Jordan Hoffman reviews 'Melania' and 'Zelig': Mockumentary at its finest
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
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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.
Hoffman delights with his New Jersey quest for the best cottage cheese in the world -- Israeli -- much to the utter scorn of Borschel-Dan before turning to his scathing review of the new Amazon "documentary" charting the life of First Lady Melania Trump prior to the inauguration.
We hear a theory that producer Melania Trump attempted to recapture the Eastern European propaganda look of her youth in the MAGA vehicle probing her napkin choices and Hoffman rates her success.
In the same genre of mockumentary, we take a new look at the masterful 1983 "Zelig" by Woody Allen.
Check out the one "oy" and one "not baaaaad" film (our highest mark) in this week's The Reel Schmooze.
The Reel Schmooze is produced by Ari Schlacht and can be found wherever you get your podcasts.
IMAGE: First Lady Melania Trump and US President Donald Trump before the premiere of her movie 'Melania' at The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, January 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert, File)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Times of Israel's The Real Shmooze, bringing you all the entertainment news and movie reviews a Jew can use. |
| 0:13.5 | I'm your host Amanda Borchelle Dunn here with our movie Maven, Jordan Hoffman. |
| 0:19.2 | Jordan, thank you, as usual, so much for joining me today. |
| 0:23.3 | It's a great day here. |
| 0:25.0 | I'm happy to be speaking with you. |
| 0:26.9 | And Amanda, I know we have a lot of movie news and television news and entertainment |
| 0:31.4 | news to talk about, but we have to address something very important. |
| 0:36.7 | Several weeks ago, you and I had a conversation about the difference between American and |
| 0:42.5 | Israeli cottage cheese. |
| 0:44.3 | Oh. |
| 0:45.5 | Do you remember this? |
| 0:47.1 | I do. |
| 0:47.8 | And you know that cottage cheese is actually in the news, in the hard news. |
| 0:53.0 | It is on the website right now. Did you know that? |
| 0:56.5 | No, I mean, why is this day different from any other day? Isn't cottage cheese always in the news? |
| 1:01.1 | Tell me what's going on in Israel with the cottage cheese. Well, today, the day that we're recording, |
| 1:05.6 | which is Wednesday, there is a huge protest happening in Jerusalem, just a kilometer or two from our offices where I'm sitting right now over this proposed milk reform. |
| 1:17.2 | And our finance minister is basically allowing more imports to come in. |
| 1:23.4 | And so that would kind of break the bank for some of our Israeli farmers. |
| 1:27.7 | And so they're here in the streets, spilling milk into the streets in protest. |
| 1:33.8 | And just think of all the cottage cheese that could have been made from that milk. |
| 1:37.1 | Oh, my God. |
... |
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