What have you watched lately?

[Thirith]

My wife’s been learning Swedish for a few years now, so we take any opportunity we can to see Swedish films at the cinema. Today a local cinema showed the Swedish comedy Jalla! Jalla! - which wasn’t particularly good, but its director Josef Fares directed the games Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, A Way Out and It Takes Two… and the film’s lead, Fares Fares (he’s the director’s brother), looked familiar… I thought I’d seen his gargantuan shnoz before, and indeed, he played one of the leads in A Way Out, and obviously the character is closely modelled on him, visually as well.

Jalla! Jalla! nonetheless isn’t a film I’d recommend, unless you really like ethnic stereotypes and penis jokes.

[Anarchic Fox]

Oh, RDJ crushed it, especially because he was playing against type. I wasn't complaining about the performance, just that I couldn't not see Odenkirk in the same place where RDJ was any given minute of the film. Part of that is I definitely caught some Saul vibes from his performance, which struck me as somewhat uncanny.

I think Odenkirk would've spoiled the heel turn. That being said, I'm bewildered by the fact that a movie about the atomic bomb saw a need for a villain.

Also, I find it funny how hard the movie tried to portray him as a top physicist. He did not compare to his advisor Max Born, and Born himself was one of the lesser stars in that constellation.

[demagogue]

Sure he wasn't one of the handful of titans, but he wasn't a slouch either. I just watched a nice video walking through his contributions to physics. There were two big things that he jumped the gun on, just without connecting the last piece, Dirac's prediction of positrons and the theoretical discovery of the mechanism for the creation of black holes. Anyway, I think it's fair for a movie like this to thumb the scale a bit just out of literary license since it's ultimately a story for the public, sort of like they also did with Steven Hawking because the public adores him so much.

[henke]

My wife’s been learning Swedish for a few years now, so we take any opportunity we can to see Swedish films at the cinema. Today a local cinema showed the Swedish comedy Jalla! Jalla! - which wasn’t particularly good, but its director Josef Fares directed the games Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, A Way Out and It Takes Two… and the film’s lead, Fares Fares (he’s the director’s brother), looked familiar… I thought I’d seen his gargantuan shnoz before, and indeed, he played one of the leads in A Way Out, and obviously the character is closely modelled on him, visually as well.

Jalla! Jalla! nonetheless isn’t a film I’d recommend, unless you really like ethnic stereotypes and penis jokes.

Oh as it happens I rewatched another one of his movies "Kopps", with some family and friends who hadn't seen it, this weekend. Story of a small town police station which is threatened with shutdown because they don't have enough crimes in the town, so the cops take it on themselves to get up the statistics. Still funny, but yeah, very low brow. Haven't seen Jalla Jalla in ages but I think I mostly liked it.

[SD]

Saw Oppenheimer. Random frivolous take: if you're going to get Robert Downey Jr. to play someone who looks like Bob Odenkirk, and give him a very Bob Odenkirk character to play, you could have just given the role to Bob Odenkirk instead.

They probably felt like they should at least cast some Jews in a movie about Jews.

[Sulphur]

Fair point. Well-represented by giving the title role to a non-Jewish person, but getting the antagonistic stereotype to be played by a Jewish Buddhist.

[SD]

A few people have wryly observed that the present vogue for authenticity in casting seems to apply to every minority but one.

Personally I don't think it really matters, although I did raise an eyebrow about Tom Conti portraying Einstein; that felt a little iffy.