The Israeli film, Waltz With Bashir, picked up a Best Foreign Film nomination for next months Academy Awards. The film should win that category and is, in my opinion, better than all of the films nominated for Best Picture. A truly wonderful film and this ecstatic review contains Natalie’s thought of the film.

At the Cannes Film Festival in May, the film struck me as “a stimulating and provocative meditation on responsibility and morality.” Festival juror Natalie Portman noted at the closing press conference that when “a film as good as ‘Waltz With Bashir’ ” doesn’t win a major prize, you know competition was especially formidable. Neither opinion, it seems to me now, went far enough. I doubt anyone could remain unmoved by what this picture says, and I can’t imagine a filmmaker finding more bracing cinematic ways to express it.