A Real Pain (Movie)

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    Where to Stream the 2025 Oscar Winners, From ‘Anora’ to ‘Flow’

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    Most of the awarded films, including the winner of best picture, can be watched at home. Here’s a guide to catch up.In a resounding win for American independent film, “Anora,” Sean Baker’s rambunctious comedy-drama about the marriage between a Brighton Beach sex worker and the son of a Russian oligarch, won five Oscars, including one for its lead actress, Mikey Madison, and a record-tying four for Baker, who took home statuettes for picture, director, editing and his original screenplay.“Anora” and most of the other winners are available to rent on major platforms or subscription services, and the three winning shorts are only a click away, too, though the full Oscar shorts programs are still circulating in theaters across the country. The only films currently only available in theaters are the best international feature winner “I’m Still Here” and the documentary feature winner “No Other Land,” an Israeli-Palestinian co-production that’s finding its way to art houses around the United States without official distribution.‘Anora’The writer, director and editor Sean Baker narrates a sequence from his comedy featuring Mikey Madison and Mark Eydelshteyn.NeonWon for: Best picture, director, actress, original screenplay, editing.How to watch: Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV+, Fandango at Home, Google Play and YouTube.The writer-director Sean Baker’s rambunctious film concerns the whirlwind romance between a sex worker from Brighton Beach and the son of a Russian oligarch. It somehow channels both the madcap energy of classic screwball and the unfiltered emotion of John Cassavetes. Much of that liveliness is owed to Mikey Madison’s firecracker of a performance as Ani, a stripper whose time with a handsome young party animal, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), at first seems like a “Pretty Woman” fantasy. But a quickie marriage draws attention from Ivan’s minders in the states and his parents abroad. Ani’s fight for their relationship, which turns literal at times, is alternately slapstick and touching.‘The Brutalist’The director Brady Corbet narrates a sequence from his film, starring Adrien Brody. The movie is nominated for 10 Academy Awards.Lol Crawley/A24Won for: Best actor, cinematography, score.How to watch: Buy it on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango at Home.Just as the unity of form and function is the goal of any great architect, Brady Corbet’s epic about the architectural vision of a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor goes pointedly against the grain, from its 215-minute running time (with an intermission in theaters) to its use of VistaVision, a large-format process that hadn’t been used for a feature since 1961. As László Toth (Adrien Brody) emigrates to Philadelphia after the war and eventually finds work for a temperamental industrialist (Guy Pearce) with big plans for a community center, “The Brutalist” grows into a grand statement on the tension between art and commerce, and the compromise that often comes as a result. On that front, Corbet himself has unquestionably triumphed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Watch the Oscars 2025: Date, Time and Streaming

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      Conan O’Brien will host the annual awards, which will be available to watch live on a streaming service for the first time.It seems like a lifetime ago that Sean Baker’s screwball comedy “Anora” first emerged as the favorite in the best picture race (no one was yet even thinking about holding space for “Wicked”).But we’re now right back where we started in the fall with both math and our Projectionist columnist, Kyle Buchanan, predicting that “Anora” will emerge triumphant. It’s by no means a sure thing — last weekend’s big Screen Actors Guild Awards winner, the papal thriller “Conclave,” could play spoiler.In the acting races, Demi Moore appears to be the one to beat after notching another win at the SAGs (though Buchanan says not to count out Fernanda Torres, who delivers a tour de force performance in the quiet Brazilian drama “I’m Still Here”).But could Adrien Brody, who plays a Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust in “The Brutalist,” be in for an upset from the 29-year-old Timothée Chalamet, who has embarked on a decidedly unconventional — and very online — Oscar campaign for his lead role in the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”?Here’s everything you need to know.What time does the show start and where can I watch?This year’s show is again one for the early birds: The ceremony is set to begin at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles.On TV, ABC is the official broadcaster. Online, you can watch the show live on the ABC app, which is free to download, or at abc.com, though you’ll need to sign in using the credentials from your cable provider. There are also a number of live TV streaming services that offer access to ABC, including Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV and FuboTV, which all require subscriptions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oscars 2025 Predictions: Who Will Win Best Picture, Actor and Actress?

