Review: The Apprentice

Image courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.

Ali Abbasi's controversial new film, "The Apprentice," is a surprisingly watchable and frequently unsettling origin story for America's worst person. The picture's title refers to the popular reality show in which Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) was once the star, but in the context of this story it refers to Trump's mentor-friend relationship with the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).

There are more than a few scenes here in which the groundwork is laid for the Trump who would later go on to become its 45th president and is currently seeking the role of its first fascist dictator, but mostly the picture is a well written and intriguing story about how a guy with few morals but a lot of bluster was able to rise to the top through the tutelage of an unscrupulous mentor.

As the film opens in the 1970s, Trump has just been admitted to the Manhattan billionaire's club and has taken a date to an exclusive lounge where he fawns over the wealthy and powerful people hanging out there. It's here that he meets Cohn, an unrepentant bigot and sleaze merchant who is proud of his ability to hob knob with Richard Nixon (he previously worked with Joseph McCarthy) and blackmail people.

Trump wants Cohn to represent his family after his father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan), and he have been sued by the federal government for refusing to rent to Black people. Cohn decides to take the family on as a client but, more importantly, take Donald under his wing.

Cohn teaches him the three most important tricks of business: attack, attack, attack; reframe the truth as being only what you say and deny every accusation; and never admit defeat, but rather claim victory even when the truth shows otherwise. Sound familiar?

A viewer who dislikes Trump might believe it would be hard to spend two hours in his company - and while this is somewhat true, I still found "The Apprentice" to be compelling and watchable. The film is shot in the seedy 1970s style one might expect from a film set in that era and there's an ever present sense of menace during its entire running time. 

Stan gives a solid performance as Trump, looking somewhat like him and and sounding a little bit like the real estate tycoon, but certainly nailing his mannerisms. In many ways, Strong gives the most compelling performance as Cohn, a ruthless man who views those lower on the societal totem pole as weak and not deserving compassion, that is, until he contracts AIDS (Cohn was gay, although he denied it) and suddenly finds himself being viewed by Trump in the same manner.

Ali Abbasi's filmography has been one that never fails to surprise. His "Border" was a freakish film about a Danish border security guard, while "The Holy Spider" was a haunting true crime film about an Iranian serial killer that cracked my top 10 of 2022. "The Apprentice" feels more in line with Abbasi's second film in that both study sociopathic behavior that comes to be deemed as acceptable by society. 

While I wouldn't go as far as saying that "The Apprentice" does a great job of capturing the essence of what has made Trump such a prominent figure in American politics and culture, it's an often fascinating origin story about how a sociopath is given the tools through a mentor of equally questionable morals to conquer the world or, at least, smooth talk his way to the top. 

Yes, it was difficult to spend two hours in Trump's company - especially during the scene in which he rapes his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova) - when we are inundated with his awfulness on an hourly basis thanks to our feckless media, but "The Apprentice" is a film that is a little more watchable than you might expect.

Review: Saturday Night

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

Jason Reitman's "Saturday Night" is nothing less than what it appears to be - a play-by-play of the hours and minutes leading up to one of the most momentous nights in comedy TV history. Filmed in the style of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's "Birdman," the picture follows a number of personalities as they navigate the sets of NBC just before the show was set to go on the air in 1975.

Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), the show's creator, is our main window into the proceedings as he attempts to get one of his stars, John Belushi (Matt Wood), to sign his contract as well as nail down a final script - a board is covered with numerous pieces of paper with skit titles, clearly too many to squeeze into 90 minutes of television - and hob knob with skittish producers (Willem Dafoe is NBC big wig David Tebet while Cooper Hoffman is producer Dick Ebersol, who takes a lot of abuse from pretty much everyone).

The cast is massive. There's a cocky Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), a fast-talking Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien), affable Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), and Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), who fears he is the cast's token Black cast member. There's also George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), future Letterman band leader Paul Schaffer (Paul Rust), Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany), Nicholas Braun pulling double duty as the shy Jim Henson and eccentric Andy Kaufman, and even an appearance by Mr. Television himself, Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons).

The list goes on and on. Surprisingly, a number of the figures get their own memorable moments - Henson pleads gently over and over again with Michaels for a script for his Muppets bit, Carlin gets to rant and rave, Morris connects with musical guest Billy Preston and later with Curtin when he ponders what exactly he's doing there, Kaufman does his Mighty Mouse routine, Belushi goes ice skating, and Chase has a confrontation with Berle that he was not likely expecting.

And yet, the film feels more like a series of enjoyable moments, rather than any sort of deep dive into the relevance that "Saturday Night Live" represents for American pop culture. So while "Saturday Night" - the film's title refers to the show's original name, which later added a third word - isn't anything more than it purports to be, well, that's perfectly fine. It's an amusing behind-the-scenes look at what allegedly took place while the show's cast and crew struggled to get it on the air.

