Ten years or so between installments of a successful Hollywood franchise is a lifetime. When it comes to the third “Now You See Me” movie — poof! — time doesn’t matter. These magicians still got it.
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” does what sequels apparently must do these days — load up the characters, return to favorite bits and go global — but nails the trick, a crowd-pleasing return that already has a fourth in the works.
“It is very good to be back,” says Jesse Eisenberg as the egotistical, perfectionist J. Daniel Atlas, the brains behind the magician-robber outfit. It’s hard to argue with that sentiment on the strength of this outing, directed with assurance by Ruben Fleischer.
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” acts as a sort of pivot, bringing back the veterans — all of them, in various forms — as well as introducing three Gen Z eat-the-rich magicians played by Dominic Sessa, Justice Smith and Ariana Greenblatt. They’re clearly the future. It’s in good (sleight of) hands.
The movie starts off with a clever rip-off of nasty crypto bros in Brooklyn and expands to scenes in Belgium, the United Arab Emirates, France and South Africa. It’s got Nazis, “Harry Potter” vibes and some Louvre museum heist energy. We didn’t need the F1 chase through Abu Dhabi, but no one’s complaining.
The original Four Horsemen — Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Isla Fisher — are supplemented by Lizzy Caplan, who had replaced Fisher in the second installment. Morgan Freeman returns as the gravel-voiced mentor.
Rosamund Pike in “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.” (Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate via AP)
Rosamund Pike in “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.” (Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate via AP)
The prize at the movie’s heart is a diamond — but no mere bauble. It’s the Heart Diamond, the largest ever discovered, with a price tag of half a billion dollars. It’s the size of a smoked turkey leg.
The diamond is owned by a particularly vile South African diamond mine scion who uses her ultra-wealth to launder money for warlords and arms dealers. She is played deliciously by Rosamund Pike with a snide disdain and a nifty Afrikaner accent.
The secretive magic society known as The Eye unites the old Horsemen and the new trio (the Three Ponies?) to steal the diamond, stored in one of those multilevel, biometric “Mission: Impossible”-style bunkers.
Capturing it won’t enhance their bank statements. Remember, they’re all really anti-capitalist, share-the-wealth magicians — most likely democratic socialists, in vogue right now. “This is a chance to drive a stake through the devil herself,” Eisenberg’s character says.
Hollywood is funny that way, creating a multimillion-dollar franchise on the back of heroic left-wing activist characters and convincing the UAE to set it on their streets.
Dominic Sessa, Justice Smith and Ariana Greenblatt in “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.” (Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate via AP)
Dominic Sessa, Justice Smith and Ariana Greenblatt in “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.” (Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate via AP)
At first, it’s hard, with eight heroes rushing around, to figure out the primary dynamics. The older Horsemen are strangely muted here — except for Caplan, a hoot — and the young need some seasoning. Intergenerational bickering keeps the movie alive.
There’s a quick stop at a French chateau where some real magic takes place, literally. The last two “Now You See Me” installments got very green-screen and CGI when it came to effects, but the third very refreshingly steps back into old-fashioned trickery. In a single take, we see each of the heroes try to top the others with a card trick, misdirection or illusion.
There’s also a hall of mirrors, an upside-down room, an infinity staircase, a perspective-warping room and a nifty escape from a chamber filling with sand. Kudos to the filmmakers for embracing physical tricks over digital trickery. Also, cute use of Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra.”
All this leads to a huge showdown between the diamond princess and our motley magicians. You won’t guess who’s been pulling the strings all this time. Seriously, you won’t. And a new generation of magician-thieves are minted. That was a hard trick to pull off.
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” a Lionsgate release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for some strong language, violence and suggestive references. Running time: 112 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Jesse Eisenberg is taking his love of blood donation to the next level. While appearing on Today, the Now You See Me: Now You Don’t star shared that he intends to donate one of his kidneys to a stranger.
“I’m actually donating my kidney in six weeks,” he said. “I really am.”
The Oscar nominee said he was inspired to donate a kidney after becoming a regular blood donor. “I don’t know why. I got bitten by the blood donation bug,” he said. He went on to say that he was “so excited” to complete his altruistic donation—where a person donates a kidney to a person with advanced kidney disease whom he or she does not know—in mid-December.
“Let’s say person X needs a kidney in Kansas City, (and) their child or whoever was going to donate to them is, for whatever set of reasons, not a match, but somehow I am,” he explained. “That person can still get my kidney and hopefully that child of that person still donates their kidney, right? But it goes to a bank where that person can find a match recipient, but it only works if there is basically an altruistic donor.”
