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an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Ronit Elkabetz plays a mother raising two sons in a hardscrabble coastal neighborhood. One son is a sensitive boy just entering puberty. The other, a few years older, is trouble, and he somewhat comes between her and her man, a bearish and perpetually unshaven fellow played by Tzahi Grad. Fine, but this description applies to two different movies-- both "Zion and His Brother" and "Flood." Someone negligently released "Zion and His Brother" two weeks or so after "Flood," and it seems to have sunk without a splash. On the last day of its premiere week at our local cineplex, my wife and I constituted half of the audience. And it's a shame, because the script is deservedly an award-winner and the acting is fine. Actually Elkabetz and Grad are less central in this one than the kids are. The kids are played by unknown actors, and frankly they look unknown-- you couldn't pick them out in a classroom-- but they do the job of carrying the movie. The attention of the audience-- well, of my wife and me and the other couple-- is held by the uneasy constellation of relationships despite the bleakness of the setting.