Review: A Real Pain

Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

People are enigmas and when it comes to understanding another's pain, we're all basically tourists. How can it be, for instance, that someone could be a lonely person when they are the ones who command attention in a room when they enter it or be the first to make friends when they meet a group of strangers?

This is one of many questions in Jesse Eisenberg's sophomore directorial effort, "A Real Pain," which marks a major step forward for the actor's efforts behind the camera. The film, which runs a brisk 89 minutes, follows the story of two American Jews - David (Eisenberg) and his cousin, Benji (Kieran Culkin) - who are on a Holocaust tour of Poland to reconnect with the homeland of their recently deceased grandmother, Dory.

David is neurotic and lives in New York City with his wife and young child, while Benji - who considered Dory his best friend - is a man adrift, apparently living with his mother in Binghamton and seeming to have no current prospects on how to move his life forward.

While David takes great pains to be mannered among the small group with whom he and Benji are taking the tour - it consists of a good natured guide (Will Sharpe), a single woman (Jennifer Grey), a Rwandan genocide survivor who has converted to Judaism (Kurt Egiywan) and an aging couple (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadovy) - his cousin, on the other hand, has no problem pushing buttons.

And yet, the group responds to Benji, both his antics (getting them all to pose in front of a statue representing Poland's efforts in World War II) and gregariousness to his occasional outbursts (in one scene, he takes umbrage with the concept that a group of Jews are riding in posh first-class on a train when Polish Jews during the Holocaust rode trains to concentration camps in deplorable conditions; during another at a Polish graveyard, he critiques the guide's insistence on talking in a place where hushed respect is, perhaps, more appropriate).

For a movie about grief, "A Real Pain" is often riotously hilarious. From a comparison between two goodbyes involving the tour guide, Benji, and David to a scene in which Benji's over-exuberance in hearing about the Rwandan survivor's experiences makes one cringe, this film has some of the biggest laughs of any movie I've seen in the past few years.

But it's also a somber picture. The film's score fades away for a moment when the group tours a concentration camp as silence is the only noise befitting such an occasion. There are constant reminders of the horrific things that went on in the country that Benji and David are touring some decades before. There is also, of course, what appears to be the recent loss of the men's grandmother. 

And then, there's whatever is going on beneath the surface with the two cousins. There's a reveal late in the film in which David overshares with the group about Benji's struggles. It's a powerful scene because Eisenberg's David is so convincing in portraying how a person can love someone deeply - in this case, his cousin - while at the same time finding him as abrasive, off-putting, and frustrating as most others feel who come into contact with him.

Eisenberg has somewhat more of a challenge as the buttoned-up David, but "A Real Pain" belongs to Culkin, whose Benji is one of the more memorable film characters I've experienced in some time. He's the guy who never quite grew up and masks his pain with boisterous - and occasionally obnoxious - behavior. He's funny and charming, but can also turn on a dime and make things awkward when something rubs him the wrong way. It's one of the year's great performances.

And "A Real Pain" is one of the year's great movies. It's a lean film that uses its time wisely for great impact. It's loaded with laugh-out-loud moments but there's also a lot to unpack in this story of two people who care about each other but have drifted apart due to the events of their lives. There's something admirable about trying to put oneself in another's shoes and attempting to understand their pain but, as this film argues, this is something that none of us can fully comprehend. 

Review: Emilia Perez

Image courtesy of Netflix.

It's been quite a season of unique moviegoing experiences, from the outrageous horror satire "The Substance" and the gutter poetry of Sean Baker's Palm d'Or winner "Anora" to Jacques Audiard's trans crime musical "Emilia Perez." The latter was a hit at Cannes and is certainly audacious.

The picture opens with a lawyer named Rita (Zoe Saldana) winning a court case for a client whom she knows to be a murderer. Shortly thereafter, she is contacted by an even bigger criminal, a Mexican cartel leader named Manitas Del Monte, who has an unexpected job for her. 

Manitas wants to transition to become a woman and needs someone to move his family - which includes Jessi (Selena Gomez) and several children - to Switzerland, help him fake his death, and start a new life after having a sex-change operation.

Some years later, Rita is in London for work and runs into a woman named Emilia Perez (Karla Sofia Gascon), whom she soon figures out was the former cartel leader. At first she fears for her life, but Emilia tells Rita that she needs her help in bringing her family back to Mexico. Of course, none of them will know who she really is.

