Jesse Eisenberg’s second movie as writer/director, A Real Pain, just premiered at Sundance. It was picked up for distribution by Searchlight, and is very worth finding once it gets released.

My review is at Slant Magazine:

There’s enough pain on display in Jesse Eisenberg’s crackling comedy A Real Pain to keep numerous therapists busy for years. It’s a cavalcade of angst and agony, from the familial to the historical, with an occasionally quite bleak assessment of the human condition. Nevertheless, it’s also levitated by a truly joyful sense of humor that puts up a good fight against the story’s darker moments without trying to joke them into irrelevance…