Eisenberg also dispelled the myth that being an altruistic kidney donor could prevent a potential donor from giving their kidney to someone in their family if that situation were to arise. “The way it works now is you can put a list of whoever you would like to be the first to be at the top of the list,” he said, referring to the National Kidney Registry’s family voucher program. He went on to reveal that he put his family members on his list so they’ll be prioritized for a living kidney donation if necessary. “So it’s risk-free for my family, as well,” he explained.
In a separate interview with Today, Eisenberg said that his forthcoming procedure is “essentially risk-free and so needed.” The U.S. currently has an organ donor shortage, with about 90,000 people on the transplant list waiting for a kidney as of September 2024, per the Health Resources and Services Administration. “I think people will realize that it’s a no-brainer, if you have the time and the inclination,” he added.
Jesse Eisenberg is leaving his turn as Mark Zuckerberg in the past.
Eisenberg, who played the Facebook CEO in the David Fincher-directed film The Social Network, surprised fans when it was reported in June that a sequel was in the works, but Eisenberg wasn’t coming back to play its lead.
During a Thursday appearance on the Today show, the Now You See Me: Now You Don’t star was asked why he wouldn’t return for the second film, The Social Reckoning. “Listen, for reasons that have nothing to do with how amazing that movie will be, really, truthfully,” Eisenberg said. “But when you play a character, you feel, at some point, you’ve grown into something else.”
When asked if he’s outgrown the character, the actor responded, “Yeah, something. But it’s a really wonderful movie. I’m friends with Aaron Sorkin who wrote and is directing this movie, and all of the reasons that I am not in it are completely unrelated to how brilliant it will be.”
The 2010 film scored eight Oscar nominations and won three, including adapted screenplay for Sorkin. The film grossed $226 million globally. Its cast included Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield’s Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker and Armie Hammer as the Winklevoss twins.
In the upcoming sequel — which has Aaron Sorkin, writer of the first film, directing and writing for Sony — Jeremy Strong will play Zuckerberg. “It’s one of the great scripts I’ve ever read. It speaks to our time, it touches the third rail of everything happening in our world,” Strong told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month. “It’s a great character — fascinating, complex — and I’m approaching it with great care and empathy and objectivity.”
The Succession actor also noted that he hasn’t spoken to Eisenberg about taking over his role. “I think that has nothing to do with what I’m going to do,” Strong told THR.
In addition to Strong, Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Bill Burr are among its cast. The film takes place 17 years after the original ended. It follows a young Facebook engineer, Frances Haugen (Madison), and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (White), who work together to spotlight the secrets of the social network.
The Social Reckoning will release in theaters over Columbus Day weekend next year.
The long-awaited sequel to The Social Network will hit theaters next fall, according to a report by Deadline. The official release date is set for October 9, 2026, which is just about 16 years after the first film dropped.
We also have plenty of other information, including the full cast and the actual name of the movie. The official name is The Social Reckoning, which makes sense as the movie follows recent events in which Facebook got into legal and political trouble when a whistleblower alleged that the company knew the platform was harming society but did nothing about it.
The cast is being led by Jeremy Strong from Succession, who takes over Zuckerberg duties from actor Jesse Eisenberg. Mikey Madison is playing the aforementioned whistle blower Frances Haugen and The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White portrays Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horowitz.
Bill Burr is also appearing in this flick, though we don’t know in what capacity. The Hollywood Reporter has suggested he will play a fictional character invented for the film that will be an amalgamation of several people. Aaron Sorkin is both writing and directing this one. He wrote the first movie, but David Fincher directed it.
It’s been almost a decade since the last Now You See Memovie, but the franchise is coming back with a third installment that sees old and new magicians team up for a series of heists.
The best part of these movies has always been watching the Horsemen and their friends pull off their seemingly impossible schemes, and according to Jesse Eisenberg, the upcoming movie has some even more fun in store.
Eisenberg cryptically told Entertainment Weekly that a “genuinely brilliant, incredibly effective twist” will change the course of the entire film. Said scene would demand “some really great acting,” although Eisenberg admitted he didn’t entirely get it at first, even after reading the script three times. It was only after Eisenberg asked director Ruben Fleischer to explain the scene and then actually shooting the scene itself when everything finally clicked: “Apparently people go nuts for the ending in test screenings, but I am like an idiot when it comes to plot. […] People will not only understand [the twist], but love it.”
If you liked Now You See Me 2 and wished Lizzy Caplan were here, you may also be in luck. Eisenberg teased some surprise appearances that will be “as much fun as they are surprising. These appearances aren’t boring—it’s the best kind of shock because it’s a surprise but also done in such an unusual way.” According to him at least, the entire film will both “blow your mind.”
