A Real Pain, 2024.

Written and Directed by Jesse Eisenberg.
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Ellora Torchia, Liza Sadovy, and Daniel Oreskes.

SYNOPSIS:

Mismatched cousins David and Benji reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair’s old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.

At one point on the Holocaust tour in Poland, Benji (a devastatingly complex Kieran Culkin) loses his cool and freaks out. To be fair, he does this multiple times in writer/director/star Jesse Eisenberg’s achingly effective but sharply funny A Real Pain (marking his return to Sundance following up his debut feature When You Finish Saving the World), portraying a somewhat contradictory individual, tormented and lost following the death of his Jewish grandmother, seemingly the only adult who was able to successfully ground him. Part of the magic trick here is that Kieran Culkin is fully raw, vulnerable, authentic, and hilarious throughout every bit of his unexpected, brash, and sometimes uncalled-for behavior. 

Traveling with his close cousin from New York to Poland to reconnect and pay respects to their grandma, Jesse Eisenberg’s David is also unsure what to expect, repeatedly calling Benji on the way to the airport as if disaster is going to strike if he doesn’t check up on him often. They also share polar opposite personalities, with David being, well, the socially awkward and nervous Jesse Eisenberg moviegoers are familiar with, whereas Benji is a directionless stoner (he has also arranged for some marijuana to be delivered to him at the hotel they will be staying at in Warsaw) who needs this trip as a form of therapy. As a married father, David takes time out of his busy life to be there for his cousin and provide support.

Being present is a huge theme in A Real Pain, but considering these cousins are also taking up a Holocaust tour before ending their vacationing week by visiting their grandmother’s home (where she lived in Poland before experiencing 1,000 incidents of luck to avoid concentration camps and flee the country), it’s also about suffering and the different baggage people bring to these situations. One minute, Benji is playful and encourages the rest of the group to pose alongside some memorials of soldiers, pretending to be medics or fighting alongside the resistance. In the next scene, he could be irritable riding first class on a train expressing that such privileged treatment feels distant from the reality of what his grandmother and others lived through.

Grouped up with a non-Jewish but friendly, well-meaning tour guide named James (Will Sharpe), Benji also points out that the nonstop barrage of facts, especially when visiting a historic cemetery, also feels cold and counterproductive to the experience. This shouldn’t be about statistics, but something that can be felt. In that same vein, David and Benji must also have difficult conversations about the past and what the latter will do in the present (there’s one revealed that, while sensitively handled, also feels like something this story doesn’t even need.) However, the actors do have charming chemistry whenever they are alone and reminiscing about the good times, which is unsurprisingly dynamite when things turn serious. 

A Real Pain is historically and culturally emotional as it is personally involving, with Jesse Eisenberg noticeably evolving as a filmmaker. Here, he is confident and comfortable taking brief moments with cinematographer Michał Dymek to linger on statues, murals, and architecture or anything that might deliver a vicarious feeling that we are alongside these characters on this tour. There’s a beautiful, soft scene where buildings and landmarks are rattled off, each with a shot of what exists there now. It’s enough to make one wish the film delved even deeper into the historical context and the tour itself.

Naturally, this also elicits curiosity about what they will find when the cousins inevitably visit their grandmother’s former home. Whatever it is, we hope Benji finds healing and that the struggles would then he and David’s relationship will also feel repaired (it’s that typical notion of feeling lost when a relative no longer has time to be carefree and hang out constantly since they now have a family.) Without giving it away, David certainly tries resulting in a painfully funny, cathartic sensation. A Real Pain is a multilayered look at generational trauma with poignant and hilarious complex chemistry from its leads.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

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When Jude Law and Justin Kurzel set out to make “The Order,” a period piece about neo-Nazis in the Pacific Northwest, they couldn’t have known that the events of the early 1980s would be as timely as they are today. Yes, groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers had been in the news from the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., through the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021, but the idea of an energized white power movement with tacit presidential approval had faded — until Donald Trump was reelected.

“We started developing the script, and then January 6 happened, and I’m seeing nooses outside the Capitol building, and there were pictures of people holding ‘The Turner Diaries,’” says director-producer Kurzel, referring to the 1978 novel that became a foundational text for white nationalists. “As we filmed and edited, and as the film played at festivals, it is interesting how it’s sort of sharpened up in terms of how much it’s speaking to the temperature at the moment.”

During the campaign, Trump himself vowed to fight what he calls “anti-white feeling” in the U.S., and shortly after the election, the FBI said it was investigating threatening text messages sent to Black Americans, Latinos and people in the LGBTQ+ community around the country.

