SYNOPSIS: A mix of humor and pain, “A Real Pain,” a new dramedy from writer/director Jesse Eisenberg, and now playing in theatres, sees polar-opposite cousins David and Benji (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) embark on a tour of Poland to honor their Holocaust-survivor grandmother. As their odd couple trip progresses the double meaning of the title becomes apparent. Is Benji’s wild behavior a pain, or is it the result of pain?
CAST: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, and Daniel Oreskes. Directed by Jesse Eisenberg, produced by Emma Stone.
REVIEW: “A Real Pain” is both an oddball couple comedy and road movie, but, most importantly, it’s about personal pain and coping mechanisms. As David, Jesse Eisenberg says his, “pain is unexceptional,” and yet he is anxious and medicated, hobbled by feelings he cannot control.
Benji (Kieran Culkin), on the other hand, is a raw nerve, charming and charismatic, but quick to temper and bitterly selfish. “Forgive me if I don’t see his magical spark,” says Mark (Daniel Oreskes), another traveller on their heritage tour.
The characters share DNA and a handful of memories, but despite their familial love, they are oil and water, and it is that dynamic that drives the movie.
Despite its subject, “A Real Pain” is a gently amusing movie. There are no jokes in the traditional sense, just situational and character-based humor that bubbles forth through their interactions. David’s exasperation with his cousin’s antics is milked for some laughs, but it is Culkin who delivers the goods.
As Benji he is an anti-establishment motor mouth who makes pronouncements like, “Money is like heroin for rich people,” and never entertains an unexpressed thought. Benji is overbearing, but this isn’t a big performance.
The beauty of it is in the small details.
The way he snaps an elastic band against his wrist as a coping mechanism is a subtle touch but speaks loudly about his state of mind. Culkin grabs Benji’s complexities, his kindness and cruelty, his humor and pain and folds them into one fascinating character.
“A Real Pain” is a quiet movie, with some somber moments, like the tour’s visit to the former concentration camp Majdanek, but Eisenberg finds the tricky balance between the heartfelt moments and the humor.
LOGLINE: “Kinds of Kindness,” a new, absurdist dark comedy now playing in theatres, reteams “Poor Things” director Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone, in three interconnected stories, detailing the codependency between a man and his eccentric and controlling employer, a policeman whose missing wife reappears, but isn’t the person he remembers and a woman devoted to a spiritual leader.
CAST: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hunter Schafer. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.
REVIEW: Director Yorgos Lanthimos follows up the Academy Award winning success of “Poor Things” with another study of the dark side of humanity. The film, “Kinds of Kindness” is a portmanteau, a triptych of tales, each featuring different stories and characters, but the same main cast. Loosely connected, each section deals with some sort of manipulation and falling under the sway of someone who may, or may not, have the best of intentions.
Those expecting a rehash of “Poor Things” or “The Favourite,” the Lanthimos films that edged the Greek director into the mainstream, will have to adjust expectations. This is a return to the, despite the movie’s title, unkind tone of earlier works like “Dogtooth,” “The Lobster,” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” The harder edge brings with it a certain kind of bleak, mean spiritedness that may be entertaining to watch, but not always exactly enjoyable to process as a viewer.
Still, Lanthimos has made a movie that is not soon forgotten.
In a landscape of movies that offer instant gratification, “Kinds of Kindness,” with its unexpected twists and often unpleasant story developments, is one that takes its time to burrow into its audience’s collective consciousness.
To say it takes some surprising zig zags is an understatement, but it’s not simply strange for the sake of being strange. There does seem to be a motive behind the madness of this co-dependency comedy, no matter how impenetrable it may be. Your enjoyment level will depend on your ability to hang on to the mast as the waters get very choppy.
“I Saw the TV Glow,” a new existential drama starring Justice Smith, and now playing in theatres, is a coming-of-age story about someone who never quite comes-of-age.