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t will be conjured into theaters on November 14.
Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in A Real PainCourtesy of Searchlight Pictures
The Jewish tradition of placing stones on the grave markers of the deceased as a form of respect and remembrance becomes a central animating force in A Real Pain, the new film written, directed and starring Jesse Eisenberg. While visiting Poland with a Holocaust tour group, cousins David and Benji (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, respectively) place stones on one of the markers at the country’s oldest gravesites; they try it again at the front entrance of the home where their beloved grandmother grew up, until they are alerted in brusque Polish by a concerned neighbor that an old woman actually lives there now and is likely to trip over the stone and break her neck.
A REAL PAIN ★★★★(4/4 stars) Directed by:Jesse Eisenberg Written by: Jesse Eisenberg Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan Running time: 90 mins.
Eisenberg’s remarkable film—which won Eisenberg the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance earlier this year—is like that mislaid second marker: heartfelt, awkward, full of pain it’s desperate to do something with, and laced with an all-too-necessary mordant humor. It at once recalls the works of Woody Allen, Alexander Payne and, most notably, the comedy of Adam Sandler (Culkin’s live-wire Benji’s too-muchness is an outcome of his outsized anger and vulnerability). But Eisenberg, in his second writer-director effort following 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World, has somehow created an of the moment tragicomedy in a style identifiably his own.
Or to put an even finer point: it is identifiably himself.
The lead characters—the highly-medicated worrywart seller of internet pop-up ads played by Eisenberg and the stoner charm-monster disrupting everything in the search for something genuine embodied with ruthless abandon by Culkin—are like the filmmaker split in two. Watching these two actors bounce off of and grate on each other as they navigate well-appointed hotel rooms, air-conditioned train rides and finally, in absolute silence, the Majdanek concentration camp, is like witnessing a Socratic dialogue if Plato had spent a few seasons writing for SNL.
Jennifer Gray in A Real PainAgata Grzybowska/Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Filmmaker and actor Will Sharpe delivers a deftly attenuated performance as the well-meaning tour guide with the impossible task of respecting the enormity of what they are there to see while keeping the mood light enough to not be crushing. Like a lost crush from a Catskill’s summer many moons ago, Jennifer Grey turns up on the bus as a recently divorced Los Angelino looking for meaning in her life. Kurt Egyiawan, a child soldier in Cary Joji Fukunaga’s 2015 war film Beasts of No Nation, plays a Rwanda genocide survivor who turned to Judaism as a way to connect with and process his own trauma.
Eisenberg seems incapable of an inauthentic moment, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that nearly everything he does as an actor, writer and now director confronts the sheer impossibility of achieving anything approaching authenticity. But his deftest act as a filmmaker may be simply handing the ball off to Culkin and clearing a hole so he can run with it. Like a one-winged bird forever trying to escape a cage of its own construction, the Emmy-winning Succession star thrashes, soars and crashes with a breathtaking transparency.
Admittedly, A Real Pain is an acquired taste; like a top-flight IPA, it is at once overly aggressive and serenely balanced. As a director, Eisenberg holds a preternatural understanding of when to exhale when it all gets to be too much, whether it’s Benji’s antics, David’s brittleness or the enormity of the Holocaust.
Like several of the year’s very best films—including Brady Corbet’s epic The Brutalist and Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, a recreation of howABC Sports covered the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics—A Real Pain demonstrates how we can and must reconcile with the forever festering wounds of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people in dynamic ways and with distinct styles. It has never been a more crucial time to listen to and engage with those stories.
I’m waiting for Kieran Culkin at the tip of the Greenpoint ferry platform, where he’s suggested we meet on a Friday morning to get on the boat, take it a few stops to Dumbo, then walk across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan — a sort of hung-over New Yorker’s triathlon. He’s late and sending me self-effacing riffs about it: “I was just about to text you to see if you were also running late or if you were the kind of person that was professional and an actual adult, unlike myself.” The ferry pulls into the dock at the exact moment that I spot him on the horizon. He is instantly recognizable, clad in all black and wearing a pair of sunglasses, eyebrows perma-arched, hair like an inverted comma, walking with distinct hustle but not running. The boat starts boarding right as he reaches me, a little out of breath and visibly relieved that he pulled it off. “This is what I do,” he says. “I pull up to airports, I don’t even know what airline I’m flying. Sometimes I don’t know what city I’m going to. I still get on the plane and everything’s fine.”
