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F1 – 1.5 stars

July 15, 2025
1 star, 2025, Action/Disaster, Drama
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A big, flashy, visually overwhelming nirvana for speed junkies. But when cars are not going vroom vroom around the cinematic coliseums of the Formula 1 race tour, the film is unoriginal, dull, sexless, and stupid. It is also badly acted (Brad Pitt excepted, as he doesn’t act so much as pose).

Pitt is a journeyman racer, much like Tom Cruise’s Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder, though Cruise was silly as an old “I can race anything with wheels” hand given his youth in that picture. Pitt is more plausible as a man who can race anything, be it in NASCAR, Lemans, Formula One, Baja, or, the Sahara, on a camel. But he’s still silly as a a man looking for something transcendent and elusive, like Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu. When Pitt’s old chum Javier Bardem arrives to offer him a spot on his flailing Formula One team, Pitt can’t say no even if it interrupts his quest.

The old timer Pitt joins the team and runs into a hotshot younger driver teammate (Damson Idris). Idris is resistant to the grizzled interloper. He makes his mark on social media more than on the track.

Pitt teaches him maturity, discipline and self-respect.

Pitt also runs into team car design guru Kerry Condon.

Condon teaches Pitt how to be a good teammate.

They also sleep together.

Pitt has not had very good on-screen chemistry with women since Thelma and Louise. The trend continues Here, he is a stoic, and in return, Condon musters all the heat of a flagging sterno cup. With a strongly established “older brother, younger sister” vibe, they have what can only be envisioned as some of the worst sex in history.

Just when you are nodding off, another race will start. You will perk up, because the spectacle is kinetic and exciting. But you can only watch so much racing. These people will have to start talking again, and when they do, it is drivel.

The plot then begins to echo that of a much better racing film – Talladega Nights. There is corporate skullduggery in the form of Tobias Menzies, who wants control of the entire racing team and schemes to depose and supplant Bardem. Like Ricky Bobby, Pitt must not enter the final race for Menzies’ machinations to succeed.

Pitt, of course, enters the final race and saves the day.

In a withering coup de grace, Pitt texts Menzies an emoji.

It is the finger.

Now, we have just spent an entire film trying to establish that Pitt is a simple, grounded, live-in-your camper, shut-out all of the noise enigma.

Yet, in declaration of his own worth and independence, he texts an emoji.

Yeesh.

The movie is terrible when characters talk, impressive when wheels are turning, a bit of a conundrum, because I can’t imagine it would transfer as well at home.

Use your best judgment. Knowing what I know now, I believe mine would have been to forgo the film and watch the vastly superior Rush.

The Order – 4.25 stars

May 27, 2025
2024, 4 stars, Crime/Mystery, Historical
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A straightforward procedural based on a true story, broke-down and ailing FBI agent Terry Husk (Jude Law, as unpretty as you’ll find him) arrives at his new desk in Idaho only to stumble upon the rise of The Order, an “action, not words” offshoot of The Aryan Nations in the early 1980s. The Order is led by the charismatic Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), who guides it from counterfeiting to bank robbery to assassination to planned insurrection. As Matthews rises, Husk and the Feds close in, amidst a backdrop of the majestic and haunting Pacific Northwest.

There is nothing new here save for restraint, but restraint is in awful short supply these days. The pace is taut, the acting largely superb, and the photography memorable. In the hands of a lesser director or writer, the temptation to weigh in on the philosophy of The Order, and to jam it into whatever current bugaboo is in fashion, would be too much to resist. Here, writer Zach Baylin shows you what The Order believes and how, attenuated or not, those beliefs are connected to their criminal endeavors. To Law, who we learn has worked undercover on cases from The Klan to The Mob, the “the” doesn’t really matter. They’re all the same. And that keeps the story from stalling on the anticipated wordy handwringing that you expect.

As one article observed, “Ultimately, the hope of slipping an unsparing portrayal of domestic extremism—produced outside of the Hollywood studio system—into the December award season is to reintroduce a discussion of radicalization to American society. ‘If you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it—how a guy that, in the way Nick depicted him, could live down anybody’s street,’ says Haas. ‘There are lots of people right now who are hurting and struggling and looking for answers.'”

Thankfully, this kind of easy, didactic tripe is little found in the actual picture.

We also aren’t loaded down with Law’s past. There is a medical issue and familial distress, but Baylin explains just enough to give you a sense as to their effect on Law’s nature and psyche. Husk is not out here for redemption or revenge. Even his obligatory “Let me tell you about this one horrible thing” speech is muted, his explanation almost perfunctory. Much like the father of one of the young men who joined The Order, a man who resignedly tells Husk, basically, “you do the best you can with your kids, but it’s a crapshoot.”