When we first meet Owen (Ian Foreman), he’s an awkward, suburban seventh grader drawn to Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a ninth grader obsessed with a young adult TV show called “The Pink Opaque.” He’s interested in the series, an “X-Files” for teens with a villain called Mr. Melancholy, but it’s on after his bedtime.
The pair share a love of the show—he clandestinely sleeps over at her place to watch the show on the weekends—and troubled home lives.
In “The Pink Opaque” they find an escape.
Jump forward two years. Owen, now played by Smith, still can’t stay up late enough to watch the show, so he voraciously consumes it on the VHS tapes Maddy makes for him.
On the eve of the show’s cancellation, Maddy disappears, leaving Owen at the mercy of his cruel stepfather Frank (Fred Durst). Years later, she re-enters his life, with a wild tale of where she has been, as his grip on reality slowly slips away.
“I Saw the TV Glow” owes a debt to the surreal stylings of David Lynch. In their telling of the story director Jane Schoenbrun embraces Lynchian themes of appearance vs. reality, surrealism and often impenetrable storytelling. It can make for a confounding experience, as the exploration of pop culture’s effect on identity and individuality reveals itself in increasingly inscrutable ways.
“I Saw the TV Glow” is audacious in its execution, introspective in its narrative and interesting in its aesthetic, but it’s also a bit of a schlep, more ambitious than actually entertaining. It is not a feel-good movie, and has no aspirations in that direction, but as the storytelling becomes opaquer, the film loses its way, revelling in Owen’s awkwardness and mundanity rather than what makes him interesting. The result is a movie that confuses impenetrability with depth.
“Poor Things,” a new Gothic drama starring Emma Stone, is one unique woman’s journey through science, sex and self-discovery.
Based on Scottish writer Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, and set in 19th century London, the story focusses on Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), who, when we first meet her, is a fully grown woman with the mind of a child. Her “mental age and body are not synchronized,” says her guardian, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) a.k.a. “God,” a disfigured man of science with an unconventional mind.
They live in a lavish home, which also houses Godwin’s menagerie of strange animals, like a half chicken, half dog, creations right out of the Island of Dr. Moreau, and an ever-patient housekeeper who cleans up after Bella’s frequent temper tantrums.
When Bella isn’t acting out, she soaks up knowledge like a sponge, wearing her curiosity like a badge. To chart her progress Godwin recruits his protégé Max (Ramy Youssef), a young scientist with an open mind and an open heart.
As Max develops feelings for the young woman, Bella becomes curious about the world outside the walls of Godwin’s home. She gets the chance to explore with lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a flamboyant character who accompanies the now free-spirited Bella off on a romantic, picaresque excursion to Lisbon, Portugal. For the rapidly developing young woman, everything is new and she dives into every experience, including sex with gusto. “Why do people just not do this all the time?” she says to Wedderburn post coitus.
Her journey to self-discovery, free from the prejudices of polite society, sees her plot her own way to liberty by working as a Parisian prostitute, studying medicine, expanding her mind with the writings of Emerson and travelling the world. “I am finding being alive fascinating,” she says matter-of-factly.
An off-kilter “Frankenstein” story, “Poor Things” is the darkly funny tale of a human experiment who is not beholden to her creator. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, she has a lust for life, an eagerness to drink from the chalice and savor every drop. From figuring out how to walk, spitting out food she doesn’t like—“Why keep it on my mouth if I find it revolting?”—to running off to an uncertain future, she finds freedom in the moment, and the zest with which Stone brings Bella to life is irresistible. “Ideas are banging in Bella’s head like lights in a storm!” she says.
It is a raw, strange performance, fearless in its execution. Rich in comedy—it takes a well-defined character to say, “I must go punch that baby,” and get away with it—and deep in pathos, Bella is the kind of character that we’re likely only to see in a film by Yorgos Lanthimos, director of oddball delights like “The Favourite,” “The Lobster,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “Dogtooth,” but it is Stone who makes the character simultaneously hilarious, sympathetic and disturbing.
