Category Archives: Biography

The Apprentice

Leave a reply

The Apprentice                 4 stars

The 2024 movie The Apprentice by director Ali Abassi tells the story of a young real estate investor in New York City who is mentored by a well-known, vicious attorney from whom he learns valuable lessons about how to become a killer in the real estate world and destroy those who would stand in his way. The apprentice is of course Donald J. Trump, 45th and 47th President of the United States and the mentor is Roy Cohn, the notorious New York attorney who began his career in the McCarthy era. Having read six books about this POTUS and seen the documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn, I didn’t learn a lot of new things about Donald Trump but admired Abbasi’s crafting of the story of the rise of this monster of American politics. As the movie begins, we see young Donald (Sebastian Stan of A Different Man and I, Tonya) performing the menial job of collecting rent from disadvantaged tenants of his father’s housing projects, threatening them with eviction for non-payment. Then he happens to meet Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong of Succession) at a gathering of worshippers and other criminal scum. Cohn sees potential in the young man and agrees to help him fight off an anti-discrimination lawsuit from the feds at no cost. He wants to keep Trump as a friend. It is from Cohn that Donald learns his three rules of success: 1. Always attack your enemies. 2. The truth is what I say the truth is. And 3. In defeat always claim victory. (We all know that Trump has put these rules to use throughout his career.) He emphasizes the importance of patriotism and defending democracy to Trump, but in Cohn’s mind democracy means low taxes for corporations and cutting social programs for the disadvantaged. Strong is effective at portraying Cohn’s brash and aggressive style as he threatens a federal attorney with photos of homosexual behavior and keeps a stash of secret recordings of incriminating behavior on public officials. As the film progresses, the bad behavior we are familiar with transfers to Trump. In one telling scene after Donald meets fashion model Ivana (Maria Bakalova (who made a name for herself in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm)), he proposes marriage but asks that she sign a prenup that states she must return all gifts if they separate. After an argument in the street he relents and agrees to remove the clause and Ivana agrees to accept the ring. When a stranger observes the interaction and shouts “Congratulations” to Trump, his response is “Fuck Off!”. When Trump’s brother Freddy passes away from alcoholism and Ivana offers sympathy to her husband, he rebukes her and shuts her out. He is incapable of soothing his crying baby son. When Ivana gives Donald a book that could reenergize their sex life, his response is to beat and rape her. (This is based on an account given by Ivana Trump that she later retracted.) When under pressure from rising debt, Trump tries to get his father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan), who suffers from dementia to sign away control of the Trump properties. We see Donald expand his real estate empire in New York and Atlantic City maintaining his relationship with Cohn; that is until he learns that Cohn is sick, possibly from AIDS. Then Trump, who values loyalty won’t honor any favors toward his former attorney friend. In the end he tries to make up with Cohn by giving him a lavish birthday party at Mar-a-Lago, but afterwards the germaphobe Trump has the room fumigated. Ultimately, Cohn passed away from AIDS. Ali Abassi previously made a movie called Holy Spider, about a serial-killer in Iran. In The Apprentice he pulls no punches in portraying two of the greatest monsters of the present era. Both Stan and Strong command attention to the screen through their performances of these despicable men. And both were rewarded with Academy Award nominations in what could be called an American horror story. See it if you dare.

