Capsule Reviews: 'A Real Pain,' 'Anora' & 'Small Things Like These'

by Philip Price

A Real Pain

Photo: Searchlight Pictures

The way Dave consciously places his small stone behind everyone else’s at the cemetery while Benji comments about finding the biggest one is so telling and so endearing to Dave. We don’t see the size or placement of Benji’s, but that Jesse Eisenberg follows this moment with the only scene where his character is alone with the rest of the tour group confirms what we've suspected all along. Dave is too self-aware to be as bold or ornery as Benji despite a yearning to share the same qualities that make him impressionable to everyone he meets. Dave is emotionally intelligent, responsible, law-abiding and all the more forgettable for it. Dave is concerned for Benji and the raw emotions he allows to overtake him while believing his own pain to be unexceptional and therefore unworthy of expressing. Benji wears his baggage on his sleeve, Dave doesn't want to be a burden. Check on the quiet ones.
​
Ironically, it will be Kieran Culkin's performance as Benji that will be the most lauded aspect of the film while writer/director Eisenberg will fall into the background despite the writing being every bit as sharp as Culkin's performance. Furthermore, Eisenberg balances the critical tone of the film in such a naturalistic fashion, never allowing it to fall into the trap of repeating itself despite being about a very specific kind of anguish. A film about different types of people trying to understand different kinds of agony in many different ways while reconciling as much with the peace and joy they allow into those same spaces; this very easily could have retreated into self-pity rather than the buddy dramedy it ultimately becomes. Like Will Sharpe's charming tour guide, “A Real Pain” takes us through the steps of recognizing suffering, figuring out how to process it, and eventually giving us hope that despite the struggle there is much to take from it - not only the negative.

---

Anora

Photo: Neon

For the first hour and a half, this is as thrilling and chaotic as anything that has graced a movie screen this year. It takes the time to establish and make us believe in the probability of its modern-day “Pretty Woman” premise while culminating in a wild and anxiety-inducing series of moments that sees the co-lead of the film literally run away from the confluence of events he has brought upon himself.
​
What hurts most about Sean Baker's “Anora” is that the first half of the film is the better half, yet it is the characters that don't arrive until the second half that, by and large, make this as memorable as it is. It would never happen, but I wouldn't mind if Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan and especially Yura Borisov were all recognized with Supporting Actor nominations. Why not? It feels like a weak year for those things.

Mikey Madison is the story, though, and Baker's script and Madison's dedicated performance make apparent the titular character's sad but true reality of fooling herself into believing this opportunity will save her from a life of hustling when she knows deep down the lack of power she wields and the level of desperation she later exhibits means the world - and more specifically, America - would never let a broke stripper like her sit at the top of the food chain. I wish I liked (or cared about) Annie as a character more.

---

Small Things Like These

Photo: Lionsgate

The ever-expanding collage of indecencies done by institutions intended to help the least of us while catering only to those who contribute the most (especially financially) expands in this subtle, quiet drama where Cillian Murphy wrestles not with his faith but with his principles. Though most would argue one should guide the other, it becomes increasingly evident throughout director Tim Mielants’s “Small Things Like These” that one means to dictate rather than lead. Emily Watson's domineering Sister Mary making what is right and just questionable through the conflict she introduces into the life of Murphy's Bill Furlong - an otherwise devoted father and simple coal merchant - who forces himself to balance the weight of different types of responsibilities that he feels, in starkly different and shattering ways, he owes to his wife and daughters.