One of the most popular shows on Norwegian TV involves uninterrupted footage of trains traveling across the countryside. It can go for hours — even days — to capture actual length one of these journeys take. Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain isn’t necessarily a slow crawl at a lean 90 minutes, but it’s also not necessarily ripe with narrative development. It’s a film that’s as somber as it is funny, washing over you like a walk through a familiar neighborhood.

Shortly after their grandmother dies, Jewish cousins David (Eisenberg, The Social Network) and Benji (Kieran Culkin, HBO’s Succession) reunite for the first time in over a decade to tour Poland. David is a dad and accomplished digital marketer whose neurosis, pessimism and risk-adverse nature keeps him from enjoying life. Benji, who still lives with his mom and is presumably unemployed, operates with an abrasive charisma that’s equally grating and lovable. Together, the two explore their ancestry, get high and gradually work to resolve their 10-year tension.

A Real Pain places an intimate, family conflict against a historical jaunt. And it simply works. Yes, it delves into the Holocaust — including a sequence through a still-standing concentration camp — but it doesn’t do so in an overly dogmatic or heavy-handed way. It also doesn’t get too cerebral with its commentary, subtly weaving in historical context into David and Benji’s relationship.

Eisenberg and Culkin’s acting breathes life into the characters, which is where A Real Pain finds its staying power. The duo’s dialogue is refreshingly natural, true, but their physical performances make David and Benji even more compelling. 

One scene at a train station illustrates this perfectly. We see them on the empty platform having just missed their stop. David is rigid, his posture snapping into sharp angles as he tries to chastise his cousin. Benji, on the other hand, is lax and fluid, shrugging off David’s imminent panic attack. Gradually, David loosens up, and it shows in his body language throughout the film. It’s a subtle shift that speaks volumes in a film of tiny, though nonetheless meaningful moments.

The setting also lends itself to the cousins’ attempt to reconcile. Surrounded by monuments to Jewish heritage and hardship, David uses reverence and respect to shield himself from feeling much of anything. Benji, on the other hand, sees every informative plaque and even the non-Jewish tour guide as a barrier between feeling connected to his past. Yet in a candid conversation with someone else on the tour, a recently converted Jew from Sudan (Kurt Egyiawan, Beasts of No Nation), David rejects the idea of stewing on tragedy and trauma. Benji, however, is undeniably moved and shaken by it. (Admittedly, it’s a little weird Benji makes no mention of Israel and Palestine, though that probably would never fly in what’s ultimately a Disney production.)

Again, A Real Pain never gets to some dramatic moment of reconciliation. It feels more in line with the slice-of-life vibe found in 2021’s C’mon C’mon. Instead, it’s rooted in reality, reminding us that change isn’t always obvious or resonant. —Daniel Bokemper

In college, my dorm roommate, Randy, told me about a British horror spoof he’d once seen called Bloodbath at the House of Death. I’d never heard of it (this was pre-internet, folks) and thought maybe he was making it up, if not for one detail that struck me as too specific, too abstract and too hilarious: “The best thing is, the box says, ‘Starring Vincent Price as The Sinister Man’!”

For some reason, that made us laugh a lot.

Weeks later, my birthday rolled around. Randy gave me a brand-new VHS tape of Bloodbath from the budget-friendly Video Treasures label. Sure enough, atop the front cover, big block letters announced, “STARRING VINCENT PRICE AT THE SINISTER MAN.”

We laughed all over again. I guess you had to be there.

Nothing in the movie itself lived up to that. I remember being bored quickly and fast-forwarding to a scene Randy had hyped: where “the blonde floozy from Superman III gets her clothes ripped off by a ghost!” Even that disappointed, if only because Video Treasures’ LP-mode cassettes didn’t allow ideal clarity.

Now, nearly 35 years later, I can appreciate Bloodbath at the House of Death — and Pamela Stephenson’s toplessness — properly. She and fellow UK comic Kenny Everett headline the ramshackle rib-tickler as scientists investigating radioactive goings-on at Headstone Manor, where 18 people were brutally killed several years earlier.

And with that intentionally bare premise set, regular Everett writers Barry Cryer and Ray Cameron (who directs perfunctorily) hang parodies of Jaws, Alien, The Shining and others on it that, while not toothless, certainly don’t bite down hard. (The Carrie one is an inspired exception, with the Piper Laurie character beheaded by a can opener, slowly cranked turn by slowly cranked turn.)

In what amounts to an extended cameo, the legendary Price is game as the cult leader behind it all — the sinister man, some say. It’s a hoot to see him curse; his delivery of “You piss off!” is one for the ages, but his use of a gay slur hasn’t aged well.

As horror parodies go, Bloodbath resembles a more modern Carry On entry than this millennium’s Scary Movie series. The difference between their respective styles is far less than the distance separating their respective home countries; both offer an intelligent approach to comedy more stupid than, um, sinister. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

It’s easy to forget Peter Jackson, director of the prestigious Lord of the Rings films, began his career with a trio of splattery, dark, lowbrow comedies, beginning with the aptly named Bad Taste (the other two being Meet the Feebles and Braindead).

