Jake Gyllenhaal, hosting a special screening of his sister Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new film, “The Kindergarten Teacher,” at Metrograph, was all praise for his sibling. (The movie is in theaters, and on Netflix right now.)

“I’ve been watching her act all my life,” he smiled broadly at a crowd that included Christopher Lloyd, Israel Horowitz, Diane Sawyer, and many others including his “Wildlife” director Paul Dano and co-writer Zoe Kazan.

The titular kindergarten teacher joins a roster of edgy women brought to life by Gyllenhaal’s ample talents. Think “Secretary” where her character enjoys a good spanking. In this movie, she’s a thwarted poet who recognizes the poetic gifts of one of her students, a five-year old named Jimmy Roy played by one of the producer’s children’s real life classmates, Parker Sevak. Wishing to nurture his verse, Gyllenhaal’s Lisa goes creepy, unacceptable. Every parent will get the willies watching her become more and more obsessed with savant poet Jimmy. She even tries to pass off the little kid’s potent verse as her own to gain the graces of her own hottie poetry teacher, played by Gael Garcia Bernal.

At a post screening Q&A, Ashley Banfield began by asking which is more fun to play, a prostitute (as in HBO’s “The Deuce”) or a kindergarten teacher. A prostitute, said Gyllenhaal gamely, and yet she spoke eloquently about women like Lisa whose imaginations are curbed by few opportunities and her own artistic limitations. Lisa illustrates the consequences of what happens when you starve a vibrant woman’s mind: “Women twist themselves into a culture that doesn’t care who we are. We are learning right now in our culture how little women’s experiences are heard or valued. People are hungry for something truthful.” As to her own ambitions, Maggie Gyllenhaal is adapting a novel by Elena Ferrante to direct.

Just to show you the Oscar race can’t be prognosticated so easily months out:

Sony Pictures Classics has announced a qualifying run for Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare fantasy, “All is True.” Branagh directed and plays the Bard, Judi Dench is his wife, Anne, and Ian McKellen plays the Earl of Southampton. Ben Elton wrote the screenplay.

The year is 1613, Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest writer of the age. But disaster strikes when his renowned Globe Theatre burns to the ground, and devastated, Shakespeare returns to Stratford, where he must face a troubled past and a neglected family.

Haunted by the death of his only son Hamnet, he struggles to mend the broken relationships with his wife and daughters. In so doing, he is ruthlessly forced to examine his own failings as husband and father. His very personal search for the truth uncovers secrets and lies within a family at war.

SPC already has a lot on its plate: Glenn Close in “The Wife,” two foreign films– “Never Look Away” and “Capernaum.” If they’re trying an Oscar run for this one, it must be good.

I like the timing of this. In a week when the discussion of anti-Semitism is at its peak thanks to the tragedy in Pittsburgh, Mel Gibson is back.

Mel, says the sensitive press release, will star in a movie called “Waldo,” from a little known British television director named Tim Kirkby. Charlie Hunnam (fresh off duds like “Papillon” and “King Arthur” will co-star with Eiza Gonzalez.)

The ironic part of the announcement it that the three producers involved are Jewish. They are Andrew Lazar, Christina Weiss Lurie, and Steve Shainberg. I’m surprised they wanted to work with him. I’m surprised he wanted to work with them.

Lurie is a minority owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, so that answers where the money is coming from. She also funds documentary films.

Mel is Hollywood’s most famous anti-Semite. He runs a church in Malibu for non-diocese Catholics who don’t believe in the Pope, and do believe Jews killed Jesus. He has $70 million parked in a private foundation to run the church.

In 2006, Mel was pulled over in a DUI and told the Jewish cop who pulled him over that “the Jews started all the wars.” Over and over, Mel has not not denied the existence of the Holocaust, not disowned statements by his father to the effect that the Holocaust never happened. His father, Hutton Gibson, is now 100 years old, seriously. Evil will not die.

In an interview I’ve cited many times, Mel said of the Holocaust, “it’s a numbers game,” meaning he thinks the number 6 million dead Jews is invented. Yet Andrew Lazar, Christina Weiss Lurie and Steve Shainberg think that’s ok.

I won’t see this movie, and most of the people I know won’t either. Mel has at least three other movies in the can or finishing up. I get it that they’re B films meant for international sales. But it doesn’t matter.