If you're thinking this is merely a film about a person who has transitioned getting the chance to reconnect with their family, well, you're in for some surprises. Yes, "Emilia Perez" is a musical - and the musical numbers, I'll add, are varied in quality - but it also follows Rita and Emilia's initiative to help families of the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who have gone missing due to cartel kidnappings unearth the bodies of their loved ones. 

"Emilia Perez" is vibrant, well acted, and full of energy. It's also a little all over the place. As I'd mentioned, the musical numbers are a mixed bag - some good, a few I could have done without - and the plot veers wildly - occasionally, it concerns itself with the attempt to relocate the missing people, while at other times it focuses on the tension between Jessi and Emilia, whom the former doesn't know was previously her spouse, and there's even a romance between Emilia and a woman who comes to claim the body of a missing spouse.

But for the most part, "Emilia Perez" works. Saldana gives one of her finest performances, while Gascon - who is apparently a Spanish soap opera star - is a revelation and Gomez is grittier than one might expect. So, while not every single aspect of the picture works - the film is directed by a Frenchman and it has an outsider's view of a country's turmoil that is noticeable - "Emilia Perez" is a unique and engaging moviegoing experience. There's a lot going on in this film and most of it is enticing. 

Review: Heretic

Image courtesy of A24.

Although I'm not sure a movie about religion and control was exactly the remedy I needed after one of the worst weeks in American history, I have to give credit where it's due: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods' "Heretic" is a creepy and unsettling horror movie with a wicked performance by Hugh Grant and one of the spookiest villain's lairs of recent memory.

The film's setup is simple enough: Two young women from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) - show up at a semi-secluded house on a snowy night to spread to the good word. There, they are greeted by a man named Mr. Reed (Grant), who at first seems nice enough as he welcomes them in and makes promises of blueberry pie that his wife is making in the kitchen.

At first, the trio ponder theology through various lenses, from Reed's questions about the Mormon church's history of polygamy to a discussion of which is the best fast food franchise and how that relates to religion. But as Reed begins to act creepier, and the two young women realize that the front door is locked, they recognize that they could be in some sort of danger.

Reed shows the women two doors - one marked "belief" and the other "disbelief." He asks which is scarier: The idea that God exists and allows such suffering or that we might just be all alone on this floating rock out in space. One of the two doors, he says, will lead outside since the front door apparently can only be opened once per day.

There's an interesting point to be made during these discussions before "Heretic" turns into a full-fledged horror movie when Reed tells the women that they thought that his wife - who does not exist - was in the kitchen and that they chose to believe what they were told, even long after signs should have alterted them otherwise. Naturally, he compares their choice to that of believing in God before beginning a lecture, of sorts, on the numerous religions around the world and how close they are in comparison.

The film feels like an unholy blend of topics that Ingmar Bergman might have pondered in his heyday - namely, the role of religion in a world of horrors and suffering - and something similar to the "Saw" franchise. And what ultimately makes the film work is Grant's sinister performance as Reed and Thatcher and East's solid work as the two sisters.

The finale leans a little heavily on aforementioned elements regarding the two young women's faith - and a character seemingly revived from the dead momentarily could, perhaps, have used some rethinking - but this is an otherwise intelligent, moody, tense, and thought-provoking horror movie. Call it elevated horror or whatever you will, but there are few mainstream films - horror or otherwise - these days that tackle weighty subjects in such an engaging manner as this one. 

Review: Anora

Image courtesy of Neon.

Sean Baker's Palm d'Or winner "Anora" is a real spark plug of a movie - a wild, coarse, often funny, and occasionally very sad movie that starts out as being a tale of amour fou, but then spirals into a wild chase through New York when one of its lead characters goes missing.

Baker's films often feature sex workers or those working in sex-related industries. His "Starlet" featured porn stars, while "Red Rocket" chronicled the tale of a former actor in that line of work. "Tangerine" was about two transgender sex workers and his masterpiece, "The Florida Project," followed a young girl and her mother, who occasionally dabbled in sex work.

The title of his new film refers to the full name of Ani (Mikey Madison), a Russian-American exotic dancer who occasionally lets a client take her home for money. Ani's sharp tongue and observational insights seemingly disarm her clients - while performing a dance at a strip club, a client asks her if her family knows where she is at the moment. She poses the same question to him.

One night, Ani meets Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a fun-loving young Russian who is living in the United States at the moment, while his oligarch parents reside in Russia. He offers to pay her for sex, so she makes several trips to his ridiculously laid-out pad in New York City's outer boroughs. He then invites her to a New Year's Eve party and, finally, to Las Vegas, where in the spur of the moment, he proposes to her.