Considering that next year is the 50th anniversary of that evening, it should come as no surprise that Reitman's film exists. It's an enjoyable homage to the show's lasting legacy and a number of the cast members nail their impersonations. It's not likely to give anyone new insights into the show, but instead it celebrates the quirky collaborative spirit that has allowed it to last this long.

Review: Joker: Folie a deux

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

While I wasn't particularly a fan of Todd Phillips' first "Joker" movie, I could admire Joaquin Phoenix's committed performance and its visual style, clearly trying to mimic the 1970s films of Martin Scorsese or Sidney Lumet. One of my complaints with the film was its seeming self-importance; that it was a facile film that thought it was making a big statement. 

While its sequel, "Joker: Folie a deux," is technically a riskier venture - hell, it's sort of a musical - it also just feels, well, lost. My objection is not so much that it is a musical - in fact, there's a decent enough argument as to why that might have worked - but that the filmmakers once again think they are doing something so daring by making it one.

Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) is by all accounts a deeply disturbed individual who often lives in a world of fantasy. If you think about it, musicals are movies in which characters suddenly exit the land of reality by breaking out into song and dance that is often choreographed and scored to music. Therefore, making this film a musical could have been an interesting way of approaching Fleck's story.

The film picks up where the other left off, that is with Fleck in a mental institution, where he's mocked and occasionally abused by the guards. His lawyer (Catherine Keener) seemingly has sympathy for him and is trying to ensure that he doesn't go to trial on the grounds that he is mentally ill. However, Arthur meets a woman named Lee (Lady Gaga) - short for Harley Quinn - in the institution and the two begin a, ahem, bad romance.

Lee appears to be a Joker fan and quickly endears herself to him. She encourages him to take control of his own narrative and, against all good judgement, he decides to fire his lawyer and defend himself in court. If making the film a musical seems like a strange choice, making its second half a courtroom drama is even weirder.

For starters, Phoenix, once he begins acting as his own counsel, speaks in the voice of a southern man for no apparent reason. His theatrics are occasionally tolerated in the courtroom to unbelievable lengths. At the end of all this, something happens that enables Arthur to be out on the streets, all leading up to an ending that will likely leave most people scratching their heads.

I'll say this: Phoenix again remains committed to this character and Gaga is pretty decent herself. It's too bad they're left to navigate this film full of strange choices without better direction. At various points in the film, Fleck laughs his bizarre, unnatural laugh - and like it did in the last film, it feels too forced, much like most of "Joker: Folie a deux."

Review: It's What's Inside

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Game nights are seemingly treacherous terrain, according to horror and thriller films as of late, from last year's "Talk to Me" to "Bodies, Bodies, Bodies." The latest in this subgenre, director Greg Jardin's "It's What's Inside," is more of a thriller with science fiction elements than a horror movie, and there's only one mildly bloody scene, but it still has some of the same trappings of the aforementioned films.

The picture primarily takes place at a large, somewhat secluded house where a group of friends are gathered to celebrate the impending marriage of Reuben (Devon Terrell). The group includes a couple experiencing problems with their sex life - Cyrus (James Morosini) and Shelby (Brittany O'Grady) - which allows for an amusing opening sequence involving this issue.

Others include ultimate bro Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), hippie Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), influencer Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), and stoner Brooke (Reina Hardesty). A final member of their group when they were in college - Forbes (David Thompson) - is mentioned and seems like a distant memory until, that is, he suddenly arrives and Reuben mentions that he'd invited him.

The last time Forbes was seen was during a raucous party that led to him being kicked out of school and his at the time underage sister, who had been having a fling with Dennis, to go into a mental hospital. Upon his arrival, Forbes introduces the idea of playing a game, which turns out to be a little more than anyone bargained for.

The game involves flipping a switch on a box - any explanation I could give would probably be as flimsy as that given by the film - that leads to all of the persons at the party switching bodies. In other words, their consciousness pops up in the bodies of one of the others present. Some members of the group are put off by the game, while others seem to relish in the freedoms it allows.

One of those freedoms ultimately becomes being able to hide which personality has ended up in which body, leading to some double crosses and secrets being unearthed. When two of the characters run off for a quickie on a balcony, tragedy ensues and the rest of the film revolves around the various characters debating whether to return to their original bodies, especially considering that two of those bodies are now corpses.

While I'm sure that something deeper could have been done with a story involving the quandaries of swapping bodies with someone else and what freedoms that might entail, "It's What's Inside" is content with merely plot twists and seeing actors portray other characters who have become disembodied. It's amusing enough, but not as memorable as "Talk to Me," which I liked well enough and had a fair amount of atmosphere and some decent shocks.

"It's What's Inside" often feels like a dark comedy with bits of horror or science fiction thrown into the mix. It's funnier than it is scary, and its final punchline - despite that you could probably see it from a mile away - will likely result in a smile. But I feel like this film could have been more than what it ultimately is - a mild divertissement.