A Real Pain – funny and moving with Culkin excellent

Jesse Eisenberg’s film about mismatched Jewish-American cousins taking an organised Holocaust trip across Poland in honour of their recently-deceased grandmother, who had survived the camps, manages to be irreverent, funny and profoundly moving.

Benjie is a boisterous drifter with strong opinions and no filter. David is a neurotic who works hard selling online ads, loves being with his wife and their young son, and is already homesick on their flight from New York.

Their tour guide is James, while their fellow visitors are recently divorced Marcia, Elogue, who survived the Rwandan genocide and later converted to Judaism, and Mark and Diane from Ohio, who are recently retired.

From the start of their tour, Benji acts up, persuading the group to pose ridiculously in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument for photographs, taken on their phones by the embarrassed David.

The next day, on a train journey to Lublin, he explodes angrily that nobody else seems to have noticed the incongruity of their being Jewish, in a first-class carriage, traveling through former Nazi-occupied Poland.

Is the title of A Real Pain a reference to Benji or more about the pain of personal struggle, of personal grief, of collective trauma and of survivor guilt? Eisenberg – who also stars in the film – made it in part about the last of those, in relation to his own experiencing of being a “third-generation survivor”, when some of his ancestors died in the camps.

There’s also nods to the problems of trauma tourism.

It’s also a story about the migrant experience – not only of those Jewish people whose ancestors reached the US, but also of Elogue and James, who is a Northern English philosemite of Asian extraction.

Given the comedic nature of elements here, it’s a sensitive, touching and thought-provoking film.

Cinematographer Michał Dymek deliberately moved away from any sort of stereotypical Western idea of Warsaw being post-Soviet era gloomy. The soundtrack is almost entirely piano music by Polish virtuoso Chopin, played by classical pianist Tzvi Erez.

Eisenberg is excellent as the socially-insecure David, but it’s Oscar-winning Kieran Culkin who steals the show as Benji – not only in his manic moments, but also in revealing the pain that he lives with.

Will Sharpe as James is very good, but generally speaking the rest of the cast don’t really get enough screen time to make a huge impact, with the exception (just about) of Kurt Egyiawan as Elogue and Jennifer Grey as Marcia.

Now available to stream and comes in at a tight 90 minutes.

Anora – no shock as to why it's won big

A rom-com that takes a darker turn, director, writer, producer and editor Steve Baker’s mega award-winning Anora tells the story of the titular character, who prefers to be known as Ani. A stripper at a club in Brighton Beach, an American-Russian part of Brooklyn, she is introduced to a young Russian, Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov, the 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch, because she can understand Russian.

He is supposed to be in the US studying, but this spoiled brat spends most of his time partying and playing video games. When he and Ani hit it off, he asks if he can pay her to be his girlfriend for a week. She agrees and, with some of his friends, they fly to Las Vegas.

While there, Vanya expresses disdain for his parents and Russia, and then impulsively asks Ani to marry him. Despite her initial disbelief, she agrees and they wed before returning to New York, to the mansion Vanya has been living in.

But word gets back to his parents and they set off from Russia, having ordered his Armenian godfather/US babysitter, Toros, to arrange an annulment and hold Vanya for return to the motherland. Ani, on the other hand, has no intention of simply quitting.

This is not Pretty Woman. For one thing, it’s no happy-ever-after fairy tale – it’s a lot grittier and doesn’t play with tropes about ‘poor’ sex workers who need saving. It’s Baker’s second feature about sex workers after Tangerine and he never treats them with any sense of moral judgmentalism. On top of that, it never makes sex work look sleazy/pornographic.

Also, Ani can do charming, but she’s not afraid to spit venom, use violence and not simply acquiesce to the demands of others.

Filmed with a nod to 1970s New York crime dramas, Drew Daniels’s cinematography has a look that entirely matches its subject. It rolls in at 139 minutes (long for me), but never feels over-stretched. The final scene is a wallop to the guts.

Mikey Madison won the best actress Oscar a week ago – and it’s not hard to see why. She gives this everything she’s got and is spiky, funny and charming by turns. It’s a nuanced performance that leaves us wondering – at least to a degree – about her motivations.

Mark Eydelshteyn is very good as the spoiled Vanya, as are Karren Karagulian as Toros, and Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan as two hoods that he hires.