Not too long after their hasty marriage, two men - Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) - show up at the door and tell Ivan that his parents want the marriage annulled and that they are flying to the United States to see that this is carried out. Ivan flees the scene and Ani engages in a physical struggle with the two men that goes from being unpleasant to comical. Another man, Toros (Karren Karagulian), who works for Ivan's family shows up and the four take an extended cruise through New York City as they search for Ivan.

"Anora" is really made up of three parts - the first sequences of partying when Ani meets Ivan, the search for Ivan, and a finale in which Ivan's family arrives. The first third - the amour fou section - feels like a blast out of a cannon, all propulsive motion as Ani and Ivan meet and fall in love. The second half often feels absurdist as the four characters search for Ivan and spend a lot of time hurling invective - or, in one scene, just hurling - at each other. The final third is the most, at times, poignant or, at others, just downright sad.

Madison, who was previously seen in one of the recent "Scream" sequels and as a Manson family member in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," gives a star-making performance. She's a ball of fire and her character is among the most memorable I've seen in a film this year. The rest of the cast is good as well, especially Borisov as Igor, who gets off on the wrong foot with Ani, but eventually tries to make amends.

While "Anora" is quite good, my favorite Baker film is still "The Florida Project," which was one of the biggest gut-punch films I've seen in the past decade (and my favorite movie of 2017). "Anora" has a gut punch of its own and by the time you get there, you'll realize how many mood shifts the film has undergone and how Baker deftly juggles hilarity and heartbreak in the course of its two hours and 20 minutes. 

Review: Here

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.

 
The concept for Robert Zemeckis' latest film, "Here," is ambitious but the execution, unfortunately, doesn't quite match it. In theory, the film sounds like a great idea - a reunion between the director of "Forrest Gump," one of the biggest films of the 1990s, with its two co-stars, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, that involves a time shifting narrative all from the perspective of a single camera angle from the corner of a room. 

The film is based on a graphic novel by Richard McGuire that tells the story of a single plot of land, from the dinosaurs to the colonial period of American history up through the 1920s and World War II and, finally, settling in to tell the story of a family from the 1940s to the present. The primary story in the film involves World War II veteran Al (Paul Bettany) and his wife, Rose (Kelly Reilly), and their children, one of whom grows up to be Richard (Tom Hanks).

The main concept at play in the film is that Richard and his wife, Margaret (Wright), live with Al and Rose and feel stuck in the house for decades, complicating their marriage, while at the same time Richard gives up his dream of being an artist to sell life insurance and Margaret regrets that she's never gotten out to see more of the world.

One of the film's primary stumbling blocks is its use of de-aging technology that makes Hanks and Wright look like younger versions of themselves. The somewhat plastic-looking versions of these actors often mute the emotions that their characters are emoting. The scenes in which they are older are more convincing.

There are some issues in the script department as well. Often, the characterizations feel a little skin deep and the fact that the film jumps back and forth in time so frequently - from story to story - means that any momentum that starts to build is quickly cut off during a scene, only to be replaced by stories taking place on the plot of land in the past, which include an aviator and his wary wife, an inventor and his significant other, Benjamin Franklin's grandson, some Native Americans living on the land before a home was placed there, and a Black family who move in after Richard and Margaret have moved on.

One example is a sequence during which the father of the Black family is explaining to his son how to act if he is ever pulled over by a cop. The scene's power is undercut by the fact that it is brief and then is quickly followed by some other foray into one of the past stories. Only Richard and Margaret's story is given any weight and even they are frequently interrupted by a quick jaunt back several hundred years.

"Forrest Gump" was a film that gave a tour of the 20th century through the eyes of its main character. "Here" occasionally includes landmarks as that film did - we hear The Beatles on TV for the first time, lots of reruns old TV shows, and the occasional needle drop ("Our House" is maybe a little too on the nose) - but it doesn't feel as momentous because we aren't seeing these moments through anyone's eyes so much as they are being used as indicators as to what year we are in at any given moment. While this is helpful from a narrative standpoint, the constant jumping around in time ends up giving all of the stories the short end of the stick.

"Here" has its moments - a reunion between two of the characters in the house and a home movie screening are effective scenes - but for those hoping for something that resembles Zemeckis' past hits, namely "Forrest Gump," his latest feels more like a conceptually interesting experiment that doesn't quite stick the landing.

Review: Conclave

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

The most interesting movie about organized - or, in this case, disorganized - religion in some time, director Edward Berger's "Conclave" is likely to be one of the year's most talked about films, and not only due to that twist near its end. 