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      The best picture race has been full of twists and turns. The best actress race is closely contested. Our expert predicts which films and artists will get trophies on Sunday.Best PictureMark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison in “Anora.”Neon✓ “Anora”“The Brutalist”“A Complete Unknown”“Conclave”“Dune: Part Two”“Emilia Pérez”“I’m Still Here”“Nickel Boys”“The Substance”“Wicked”After a few years where the best picture winner was practically ordained from the start of the season, at least this race has given us some twists and turns.First, there was the saga of “Emilia Pérez,” which led the field with a near-record 13 nominations but collapsed in controversy after the unearthing of disparaging tweets by its star, Karla Sofía Gascón. Then “Anora,” a front-runner that was utterly shut out at January’s Golden Globes, scored top prizes from the producers, directors and writers guilds.Those wins usually presage a best picture victory, especially because the producers guild uses a preferential ballot similar to the Academy’s. But in the late going, another contender began to surge as “Conclave” took the top prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (where “Anora” was once again shut out) as well as best film honors at the BAFTAs, the British equivalent to the Oscars.One thing gives me pause, though: If “Conclave” had the sort of across-the-board Academy support that a best picture winner can usually count on, it shouldn’t have missed out on slam-dunk Oscar nominations for directing and cinematography. “Anora” earned all the nominations it needed to, and its guild spread is hard to argue with, so that’s the film I project will win.Best DirectorJacques Audiard, “Emilia Pérez”✓ Sean Baker, “Anora”Brady Corbet, “The Brutalist”Coralie Fargeat, “The Substance”James Mangold, “A Complete Unknown”Baker picked up the DGA trophy but has strong competition from Corbet, who won best director at the BAFTAs. Still, I suspect the Academy will embrace “Anora” in both of the top categories. It helps that Baker has turned every acceptance speech he’s made this season into an upbeat rallying cry for theatrical independent filmmaking.Best ActorAdrien Brody in “The Brutalist.”Lol Crawley/A24✓ Adrien Brody, “The Brutalist”Timothée Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown”Colman Domingo, “Sing Sing”Ralph Fiennes, “Conclave”Sebastian Stan, “The Apprentice”Brody has been collecting prizes all season, though his reign was halted last weekend when Chalamet scored a last-minute SAG win. But Chalamet faces headwinds from an Academy that remains stubbornly resistant to recognizing young men: No one under 30 has ever won the best actor Oscar except for Brody himself, who notched his win for “The Pianist” at age 29. Come Sunday, he’ll add a second Oscar to the mantel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘A Real Pain’ Review: Mourning as an Act of Survival