The film could have used a little more exposition (particularly with the doomed local deputy, Tye Sheridan), the tough gal FBI supervisor (Jurnee Smollett) is hackneyed even with the gender change, and maybe there should have been one more turn before reaching resolution.

But otherwise, very solid, entertaining crime flick. Reminded me of the equally impressive Under The Banner of Heaven.

On Hulu.

8 Million Ways to Die – 0 stars

May 19, 2025
80s, Crime/Mystery
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My dive into the crime films of Amazon Prime gets deeper.

I was intrigued by this flick because I like Jeff Bridges, the movie was an early Oliver Stone screenplay (a co-write), and it was one of last films directed by Hal Ashby (Shampoo, Being There, Coming Home).

I don’t have 8 million reasons to hate this film, but I have 8.

  1. Stone’s writing is garish and ridiculous. In an attempt at modern noir, we actually hear Bridges say, in voiceover, “Yeah, there are eight million stories in the naked city. Remember that old TV show? What we have in this town is eight million ways to die.” A high-priced call girl ups the retch factor, cooing to Bridges, “the streetlight makes my pussy hair glow in the dark. Cotton candy,” as she lays out ala’ Ms. March 1978. Maybe these gems were penned in the source novel by Lawrence Block. I don’t know. It doesn’t land here.
  2. Hal Ashby knows about as much about film action as I do taxidermy. It’s not like Coming Home’s Jon Voight was doing wheelies in his chair. This picture, which involves blackmail and cocaine and kidnapping and gunplay, is as flat and unimaginative as professional bowling.
  3. As the alcoholic ex-cop, Bridges seems as confused by the script as the viewer. There are times you feel, his eyes alone, Bridges is communicating, “What the hell is this thing about, again?” When he’s involved in a bad shooting, and guns down a man in front of his family, he says, “Shit.” Like when you don’t get a good score in Skee Ball. And then, “Fuck,” like when you leave home without your iPhone.
  4.  Bridges is also forced to play an alcoholic who relapses; he does this by reprising his role in Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, after he was thunked on the head.
  5. The plot is inane. Bridges is lured into the entire mess because the girl with the cotton candy pubic hair heard his name from the friend of a friend.
  6. Roseanna Arquette is terribly miscast as the sultry, misunderstood, cynical call girl with a heart of gold. Arquette is cute best friend, quirky neighbor.  She ain’t this.
  7. The supporting turns are execrable.  Andy Garcia is so over the top (see below), it’s hard to stop laughing, as if he saw Scarface and said, “Hmmmm. Pacino seems a bit muted.” Another actor, Randy Brooks, nemesis to Garcia, is also near-lunatic. Brooks scurried off to TV after this flick, only to return as the worst actor in Reservoir Dogs six years later. The cotton candy girl is the badly miscast Alexandra Paul. She is the girl next door. Here, she’s over-the-top coquettish, as erotic and worldly as Georgette in The Mary Tyler Moore show. To be fair, this may not all rest on the actors. From the analysis below, “Ashby’s style of directing, according to Block, involved letting the actors do takes where they exaggerated their emotions, before reining them back in for subsequent takes. Since Ashby did not have final cut, some of these ‘dialed up’ takes were used in the film.” Seems like all of them were.                 
  8. Scenes are interminable. The characters scream the same thing at each other ad nauseum or endlessly posture. Behold, the longest, loudest, most idiotic confrontation scene in film history:

Apparently, I am not alone in my derision and confusion.

True Confessions – 5 stars

March 22, 2025
5 stars, 80s, Crime/Mystery, Drama
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An unheralded gem, powered by the stellar performances of Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, as brothers Dez and Tom Spellacy. De Niro is a rising monsignor in post-WWII Los Angeles, archbishopship on the horizon. Duvall is a tainted LA homicide cop. De Niro is ambitious and technocratically capable but fast becoming disillusioned with the moral elasticity necessary to keep the church afloat, including being chummy with the likes of a scumbag real estate mogul (Charles Durning, who seeks the church as beard for his corruption and literally sweats menace). Duvall is trying to make up for his past as a bagman. A Black Dahlia-esque murder connects them, and as De Niro wrestles with his faith and station, Duvall agonizes over his past crimes and his attempt to make amends by going after Durning, damage to his brother be damned. We learn about their secrets and upbringing in an L.A. that has a Chinatown-vibe.

