A Real Pain

 

                   On a typical Saturday night there is nothing better to do although I was technically house sitting for my parents, while they go on vacation. And really I was told about Jessie Eisenburg's second directorial film, A Real Pain was premiering at the local IMAX theater in one of the many towns I go see movies at, furthermore saw a preview of the film and thought why not it has that intriguing sense of a human story of two grown cousins who both have baggage in their everyday lives, more importantly this is one of those films that I'd never imagine watching a movie of Jessie Eisenberg's mainly because I always viewed him as a type cast after his Oscar nominated role in The Social Network, but then this is probably one of his best works of all time. 

                   Mismatched cousins David and Benji (Jessie Eisenburg & Kieran Culkin) tour Poland to honor their late grandmother. Their adventure becomes complicated as old tensions resurface while exploring their family history.

                   A big surprise is that this film is Eisenburg's second feature film, later in his career he made his first directorial debut "When You Finish Saving the World", and this basically was his first directorial debut, and basically the important part is that he just basically wrote and directed his first film didn't act in the film just wanted to focus more on directing his first feature film and this was around 2022. Now, with A Real Pain Eisenburg just decided to write a story about his heritage of what it means being Polish and Jewish at the same time and has really been asking about that question for quite a long time. Emma Stone, who co-starred alongside Jessie Eisenburg with Zombieland, has been a longtime friend as well as a producing partner who most recently produced this film along with Eisenburg's past films. At the time Eisenburg wasn't familiar with Kieran Culkin prior to developing the script, but later cast him, based on his essence as well as his sister's recommendation. Although Culkin wasn't sure about wanting to do this movie mainly because he wanted to be around his family and was recently finishing wrapping with Succession, that I truly believe he most certainly wanted a break from acting as well as probably didn't want to do another drama like this, but after a series of conversations as well as convincing with Emma Stone, Kieran decided to be in the movie along with Eisenburg. Moreover, all this movie is credited to Kieran Culkin's performance in the movie and the man no question has a great talent of being able to portray a character with a ton of baggage but also is a down to earth guy who loves his cousin no matter how dysfunctional the two of them are. Even Eisenburg does a fantastic job directing this great human-interest story of what it means to carry the burden of past family pains as well as having to live in the shadow of your own religion being oppressed even after the events of WWII. And true there times in Eisenburg's other past work where I wasn't really interested as in actor because after the Social Network he's always been branded as this uptight guy whose socially awkward basically playing Mark Zuckerberg kind of made him a hit but was kind of like Jim Parsons portraying Sheldon Cooper where that character will never go away from this guy, though after doing some research I realized that Jessie Eisenburg is in fact OCD actor which I figured he would be because that's always followed him through his career but now seeing him as a writer and director I've begun to respect him more, especially with a movie like this furthermore casting Baby aka Jennifer Gray in a movie which I totally didn't realize she was in the movie until I looked the movie up after watching the film. Even though I saw this film at a IMAX screening, the film itself is recently on Hulu so, for a first time seeing Eisenburg in the director’s chair as well as an actor and writer I have to say this is most certainly up there in the top five best films of 2024, in fact it's so good I can now push Dune Part Two out of the list and store that movie into the closet of films I can only watch once. So, if you’re looking for a feel good and relatable movie to watch before the Academy Awards come around then I would highly recommend watching A Real Pain, for Eisenburg's writing and directing as well as Kieran Culkin's best on-screen performance since Scott Pilgrim versus the World.