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      Jesse Eisenberg directs and stars in a melancholic yet funny exploration of Jewish loss and belonging, with an outstanding Kieran Culkin.American movies about grief tend to end with sniffles and pasted-on smiles that reassure audiences that whatever horrors have come before — however brutal the tragedy, no matter how severe the torment — everything is going to be OK. It’s a crock, but that’s the Hollywood way, even in indies. No matter how distinct their subjects, their scale and scope, they insist on drying the tears that they’ve pumped. The pursuit of happiness was an inalienable right for the founding fathers, one that our movies have made a maddeningly enduring article of faith.Jesse Eisenberg races straight into life’s stubborn untidiness in “A Real Pain,” a finely tuned, melancholic and at times startlingly funny exploration of loss and belonging that he wrote and directed. He plays David, a fidgety, outwardly ordinary guy who, with his very complicated cousin, Benji (Kieran Culkin), sets off on a so-called heritage tour of Poland. Their grandmother survived the Holocaust because of “a thousand miracles,” as David puts it, and they’ve decided to visit the house where she grew up. Theirs is an unexpectedly emotionally fraught journey, and a piercing, tragicomic lament from the Jewish diaspora.The journey begins and ends in the United States, but mostly unfolds during a compressed road trip through Poland that they set off on with a British tour guide, James (Will Sharpe), and five other travelers. Together, the group tours Warsaw, crosses pastoral countryside, peers into picturesque corners and makes a relatively brief, heart-heavy visit to the Majdanek concentration camp a few miles from the medieval city of Lublin. Eisenberg doesn’t delve into the history of the camp (also known as Lublin), but it became a killing center and was instrumental in a 1941 Nazi plan to murder the Jewish population of German-occupied Poland. An estimated 1.7 million Polish Jews were killed during this operation alone.That’s a profound history for any movie to grapple with intelligently, especially one that’s as modest and laugh-laced as “A Real Pain.” Eisenberg, though, deftly handles its weight, in part because it is a given for his characters. The Holocaust doesn’t need to be summarized for David, Benji and the rest of the tour group; they’re in Poland specifically because, in one attenuated way or another, it has been with them all their lives. It’s history, but for David and Benji it is, fundamentally, a history that’s inseparable from the existential reality of their grandmother, from the woman and the mother she became, and from the family that she had. It is, as this gentle movie plaintively suggests, an anguished generational bequest.Eisenberg brings you right into the story with a burst of jump cuts and the sight of an agitated David, who’s in a car en route to the airport in New York, leaving one anxious message after another for Benji. Eisenberg excels at playing live wires, characters who can seem so tightly wound you wonder if or when they will break. Like him, they tend to be fast talkers — Eisenberg’s clipped enunciation means that their words generally jab rather than flow — and David is no exception. He’s still leaving messages by the time he rushes into the terminal, where a widely smiling Benji is waiting. They embrace, Benji all but throwing himself at David, and by the time they’ve settled in their plane seats, it feels like you already know them.This sense of awareness, that these are guys you like and maybe even know, is crucial to the movie and how it uses intimacy to fortify its realism. “A Real Pain” is a fluidly blended amalgam of pleasing, approachable subgenres, including an odd-couple buddy flick, a consciousness-raising road movie and a charged family melodrama. These story forms add to the overall sense of familiarity as does the focus on David and Benji, who emerge more through the complexities of their relationship than through individual quirks of personality. We are who we are, Eisenberg says, because of the people in our lives, a truism that becomes more stark and affecting as his characters travel through a country haunted by Jewish ghosts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Holocaust’s Grandchildren Are Speaking Now

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      Toward the end of “A Real Pain,” a movie written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg coming to theaters on Nov. 1, two first cousins played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin approach the house in a Polish town where their recently deceased grandmother had lived before the Holocaust.Eisenberg’s character, David, the more reserved of the pair, proposes the two leave stones on the doorstep, riffing on the Jewish tradition of placing stones on graves.“She’s not buried here,” says Culkin’s cousin, Benji.“Yeah, I know, but it’s the last place she was in Poland,” says David. “It’s the last place any of us were.”The improvised remembrance, the interruption of self-awareness, the confused sense of duty — all are characteristic of how American descendants of the Holocaust’s victims two generations removed today commemorate an event that, nearly 80 years after it ended, can feel like something that still governs their lives, not to mention the lives of Jews and everyone else.This cohort is known as the third generation of Holocaust survivors, and “A Real Pain” is representative of their output. Which is to say: It is often not about the Holocaust at all. The cousins go together on an organized tour of Holocaust sites and memorials in Poland, but much of it — excepting a visit to the Majdanek concentration camp — is lighthearted. David and Benji grieve mainly not for the Holocaust but for their grandmother, who survived it. They struggle with their own problems, including the dissipation of their relationship. They question why they are even there.Jesse Eisenberg on the set of his new movie, “A Real Pain,” about the grandsons of a Holocaust survivor visiting Poland.Agata Grzybowska/Searchlight PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      39 Movies to See This Fall: ‘Joker’ Sequel, Bob Dylan Biopic and More