Stone is supported by Dafoe as a mad scientist who wouldn’t be out of place working alongside James Whale or Tod Browning. It’s a bravura performance, under an inch of monstrous make-up scars, that reveals the human side of a man mostly interested in data, but who makes a space in his heart for Bella.
Ruffalo lets it rip, gleefully embodying the worst of humanity. The old money lawyer is braggadocious, uptight and a bit of a dim wit. The Avengers actor milks Wedderburn for all he’s worth, emphasizing his ridiculous suaveness to create a comedic character that is part Errol Flynn, part Derek Zoolander.
The success of “Poor Things” is due to that trio of performances laid against Lanthimos’s ornate set design and odd-ball sensibility. It is a coming-of-age, a long strange journey unlike any other, but one with a strong message of female agency. “A woman plotting her course to freedom,” says brothel owner Swiney (Kathryn Hunter). “How delightful.”
Richard Crouse makes a Salty Dog, the perfect cocktail to enjoy while paying tribute to animal actor stars of “Cruella,” the latest Disney live-action reboot. Come have a drink and a think about “Cruella” with us!
“Cruella,” now available in select theatres and on Disney+ with Premier Access, is an origin story that explains the reason why one of Disney’s greatest villains hates Dalmatians.
One eventful day defined Estella’s (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) life. In less than twenty-four hours, the precious preteen with the distinctive mop of black and white hair, got kicked out of an upscale private school, snuck into a fashion show and thought, “for the first time in my life, I feel like I belong,“ and developed a lifelong hatred of Dalmatians. I won’t say why, but she does have a good reason to harbor animosity toward the spotted dogs. Most tragically, she lost her mother that same day.
Cut loose and alone, she lands in 1964 London. Falling in with petty thieves Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), Estella (now played by Emma Stone) forms an impromptu family, pulling off scams using disguises designed and made by her own hand.
Still, she’s not satisfied. “I want to be a professional designer,” she says, “not a thief.”
Securing an entry level job at an upscale department store, she gets the attention of The Baroness (Emma Thompson), a cruel, imperious clothing designer who says things like, “Gratitude is for losers.” She is the undisputed matriarch London fashion and will crush anyone who gets in her way.
As Estella rises through the ranks, she becomes aware of a connection between The Baroness and the death of her mother. Until then, she believed she was responsible for her mother’s passing and had gone through the five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Now she adds a sixth stage, revenge.
“I’m starting to remember that you have an extreme side,” says Estella’s old friend Anita Darling (Kirby Howell-Baptiste).
Determined to ruin The Baroness, break her spirit, her confidence and her business. Estella creates an alter ego, the disruptive Cruella. In a series of staged public stunts Cruella humiliates The Baroness and becomes the darling of the fashion world. “Some call her a designer,” a TV talking head breathlessly reports, “some call her a vandal.”
As the “mad, bad and just a little bit sad” Cruella’s antics escalate, Estella’s personality grows fainter. “I’m not sweet Estella, try as I might. I’m Cruella.”
“Cruella” has lots going for it. Great costume design, a rippin’ soundtrack and arch attitude, but by the time the end credits roll, it is all about the dueling Emmas, Stone and Thompson.
“Wow,” says Cruella. “You really are a psycho. “How nice of you to say,” The Baroness snaps back.
Both hand in flamboyant performances that capture the wickedly humorous tone of the story.
Stone’s performance straddles the line between her two characters as Estella’s attempts to fit into the regular world fade, as bits and pieces of Cruella’s anything goes mentality filter through until she goes full-on baddie. The punk rock-glam inspired clothes help in the transformation, but the heart comes from Stone, who does something difficult, bring a tragic heart to a villain.
As The Baroness, Thompson is the is the Queen of the Side Eye. It’s a wonderfully comedic performance, equal parts disdain, evil and ridiculous, she redefines arrogance. Think “The Devil Wears Prada” with a sharper edge. It’s the kind of work you want to watch at least twice to catch all the small bits of business she weaves into the performance.
