I have been sitting on this review for weeks, because I allowed the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Since you need to see it, here is a review that is not quite as good as the movie. A Real Pain was beautiful. I was laughing and crying the whole time. This review won't have the same effect on you, but I hope it will tell you why I reacted the way I did.

Derek Zemrak, manager of the Orinda Theater, smells Oscar in the air. Me too.

The mood swings, the total lack of self-awareness, the frequent inability to read the room. This movie is basically my brother’s biopic. He, like Benji (Kieran Culkin) in the film, could also sometimes be charming and read the room like a book.

Like me, David (Jesse Eisenberg) is clearly embarrassed by the brother that he clearly loves. Well in this case, the cousin, but it’s the same idea

The "sibling" dynamics and Benji’s mental health ups and downs were compelling, as was his relationship with his grandmother, and the plot driver, a trip to the ancestral home in Poland.

Jesse Eisenberg is clearly a genius. There was no part of this film that wasn’t done well. It was as cringeworthy as an episode of I Love Lucy, which you don’t see often in a movie.

Some people get producer credits for just hanging around. Eisenberg has the letters PGA after his name, which means he is a member of the Producers Guild of America. Which means he actually did something as the producer. Since he wrote, directed and starred in the film as well, he is a quadruple (non-threating) threat.

With regard to the acting, Kieran was brilliant in his ability to play a self-unaware person without so much as a wink or a nod. Real commitment to the character. Benji was expressing pain, mostly hidden from the audience at first. In perfect conformance to the Hollywood rule “Show us, don’t tell us,” Eisenberg gives the lie to almost every film or television show ever feature a narrator or a journalist asking all the questions the audience has. He just shows us.

When pale, stale males write and direct all the movies, story telling stagnates. Let a few women in and things change.

Stelana Kliris wrote and directed Netflix’s Find Me Falling. I am a connoisseur of Rom-Coms, and I found Falling a perfect mix of love and laughs.

If for no other reason, I’d like it because is an Early Rom-Com. Late Rom-Coms save the kiss for the last scene. Early Rom-Coms show the kiss in the first scene. Generally, I find the latter more interesting.

It took Kate Winslet seven years to make this female-centric bopic of Lee Miller, a WWII combat photographer for British Vogue magazine. Who was, incidentally, a woman.

I was thrilled to see women everywhere in the credits: director Ellen Kuras, producers, writers, cinematographers. You go girls. You go, audience.

Almost all the reviews mention this real incident from Miller’s life: when she joined the troops in Hitler’s Munich apartment, she had her picture taken soaking, disrespectfully, in his bathtub. It’s a great scene in a great movie, even though you know it is coming.

Many of the handful of men in the movie with speaking roles don’t start out well, although most eventually come around. This film blows the Bechdel Test out of the water.

There is a framing device: Lee being interviewed. The last scene exposes two classic tropes of American film-making, but if I told you, that would be a spoiler. If you’re a regular film goer, prepare not to be surprised.

There are 20 producer credits, of whom five are women, including both the "real" producers from the PGA (Producers Guild of America). One PGA producer, to my surprise, was Winslet. How many guilds does this woman belong to? Two of the three screenwriters are women.

An entertaining look at toxic masculinity if such a thing is possible. Both comedy and tragedy in unequal measure.

This movie is too easy to spoil so technical notes only. Heartily recommended.

• It has a very satisfying  ending. 
• Just over 90 minutes. Good length.
• Women everywhere. Director and co-writer Zoë Kravitz. Definitely passed the Bechdel test. Lots of women who talk about things other than men.
• As I have said before, plays deal with issues and entertain, movies generally just entertain.  Blink Twice is an exception.

Here is the July 18 Top5 List (https://www.top5list.com/top5-for-7-18-24/).

My winner:

* Dr. Lecter’s Missing Hearts Club Band

My losers:

* Dead Side Story

* A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The House on Elm Street

Written by women, directed by women, only 90 minutes long (minus credits)! I love it when women of a certain age get their own movie, where the men are, for the most part, accessories. This film meets the Bechdel test 100%: women talking to each other about something besides men. Lifelong friendship is explored. And the move is hysterical; I didn’t know Susan Sarandon or Sissy Spacek had it in them; I knew Bette Midler did.

I am not much for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even though I camped outside Beaumont Pharmacy every Thursday until I owned the first 100 issues of the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers and so on… 60 years ago. (All destroyed in a basement flood while I was away at MIT). I've seen a few MCU movies, but I'm far from a completist. And so it is that I gingerly bestow six stars.

I have tried to learn over the years not to review a film's budget, but I have rarely had occasion to try to avoid reviewing a film's box office. If you're alive and alert you know the basket of records this film has already broken.

I did see and enjoy the previous Deadpool movie. This one is bigger, louder and more impressive. If, like me, you're not great on the whole pantheon, sit next to an MCU expert, who can help you understand the more obscure inside references and the more obscure cameos. Of course, you don't need to know much to laugh at a Deadpool line, aimed at a fellow superhero, whom he refers to as "Mr. PG-13," in comparison to Deadpool's R rating.

In short: Run don’t walk to see Deadpool and Wolverine. Hysterically funny, unbelievably foul-mouthed, ultra violent, exploding heads. A laugh riot. And a 100 Deadpools from throughout the multiverse.

The movie Daddio is an artistic and technical marvel, and to top it off it is only 1:41 long. Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson (Don's little girl) spend all but five minutes of the film talking to each other as Penn drives a taxi from JFK to Manhattan. Spoiler alert: yes, it doesn't take 90 minutes for that drive. They are delayed by an accident on the way in.

Genius is not too strong a word for writer/director Christy Hall. They talk of cabbages and kings and life, and make it all fascinating. Well worth your time and money.

Ann Hathaway. Need I say more? An older woman and a younger man fall in love with each other. Not a romcom because they kiss and have sex early. More a parable of the price of fame, and a story that holds out hope for May/December relationships.

It reminded me of other “Fame is a bitch” movies. I found a partial list on Screen Rant. Dream Scenario was the most recent and blatant, but other films that sip from the poisoned chalice of fame include: Blonde (2022), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Birdman (2014) and A Star Is Born (2018).

 Now these would comprise one hell of a binge watch. I’ve seen them all (just not at once) and they didn’t dampen my desire for fame (I am better than all these characters), but they might have that effect on someone who is less ceaselessly self-promotional.

After watching about 1,500 movies in my life – about half of which I reviewed in public – I was moved by classical music critic Joshua Kossman‘s farewell column in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he says it’s just talking if you say whether or not you like a work of art; it is reviewing when you say why.

 One of the things I’ve struggled with for 55 years is the fact that I always know how the movie made me feel, but often don’t know why. I have the same problem in my book reviews. Why is one great and another just adequate? Like Justice Potter, I know it when I see it even if I can’t define it. Which means that at best I’m a three star reviewer. Or, for Chronicle readers, the little man is sitting in his chair.