His first foray into moviemaking is an impressive feat, considering it was shot on 16mm with virtually no budget and features friends playing all the key roles. Jackson himself pulls double duty as Derek and Robert. This double casting includes a fight scene between the two characters via highly clever editing.

The premise is simple: A shadowy government organization learns of the disappearance of a small town in New Zealand, so they send in “The Boys,” a paramilitary group comprised of Ozzy (Terry Potter), Barry (Pete O’Herne), Frank (Mike Minett) and the aforementioned Derek, to investigate. They discover the town has been invaded by space aliens who plan to use the slaughtered citizens as meat for their intergalactic fast-food chain.

The Boys wage an all-out assault on the aliens, and it’s every bit as action-packed, silly, nasty and gory as one might imagine. There’s also plenty of poop, puke and all-around perversity to boot.

The over-the-top special effects are the true star here, but Jackson’s impressive camera work gives them a run for their money. Reportedly inspired by Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, the camera swings and swoops in frenzied motions, coming to rest in oblique angles and odd closeups. It’s the kind of visual grandeur Jackson became known for so many years later, on full display in this gnarly little labor of love.

If fans of the director haven’t yet seen Bad Taste, they would be wise to correct this error in judgment and see how it all began. More broadly speaking, lovers of Raimi, gore and sci-fi/horror comedies should add this one to their watchlists immediately. —Christopher Shultz

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In horror movies, hunters often receive the short shrift. They’re almost always randos relegated to one scene for the sole purpose of being dispatched by Jason Voorhees and his ilk. They’re not introduced so much as placed in the way — a minor obstacle to “overcome” on the way to those nubile, horny teens.

A throwback to the slasher decade, the horror comedy Deer Camp ’86 upends that architecture, making the hunters the protagonists — not necessarily a change for the better. Here, five friends head to the woods to slay bucks and does, but risk getting slain themselves by a Native American spirit noted for its skull visage and Predator-esque clicks.

From first-time director L. Van Dyke Siboutszen, Deer Camp ’86 reminded me of the screen outings of the Broken Lizard troupe, in all the positives and negatives that comparison brings. On the plus side, that includes a willingness to “go there” without care of offending; conversely, they “go there” without knowing what to do with it.

Its humor is largely predicated upon two obnoxious varieties: gotta-take-a-shit and fucked-your-sister. Hanging over the telling of these jokes is an air of obliviousness at how unfunny the jokes are. Whenever neophyte scripters Bo Hansen and Riley Taurus place a sequence at bat with potential for inspired craziness, they fail to pay it off.

Nothing embodies the movie’s consistent swing-and-a-miss run than the extreme close-up of a tick burrowed into a hunter’s testicle. What happens? The parasitic arachnid is simply plucked from the nut; the entirety of the gag is that a ball sack fills the frame. All in all, hardly worth stuffing to mount on your den’s wall. —Rod Lott

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Said many times by many people, I am a rapturous apologist for many movies that most people consider “bad,” “unwatchable” or “sheer slights against God.”

After all, one person’s trash can be another person’s treasure and, many times, I can find a sliver of gold among the absolute dreck, especially that irregular drumbeat plaguing rock-music films like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Who’s Tommy or Can’t Stop the Music.

That being said, Who’s That Girl is complete shit by all accounts and, sadly, I totally agree. Although not her film debut, it became the absolute model of motion pictures to be associated with Madonna and, after 92 minutes, I can see why.

With her constantly braying, ample whines and a high-pitched squeaky-voice that screams “Ain’t I a bad gurl?” to the masses, this modicum of lame humor ingrates from the very beginning. The cartoon opening credits set up Madonna’s whimsical character, who will take stuffed-shirt Griffin Dunne into will-they-or-won’t-they pieces for the movie’s duration, all of them forced and vapid.

Dunne is assigned to get Madonna, a newly released jailbird, on a bus to get some evidence to exonerate her character. On the way, though, she participates in shoplifting and other criminal activities, including buying weapons on the black market and taking charge of an endangered wildcat that, I believe, she doesn’t once feed.

All the while, she speaks in a stupid inflection that’s like nails on a chalkboard.

Now, to be honest, I truly liked Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan when it premiered on HBO, and I also was somewhat enamored with Madonna’s rotating videos on classic MTV … but following it up with the one-two cinematic punch of Shanghai Surprise and Who’s That Girl was too much, even for me.

As a director, James Foley has had a few hits like the Madonna-soundtracked At Close Range and Glengarry Glen Ross, but also misses like Marky Mark’s Fear or Chow Yun-Fat and Marky Mark’s The Corruptor. Turns out, screwball comedy is not in his wheelhouse; hopefully, he burned that wheelhouse down to the ground.

Madonna had her recording career to fall back on, but she’s only part of the problem. Lead actor Dunne (After Hours) is just as blameworthy, because he should had known better. Unacceptable!

While the soundtrack has a few toe-tappers — especially “Causing a Commotion” and the title track — the movie really is one of the worst in the world. Even I can’t come up with a case for it! Playing like a screwball comedy without the screws or the balls, this is not a Girl I want to find. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.