As we line up to show our tickets, Culkin, a lifelong New Yorker who rode the subway around the city alone by 13 and who contains all of the ungovernability and bullshit-detecting that this implies, digresses into a spontaneous but deeply felt spiel about the ferry’s flawed digital ticketing system (“The physical ticket, I can just put it in my pocket. I just have to get here early enough to go to the kiosk and fucking do it. But I’m lazy. And now I’m bitching about how lazy I am”). I will soon learn that this is his greatest talent, second only to his ability to wring humor, poignancy, and a sense of total reality from the dozens of onscreen characters he’s been playing since early childhood. Later, he will joyfully go full Larry David on everything from coffee-lid sizes to the concept of wearing shorts (“It’s a weird garment”).
Culkin, 42, has made his career portraying boys, teenagers, and now adult men not unlike himself: hyperverbose and stubborn, skin-of-their-teeth charming, effortlessly funny, irascible and self-lacerating. He’s mastered the art of playing people who think they’ve mastered the art of the carefree, loutish façade but whose pathos and pain glisten through the cracks. He uncovered that instinct as a part of the brief but powerful Culkin Child-Actor Dynasty in blazingly earnest ’90s films like The Mighty and The Cider House Rules and Father of the Bride, sharpened it as a teen in artier fare like Igby Goes Down and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, and most recently and famously perfected it on HBO’s Succession as sad perverted clown Roman Roy.
He’ll next star in the film A Real Pain, a dramedy about a pair of cousins who embark on a Holocaust tour of Poland in memory of their late grandmother. Culkin is at the apex of his idiosyncratic powers as the magnetic charmer Benji, whose easy banter with his fellow tourgoers gives way to increasingly volatile moods that reveal a tormented core. Jesse Eisenberg — who wrote, directed, and stars opposite Culkin — is the ostensible protagonist David, Benji’s uptight, socially awkward cousin who envies and pities him in equal measure, but A Real Pain is Culkin’s showcase. Eisenberg remembers being consistently astonished by Culkin’s ability to show up on set with no idea which scene they were filming that day, scan his lines, then casually deliver “the greatest acting I’ve ever seen in my life.” Its Sundance and Telluride premieres received glowing reviews praising Culkin’s performance specifically, entering him into the Best Supporting Actor Oscar conversation.
And Culkin nearly dropped out of the film. He’s notoriously picky about taking jobs; he turned several of them down in the years after 2002’s Igby, unsure if he wanted what he saw as a fun childhood hobby to be a proper career. “Things were coming,” he recalls of that time, like movies written specifically for him, and “I freaked out, ran away.” He eventually got comfortable taking on more parts, only saying “yes” when he really connected with something — which is exactly what happened when he read the script for A Real Pain while filming Succession’s final season in 2022.
“It was one of the very, very, very rare scripts that I laughed out loud reading,” he says as we disembark and begin our trek toward the bridge, both sweating in the early-September sun as he curses himself for coming up with this activity and then showing up for it in an entirely black outfit. “It was that rare thing of, Oh, I know who this character is and I know how to do it.” Specifically, he recognized Benji as a near-perfect doppelgänger of someone unnamed whom he knows in real life as well as in a sort of a quantum-multiverse, Sliding Doors version of himself. “I’m one quick little misstep away from being that person,” he says, and he credits his decision to stop smoking weed in his 20s as one of the things that saved him from a lonely, depressive, Benji-esque fate. He took the role after the Real Pain producers told him the film wasn’t shooting for another year. “I’m like, ‘Oh, a year? That’s not real life.’ Then that year was up. And I had a panic.”
Culkin is a consummate wife guy who brings up his spouse of 11 and a half years, Jazz Charton, dozens of times unprompted and tells me his ideal job would be a stay-at-home dad. “Some people say that but don’t really mean it,” he says, knowing how the whole thing sounds. “And some definitely just couldn’t do that.” So he was particularly stressed by the idea of being separated from Charton and their two kids. He learned while making Succession that eight days is the maximum he can be away from them without plunging into dissociative despair. “I don’t know who I am without them,” he says. As we exited the ferry, Culkin instinctively reached to grab a stroller from the storage area. “Where are my fucking kids?!” he joked.
