The emphasis is on "pain." And what's with modern parents?

A Real Pain is of those movies that is absorbing simply by dint of its characters. In this case it would be director Jesse Eisenberg who plays David and Kieran Culkin as Benji. They’re American Jewish cousins on a Holocaust Remembrance tour of Poland. Sounds sad? Not really. And you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it, if enjoy is quite the right word. But this film is more fun than drama though leaves a poignant message, to the point my eyes welled up at the end. Benji and David are as different as chalk and cheddar, David the responsible family man and Benji the anarchic wild one. Benji is yin to David’s yang – you know. Both actors are at top of their game as the characters first meet for their flight to Poland. Benji loves to hang out in the air terminal hours ahead of time simply because it’s cool he can meet the weirdest people. Kind of like him. So wild is he that he picks up a pre-mailed package of marijuana he had sent to the Warsaw hotel, then finagles their way on to the roof top for a little relaxed toking. On the tour, Benji becomes enraged with the tour guide for being too sterile in his description of Holocaust facts. And he demands that David “feel” the loss or the “pain” of the Nazi horrors. “If now is not the time to grieve I don’t know what to tell you.”  On a train they evade the conductor by not paying fares and joke that’s the reason “our people” were kicked out of Poland for being too cheap. The title? Well, the guide (Will Sharpe) does say it’s “a tour about pain.” But is Benji the real pain? Is he psychotic? Manic depressive? The burning of the personal into the historical is what charges this movie, regardless of what he is.  

What is it about modern parents they don’t know how to bring up their kids? Two recent movies or TV series made me shake my head and scream at the doofuses who were portrayed as mothers and fathers. The first is Let Go (Josephine Bornebusch) on Netflix where the punk daughter constantly berates her parents including with obscenities like “You argue all the f---- time” and “What the f---were you thinking? The whole point of coming here is my f--- competition.” The dour compliant parents only talk softly and try to appease. Same with the new hit series A Man on the Inside (created by Michael Schur) with Ted Danson, and his grandkids being the utterly most desultory teens. I don’t believe in corporal punishment, but it just made me want to slap them - and the parents.

That's a wrap: 20th edition of the Windsor International Film Festival

Here are my capsule reviews of several films at this year’s 20th edition of the Windsor International Film Festival, which ends tonight. Congrats on yet another successful year for this amazing and uniquely Windsor event which just keeps growing and growing!

Bonjour Tristesse: this part-Canadian remake by Durga Chew-Bose of the Otto Preminger 1958 classic has Chloe Sevigny in the Deborah Kerr role as the snobbish high-class matron. Every frame is beautifully shot by Maximilian Pittner and I thought Sevigny pulled off the role well. The problem was the often-fleeting dialogues among the other characters that seemed as languorous as the sun-drenched setting. A Different Man: Aaron Schimberg’s black comedy has a lot of assets including an intriguing premise and great score. A film about physical deformity turns into a character study with a bizarre, yet not really satisfying, twist. Firebrand: Karim Aïnouz’s take on Henry VIII’s rebellious – and last – wife, Katherine Parr is all Jude Law as the old awful monarch, an award-winning role. Alicia Vikander as the Regent is stiff and the script doesn’t give her a lot to work with. But the sets are probably accurate about how physically uncomfortable the 16th century monarchy actually was. It’s Raining Men was the perfect star vehicle for up-and-coming French actress Laure Calamy and she’s perfect in a surprisingly formulaic film where all ends well and no harm is done; there’s even a burst-out music and dance scene. Anora (Sean Baker) won the Cannes Palme d’Or and it won the WIFF LiUNA People’s Choice award. But it really did nothing for me, this one note story about a Brooklyn sex worker Anora (Mikey Madison) who falls in love with the immature and drug-addled scion (Mark Eydelshteyn) of a Russian oligarch and the ongoing craziness – with seemingly every third line having the f-word – of their relationship. But, ah, what do I know? Maria (Pablo Larrain) stars Angelina Jolie as the late great Greek opera singer Maria Callas but in the autumn of her life when she’s striving to make a comeback. It’s very atmospheric and Jolie is reasonably good but who steals the show is Haluk Bilginer as Aristotle Onassis. The Battle of St. Leonard is a fascinating documentary by Quebec filmmaker Félix Rose about a late 1960s language war between Montreal’s immigrant Italian community and French Quebecois. It marked an important milestone in that province’s quest for French equality and language rights though the main activist Raymond Lemieux paid an emotional price. Conclave by Edward Berger has the stars – Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto and Isabella Rossellini - the lush sartorial trappings of elite Cardinals and the magnificent backdrop of the Sistine Chapel. Yet the intrigue and political gamesmanship plot gives way to a bizarre unexpected twist and a less than satisfying outcome. Skincare (Austin Peters) stars the versatile Elizabeth Banks based on a true story of the rivalry between two estheticians which spirals out of all proportion and demonstrates the twists to which the human mind is capable.