Eleanor the Great (2025) review

Nonagenarian Eleanor (June Squibb) moves to her native New York City (from Florida) to stay with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson Max (Will Price) after her life-long friend Bessie Stern (Rita Zohar) passes away, but Eleanor finds herself in a bit of trouble when she gets dragged into attending a support group for survivors of the Holocaust and adopts Bessie's tragic back story as her own, and then forms a friendship with NYU journalism student Nina (Erin Kellyman).  While it's nice to have actress ScarJo directing a feature (it's her full-length debut) this is utterly shameless in the way it begs for audience pity: it not only invokes memories of one of the worst genocides in human history, but it has 94-year-old Squibb hobbling along with her cane and then shows Nina (who, by the way, is a lesbian and friendless) crying repeatedly because she's mourning the death of her mother.  The fact that it "brushes off" Eleanor's Big Lie as "just a reflection of her grief" is also an offensive copout, like young men claiming they served overseas during the Occupation of Iraq but, in reality, were chugging Mountain Dew and playing computer games in the comfort of their homes.