No./ 11 Taika takes on the Oompa-Loompas

THE LIST OF filmmakers able to pull off a movie about a young boy whose imaginary best friend is mass-murdering dictator Adolf Hitler is extremely short. In fact, it may be a list director Taika Waititi. The New Zealand filmmaker became the first person of indigenous descent to win an Oscar for his Nazi-era comedy earlier this year; that Waititi cast himself — a proud Polynesian-Russian-Jew — as a goofy version of Hitler was itself a middle finger to the Führer, and a smart appropriation of a racist white icon.