You Can See Everything

Leave a reply

You Can See Everything                 5 stars

In 2018 Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of the blood test startup Theranos, was convicted of defrauding investors over making false claims that their product could test for multiple diseases from a single drop of blood. Everyone can remember the fall of this seemingly brilliant entrepreneur who made the cover of Forbes magazine. Books, documentaries, podcasts and a mini-series have been made on the subject. Before her eleven-year prison sentence was to begin Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, invited the film company A24 to document her story in an attempt to rehabilitate her image. Thus, the documentary You Can See Everything begins with director Nathan Fielder visiting them in a San Diego cottage on the beach 46 days before the incarceration is to begin. What follows over the next three hours is one of the most fascinating documentaries I can remember. The movie can be thought of in three parts. In the first, Fielder questions Holmes and Evans about their circumstances and why he was even chosen to begin with. (Fielder’s background is a comedian, certainly not someone with knowledge of medical devices.) We can see that he must tread very lightly with his questioning as he must maintain trust while at the same time seeking to get into the mind of his host. Holmes is eager to engage, but when the subject of the device and the defrauding is discussed, it is clear that she does not believe she did anything illegal or immoral. The claim about the device’s capabilities is just a matter of semantics, a misunderstanding. She believes the device actually works despite the evidence. Fielder takes one occasion to show her the famous Abbott and Costello Who’s On First? comedy routine to show her how words and phrases could mean different things to different people, but she doesn’t seem to get the reason why it is funny. Holmes and Evans even talk about starting a new Theranos again. They are committed to the cause. What? Throughout their talks, Fielder and Holmes seem to connect, but you’re not sure if either is faking it. Finally, the film crew follows her to the Texas prison where she will serve her sentence. The second part picks up after Holmes has been in prison for two years with the film crew visiting Billy Evans at their house in Texas. There they find him actively pursuing the couple’s business interests. He has regular visits with Holmes and has taken over her X account, creating messages as if he were her. Evans has become a control freak telling the director what he can and cannot talk about while filming. In the final part, Fielder takes us back to the impetus of the film. He brings Amanda Seyfried, the actress who portrayed Holmes in the mini-series The Dropout, into the movie discussing the unusual situation. Seyfried becomes a stand-in for recreations of scenes that happened when Fielder and the executives began talks about the film. There we see how controlling Billy was from the start, so we wonder: Is he manipulating Holmes through this entire endeavor? Just how much does Holmes know about Billy’s demands? The recreated scenes continue with Seyfried as Holmes when Fielder gets permission to visit Holmes in prison alone. The questions only expand in this final meeting. Who is Elizabeth Holmes? Is she a misunderstood victim, a master manipulator or pathological liar? What is the truth about her? The audience must be the judge. Psychologists will be studying this case for years. Nathan Fielder has created a masterpiece of a documentary. Look for it to get plenty of attention when the awards season starts.

Tangles

Leave a reply

Tangles                 4 ½ stars

I continued my viewing of new movies at The Chicago International Film Festival with the animated movie, Tangles, by director Leah Nelson. It is based on an illustrated memoir by Sarah Leavitt in which she tells her personal story of dealing with her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. The images are done as hand drawings in black and white that gives the movie a dark tone, but the story does include plenty of humor in dealing with this troubling subject. There have been plenty of dramas about Alzheimer’s showing the challenges that loved ones go through in caring for the stricken family member. Those that come to mind are The Father, Still Alice, The Notebook and Away from Her. Tangles uses a lighter approach than these earlier films but has plenty of serious moments. In the story Sarah (Abbi Jacobson) is in her early twenties and just starting a career as an illustrator for a gay weekly in San Francisco, where her boss (Wanda Sykes of The New Adventures of Old Christine) has noticed her dark, sexual drawings. She has just met Donimo (Samira Wiley of Orange Is the New Black), another lesbian with whom she is starting to form a relationship when she takes a trip back home to visit her family. There she finds that her mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld and Veep) is behaving in erratic ways and is unusually irritable. She suspects that something is wrong with her, but her father (Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad) and other family members are not as alarmed by her behavior. Soon Sarah finds herself making more trips back home to care for her mom until the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is made and the family must deal with her condition. All the while Sarah is putting her job and relationship with Donimo on hold. Her frequent visits continue over the years as mom’s condition deteriorates. Through the use of animation Sarah’s feelings of dread and guilt are imaginatively expressed, something not possible in conventional dramas. Scenes connected to the Mexican holiday The Day of the Dead are especially vivid. Other cast members include Seth Rogan, Beanie Feldstein, Sarah Silverman and Bowen Yang. The subject of Alzheimer’s is a tough one to watch in a movie, but I highly recommend Tangles. It would be especially moving for those who have experienced such situations in life. The movie is expected to be in theaters in January.