He tried to pull out of A Real Pain just before production began and ended up on the phone with Emma Stone, his onetime girlfriend and a producer of the film. “She did an almost reverse-psychology thing on me,” he says, laughing. “She was like, ‘Oh, I totally get that. If I were you, I’d probably feel that way.’ And I was like, ‘But have they started?’ She goes, ‘Oh, yeah. They’re actually already in Poland scouting locations; people are hired.’ I was like, ‘It’s not like people would be out of a job?’ She’s like, ‘No, no, they would, but it’s not on you. You said ‘yes,’ but if you have your reasons for not doing it, you’re not responsible for these people’s jobs. It’s fine; you do whatever you want.’ And I got off the phone and I went, ‘Ah.’ ” Stone laughs recalling the conversation. “I can’t believe he talked about it publicly,” she says. “Producing, I’ve realized now, is like parenting — every kid needs different things.” Stone got on the plane with Culkin, his wife, and their kids to make sure he made the journey. “I was so grateful that he did it, but, also, thank fucking God. Because it would’ve been catastrophic,” she says.His family was able to join him for a good chunk of the shoot but not all. When I ask how he pushed through the 25 days without them, he deadpans, “Alcohol.”
Eisenberg didn’t learn about Culkin’s attempt to back out until after the film was finished. But when Culkin eventually told him, he was relatively nonplussed. “It was just another thing in a long line of, like, Who is this person?” Eisenberg says. He cast Culkin without ever having seen him perform in anything. The two had only met briefly — once on the set of Zombieland (where Culkin was visiting Stone) and once at an audition for Adventureland, which Culkin didn’t get but Eisenberg did, and where, Culkin tells me, he made the spontaneous artistic choice to pinch Eisenberg’s nipples through his shirt as part of the audition scene and forgot to remove his hands once the director called cut. When I bring this up to Eisenberg, he pauses thoughtfully. “I had forgotten about that. That’s right,” he says. “We’ve never discussed it. I think he squeezed my breasts.” While the breast-squeezing left no lasting impression, what did was Culkin’s “magic trick” ability to project both lightness and darkness simultaneously and in equal measure. He “exhibits real quickness, but there’s also a kind of real-world heaviness to him,” Eisenberg says.
Culkin isn’t Jewish, which was a major discussion, Eisenberg says: “I have 17,000 thoughts about this, and where I come out is he gave me an amazing gift by helping to tell this story that is very personal for my family.” As Benji, Culkin is as enchanting as he is impulsive and infuriating, casually befriending other people on the tour to the astonished envy of David then later berating their sweet guide for his “constant barrage of stats.” In a vivid moment roughly midway through the film, he publicly melts down about the cognitive dissonance of traveling first class on a Polish train on a Holocaust tour, embarrassing David and baffling his peers. David in particular can’t seem to understand why Benji is so consistently plagued by suffering. “You see how people love you? You see what happens when you walk into a room?” he goes on to ask him. “I would give anything to know what that feels like, man.”
With Jesse Eisenberg in A Real Pain. Photo: Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Unlike a lot of actors, who tend to try to distance themselves from their most widely known role in fear of being existentially stuck or typecast, Culkin constantly and happily steers our conversation back to Succession. The show was deeply meaningful to him — it was where he says he finally realized he wanted to be an actor. On a personal level, he was such a fan of the series that he almost always watched it with Charton as it aired each Sunday night, though he mostly avoided the internet discourse. “My wife would tell me certain things, like, ‘Oh, people are making fun of the way you sit.’ And she’ll show me on her phone. And I’m scrolling, like, ‘Oh, yeah, I sit weird in the show. I didn’t know that.’” He still hasn’t seen the final episode, in part because he was already in Poland filming A Real Pain when it aired. It’s been so long now that he and Charton are planning a rewatch going back to episode one. He admits he might also be avoiding the finale because then the whole thing will really be over. He still daydreams about a spontaneous fifth-season pickup: “There’s part of me that feels like, When are they going to call?” he says. “I think maybe the reason is because I didn’t get the closure of watching the last fucking episode.” Suddenly, we are confronted by the half-naked body of his Succession co-star Alexander Skarsgård hovering above us on a gigantic billboard. Culkin stops talking and looks up at him, beaming with pride. “Well!” he says. “There he is.”
While filming Succession, where he was encouraged to play around with his lines and his character, Culkin developed a sort of free-associative acting style, but he won’t go so far as to call it improv (“That has a certain feel to it”). Instead, he calls it blagging, British slang he picked up from his wife that loosely translates to “fake it till you make it.” He doesn’t like to talk too much about how he does this or try to analyze it; to look at it too hard might ruin the whole thing. “It’s written, and I understand the character, and then some shit comes out sometimes; that’s it. And I don’t force it,” he says.
