Reel Advice: Religious experiences

Those waiting for the proper follow-up to Zach Braff's amazing directorial debut Garden State will have to wait a little longer. His new movie, Wish I Was Here (Focus), doesn't get us there. In the tradition of the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man, Jill Soloway's Afternoon Delight and Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child, Wish I Was Here is a "Jewy" (a term used by Soloway) dramatic comedy about questioning everything from religion and the existence of God to family and responsibility to careers and personal happiness, and more.

Failed actor Aiden (Braff, who played gay in 2000's Broken Hearts Club) and his half-Jewish wife Sarah (a decent Kate Hudson) send their daughter Grace (Joey King) and son Tucker (Pierce Gagnon) to yeshiva, a private school whose tuition is paid for by Aiden's father Gabe (a restrained Mandy Patinkin). But things are about to change. Gabe, whose cancer was in remission, is sick again. This time it looks worse than before and Gabe's unable to continue being Aiden's kids' benefactor.

With that as the backdrop, Aiden has to make serious life choices. Does Aiden give up his dream? Do they send the kids to public school or home-school them? Can Aiden get his socially awkward genius brother Noah (Josh Gad of The Book of Mormon) to make peace with their father before he dies? These are just a few of the somber issues facing Aiden.

The trouble is that Braff can't decide just how serious he wants to be here. It's an important decision because he is dealing with heavy and emotionally draining material. But Braff begins things on a high comedic note, in a scene involving an overflowing "swear jar", followed by another amusing scene at an audition where he runs into Paul (out actor Jim Parsons in what is a subtle nod to Garden State). What we are left with is indecisive self-indulgence with moments of authenticity (the hospital scene with Grace and Gabe, for instance) and wayward wackiness (oy vey, there's an ancient rabbi on a Segway!). An admirable, if overly long achievement, Braff also deserves praise for the way he works modern poetry into the film. Wish I Was Here is worth seeing if you don't go in with great expectations.

Spanning more than 60 years, including childhood flashbacks, the DVD The Jewish Cardinal (Film Movement) is a dramatization of the true story of Jewish Cardinal Jean-Marie Aaron Lustiger (Laurent Lucas), directed by Ilan Duran Cohen. A holocaust survivor and the son of Polish immigrants, Lustiger's childhood conversion to Catholicism is one of the factors that lead to him being named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II (Aurélien Recoing) in the early 1980s.

Studying Hebrew in Paris in 1979 with the goal of being a priest in Jerusalem, Lustiger is surprised to learn that the pope has other plans for him. Named Bishop of Orleans, Lustiger not only encounters resistance from his widowed shopkeeper father (Henri Guybet) and cousin Fanny (Audrey Dana), but also conservative Catholics. As he rises through the ranks of the church, becoming an archbishop and finally a cardinal, Lustiger becomes famous for both his short-fuse and his boundless capacity for compassion.

Throughout the film, Lustiger insists on maintaining a sort of Jewish identity, at one point referring to himself as "God's mixed child," declaring that he didn't desire his fate; that it came upon him. Because of this dual heritage, Lustiger is thrust into a situation involving the insensitive establishment of a Carmelite convent on the grounds of Auschwitz (where Lustiger's mother perished). This is an especially eye-opening segment as it portrays the Polish Catholic clergy's ignorance about the symbolism of Auschwitz and also succeeded in reigniting anti-Semitism in Poland 50 years after the war. Due to Lustiger's determination to communicate the urgency of the situation to the pope, who was utterly blinded by his obsession with the defeat of the godless communists, that a resolution was eventually reached and a healing process could begin.

The biggest problem with The Jewish Cardinal, and one that proves to be an unnecessary distraction, is that the passage of time is well documented in the faces of some characters (Pope John Paul II, for instance), while others, including Jean-Marie and Fanny are simply (and unbelievably) ageless. If you want to see a better representation of a similar type of story, see Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida, currently playing in theaters. Isabelle Stead's short film Kosher, about a boy and his pig, is among the bonus material.