Here are capsule reviews of a sampling of movies being screened the first week of the Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival:

Remember "The Man Who Came to Dinner" -- that guest who fell and ended up staying more or less permanently? This is "The Boy Who Came to Help Clean."

His name is -- well, Miri has no idea. He's the 6-year-old son of her Chinese maid, who brought him along to help. When Miri comes home from a long day's work as an El Al flight attendant, the mother begs her to watch the kid "just for one hour" while she runs an urgent errand.

But mama never comes back to claim him.

Melancholy Miri (Mili Avital) is a two-time widow with yet another preexisting domestic problem: cynical, sharp-tongued sister Gila (Anat Waxman), with whom she shares their Tel Aviv apartment. Gila is bitter about her impending divorce from Izzy (Alon Aboutboul), who works and flirts with Miri.

Talk about tension. Not to mention sibling rivalry. Both of their lives have been screwed up, and the resultant bickering never ends.

"I'm sorry you were offended," Gila says.

"You're sorry you offended me?" Miri corrects.

"I'm sorry I was born," she replies.

A cease fire and some kind of alliance are necessary to figure out what to do -- and how to communicate -- with a shell-shocked boy who speaks no Hebrew.

Gila asks what his name is.

"I don't know -- Mao Tse-Tung," Miri guesses.

They settle on "Noodle" and set forth to find his mom.

Of the uniformly fine performances adorning the film, none is better than little BaoQi Chen's in the title role. Picked and plucked from 2,000 candidates in Hong Kong and Shanghai, he is as darling as they come, whether sitting immobile and staring at a table top or (occasionally) freaking out or gorging himself on Chinese take-out.

In my favorite scene, he teaches Miri and Gila the proper way to shovel and slurp-suck noodles (with accompanying noise and face spatter). The waif's quiet "oooh," when he finds out about Miri's husbands, will tug at your heartstrings.

Director-writer Ayelet Menachemi ("Tel Aviv Stories") moves things along briskly, with the help of many convenient coincidences: A passenger on one of Miri's flights is Gila's ex-lover -- who happens to be fluent in Mandarin. Overall, there's more matchmaking than in "Hello Dolly." But momentum drives melodrama, and vice versa, in the film's suspenseful final gambit.

"Noodle" goes down easy -- a perfect opener for the 15th annual Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival. It's a gentle, "Kolya"-esque, feel-good family fairytale.

Bring some Kleenex.

See note with schedule.

-- Barry Paris, Post-Gazette film critic

'STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME'

Reality TV contestants like to blather about their "soulmates," so much that the word has been robbed of its meaning. However, this documentary will prove that the description still applies to Jack Polak and Ina Soep.

Their love was kindled in their native Holland, after Germany had invaded and begun deporting Jews. Jack and Ina met briefly at a birthday party in June 1943 and ended up at the same transit camp, in the same barracks, with Jack's wife, Manja. The three later were sent to Bergen-Belsen, although Ina had been on the list for Auschwitz.

"He was so in love with Ina it was, I don't know, extraordinary," one of Jack's sisters recalls. "That also kept them alive because they had each other. They lived on it."

"Steal a Pencil," which is what Jack asked Ina to do so he could write to her, tracks this ever-improbable love. It doesn't gloss over the disappearance of parents, the news that a brother was stoned to death or the unrelenting hunger, filth, desperation, illness and death.

But it celebrates how love, the written word, optimism, coincidence and fate brought and bound this couple. It's a joy and an affirmation to be in their presence, and director Michele Ohayon does justice to their remarkable story.

-- Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette movie editor

'THE CHAMPAGNE SPY'

In the early 1960s, Ze'ev Gur Arie took his son, Oded, to see the James Bond adventure "From Russia With Love" starring Sean Connery. He laughed and said, "It's much more interesting in real life."

And he would know, because he was a real-life spy for Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) whose wife and teenage boy were in Paris while he was in Egypt masquerading as a former Nazi and high-society horse breeder named Wolfgang Lotz. His assignment was to keep an eye on German scientists helping Egypt develop weapons that could destroy Israel.

"He was the kind of man who could look the Angel of Death in the eyes, never lower his gaze, invite him to a drink and raise a glass to him," a colleague says of the champagne spy. "He had nerves of steel."

This is the tale of a son whose childhood was fraught with fear -- that he would let something slip about his father's job or whereabouts, that his dad would be unmasked as an Israeli and executed, that his mother would be shattered by events beyond her control.

To tell a story about a fearless spy, a fractured family and the dangers of playing a role so well that it becomes part of you, director-writer Nadav Schirman relies on candid interviews with relatives, friends and Mossad operatives, along with recent and archival footage that is every filmmaker's dream.

The movie focuses so tightly on its subject that it doesn't explore how this shaped Oded's marriage and fatherhood or how his mother spent her final decades. The movie is protective of her, even as it peels away the secrets of a spy who believed you only live twice.

-- Vancheri

'KNOWLEDGE IS THE BEGINNING'

This movie would have made an excellent "60 Minutes" segment or even a 90-minute documentary. But at 115 minutes, it's too long and somewhat repetitive, even as it charts music as a bridge to understanding among Jews, Arabs and other Middle Easterners.

It builds to a historic, emotional event no one thought possible, but it's limited by its scope, focusing on the musicians during their tenure in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra but not doing much follow-up or interviews with parents and others outside the ensemble's protective cocoon.

The orchestra -- young musicians from different cultures, countries and faiths playing in harmony -- was the brainchild of Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said. The documentary, which spans a half-dozen years, is filled with the occasional famous face, such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma along with orchestra members identified only by first name and country.

Charismatic, forthright Barenboim acknowledges, "This is not going to bring peace, you know that. ... What it can bring is understanding the patience, the courage and the curiosity to listen to the narrative of the other." In a war-weary world, that is sweet music, indeed.

-- Vancheri