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      From the “Joker” sequel and Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan biopic to a handful of festival darlings, it’s a jam-packed season. Plan accordingly.From an outsize Francis Ford Coppola passion project to a “Joker” follow-up that multiplies the madness by two, the fall movie calendar is going big. Reducing it to a select list of noteworthy titles was a daunting task. Alongside major releases, including sequels to “Gladiator” and “Moana,” we’ve included a large number of films that earned acclaim at this year’s festivals. Many other titles haven’t yet settled on release dates. (All dates and platforms are subject to change.)September‘A DIFFERENT MAN’ Sebastian Stan won best lead performance at the Berlin Film Festival for his turn as an actor with a facial disfigurement. As he pines for a new neighbor (Renate Reinsve), a playwright, he undergoes an experimental treatment. Aaron Schimberg directed this offbeat comedy, featuring Adam Pearson as the Stan character’s rival. (Sept. 20; in theaters)‘THE SUBSTANCE’ In what would make an excellent Sept. 20 double feature with “A Different Man,” Demi Moore plays an aging actress reduced to fitness guru-dom who undergoes an experimental treatment of her own. A mysterious injection will divide her into, essentially, two people. Margaret Qualley plays her counterpart. Coralie Fargeat, who wrote and directed, won the screenplay prize at Cannes. (Sept. 20; in theaters)‘WOLFS’ George Clooney and Brad Pitt mastered the art of smooth teamwork over three “Ocean’s” movies, but in this action comedy, their characters — two fixers who wind up on the same job — are initially at loggerheads. Amy Ryan also stars. Jon Watts (“Spider-Man: No Way Home”) wrote and directed. (Sept. 20 in theaters, Sept. 27 on Apple TV+)‘LEE’ The celebrated photojournalist Lee Miller got a shoutout in “Civil War” earlier this year. Now she gets a biopic, with Kate Winslet in the role. Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough and Andy Samberg co-star. Ellen Kuras, best known for her work as a cinematographer, directed. (Sept. 27; in theaters)‘MEGALOPOLIS’ Francis Ford Coppola’s first feature since 2011 is a project he’s been talking up for more than 40 years. In an amalgam of contemporary New York and ancient Rome, Adam Driver plays an urban-planning visionary who at various points evokes Robert Moses, Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark and Coppola himself. (Sept. 27; in theaters)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Which Sundance 2024 Movies Will Make It to Next Year’s Oscars?

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      A Jesse Eisenberg-Kieran Culkin film, along with performances by Saoirse Ronan and André Holland, may be on the ballot next year.We’ve only just gotten this year’s Oscar nominations, but is it already time to begin looking ahead to next season?I can sense you bristling, and I understand. “Kyle, no,” you’ve just muttered, because we’re on a first-name basis now and you’re still mired in dinner-party discourse over whether the snub of Greta Gerwig in the best-director race is an extinction-level event.I hear your concerns, and I share them. But even as we continue to sift through the wreckage and tea leaves following this season’s Oscar nominations, I’ve just come back from snowy Park City, Utah, where the 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival debuted a full slate of new movies that could give shape to next year’s awards race. Make no mistake, trophy-related considerations can affect these films’ fortunes even at this early date: I’ve already heard that one terrific Sundance indie has had trouble selling because of concerns that its lead would be unavailable for a full-blown press tour next awards season.Could any of these films follow best-picture nominee “Past Lives,” which premiered at Sundance last January, or even “CODA” (2021), the first Sundance movie to win the top Oscar?The likeliest film to factor into next year’s race is “A Real Pain,” a dramedy starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched cousins who embark on a road trip through Poland to better understand the personal history of their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film, plays the by-the-book cousin and generously hands the flashy, sure-to-be-nominated role to Culkin: His cousin is a charismatic hot mess, and the Emmy-winning “Succession” actor zigs and zags through every scene like a freewheeling live wire.Searchlight bought “A Real Pain” for $10 million, and I could see it making a deep run into awards season. Pronounced a “knockout” by our critic Manohla Dargis, it’s the kind of thematically resonant, culturally specific comedy that voters often respond to. Most of all, I think movie folks will be eager to welcome Culkin into their club: They were just as obsessed with “Succession” as their TV brethren, and it’s finally their turn to shower the 41-year-old with awards attention.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More