The Israeli Movie Channel on Yes is featuring a tribute to Yitzhak Shani, one of Israel’s great veteran movie producers, on his 90th birthday, which falls on April 14. On April 19, it will screen several of his films in an all-day program.
Shani, who started out as author/director Ephraim Kishon’s lawyer and produced many of the beloved Israeli classics of the 1980s and earlier, now owns the Lev Cinemas chain. The channel will show Alex is Lovesick (1986), directed by Boaz Davidson, arguably Shani’s most famous film, in its Private Screening series, where the producer will watch his film and comment on it. This dramedy tells the story of a boy (Eitan Sneh), growing up in a typical Polish family in Israel in the 1950s. He falls for his Aunt Lola (Sharon Hacohen), who arrives from Europe to search for her lost love. Yosef Shiloach plays the family’s kooky tenant.
Another classic Shani produced, also directed by Davidson, is Azit, the Paratrooper Dog (1972), which will also be included in the tribute. Azit is a friendly neighborhood dog with military training who ends up going behind enemy lines to rescue soldiers from terrorists. They really don’t make them like this anymore. If your children are not too jaded to watch a movie that doesn’t have great production values by today’s standards and is generally a bit dated, you should introduce them to this film. It’s a must for dog lovers.
Hacks – Hot VOD, Next TV, Yes VOD, Sting+
If you’re trying to figure out what to watch now at the end of season three of The White Lotus, the most uncannily engrossing series in recent years, there are a few options on the horizon. Season four of Hacks is coming up on Hot VOD, Next TV, Yes VOD, and Sting+ starting April 11, and the series will be broadcast on Saturdays starting April 12 on Hot 3 at 10 p.m.
Hacks is a comedy series about Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a pioneering female stand-up, and her 25-year-old writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder), who has been canceled for an ill-considered quip. The two have ratcheted up the tension between them higher than ever now that Ava managed to secure the head writer job on Deborah’s new late-night show at the end of the previous season. I wasn’t really sure at the end of the third season that we needed another one, but I’ve always enjoyed Smart in this role, for which she has won three Emmys.
The Handmaid’s Tale, The Last of Us – Hot, Next, Yes
I stopped watching The Handmaid’s Tale back in season two, when a character I liked had some body part amputated and all the torture became too relentless, but it has a loyal following, and the first episode of season six, the final one, has just started running on Wednesdays on Hot 3 and is also on Hot VOD and Next TV.
If zombie shows that aren’t really about the zombies are your thing, the second season of The Last of Us is coming to Cellcom TV, Hot HBO, Hot VOD, and Next TV, and Yes VOD and Sting+ on April 14. There’s a five-year time jump between the end of the previous season and the new one, and a few twists in store for fans.
Your Friends and Neighbors – Apple TV+
“You have this very strange mix of confidence and low self-esteem,” says a young woman to Jon Hamm, who plays Coop, the hero of Your Friends and Neighbors, in the opening episode of the new series, which starts streaming on Apple TV+ on April 11.
She could be describing Don Draper, the anti-hero Hamm portrayed on Mad Men, one of the gems of television’s new golden age. It seems strange to think that in May, it will be a full decade since that series ended its run, and Hamm seemed poised for superstardom. But over the last decade, this comedian in the body of a leading man has stuck mainly to capers, such the Fletch movies, and comedies, like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, as well as voice acting for cartoons.
Your Friends and Neighbors is mostly a caper series, recycling the trope that people seem to love – about middle-class people (or in this case, upper middle-class ones) who are forced into a life of crime to support themselves the way they’re used to being after they suffer a reversal of fortune. That was the basic story behind Weeds, Ozark, Good Girls, and so many other movies and series.
In this series, Coop is a hedge-fund manager reeling from a divorce after his wife (Amanda Peet) cheats on him with a friend. He makes the mistake of having a one-night stand with a young woman who works at his company. Faster than you can polish a Rolex, his smarmy boss (Corbin Bernsen, who played Arnie Becker on L.A. Law) fires him and freezes his stock options, reminding him that he can’t work for any competing firms for two years.
At a garden party, he wanders through the home of one of his neighbors and realizes how much expensive stuff they have just lying around. It’s hard to imagine that someone could have so many watches that cost $200,000 that they won’t notice if one is missing, but according to this series, that’s the case.
Soon, he is grabbing up some of these luxury goods and selling them to a tough-talking Bronx grandmother (Randy Danson) who runs a pawnshop, and trying to figure out how much more he needs to sell to get by.
He also has to figure out what’s going on with his on-again, off-again girlfriend (Olivia Munn of The Newsroom, who has been very ill with cancer for a couple of years but who looks great here). Mad Men fans will recall that no one is better than Jon Hamm at playing resentful befuddlement, and he gives it his all here. The writing in the series aims high, for the snappiness of legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard, but can’t make it and the script is talky and obvious. At least a lot of the dialogue is delivered in Hamm’s laidback, sexy voice.
A Complete Unknown, The Substance – buy or rent
If you enjoyed the recent Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, and know that you’ll want to see it again, it’s already available to buy on Apple TV+ for about the same price as a movie ticket, and will be available to rent in May at a lower price.
Another movie you may have missed in theaters, The Substance, can be rented on Apple now. It’s a horror movie about the lengths a washed-up former movie star, played memorably by Demi Moore, will go to look younger. She gets a tip that she should inject herself with the titular substance, which will make her look like Margaret Qualley for seven days, and then she’ll go back to being herself for another week. Soon, her younger self decides to stop sharing the spotlight and all hell breaks loose.
