WALK ON WATER
Unrated, 104 mins.

Eytan Fox is a big name is Israel, and a minor, but welcome one in New York. “Yossi and Jagger,” his 2003 feature about frustration and homosexuality in the Israeli army, was a great popular and critical success at home, and long-running local favorite. With a runtime of barely an hour, that slight but affable breakout was exactly as long as it should have been.

Mr. Fox’s latest, “Walk On Water,” clocks in at standard-feature length, and mostly earns the extra minutes. Once again, homosexuality intersects with contemporary Israeli politics. Mossad agent Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi) is the strong, silent type. Tasked with hunting down and killing a geriatric Nazi (“get him before God does”), Eyal poses as a Tel Aviv tour guide in order to glean information from his target’s grandchildren.

Pia (Carolina Peters) lives in a Kibbutz; her brother Axel (Knut Berger) comes to visit and sightsee from Berlin. Uptight Eyal forms a friendship with adorable Axel, but is unsettled to discover the young German’s sexuality, especially after he picks up a young Palestinian at a Tel Aviv nightclub. Tensions rise as Eyal learns of an upcoming family reunion in Berlin and sets off to complete the hit with a growing sense of uncertainty.

Mr. Fox is biting off a lot here: the psychological burden of Nazism on a young generation of Germans; the ethics of assassination; the way sexuality can dissolve racial and political tensions – or inflame them. He’s too pedestrian an artist to fuse a meaningful personal story to these sociological concerns; winning as it is, “Walk On Water” sinks to the televisual and schematic. But his ambitions are laudable, his generosity is palpable, and I suspect his name will continue to grow in stature.

– Nathan Lee

DEAR FRANKIE
PG-13, 102 mins.

Emily Mortimer (“Lovely and Amazing”) stars in “Dear Frankie” as Lizzie, a woman on the run from her abusive husband. Each time she feels him closing in, she uproots her mother (Mary Riggins), and son Frankie (Jack McElhone), settling in one obscure Scottish town after another.

Rather, than let Frankie (who is deaf, and does not speak) know about his real father, she explains his absence by telling Frankie stories of him working on a cargo ship, Accra, that sails around the world, and rarely comes into land. For years Frankie has been writing his father letters, which are intercepted by his Lizzie, who then assumes her husband’s identity and writes him back. One day at school, a friend alerts Frankie that the Accra will be docking in a few days, and Lizzie is faced with the reality that she will have to come clean to her son.

Rather than doing that, though, she finds a nameless man (Gerard Butler) to play the role of Frankie’s long-absent father for one day. The stranger is uneasy at first, and Frankie unsure, but as they spend more time together a real affection develops between the two, and even Lizzie, who has shut herself out away from others, begins to form a bond with the man assuming the role of the person she fears most.

Ms. Mortimer is a real star, and with her winning emotional performance provides a real emotional center to the film, while Mr. Butler, who often plays outlandish, over-the-top characters (he was seen most recently in “The Phantom of The Opera”) is well suited in this smaller, more intimate role.

“Dear Frankie,” though rated PG-13, it is not too adult for children (the Scottish accents may prove troublesome, however). Shona Auerbach’s directorial debut could easily have been a gooey, sentimental bore. Instead this heartwarming film, scripted by Andrea Gibb, is quiet, understated, and quite genuinely touching.

– Edward Goldberger

INTIMATE STORIES
Unrated, 92 mins.

Three vignettes make up “Intimate Stories.” In one, a housewife (Javiera Bravo) travels far away so that she may appear on a tacky game show, where she hopes to win a food processor. In another, a lonely traveling salesman (Javier Lombardo) stops in bakery after bakery, trying to perfect a birthday cake for the son of a client he has fallen in love with. In the third (and most involving), an elderly man (Antonio Benedicti) escapes from his son’s home so that he may find his dog that ran away three years prior but has recently been spotted.

All three people cross paths with each other, though with no real consequence. In fact, the stakes are rather unclear throughout. But this generically titled film has an unassuming charm and accompanying simplicity. The result is a small gem of a film.

– Edward Goldberger