Operation Finale

Operation Finale                               3 ½ stars

Operation Finale is the newly released film by director Chris Weitz that tells the true story of the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the mastermind of the final solution by Nazi Germany, the killing of the Jewish population in Europe during World War II.  Eichmann had fled to Argentina after the war along with many other German Nazis where he started a new life with a new Spanish name and family.  The agents of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency have been tirelessly hunting down these former Nazis since the war and in 1960 believe they may have located the long sought after Eichmann in Buenos Aires.  Eichmann, masterfully portrayed by Ben Kingsley maintains that eternal defense that he was merely “following orders” and was but “a cog in a machine”.  Oscar Isaac is Malkin, one of the agents of Mossad who manages to connect with the captured Eichmann in the many conversations with him as the agents are awaiting their opportunity to smuggle him out of the country back to Israel where he is to stand trial.  Isaac does his usual creditable acting performance as the Israeli agent.  Most of the movie focusses on the time that the Israelis have Eichmann in captivity where they attempt to get him to confess his role in the killing of the Jews.  Only in the first part of the movie do we see how the agents find and suspect they may have found the elusive Eichmann.  This part of the film seems unconvincing to me as they seem to have only the thinnest of evidence that they have found the right man.  (Early in the film we see Malkin involved in the killing of a man mistakenly thought to be Eichmann.)  Also, there are flashbacks to scenes of mass killings during the war that are shown as memories of what happened that may or may not be accurate.  What is interesting is Kingsley’s portrayal of the way Eichmann goes from admitting little of his involvement to outright pride of what he accomplished in the face of his captors.  By the end of the film there is no doubt that the agents have found a true psychopath who embodies the phrase “the banality of evil”.  Director Chris Weitz has had a hit and miss career as director, giving us hits About a Boy and A Better Life, while also delivering disappointments like The Golden Compass and the Twilight Saga: New Moon.  Operation Finale was good but not the greatest of his work.

Victoria & Abdul

Victoria & Abdul                               3 stars

Victoria & Abdul brings actress Judi Dench and director Stephen Frears together again for the telling of the story of Queen Victoria, who in her later years develops an attachment to a young Indian clerk named Abdul Karim.  Abdul has been summoned from India to participate in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee where he finds the old queen seeks to consult with him on a variety of matters and he becomes a teacher of sorts.  All of this is very troubling to the Queen’s staff and in particular, her son Bertie, the Prince of Wales.  They consider it demeaning that a man from a poor family of color could find his way to a position of honor among the royal family.  We are told that this is all based on a true story, but it is one that has gone largely untold. Presumably the family at the time had tried to keep it hidden.  The film is based on a book that was recently published.  Much of the film is done in a comic fashion as it finds comedy in how differently the cultures involved find one another.  Therefore, I have to wonder just how much of the story is true.  But putting all that aside, the film is still quite enjoyable and gives us two fine performances from Judy Dench and Ali Fazal.  Victoria & Abdul was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Costume Design and Best Make up.  Stephen Frears is a very prolific director in Hollywood having directed such outstanding works as Florence Foster Jenkins, Philomena, The Queen, Mrs. Henderson Presents and Dirty Pretty Things.

The Post

The Post              5 stars

In my quest to see all Oscar nominated movies of last year I watched The Post, the Spielberg directed thriller drama about the Washington Post struggle to stay relevant in 1971 by reporting on the secrets revealed in the Pentagon Papers.  In this true story, the first woman major newspaper publisher Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) and the Post’s editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) must make the critical decisions about whether to publish the government secrets about the failures of the Vietnam War, risking the very future of the newspaper business.  This film was put together in near record time as the producers including Steven Spielberg wanted to make a movie that was very relevant to the relationship between Washington and the press of today.  The film pays great attention to detail and gets the feel of the newspaper business of the early seventies.  The newsrooms and printing press equipment are very authentic down to the metal desks and loud typewriters.  The drama brought to us by the acting skills of Streep and Hanks as well as the excellent supporting cast is compelling and will keep your attention throughout the movie’s run time.  The movie was written based on the memoirs of Graham, Bradlee and Daniel Ellsberg, thus it is very close to a representation of the true story.  It’s hard to imagine putting together a team of filmmakers more talented this this crew.  The Post may not have won best picture last year but it had to be in the running.  One interesting piece of trivia about the movie is that it took only nine months from putting the screenplay together until completion of the editing, which is close to a miracle in Hollywood.

The Old Man & the Gun

The Old Man & the Gun                 4 ½ stars

There is yet another fine movie showing in the theaters now. That is The Old Man & the Gun featuring two long time legends of Hollywood, Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek.  It is a movie driven by the two main characters that really doesn’t have a lot going on.  It is based on the true story of Forrest Tucker, a convict who in the early eighties escaped from prison and carried out a string of bank robberies at age seventy that confounded the police.  What really drives the movie is Redford’s charm and his smile.  The most enjoyable parts are when he is talking with or charming Jewel (Spacek) while she thoroughly enjoys his company while believing little of what he tells her about himself.  Casey Affleck contributes to rounding out the film as he portrays the Texas lawman trying to track down Tucker and his Over the Hill gang as the crime spree spreads from one state after another.  Redford has said that this is his last picture as an actor.  I don’t know if that is true, but The Old Man & the Gun is a brilliant send off in any case.