Based on a true story, “The Order” stars Law as Terry Husk, an FBI agent sent to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1983 to investigate a string of bank robberies. He soon discovers they’re tied to a group called the Order, a splinter sect of the Aryan Nations led by Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), a firebrand bent on a takeover of the U.S. government.

Jude Law stars as a damaged FBI agent, along with Jurnee Smollett and Tye Sheridan.

(Michelle Faye/Vertical)

“It’s important to say it didn’t start with Bob Mathews,” notes Law, who produced the film through his Riff Raff Entertainment banner. “Nor did it end with him. This is a social issue that’s been going on for years and years and years. How do we deconstruct a world to stop it from happening? Is there a way? What does it take to defy them, to break them down? You can start with basic answers like education and employment. It usually starts with the blame game and one side having what others don’t and who has more money.”

Husk is a composite of the many law enforcement officials who took part in the investigation, a fictional character with whom the filmmakers could paint a portrait that would dramatically contrast with the real-life Mathews.

“We talked about damaging him and having him be under par,” Law says about Husk’s surgical scars, nosebleeds, prescription drugs and heavy drinking. “It’s important that Mathews underestimate him. And to do that, I wanted him to be busted, like, ‘Is this guy going to make it through the afternoon, let alone solve the case?’”

As Mathews, Hoult sports an unseemly Dutch-boy haircut masking steely determination. With leading-man good looks and sharp comedic timing, Hoult has only recently turned to his inner demons for inspiration, playing Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s upcoming reimagined “Superman.” As Mathews, he displays a charismatic pull that draws disaffected young men into the Order.

“We understand the danger in him. But why is he surrounded by kids?” wonders Kurzel. “Why is he surrounded by people that gravitate to him? Why is he having barbecues, what is that pull?”

It’s a question that resonates today as young men are increasingly drawn toward toxic male figures. “It wasn’t so long ago [when] it was a heavily male-dominated society,” says Law. “Women would probably say it still is, and it probably still is, unfairly, but it’s left young men feeling vulnerable. And vulnerable minds and hearts and bodies are easy to prey on. We’re driven by testosterone, which is easier to trigger. You set up a climate of haves and have-nots, and there’s a natural male need to have and to provide.”

“As we filmed and edited, and as the film played at festivals, it is interesting how it’s sort of sharpened up in terms of how much it’s speaking to the temperature at the moment,” producer-director Justin Kurzel says of “The Order.”

(Chris Large/Vertical)

A two-time Oscar nominee (“The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Cold Mountain”), Law has several projects in the works: Upcoming films include “Eden,” co-starring Vanessa Kirby, Ana de Armas and Sydney Sweeney, and he’s currently in preproduction on Olivier Assayas’ “The Wizard of the Kremlin” with Alicia Vikander, as well as “Sherlock Holmes 3,” in which he’ll reprise his role of Watson. He can be seen now in “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” on Disney+, and next year in “Black Rabbit,” a Netflix miniseries Riff Raff produced. It was through that project that he met “The Order” screenwriter Zach Baylin and his wife, Kate Susman, who are its showrunners. (Kurzel directed two episodes of “Black Rabbit.”)

“The last couple of things I had that came out recently were delayed because of the [actors’] strike,” says Law about the sudden flurry of activity. “I’ve been fortunate enough to be asked to do some interesting work, and ‘Black Rabbit’ was something that came out of my production company. So I was excited to also be able to steer a piece I really believed in and wanted it to happen.”

It takes only a few strategic bars of tinkly piano score to suggest that the protagonist of How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (Lahn Mah) might trade his cynical motivation for selfless devotion before the end credits roll. But the unapologetic sentimentality doesn’t make this bittersweet comedy-drama any less touching or insightful in its observation of spiky family interactions when end-of-life issues and questions of inheritance cause sparks. Thailand’s submission for the international Oscar is the country’s first entry to make it onto the 15-title shortlist.

The debut feature from television and documentary director Pat Boonnitipat was a blockbuster in its domestic release, crossing borders to find similar success elsewhere in Southeast Asia and grossing an estimated $73.8 million worldwide. It’s easy to see why. Viral social media exposure that sprang from Manila theater staff handing out tissues prior to each screening and audience members posting videos of themselves in floods of tears on the way out no doubt helped.

But what’s perhaps more significant is the perceptiveness and affection with which the screenplay by Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn and Boonnitipat captures a family dynamic that’s complicated and imperfect but grounded in a loving sense of intergenerational duty, even if concerns of personal benefit can get in the way. In the story, that dynamic is very specifically Asian, but the basic plot mechanics are sufficiently universal to resonate anywhere.

