Eitan Kensky

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• Posted Boston Jewish Film Festival: Hello Goodbye to Bostonist
  There's a scene in Daniel Burman's Empty Nest--a film we reviewed earlier this year for a screening sponsored by the Boston Jewish Film Festival--where the two main characters, a husband and wife, arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport and are summarily subjected to a search of their possessions, the passport authorities doubting their intentions. Suddenly the wife puts a stop to it. "We're Jewish," she says, "I know the dances," and just as quickly she and the agents break into a rendition of an Israeli folk dance. It's a punctuated moment of glee in what had been a mostly tempered affair.
• Posted Boston Jewish Film Festival: Opening Night with Eli and Ben to Bostonist
  Eli and Ben, the opening film for this year's Boston Jewish Film Festival, is a far more muted affair than last year's The Deal. In this post-Madoff world, the showy tale of a Hollywood flim-flam man whose defining strength is his ability to talk story, the ability to effortlessly pile layers of lies on top of each other, is somehow out of step and no longer palatable. There's been too much artifice already. Times call for quieter, more restrained movies such as this one, a coming-of-age story that looks not so much at the loss of an innocence as a genealogy of morality. Bonus: Eli and Ben also happens to be a pretty good movie.
• Posted IFFBoston Preview: The Brothers Bloom to Bostonist
  2005 was a great year for Meta Film Noir (if such a genre exists). Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang injected new vitality into the detective story with its use of humor and not-so-subtle breakdowns of the sexual roles found in the classic films of the thirties and forties. Noir always had rich parts for women, be they femme fatales or expanded damsels in distress, but the sexual potency of the protagonist was rarely questioned.
• Commented on Reel Hub: Mickey, Sean, and Ty at the BSFC
  Hey Ty, Thanks for the comment. In all fairness to you, your description of the video was spot-on (it was hilarious), and it would have been impossible to really spoil Rourke's musings. Any word on when we can expect to...
• Posted Reel Hub: Mickey, Sean, and Ty at the BSFC to Bostonist
  Last night at the Brattle theater, the Boston Society of Film Critics gathered to hand-out their annual awards. It was the second time the organization held an actual ceremony, and the group wisely decided to use the opportunity to single out the people that make the Boston film world what it is, the curators, theater managers, authors, and projectionists whose unqualified love of film make going to the movies here a singular experience. We...