The Favourite

The Favourite                    4 ½ stars

The Favourite is the latest film from director Yorgos Lanthismos who famously brought us The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. The film is an unusual costume drama to say the least that covers part of the reign of Queen Anne of England in the early Eighteenth century when England was at war with France in the War of Spanish Succession.  The English forces under the command of the Duke of Marlborough were victorious over the French.  The great cost of the war created a division in policy between the war hungry Whigs and Tories who pushed for a peace settlement.  None of the above matters much in the course of the movie as it is mainly concerned with the relationships between the Queen (Olivia Colman) and her close friend Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Wiesz) who is the wife of the Duke of Marlborough, and a new arrival at the palace, a lowly maid formerly from an aristocratic family, Abigail (Emma Stone).  This is no ordinary period costume film.  It is a roudy and uproarious comedy full of sharp wit and sexual innuendo.  The movie never leaves the setting of the palace and we only hear about the war through the reports that some English nobles provide.  In fact, all but the main three women in the cast fulfil fairly minor roles.  The movie is completely carried by Colman, as the ailing Queen who requires constant attention from the staff, Wiesz, who constantly manipulates the Queen to get what she wants and Stone, as she apples her womanly charms to gain favor in the Queen’s eyes.  Sarah and Abigail spend most of the film finding ways to better one another and become the Queen’s favourite friend and advisor.  I would say the movie portrays a completely irreverent depiction of English royalty which contributes to its success.  I believe the movie will be rewarded when awards time comes around and thoroughly recommend it.  Also, the movie reveals a little known fact, that there were plenty of lesbian love affairs going on in the English palace in this period, something I had not heard in any history courses.

Boy Erased

Boy Erased          4 stars

Writer-Director-Actor Joel Edgerton brings to film the true story of Jared (Lucas Hedges), an eighteen year old boy who is outed as gay to the shock and disapproval of his parents.  In order to get over the shame felt by his father (Russel Crowe) young Jared is convinced he should undergo gay conversion therapy and be sent away to a camp for an undetermined period of time where little is known of the practices there.  The movie gives us a peek into the world of Conversion Therapy, as it is usually carried out on underage children, where they are to be converted into heterosexuals.  This practice is nearly unanimously condemned by psychologists as ineffective and harmful, but it still exists in most states.  The leader of the therapy sessions is Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton) who employs techniques that can only be described as cruel and disturbing.  The methods used only seem to instill a sense of self-loathing in the young subjects.  The movie also shows us the attitudes toward homosexuality held by most in certain religious institutions, in the case, Southern Baptist and the weight of guilt that can be placed on young people.  Despite the dark material of this movie there is eventually an uplifting feel to it by the time the credits role.  Last year’s “Call Me by Your Name” gives a sharp contrast of a parent’s reaction to realizing they have a gay son.  In that movie, the father had an accepting and even loving treatment toward his son.  In “Boy Erased”, there is the threat of being expelled from the family if the gayness is not removed.  I found all of the performances in the film to be first rate, especially that of young Hedges who is building a long resume of significant dramatic roles.

Welcome to Marwen

Welcome to Marwen                     4 stars

Welcome to Marwen from director Robert Zemeckis employs some very imaginative techniques to tell the story of Mark Hogencamp (Steve Carell), an illustrator who lost his memory after being beaten by some local thugs.  Having lost his drawing talent Mark has created a fantasy world made up of miniatures dolls and models in an imaginary town in Brussels during World War II.  Mark has an alter ego named Hoagie represented by an American airman doll who frequently takes on Nazi soldiers aided by some very courageous women who make up the town’s population.  Each of the women figures represents a woman who plays a part in Mark’s life.  Mark lives alone outside of town and seems to be a broken man, but he manages to stay connected to people through his town called Marwen which he photographs creating intricate stories about his characters.  I found the movie quite engaging with the way it moves from the fantasy world to reality and how the events in Marwen are related to things going on in Mark’s real world.  The special effects are well done using stop action photography and animation to create some great action sequences.  The story is based on the actual true events of Mark Hogencamp who created this imaginary world and became famous through exhibitions of his photography.  I found the movie uplifting and entertaining which apparently most movie critics don’t see based on the mostly negative reviews it has been getting.  Robert Zemeckis has been making movies for ages and I am sure most viewers have seen some which includes Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cast Away and Forrest Gump.  In my opinion he has another winner that more people should be seeing.