Day 799 - ToI's movie maven reviews 'Jay Kelly,' now on Netflix
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to The Reel Schmooze with ToI film reviewer Jordan Hoffman and host Amanda Borschel-Dan, where we bring you all the entertainment news and film reviews a Jew can use.
This week, the pair speaks about two new movies, the feature film, "Jay Kelly," and the short documentary "Carol & Joy."
But first, we hear in this week’s “Jangle” segment, an update on a story from last week regarding one of the Holocaust survivors featured in the film, "Eleanor the Great," Sami Steigmann, who was asked not to speak at a Brooklyn middle school about antisemitism due to his pro-Israel views.
Our second Jangle involves the impending sale of Warner Bros Studio. Hoffman has some passionate thoughts.
We then speak about "Jay Kelly," a 2025 comedy-drama directed by Noah Baumbach and written by Baumbach and Emily Mortimer. For Borschel-Dan, it was a screening in two sleepy parts that ended with a "meh" rating. Hoffman was (slightly) kinder.
Both were united in their appreciation for the documentary, "Carol & Joy," directed by Nathan Silver and starring actress Carol Kane and her 98-year-old mother, Joy Kane. It is a delight of a film and... executive produced by a The Reel Schmooze regular, Natalie Portman.
Hear which film got a seal of approval on this week's The Reel Schmooze.
The Reel Schmooze is produced by the PodWaves and can be found wherever you get your podcasts.
IMAGE: George Clooney, from left, director Noah Baumbach, and Adam Sandler pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Jay Kelly' during the London film festival, October 10, 2025. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Times of Israel's The Real Shmuse. I'm your host Amanda Borchelle Don here with our movie maven Jordan Hoffman for all the news and movie reviews as you can use. Jordan, thank you so much for joining me. |
| 0:20.1 | Where are the t-shirts with that slogan? Yeah, and in fact, my deputy, I have a deputy, Yakov, whom you know, he's... I know what's funny is I've known Yaakov through email for a decade. I've never actually seen him. I don't know what he looks like. I have a vision in my head. Okay. Well, that's amazing. And you should draw it and then we'll compare the actual |
| 0:41.2 | Yaakov. Good, good, yeah. But Yaakov was saying to me the other day that his significant |
| 0:46.8 | other was trying to trick him into going to that five and a half hour Russian movie. But he knew |
| 0:53.0 | not to take the bait because he is a real Jew, |
| 0:58.2 | R-E-E-L-Jew. Because he listens. He listens. That's such a great toadbag, right? I'm a real Jew. |
| 1:04.9 | I like that, too. Well, but I do want to say kudos to Yakov's significant other because that movie is terrific. |
| 1:12.1 | And even though it is lengthy, it is phenomenal. |
| 1:15.3 | The movie is called My Inconvenient, or my, not my inconvenient friends, my something, something friends by the Russian-American Jewish director, Julia Lokhtov. |
| 1:25.4 | It happens to be five and a half hours long, but it zooms by. |
| 1:28.8 | We talked about it last week. We don't have to talk about it. Yes, indeed. And as I mentioned, Diakov, on a winter day, it's a place where you can go in the theater, warm and dry. And I'm sure if you miss, you know, five minutes here and there for potty breaks, you're okay. Anyway. It's totally appropriate. This episode, we are going to speak about two movies. |
| 1:48.6 | One is the feature film called J. Kelly, which is now on Netflix. |
| 1:53.7 | And the other is a documentary by Nathan Silver called Carol and Joy. |
| 1:58.9 | And it's about Carol Kane, whom we all love from Taxi and other things, and her 98-year-old |
| 2:06.3 | mother, Joy. |
| 2:08.0 | And I just can't wait to talk about both of this. |
| 2:10.5 | Good. |
| 2:11.3 | Good. |
| 2:11.5 | But first, let's have a bit of a jangle. |
| 2:15.0 | So this is the segment in which we bring our Jewish entertainment news, |
| 2:19.4 | the Jewish angle to entertainment news, or the jangle. And Jordan, I'm going to start this |
| 2:25.2 | week because I have an update on the story that we were talking about last week. So if you remember, |
... |
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