Absolutely no surprise that this has done so well on the awards circuit – and well worth a watch.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Capote – another grown-up film worth watching

In November 1959, in Holcomb – a place that apparently even most Kansans don’t know of – the Cutter family (farmer Herb, wife Bonnie and their teenage daughter, Nancy, and son, Kenyon) were murdered in their farmhouse.

Seeing a report about this in the New York Times, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, actor and socialite Truman Capote is instantly fascinated by the case and tells New Yorker magazine editor William Shawn that he’s going to write about it.

He travels to Kansas with childhood friend Harper Lee as both company and to help facilitate contacts. Shortly after they arrive in town, police arrest two suspects. Perry Smith and Richard Hickock stand trial, are found guilty and sentenced to death.

Capote decides that his work will be a book – a non-fictional novel – and he finds ways to gain contact with the men in prison, particularly Smith, gaining his confidence and finding out about his life, not least by finding a better lawyer for their appeal than they had for their initial trial. But what he really wants to know is what happened that November night and Smith won’t say.

\Released in 2005, Capote is based on Gerald Clarke’s 1988 book of the same name, is directed by Bennett Miller from a screenplay by Dan Futterman and enjoysh cinematography by Adam Kimmel that beautifully contrasts the glistening New York that Capote inhabits with the wide-open spaces of rural Kansas.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won an Oscar, a Bafta and a Golden Globe for his performance, has Capote’s voice and mannerisms down pat, with his narcissism clear and his motivations far from it. There is a cynicism to his Capote, but also a vulnerability – perhaps partly down to his homosexuality and effeminism.

Clifton Collins Jr is very good as Smith, as is Catherine Keener as Lee. Bob Balaban gives a nice turn as Shawn, as does Bruce Greenwood as Capote’s long-time partner, John Dunphy.

Coming in at an unrushed (but never dragging) 114 minutes, the pace allows the characters and relationships to develop. The violence is minimised in terms of what you actually see on screen, but never otherwise. This is more very good, grown-up drama, and currently available on Amazon Prime in the UK.

Doubt is a superbly acted, intelligent, grown-up drama

Popping up on Netflix as I looked for something to watch this afternoon, Doubt is a 2008 film that was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, adapted from his 2004 Pulitzer and Tony-winning play, Doubt: A Parable.

Set in 1964, a year after the assassination of JFK and not long after Vatican II pledged that it would drag the church into the 20^th century, it takes place in a predominantly Irish-American parish in the Bronx, where cheerful Father Flynn is the priest of St Nicholas’s Church.

As he preaches about a community of doubt – particularly in light of the previous year’s assassination – Sister Aloysius, the principal of the connected school, prowls the aisles, admonishing children who aren’t paying enough attention.

This sets up the central confrontation in the piece – that of the modernising priest who wants to be friends with the children and their families, and the nun who entered the convent after being widowed in WWII and is very much of the old order.

But after witnessing a fleeting encounter between Flynn and one of her pupils, Aloysius tells her fellow nuns to be on the watch for anything suspicious and report it to her. Some days later, naïve Sister James eventually tells her that a week earlier, Flynn had called her in class to ask for one of the boys – Donald Miller, the school’s sole black pupil – to be sent to see him at the rectory.

When he returns to class, he is acting strangely and has alcohol on his breath. Aloysius has no doubts about what is happening. James is full of them.

The film’s is quietly paced and gives great time to flesh out the characters. It ultimately leaves the audience to decide whether Aloysius is correct. Do we have doubts too or her certainty?

The central cast is superb. Meryl Streep is a fierce Aloysius, Philip Seymour Hoffman a charming Flynn who can be threatening too, and Amy Adams takes the naïve James and gives her some real complexity. With only a single scene, Viola Davis is outstanding as Mrs Miller, Donald’s mother.

All four gained Oscar nominations: Streep for best actress and the others in the best supporting categories.

A seriously intelligent, grown-up drama, it’s well worth 104 minutes of your time.

The Great Escaper – gentle and powerful

Back in 2014, the year of the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Royal Navy veteran and care home resident Bernard Jordan hit the headlines because he had left it too late to get included on an official trip to the commemorations in Normandy. So he decided to make his own way there – encouraged by his wife Rene.

This is the film of his ‘great escape’, written by William Ivory and directed by Oliver Parker.

Without the knowledge of anyone – except Rene – he left the care home they lived in together and made his way to France on his own. On the way, he was ‘adopted’ by Arthur, an upper-class RAF veteran with his own bucketload of personal demons from the war.