The not-improv improv of it all caused an initial clash between Eisenberg and Culkin on the set of A Real Pain. Eisenberg is a type-A planner and had each scene carefully blocked and plotted out. Culkin felt stifled by the relative formality. “It felt a little bit like going backward,” he says. “Jesse had set up shots before I got there to be like, ‘You’re going to stand here.’ And I’m like, ‘How do you know?’ He goes, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ I’m like, ‘Well, we haven’t tried it yet is all I’m saying.’ I tried to go along with him those first couple of days, and it felt like, Why am I hired?” Eisenberg remembers changing his mind after filming a specific scene in which he asked Culkin to run up to co-star Jennifer Grey, who plays a tourgoer who bonds with Benji, and say whatever he wanted because they weren’t going to use the audio. “He was so free and funny that I didn’t mind throwing out the blueprints.”
Photo: Mark Seliger for New York Magazine
We’re in the East Village now, Culkin’s erstwhile neighborhood of 20-plus years, where he’s meeting up with Charton. He spots her from across the street and makes a loud birdcall to get her attention. Charton is disarming and funny, and the two are clearly enamored with each other, falling into natural repartee about their kids and each other. Charton lovingly mocks Culkin for being winded from our walk. “We went to our daughter’s school, and you’re only supposed to use the elevator for an emergency or if you have to, so we took the stairs and Kieran was out of breath at the second floor,” she says, laughing. Culkin picks up the story: “I made it to the third, and I took a break. She thought I was kidding.” Charton imitates Culkin: “‘I can feel my heart!’”
In January, Culkin got up onstage at the Emmys and informed the world that he’d like to have another baby, which Charton promised him she’d consider if he won. “She had no faith that I was going to,” he explains, shaking his head. “I didn’t have that forethought of like, What’s going to be the response to this?” It backfired somewhat. “I was very moved, No. 1,” Charton says. “And then I was very confused that he would bring up my uterus.” Culkin nods cheerfully, willing to accept notes. “That I was calling you out publicly,” he adds. “I mean, luckily he’s not super-famous or anything, but I got weird messages from friends and family about it,” Charton says. “I feel like my uterus is now public domain.” He is openly apologetic about the bad blag, and the possibility of another kid is still on the table.
Culkin’s next big project is Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway, opposite Bob Odenkirk and Bill Burr, in the spring. He agreed to do the play because he thought it would give him more time with his family. “Then I talked to friends who do theater and have young kids, and I was like, ‘Wait, is it good?’ They’re like, ‘No, you never see your kids. You’re working every night. You never do bath time, bedtime. You get one night a week,’ ” he says. Instead of trying to get out of it, he asked the producers to change the schedule so he could have Sundays off. To his surprise, they said “yes” and moved the show to Mondays. “I’ve never heard of the show going dark on a Sunday,” he says. “Now I get one day a week dedicated to just being a dad.”
That night, he and I meet up at a Gramercy steakhouse whose interior is emblazoned with a gigantic sign that reads “Beef and Liberty,” the sort of place that the Roman Roys of the world might conspicuously snort cocaine off a leather banquette and where, across the street, the entire Lohan family is dining outside. When I ask Culkin if he knows Lindsay, he corrects me on the pronunciation of her name (LO-uhn) and says he doesn’t ever recognize any famous people except for the anchors on NY1; recently, he says, he chatted up a very important higher-up at Disney without having any idea who he was. We order dirty martinis — “Very, very, very dry, barely any vermouth” — and Culkin deliberates for a very long time about which steak to choose, asking the waiter pointed questions about its provenance before landing on a huge bone-in so he can take the rest home for his family. But later, when he asks for a to-go box, he hands it all to me, insisting on giving me the leftovers because he wants me to make a steak soup that one of his brothers once cooked for him. He takes a deep breath and begins describing the recipe for it in passionate, exacting detail.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” returning for its second season and Adam Sandler’s first comedy special since 2018 are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: John Legend offers his first-ever children’s album, season four of “Only Murders in the Building” shifts to Los Angeles and DJ and dance producer Zedd is back with an album after nearly a decade.
NEW MOVIES TO STREAM
— “The Fall Guy” is finally coming to Peacock, where it will be streaming starting Friday, Aug. 30, alongside an “extended cut” version. It might not have reached the blockbuster heights the studio dreamed about during its theatrical run, but it’s pure delight: A comedy, action, romance that soars thanks to the charisma of its stars. Based on the 1980s Lee Majors television series (he gets a cameo), the film features Ryan Gosling as a stunt man, Emily Blunt as his director and dream girl, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as an egotistical movie star and “Ted Lasso’s” Hannah Waddingham as a Diet Coke slurping producer.
— Ishana Night Shyamalan’s thriller, “The Watchers,” in which Dakota Fanning plays an artist stranded in western Ireland where mysterious creatures lurk and stalk in the night, begins streaming on MAX on Friday, Aug. 30.
