NEW MOVIES FROM ALLEN AND SPIELBERG. To confirm what's been previously reported here and elsewhere, Woody Allen's Match Point really is a pleasant surprise, a well-made suspense film that, like the play Doubt, can also be seen as having political resonance. Considering Allen's recent remarks about his own films in Entertainment Weekly (he's unhappy with Manhattan?), I'm not sure he'd agree...but that's how I feel. The acting is damn good, too, with a very strong turn from Scarlett Johansson.

Steven Spielberg's Munich also has political resonance. On one level, it completely obvious: The plot follows a secret Israeli hit team conspiring to avenge Black September's terrorism at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. But there may also a kind of political allegory at work about the dynamics of such activities. The hit men are answerable to a government that officially disavows the existence of such an assassin squad. Left to their own devices, the assassins (not superspies by any means) seem to show independence when they diverge from their directives but ultimately they're at the mercy of shadowy intelligence providers (inside and outside the government, though the film suggests that there might not be that much of a difference). Isolated, manipulated, and in some cases haunted by their lethal mission "for God and country," they are perhaps like many other modern soldiers and militants.

I saw Munich with a friend who was bothered by it. One of her complaints had to do with some heavy-handed "Spielberg moments." I thought some worked better than others. (Homages to The Godfather and The Conversation were egregious yet effective.) My friend also felt that the movie was unfair to Israelis. I can understand that point of view (in addition, some of the portrayals of Jewish characters bordered on negative stereotyping) but I think that the film can be fairly viewed not as a dissection of competing claims or as a definitive portrayal of particular peoples but as a depiction of the hellishness perpetuated by powermongers who invoke such concepts as family, religion, and nationalism to rationalize acts of injustice. It is a tragic sequel to Schindler's List that shows how Holocaust survivors who were so glad to escape to a new homeland found themselves embroiled in yet another infernally compromising situation. In Munich, however, there is no figure of hope.

If you're in one of those book groups that combines books and movies, Munich and George Jonas's Vengeance (or Aaron Klein's Striking Back) should lead to very stimulating conversation. Matt Dentler's Blog links to articles including a Slate piece in which Klein asserts that Munich is "full of distortions and flights of fancy that would make any Israeli intelligence officer blush." I don't always agree with some of Klein's takes on the movie, but it's good to get his perspective on fact and fiction in Munich.