Kieran Culkin

A Real Pain

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Benji hugging David's head

Two Jewish cousins go on a Holocaust Holiday? No end of things could go wrong with that as an idea. The marvel of A Real Pain is that writer/director/producer/star Jesse Eisenberg doesn’t just sidestep potential disaster, but hands the film to another actor, Kieran Culkin, while doing so. It’s Before Sunrise in structure, but instead of pretty, young Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy hashing things out over a night of escalating romantic potential, it’s Americans Benji and David in Poland, off on a pilgrimage to see where their Polish grandma Doris once lived, talking the entire time, assessing themselves as people, as Jews in a country where their kind haven’t always fared so … Read more

No Sudden Move

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Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro at a phone box

On the principle that second-rate Soderbergh is better than no Soderbergh at all, a warm hello to No Sudden Move, a pastiche 1950s crime drama with a Maguffin that insists it’s more than a Maguffin. Don Cheadle, Kieran Culkin and Benicio Del Toro play three prickly guys hired to “babysit” a family (ie hold them hostage) while one of them takes Dad Matt (David Harbour) off to pick up something from a safe. That “something” becomes increasingly important as the story progresses, eventually bathing everything in a Chinatown-style glow as it becomes apparent that behind these no-marks is a vast scheme based on corporate corruption of a sort that makes day-to-day Mob activity … Read more