— Emma Stone gives a performance (and interpretive dance) worth watching in “ Kinds of Kindness,” her latest collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos fresh on the heels of her Oscar-winning turn in “Poor Things.” The film, streaming on Hulu on Friday, Aug. 30, is a triptych with a big ensemble cast including Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons (who won a prize for his performance at Cannes), Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Mamoudou Athie and Joe Alwyn. Jocelyn Noveck, in her Associated Press review, described it as “a meditation on our free will and the ways we willingly forfeit it to others — in the workplace, at home, and in religion.” Noveck wrote that the “Stone-Lanthimos pairing… is continuing to nurture an aspect of Stone’s talents that increasingly sets her apart: Her fearlessness and the obvious joy she derives from it.”
— Somehow the Yorgos Lanthimos film is not the most eccentric new streaming offering this week. That title goes to “ Sasquatch Sunset,” Nathan and David Zellner’s experimental film about a family of sasquatches just living their lives. Starring an essentially unrecognizable Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough (in addition to Nathan Zellner), this Sundance curiosity begins streaming on Paramount+ on Monday. In his review for the AP, Mark Kennedy wrote that it is “a bewildering 90-minute, narrator-less and wordless experiment that’s as audacious as it is infuriating. It’s not clear if everyone was high making it or we should be while watching it.”
— DJ and dance producer Zedd is back with an album after nearly a decade, “Telos.” The first single is the appropriately titled “Out of Time” featuring Bea Miller, a dreamy tune with atmospheric strings that builds into a dancefloor banger. Zedd has revealed that he started writing “Out Of Time” way back in 2015 but was never able to finish it. That changed with Bea — “her voice added an emotional depth that completed the song. ‘Out Of Time’ really encapsulates the DNA of the Telos album, which is why I chose it to be the song that introduces this new era,” he says.
— If you’re into a slower change of pace, check out John Legend, who releases his first children’s album, “My Favorite Dream,” on Friday, Aug. 30. It’s produced by the chamber pop polymath Sufjan Stevens and centers on universal themes like love, safety, family and dreams across nine original tracks, two covers, a solo piano track and three bonus covers of Fisher-Price songs.
— Get ready for a blast of K-pop — on your television. Apple TV+ has the six part documentary “K-Pop Idols,” a behind-the-scenes look at the highly competitive reality of K-pop stardom, starting Friday, Aug. 30. It features Jessi, CRAVITY and BLACKSWAN as they learn choreography and pull everything together to seize the stage. Producers say the series “follows the superstars through trials and triumphs, breaking down cultural and musical barriers in K-pop with passion, creativity and determination as they chase their dreams.”
— RZA takes a sharp turn as a classical composer with the album “A Ballet Through Mud.” The composition made its debut in the form of a ballet last year, performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Composed and scored by the Wu-Tang Clan star, the piece mirrors his journey from growing up in the projects in New York City to famous artist, “weaving in tales of love, loss, exploration, Buddhist monks, and a journey ‘through mud.‘” RZA says he began the project early in the pandemic after rediscovering notebooks full of lyrics he had written as a teenager. “The inspiration for ‘A Ballet Through Mud’ comes from my earliest creative output as a teenager, but its themes are universal — love, exploration, and adventure,” he says.
— Adam Sandler has the feels in his new Netflix special “Adam Sandler: Love You” featuring his standup and trademark comedy songs. It’s directed by Josh Safdie who — with his brother Benny — co-directed Sandler in the 2019 movie “Uncut Gems.” “Love You” is Sandler’s first comedy special since 2018. It premieres Tuesday on Netflix.
— Charles, Oliver and Mabel (Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez) head to Los Angeles in season four of “Only Murders in the Building,” because their podcast is being turned into a film. Their Hollywood life is interrupted when another murder occurs, meaning the trio has a new case to cover. Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis and Eva Longoria join the cast. “Only Murders in the Building” premieres Tuesday on Hulu.
— A new animated series in the “Terminator” universe comes to Netflix on Thursday. It follows new characters voiced by “House of the Dragon” actor Sonoya Mizuno, Timothy Olyphant, André Holland Rosario Dawson and Ann Dowd.
— Luke Skywalker may get the headlines, but the true MVPs of the Star Wars franchise are rascals like Han Solo and Lando Calrissian. Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws introduces a new scoundrel: Kay Vess, a young thief who’s trying to work her way up the galaxy’s crime syndicates and make the big score. She isn’t a Jedi or a Sith, but she knows how to fire a blaster and fly a spaceship. Outlaws comes from Massive Entertainment, the developers of Tom Clancy’s The Division, and it aims to spread Ubisoft’s brand of open-world adventure across multiple planets. It launches Friday, Aug. 30, on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S and PC.