Propelled by the performances and a music-heavy soundtrack featuring everything from The Doors and Nina Simone to Iggy & The Stooges (this must be the first Disney film to feature the proto-punk tune “I Wanna Be Your Dog”) and Tina Turner, “Cruella” rocks along at a clip until it loses steam near the end as it prepares itself for the sequel.
Until then, however, “Cruella” is the most audacious of the recent live action reimaginings of a classic Disney character.
Seven years after DreamWorks’ “The Croods” reinvented and recycled “The Flintstones,” minus the brontosaurus ribs, for a new generation comes a sequel, “The Croods: A New Age,” now in theatres, available soon as a digital rental.
At the start of the new movie the Croods—Grug and Ugga Crood (Nicolas Cage and Catherine Keener) and their kids daughters Eep (Emma Stone) and Sandy (Randy Thom), son Thunk (Clark Duke) and Gran (Cloris Leachman)—have outgrown the cave. In the search for a new, safe home they come across a colorful paradise with walls to protect them from attack and plenty of food. “It sucks out there,” says Ugga (Catherine Keener). “It’s so much better here. Out there if no one has died before breakfast it’s a win.”
As they settle in they find they’re not alone. The Bettermans, Phil (Peter Dinklage), Hope (Leslie Mann) and daughter Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran), a family a rung or three up on the evolutionary ladder already live. They have modern conveniences like windows, irrigation, separate bedrooms and more. “It’s called a shower. You should try it!” The modern stone age family looks down on the Croods. In fact, they’d more rightly be named The Betterthans.
When peril comes their way the Croods and the Bettermans, despite their differences, learn they have more in common than they thought. In this story there’s room for both brains and brawn.
“The Croods: A New Age” hasn’t evolved much since 2013. Like the first movie it is still jam packed with loads of caveman comedy and Paleolithic physical action. The new one has a strong message of female empowerment and the recycles the original’s theme of adversity actually bringing people closer together. It’s a winning, if familiar, combo until the noisy, frenetic ending that, while eye popping, is all sound and fury without much payoff.
The voice cast gamely delivers the story. It’s fun to hear Cage as Grug Crood actually have some fun with a role these days. It’s a welcome step away from his direct-to-the-delete-bin action movies he’s been choosing lately. Stone brings a spirited and adventurous edge to cavegirl Eep, and Reynolds, as the romantic lead, proves that his comic timing translates very well from live action to animation. They trade the often-ridiculous dialogue with ease, milking maximum humour from the script.
“The Croods: A New Age” is chaotic fun, a movie aimed squarely at kids with just enough jokes about raising a family to keep parents interested.
To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if you want to test a person’s character, give them power. That maxim is fully on display in “The Favourite,” an Oscar hopeful starring Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, as two women vie for the attention of Anne, Queen of Great Britain.
Set in the early 18th century, “The Favourite” begins as England, under the rule of Queen Anne (Coleman), is at war with France. A clueless and vain monarch stricken with gout from gorging on chocolate and cheese, the Queen is haughty in the style of, “Look at me! How dare you look at me!”
The real power behind the throne ismovie notes the Queen’s close friend and confidant Lady Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Weisz). She’s a stern figure equally at home pampering the Queen or ordering a maid to be whipped for any minor transgression.
Life at the castle is a decadent push-and-pull for favour between those who want the Queen to end the war, like Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (Nicholas Hoult), and those who feel the battle must continue. The battle for power becomes more intense when Abigail Masham (Emma Stone), Lady Marlborough’s cousin and fallen gentry whose father gambled her away in a card game, arrives looking for a job. Put to work as a maid she quickly moves up the ranks, befriending the Queen and aggressively pushing Lady Marlborough to the fringes. “As it turns out I am capable of much unpleasantness,” Abigail snorts.
