Elia Suleiman partly based the laconic satire The Time That Remains on his own memories of growing up Arab in Israel. At best, his poker-faced vignettes (which span from 1948 to the present) nail the icy comedy of war: A man chats on his cell phone, unworried about a tank targeting him a few feet away. At worst, they're totally opaque and unmoving. Suleiman's obvious gift for cinema makes you wish that in connecting so personally with his past, he'd occasionally reach out to the audience, too.