Initially reported missing, with police and others alerted, Bernard’s story caused a media hoo-ha and saw him dubbed a ‘hero’, with newspaper headlines across Europe.

‘The great escapee’ was how the mainstream news media dubbed him – but it is not indicative of what this film version of the story reveals.

There are arguably issues about how well all the flashback sequences of Brendan and Rene’s relationship work, but there can be no complaints about how the contemporary relationships are portrayed.

Though personally, I think that Will Fletcher and Laura Marcus, as the WWII versions of Bernard and Rene do really good jobs.\This is a really sweet film – not least because Michael Caine as Bernard and Glenda Jackson (in her final role) as Rene – are simply fabulous, but because it really catches at the sense of grief and PTSD suffered by veterans of all generations.

Shout outs also to John Standing as Arthur and Danielle Vitalis as a care home worker.

It is, in the second half, a blubathon. But not in an exploitive way. Just so moving – not least in a scene where Bernard, who wouldn’t buy German produce at the beginning of the film, encounters a German veteran from the D-Day landings.

When I say it’s a “blubathon”, it’s not mawkish. It addresses, in a nuanced way, the trauma that those young men suffered then – and in the years after.

This is a gentle, yet very powerful film. Streaming now on Sky.

Going on a bear hunt with Paddington in Peru

The Paddington ‘threequel’ sees the Browns and Paddington travel to Peru to visit Aunt Lucy at the Home for Retired Bears, after the Reverend Mother in charge there writes to Paddington to tell him that Aunt Lucy is seriously missing him.

But when they arrive, it’s to the news that Aunt Lucy has disappeared. Paddington persuades the family to mount a search for her, which they do by hiring a riverboat owned and skippered by one Hunter Cabot, along with his daughter Gina, and head into the jungle.

Of course, this being Paddington, this bear hunt doesn’t go smoothly.

With Paul King once again at the helm, having also co-written the screenplay – along with Mark Burton and Jon Foster for this outing – it is a charming watch, though feels a little flatter and shorter on the gags than for Paddington 2. That said, the second film set an incredibly high bar.

There is fun to be had spotting nods to other films – not least The Sound of Music and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Where it is significantly helped is in the involvement of Olivia Colman as the Reverend Mother and Antonio Banderas as Cabot, both of whom turn in delightfully arch performances.

I was surprised that I didn’t feel it ‘wrong’ seeing Emily Mortimer as Mary Brown, with Sally Hawkins not wanting to reprise the role again. Otherwise, Hugh Bonneville is back as the risk-averse Henry Brown, along with Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin as Judy and Jonathan Brown, and Julie Walters as Mrs Bird. Carla Tous catches the eye as Gina.

A very pleasant way to spend a gloomy Saturday afternoon – and make sure you watch ALL the way to the very end.

Philomena – Dench and Coogan in heart-rending, heart-warming drama

Time for more catch-up cinema – this time, Philomena, the 2013 adaptation of Martin Sixsmith’s book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee from director Stephen Frears, which by and large sticks to the true story that Sixsmith wrote about.

In 1951, after becoming pregnant, Irish teenager Philomena Lee (Sophie Kennedy Clarke) is sent by her father to Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, where she gives birth to a baby boy, Anthony. Forced to work in the abbey laundry, she has limited contact with her son, before the nuns give him up to a wealthy American couple for adoption.

Fifty years later, Jane, the daughter of the now retired nurse Philomena, spots journalist and former Blair government advisor Martin Sixsmith at a party and suggests to him that he investigate. Initially put off because it’s a “human interest story”, he changes his mind after meeting Philomena.

With a screenplay by Jeff Pope and Steve Coogan (who also co-produced), and coming in at a tight 98 minutes, Philomena is an examination of a multitude of themes: grief and loss, sin and guilt, anger and forgiveness, faith and hypocrisy, and snobbery.

The central characters are nuanced and the film rests squarely on the shoulders of its two stars – Coogan himself is excellent as Sixsmith, while Judi Dench is simply outstanding as the elderly Philomena, in a performance that understandably earned her a seventh Academy Award nomination.

It is a deeply moving film, but never mawkish, includes moments of humour, plenty of good for thought and is ultimately heart-warming.

Very much worth watching and available to stream in the UK on various platforms.