Comic neuroses in Jesse Eisenberg's 'A Real Pain'

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

News

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to The Reel Schmooze with ToI film reviewer Jordan Hoffman and host Amanda Borschel-Dan, where we bring you all the entertainment news and film reviews a Jew can use.

This week, we hear scintillating updates on Hoffman's test drive of his new snow blower before launching into our two Schmoovies of the week.

First, we discuss "33 photos from the Ghetto," which explores the saga of a trove of previously unpublished photographs of the Nazis brutally suppressing the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Revolt that was captured in secret by a Polish firefighter while German forces set the Jewish ghetto ablaze. We learn how the images were accidentally discovered -- and how they complement another set that was sent to the United States decades earlier.

The film, distributed on HBO Max since International Holocaust Remembrance Day, evokes mixed feelings from our team.

We then turn to Jesse Einsenberg's 2024 "A Real Pain." It was a second viewing of the film for our duo and one of them had a change of heart from the repeat performance.

Check out the one "meh" and one "not bad" film (our highest mark) in this week's The Reel Schmooze.

The Reel Schmooze is produced by Ari Schlacht and can be found wherever you get your podcasts.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Times of Israel's The Real Shmooze, where we bring you all the entertainment
0:10.9	news and movie reviews that a Jew can use. I'm your host Amanda Borschelle Dan here with our
0:17.3	Movie Maven, Jordan Hoffman. Jordan, thank you so much for joining me today.
0:21.9	Thank you for having me.
0:23.3	And I'm excited because, you know, I know it's probably a very low percentage,
0:27.5	but some of our listeners are also viewers because we put these podcasts up on YouTube.
0:34.9	And since day one, and this is, I think, our 11th or 12th podcast, I've been using these
0:39.7	enormous chunky headphones, which are fine. They sound good. But I look like, to put it in
0:48.4	Star Wars terms, I look like Lobot. And there's probably one or two people out there that know
0:53.0	what I mean. These giant headphones. And I knew that I always had these very small earbuds that I don't
0:59.8	like because they kind of fall out of my ear, but they look for the purposes of this podcast,
1:04.5	and you podcast all day long over there at TOI, you're like a podcast machine.
1:09.1	You're always using the buds.
1:10.6	It looks nice. I knew I had
1:12.4	these somewhere in the house and the other day I found them. They were in a box that they didn't
1:17.1	belong in and I went, oh my God, those are those earphones I'm looking for. And now I have them
1:23.1	and I'm using them and going forward, you'll be able to see my beautiful bald head with few distractions.
1:30.1	And it's a great sunny day for all the real schmooze audience out there.
1:37.5	So congratulations to me.
1:39.3	So for anyone who is still with us after that scintillating moment of finding the earbuds, I did want to ask you, Jordan, because last episode, we were talking about your new gadget, the snow blower.
1:52.6	Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. Tell us.
1:55.5	Well, as, I mean, I don't know if it was international news, but it was certainly national news. There was a bit of a storm here in the USA. And it hit some spots where big snowstorms don't normally hit, like the
	...

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