Holy Lands

Its a drama that does a take on many issues and topics. its an old american emigrating to israel, the holy land, to start a pigfarm, an illdescision in a jewish/muslim area. so he meets grat protests from a lot of religious groups and people.

at the same time his former wife who still live in newyork ,gets ill, and will die soon. they have a son whos gay, and a daughter that seems to full time student forever.

its a story about death,birth, relations, friendship, religion, cousine,rituals,traditions, politics, love, hate, and pigfarming

the technical product is nice, the score lives its own life, the acting are allover good, but what seems to me as a drawback is the fast jumping between the persons and locations. it makes it all seem so incoherent, so if your not in the mood you might leave the show pretty fast. but the playtime is perfect and the story is good so the grumpy old man can recommend a watch

I really liked this, I love Rosanna Arquette and she was amazing in this. It touched on many topics, relatable and believable, family, friendships, religion, age sickness and death, and I have to say this was my favorite James Caan movie in awhile. He became the character and was so believable in this it was very touching. A great movie for a weekend. Good job, loved it!

If this work was based on an actual family's story it might have resonated better but, Amanda Sthers, seemingly fictional story, tends to miss its mark.

The writing style tries way too hard to be 'trendy/modern' as well as too often jarringly 'different' for its own sake- this tends to make it rather more boring than involving, IE; why did the main character choose 'Pig' farming in Israel?

With a more conventional approach it might have been more human, As is, it's just too overloaded with 'political' statements about certain elements of modernity, and unsure of its connections with the past (as it tends to perhaps need more of) Has moments of thoughtfulness but, not enough to cut through the convoluted melodramatics to make you fully care.

In my opinion, this is the type of movie that should have worked a lot better than it did.

With seasoned fine actors like James Caan Tom Hollander, Rosanna Arquette, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers one would think that even more so. However, the characters here are too superficial, the thematic elements often fall into melodrama, and there are a number of scenes that are just head-shakingly bad.

For example, Caan's character, the cantankerous Harry, who as you probably know by now has moved to Israel to run a pig farm, has not heard from his daughter (Efrat Dor) for a little while as she's traveling to meet him at the farm. So when she finally shows up, what does he do? Hug her:? No! He slaps her hard across the face. Huh? Other than that scene, there's no other traces of Harry being abusive physically.

Overall, there are some moments that work here, but for the most part I thought the film came across as frustrating, even annoying and just didn't work.

Not particularly shallow either. It's just trying way too hard. Holy Land expects to tick off the viewers emotions in a box like fashion - emotions don't work like that. Viewing it more resembles an awkward dating experience than the emotional rollercoaster it is trying to be.