Tag Archives: jesse-eisenberg

A Real Pain

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A Real Pain is a perfect example of an independent movie.

For me, an independent movie does not have a plot, or at least one that drives most of the story. It is a film where we take some characters and drop them into situations and let them see what happens. You could define it as character based films. I don’t want to imply that I do not like that style of movie, but it is distinct.

In A Real Pain, two cousins take a trip to Poland after their beloved grandma passed away to go on a Holocaust tour and visit her childhood home.

The movie was written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, who starred as David Kaplan. Kieran Culkin played his cousin Benji Kaplan. They both brought Oscar-worthy performances in these roles. Their performances were very important since the characters were so important to the story.

The tour of Poland and a nearby concentration camp was very powerful and the actors did a great job responding to it.

The film was only 90 minutes long, but it did feel longer than that. That is probably because of the dense material that the film featured. However, there were some really funny moments too, which you do not find too often with Holocaust films. A Real Pain is an ambitious film with great performances that had some challenging moments to watch it.

4 stars

Sasquatch Sunset

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This was a weird movie.

We follow a family of sasquatches. Going in, I thought these sasquatches would be an anthropomorphic creature that would talk English like humans. Nope. Nothing but grunts, calls and tree knocks. The four actors had to relate thoughts without words, via actions, facial expressions and body language.

The four actors playing the family of sasquatches were Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek, and Nathan Zellner.

This is a gross movie in many instances, including scenes of vomiting, throwing poop, peeing and dangling Sasquatch penises (which kind of ruin the myth of comparison to big feet).

There are also some very powerful moments of loss and tragedy as the family tried to make its way through a years time.

I am very mixed about this, because much of the humor of the film are the type of humor that I do not like. The scene where the father squatch threw up after eating some special mushroom was extremely gross, with green vomit dangling in his beard. Still, there were some moving moments as the sasquatches tried to navigate the struggles of the wilderness. There is a cougar in the film that is just massive.

I do appreciate the swing that directors David and Nathan Zellner took with this movie, but it just did not fully hit with me. It took quite a risk to not have any dialogue in the entire flick. That definitely took some adjusting to, but after awhile, it did not bother me.

There is an artistry here, so I do not want to fully dismiss what the Zellners tried to do. The fact is this movie just did not work for me. There are positives here for sure and it took some sasquatch sized balls to make it, but ninety minutes felt too long. Sasquatch fans might really enjoy this and there is definitely comments about relationships and our world here, but there was just too much other things that I couldn’t get past.

2.8 stars