The movie plays like a political thriller, although its story would not suggest such intrigue. "Conclave" opens with the death of a pope, who seemingly left behind his share of secrets and some unresolved palace intrigue. Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, the man who has begrudgingly been tasked with leading the conclave that will select the next pope.

Although the film doesn't go so far to suggest that Lawrence has lost his faith, he openly tells his closest allies in the church - which include Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) and Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), a man whom no one in the Catholic Church hierarchy knew even existed until he turned up for the conclave from Kabul, where he secretly presides - that he doesn't believe he's the man for the task.

In one of the film's strongest scenes, Lawrence opens the conclave with a bit of controversy - a speech in which he attacks the nature of certainty, which he says removes the mystery of religion but also, in turn, the necessity of faith itself. 

Lawrence's speech could be viewed as a warning to some of the cardinals vying for the spot as the church's leader. Among those gathered include the ambitious Cardinal Tremblay, who will resort to unethical tactics to remove others from contention; Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), an African bishop with some controversial views and possibly some skeletons in the closet; Bellini; and Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), an Italian who wants to overturn the liberal order favored by Lawrence and Bellini and return to an ultraconservative church.

While the film is not technically a thriller - other than the pope dying in the opening scene, the only other violence in the film is a series of surprise terrorist attacks around Rome during the course of the conclave - it sure plays like one.

When Bellini's candidacy begins to falter and Tremblay and Tedesco begin to rise to the top of the pack, the liberal consortium begins to panic and two unlikely figures end up getting pushed to the forefront. I won't give anything else away, other than to say that Lawrence gets a chance to question how much he himself wants to be part of the church's power structure and there's a major plot reveal late in the film regarding another character.

Fiennes has long been an actor of great stature, but his performance here ranks among his very best. Tucci is solid as Bellini and I'm not sure I've ever seen Lithgow play such a loathsome character (other than his villain role in "Blow Out"). Diehz is the film's breakout performance as the cardinal whom no one even knew existed and whose role as a Mexican cardinal leading missionaries in dangerous locales around the world (first, the Congo, and then Baghdad and Kabul) lend him an air of mystery.

This is a very intriguing film, especially as the film is less about religion and more about power structures. In fact, the most interesting element that has anything to do with religion in the film is Fiennes' early speech about the dangers of certainty - although this is also clearly aimed at the regressive beliefs of some of his fellow cardinals, namely Tedesco, who gives a long-winded speech attacking Muslims and calling for the church to conduct a holy war amid the terrorist attacks in Rome.

Berger's previous film, the adaptation of "All Quiet on the Western Front," was solid and was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, but I think "Conclave" is even better. It is, thus far, one of the standouts in a year that has otherwise been a bit lackluster so far.

Review: We Live In Time

Image courtesy of A24.

It's been a while since I've seen a weepy that aims to tug at the heartstrings like "We Live in Time," a reasonably decent romance featuring solid performances by Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh. In the early 2000s, these types of films were seemingly everywhere, especially following "The Notebook" and the boom of Nicholas Sparks adaptations. But they've been curiously fewer and far between since - perhaps the COVID-19 era wore out viewer's tolerance for stories centered around diseases.

This film, which is told out of sequence (and, on occasion, a little confusedly) tells the story of the romance, marriage, childbirth, and ultimately battle against cancer for Almut (Pugh), a successful chef who wants to take her career to the next level, and her husband, Tobias (Garfield), whose work has something to do with promoting a cereal, although it's oddly nebulous.

It's a little unclear why director John Crowley ("Brooklyn") tells the story out of sequence, other than the impact that a specific scene can have when we learn new information that sheds light on something that came before. At times, this can feel gimmicky, but at others it works.

The film's most interesting moments revolve around Almut's work as a chef. Once she is diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer, she is told by her doctor to go easy in terms of work. However, she takes part in a challenge involving chefs from around the world - and without her husband knowing about it - in which she partners with a younger chef from her restaurant. The film also features what has to be the most memorable birth sequence of recent memory.

"We Live in Time" is somewhat by-the-numbers in how it handles the romance between Almut and Tobias - they have a meet-cute that involves her hitting him with her car - and her battle with cancer. But what makes the scenes work, for the most part, are the film's lead actors, both of whom are good here. 

The film doesn't reinvent the wheel for this type of picture or do anything you haven't seen before - its non-sequential format is its most unique element - but it's slightly better than your average film in this subgenre.