— Many gamers who grew up with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System remember 1993’s Secret of Mana as their introduction to a particular type of high-fantasy role-playing. It’s been 15 years since we’ve gotten a new chapter in the marquee Mana series, but Square Enix is finally delivering Visions of Mana. A youngster named Val is chosen to accompany his friend Hinna on a pilgrimage to the life-sustaining Mana Tree, and they’ll need to use magic and swordplay to fight all the monsters along the way. The lush, anime-style graphics are bound to stir memories in old-school RPG fans, starting Thursday, Aug. 29, on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S and PC.
As he got to filming his new movie A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg realized that he and his co-star, Kieran Culkin, didn’t exactly work the same way. Eisenberg was embarking on his second feature as a director, and the first in which he would also act; Culkin was playing his first role since wrapping a four-season run on HBO’s Succession, fresh off that creative high. Eisenberg had spent months working on a shot list for their expansive Poland shoot with cinematographer Michal Dymek (EO). He’d exactingly planned out each scene’s marks and blocking. A lot of that ended up scrapped. “Kieran is an unusual actor—he works really, really well as a spontaneous performer,” Eisenberg says.
“On Succession we’d do the whole scene maybe seven or eight times, and then that was it. This was set-up 12 and take 40-something. I’m like, ‘What is this?’” Culkin adds with a laugh. “I felt like I was just making a fuss of nothing. He put me in the left seat and I’m like, ‘Why’d you choose that for me?’ I was just being obnoxious.’”
Listening to Culkin and Eisenberg helps explain their exceptionally prickly chemistry in A Real Pain, which premieres at Sundance on Saturday. The pair give some of their most nuanced, funny screen performances to date as cousins at very different stages in their lives who travel to Poland together to honor the memory of their late grandmother. They join a sightseeing tour that allows them to bicker and reminisce on the road—with an audience of fellow tourists in tow—while they face their own intergenerational trauma, visiting Auschwitz and later their grandmother’s home.
The script’s origins are threefold: a short story Eisenberg had published and was trying to adapt about two guys drifting apart during a vacation to Mongolia; a play he wrote that followed his own impactful visit to Poland; and an online ad he came across that seemed to bring everything together: “Auschwitz Tours with Lunch.”
Eisenberg at the Majdanek concentration camp, taken by his wife, Anna Strout, during their trip to Poland.
“It’s just the strange irony of being an upper-middle-class suburban American Jew traveling to Auschwitz and still needing to have some of the creature comforts that you have come to expect whilst traveling,” Eisenberg says. “I thought, that’s such a fascinating, ironic, dramatic and also profound juxtaposition between trying to explore the horrors of your family history while also being able to sit first class on a train car and stay at the Radisson.”
This is the tricky tonal balance Eisenberg strikes throughout A Real Pain, even as production went to and shot at sites of profound horror. “My main goal was to make an unsanctimonious movie set against the backdrop of the Holocaust,” Eisenberg says. “I don’t like the self-aggrandizing tone of these stories about sensitive subjects—it turns me off creatively, not because I think they’re doing anything wrong. It just is not my taste.” So we have Eisenberg’s David, living a yuppie life in New York City, butting heads with Culkin’s Benji, a kind of drifter who masks immense grief with his wit. Their dynamic rings true, and smartly anchors the film’s larger questions about suffering, guilt, and luxury.
Much of those deeper emotional components came from Eisenberg’s own experience in Poland, reckoning with his family and cultural history. The film could shoot in the country thanks to the work of producer Ali Herting, whose connection to the team behind The Zone of Interest brought them to the Polish company Extreme Emotions. “The house that my family fled in 1938—we actually had cameras inside it for this lovely shot of the two main characters departing this little town,” Eisenberg says.
Then there’s the matter of the tour experience, discomfitingly familiar to anyone who’s traveled abroad in this kind of regimented, temporary social circle. Jennifer Gray plays one of the people sightseeing with Benji and David, while The White Lotus’s Will Sharpe plays their tour guide. “You’re experiencing these big things on a personal level, and then also sharing this kind of odd social dynamic with new people who are outsiders,” Eisenberg says. Sharpe actually went a little method in playing a guide, learning the ins and outs of the locations his character was presenting. “There’s a lot of improvising on his part and people asking him questions—and he would actually have the answer to it, which was very impressive,” Culkin says. “It did feel like we were on a tour.”