Broken into chapters like “What An Outfit“ and “A Minor Hitch,“ the film is a wickedly nasty look at the inner workings of a personal coup d’etat. Smartly written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, it brims with court gossip, quotable lines—“If you do not get out I will start kicking you and I will not stop,” sneers Marlborough.—and machinations enough to make Machiavelli green with envy.
Bringing the intrigue to vivid life are the three leads. At the top of the pyramid is Coleman as Queen Anne. Insecurity and imperiousness are the toxic ingredients that fuel her childlike behaviour. Whether she is stuffing her face to the point of vomiting, faking a seizure at Parliament or indulging in her secret desires, she is unpredictable, ridiculous and, ultimately a sad character. Coleman embraces it all, delivering a beautiful, unsubtle performance.
As Lady Marlborough Weisz is cunning and kind, a power player who knows when to hold ‘em, knows when to fold ‘em. She’s icy hot, calm and collected but quick to temper when threatened. Weisz has rarely been this collected on screen, delivering complex dialogue with panache.
As a woman who admits, “I’m on my side, always,” Stone has the greatest range. From scullery maid to titled Lady her character travels the furthest distance and is capable of the greatest villainy.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos has made a strange and beautiful movie, one that has the twilight zone feel of his other films “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” They all feel like real life, but tilted by 180 degrees. With “The Favourite” he has made a revisionist history that comments not only on personal politics but also how political power is open to the whims of who holds it.
“Tennis players are like warriors who singlehandedly take on each other,” says director Jonathan Dayton.
One such warrior is Billie Jean King. As a twenty-nine-year old she was vaulted into superstardom in 1973 when she trounced ex tennis champ and self proclaimed Male Chauvinist Pig Bobby Riggs in a match billed as the Battle of the Sexes. It remains television’s most watched tennis match but more than a ratings bonanza for the network it placed King at the forefront of feminism and gender politics in the 1970s. A new film, Battle of the Sexes starring Emma Stone and Steve Carrell, aims to remind audiences of the tennis champ’s importance.
“I hope this is part of a realignment,” says co-director Dayton. “She is very celebrated but since we started showing the movie I think it has been very satisfying for her to get this new level of acknowledgement. I think she felt like she had been celebrated and that was over and now other people are getting attention.”
“She is still so active in all of it,” adds co-director Valerie Faris. “She’s still working. She’s not just out to further her legacy, she’s actually just still working on these same issues. She’s all about fairness and inclusivity. She was the one who said, ‘I want to take it away from being a country club sport and make it for everybody.’”
Battle of the Sexes is undoubtedly a sports movie. The climatic 1973 match takes up much of the last half hour of the film, but it isn’t strictly a tennis drama. Like all good sports films it’s not really about the game, it’s about the human spirit that made King a hero. It also shines a light on her personal life.
Stone plays King as warm but spunky—like Mary Tyler Moore spunky—when we first meet her. The character deepens, however, when Marilyn Barnett, played by Andrea Riseborough, enters the picture. As the married and deeply in the closet King Stone blossoms as the romance with Marilyn blooms.
“It was not a happy time for her,” says Faris. “She says she hasn’t watched the match in twenty-five years. It was hard during the process because we were nervous. We wanted to make her proud and validate who she is.”
“It was very hard for her initially to even enter this process,” says Dayton, “particularly because what was important to us was to tell the story of her first relationship with a woman but, as painful as that was, she was fine with it. She knew that was the most important aspect of it.
“We wanted to show the complexity. She saw this as an affair where she was cheating on her husband. Not only was it a huge move to act on her true sexuality but she loved Larry and didn’t want us to make that relationship seem less than it was.”
As a portrait of women’s rights and the sexual revolution of the 1970s Battle of the Sexes covers a lot of ground.
“What we didn’t want is something that is so polarizing that it would divide the world into two camps,” says Dayton. “Hopefully there are entry points for everybody. Frankly, we wanted it to be entertaining, to be a fun ride.”