The theme of death is established with a welcome lightness of touch in an opening scene set on the day of the Qingming Festival, when families of Chinese origin visit the graves of their ancestors to clean the sites, scatter flowers and make ritual offerings of food and incense. The religious holiday matters most to Mengju (Usha Seamkhum), the crotchety grandmother of the title, fondly addressed as Amah by her family. She’s bossy and frequently critical of them, mostly with good reason.

Her eldest son Kiang (Sanya Kunakorn) is a financial trader whose wife and daughter chime in via video call, prompting Amah to point out that they never visit her. Her youngest son Soei (Pongsatorn Jongwilas) is a deadbeat with a gambling habit. The middle child is careworn supermarket worker Sew (Sarinrat Thomas), the most dutifully attentive of Mengju’s three children. However, the fact that Sew’s son M (Putthipong Assaratanakul, aka “Billkin”) has dropped out of college with the pipe dream of making money as a videogame streamer seems to reflect badly on Amah’s daughter.

When the old woman expresses her wish to be put to rest in a grand burial plot, the awkward responses suggest that none of her family will be volunteering to foot the substantial bill. While still at the cemetery, Mengju has a fall and is taken to hospital, where an examination reveals that she has stage 4 stomach cancer. The family decides to keep the grim news from her.

Meanwhile, M studies his savvy younger cousin Mui (Tontawan Tantivejakul) as she cares for their wealthy paternal grandfather in the final months of his life and then inherits most of his estate when the old man dies. Mui swiftly sells his house and moves into a modern high-rise apartment, where she sidelines as a sexy nurse on OnlyFans. She advises M to insinuate himself as Amah’s primary carer and get into pole position in her will, telling him he’ll stop noticing the “old person smell” after a while.

M starts turning up unannounced at his grandmother’s house in one of Bangkok’s Chinatown districts, where she makes a humble living selling congee at a local street market. Mengju is immediately suspicious of his motives, proving resistant when he tries to ingratiate himself with her, which prompts M to break the news of her cancer diagnosis.

Mengju accepts the prognosis with stoical calm and drops her objections when M moves in to take care of her, accompanying her at 5 a.m. each day to her congee stand. Even so, she’s an irascible woman who’s set in her ways and determinedly self-reliant, which makes her prickly during the next weekly family gathering, when even Kiang’s wife Pinn (Duangporn Oapirat) and daughter Rainbow (Himawara Tajiri) make a rare appearance.

It soon becomes apparent that almost everyone hopes to inherit Amah’s house, especially as her condition worsens and chemotherapy fails to produce results. Hard-working Sew (Thomas is the standout of the supporting cast) is the only one who cares for her mother altruistically. She’s more pragmatic than self-pitying when she observes, “Sons inherit money, daughters inherit cancer.”

The patriarchal imbalance and the tendency in traditional Asian families to favor sons — who carry on the family name — over daughters play out effectively both in developments with Mengju’s estate and in the grandmother’s own history.

In one lovely sequence, M takes her to visit her well-heeled older brother (Wattana Subpakit) and his family in their palatial home. It’s a cozy reunion, enlivened by the elderly siblings doing karaoke, until Mengju asks him for money to buy her funeral plot. She reveals to M that despite caring for her parents in their dotage, they left their entire estate to her brother, partly because of their low esteem for the husband they had chosen for Mengju in an arranged marriage.

The heartfelt movie is ill-served by an international title that suggests broad comedy — the original Thai title, Lahn Mah, means “Grandma’s Grandchild,” which comes much closer to capturing the story’s emotional center.

Even if Jaithep Raroengjai’s score leans into the sentiment, M’s growing fondness for Amah — and vice versa — is conveyed with a depth of feeling that steers it clear of the trap of formulaic schmaltz. Their bond slowly supplants his earlier opportunism. And surprising developments in the final act build to an affecting conclusion in which the sadness is mitigated by unexpected rewards.

Strong ensemble acting makes the family a believable unit, their differences notwithstanding. But it’s the evolving rapport between M and Amah that makes the film so captivating, played with humor and sensitivity by Assaratanakul — also a successful T-pop singer and Gucci brand ambassador, drabbed down in sloppy slacker gear for this role — and delightful newcomer Seamkhum, a natural in her first feature. The 78-year-old actress was signed to a modeling agency after being spotted on video in a dance contest for seniors and has been seen primarily in commercials.

In addition to eliciting solid work from his cast, the director imbues the movie with a vivid sense of place, working with DP Boonyanuch Kraithong to mark dividing lines of wealth in various Bangkok neighborhoods, notably the historic, traditionally Thai Chinese Talat Phlu community where Mengju lives.