2020 best actress
Golden Globe nominees).
Opening on Dec. 25 is Uncut
Gems, a black comedy crime film
directed and co-written by brothers
Josh and Benny Safadie (they
are 35 and 33, respectively). The
brothers, raised in New York, are
of Syrian Jewish background. This
is their first big-budget studio film,
having made five well-received
smaller budget flicks in the last 12
years. Gems has got great advance
reviews, with star Adam Sandler,
53, getting unusually good notic-
es. Sandler plays a jewelry store
owner who is a compulsive gam-
bler. He must find a way to pay
his debts before it is too late. The
supporting cast includes Idina
Menzel, 48, and Judd Hirsch, 84.
STREAMING CHOICES
The documentary Mel Brooks:
Unwrapped is now streaming on
HBO. Filmmaker Alan Yentob, 72,
has conducted interviews with Mel
Brooks, now 93, since 1981. The
documentary deftly combines this
interview footage with other mate-
rial to give us a wonderful portrait
of a truly funny man. Yentob,
former BBC creative director, was
born in the U.K. to Iraqi Jewish
parents.
Buzz is that The Witcher, a
Netflix action-fantasy series that
begins Dec. 20, will be something
of a Game of Thrones replace-
ment. It centers on a solitary
“monster hunter” (Henry Cavill)
who lives in a sort-of-medieval
world. British Jewish actor Adam
Levy, 49, has a large supporting
role (Mousesack). His father is an
Iraqi Jew. His mother is Russian
Jewish.
NATE BLOOM
COLUMNIST
HILARY BRONWYN GAYLE SMPSP
Charlize Theron as
“Megyn Kelly” and
John Lithgow as
“Roger Ailes” in
Bombshell, opening
Dec. 25.
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