One of my favorite fiction authors, John Gregory Dunne, wrote the screenplay with his wife Joan Didion, and it exudes verisimilitude and deftness. The script allows De Niro and Duvall significant space and what they do with the quiet moments is poignant. There is always tension, but also, always an intimacy and a shorthand that speaks to shared happier, or unhappier, times. Their exchange on their uber-Catholic mother is emblematic:

Tom Spellacy: How’s ma? Is she still eating with her fingers?

Des Spellacy: Well, she says the early Christian martyrs didn’t have spoons.

Tom Spellacy: Tell her they didn’t have Instant Cream of Wheat, either.

It’s a cheat to cite a review within a review, but Vincent Canby’s is so dead on and conclusive, I’ll transgress:  the film is a “tough, marvelously well-acted screen version of John Gregory Dunne’s novel, adapted by him and Joan Didion and directed by Ulu Grosbard who, with this film, becomes a major American film maker. Quite simply it’s one of the most entertaining, most intelligent and most thoroughly satisfying commercial American films in a very long time.”

If there is a problem, it is third act, which could have used a few more moves to get to the ultimate revelation. But I’m hesitant even in that criticism for fear that any nod to beefing up the procedural would have taken away from Grosbard’s patience and care with the characters. The film not only showcases De Niro and Duvall, but takes time to establish real connections between De Niro and an older priest (Burgess Meredith), who De Niro puts out to pasture because of the latter’s interference and sermonizing (“I’m not a man of the cloth, I’m a man of the people”); Duvall and a whorehouse madame (Rose Gregorio) with whom he had some sort of ragged relationship until she took the fall for his crookedness and did a stint in jail (“I need you like I need another fuck,” she spits at him); and Duvall and his partner, Kenneth McMillan, who shakes down Chinese restaurants for his retirement motel and tries to keep Duvall out of trouble (“You know who we’re going to pull in on this one? Panty sniffers, weenie flashers, guys who fall in love with their shoes, guys who beat their hog on the number 43 bus. What? Do you think I’m gonna lose any sleep over who took this broad out?”). The blunt and cynical nature of the dialogue aside, Dunne and Didion never stoop to hackneyed tough guy patter, and they counterbalance with real tenderness. The train station scene where the parents of the murdered girl meet with Duvall to take their dead daughter home is one memorably piercing example.       

Just added to Amazon.

Sorcerer – 3.75 stars

March 20, 2025
3 stars, 70s, Action/Disaster, Drama
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William Friedkin’s follow-up to the massive successes of The French Connection and The Exorcist, the film has met with greater favor in recent years, but at the time, it was a dud at the box office. While it has its charms, the tepid response at its release was deserved.

By way of set up, Roy Scheider is part of a 4 man stick-up crew in New York City that robs from the mob. Three are killed in the caper and Scheider goes on the run, to a small town in Chile, There, he works as a laborer under an assumed name on subsistence wages for an American oil company. He is joined by a French financier, an Arab terrorist, and a hit man of indeterminate background, all incognito and under the gun for their own reasons. None has the means to get out of town. Guerillas, however, blow up an oil well 200 miles away, and the four men are hired to ferry highly combustible dynamite containing nitroglycerin in two trucks through a hellacious terrain of winding mountain roads, dismal swamps, and, at times, torrential rain. The dynamite is necessary to cap the well and extinguish the geyser of fire.

The problems.

First, Roy Scheider is not a lead. Never has been. His intensity is unquestioned but his range is limited, and he’s only asked to be wary and furious, which he does fine. He’s just not very interesting.

Second, given the massive jostling and bouncing in the trucks during the expedition, one does wonder, “Why again was a helicopter out of the question?” Assuming it just was because somehow the flight was more unstable than the truck (which when you see the journey, is ludicrous), I’m still with one commenter, and I don’t think this is niggling:

“This big oil company calls in a helicopter and asks the pilot to transport unstable nitro that would be unsafe to handle, but never thinks to ask the helicopter pilot to bring with him some stable explosives that they can use right away. Was it more cost-effective to pay 40000 pesos (plus supplying two large trucks and apparently a bunch of additional new auto parts) and risk a 218-mile land journey than it would have been to just fly in some new explosives?

Third, other than the French financier (Bruno Cremer), with whom we spend a lot of time explaining his backstory, we don’t really get to know these men, and in their journey, they share very little.  

On the plus side, many of the ordeals are stunning (getting the trucks over wooden, swinging bridges is one of the most riveting things I’ve ever seen in movies); the visual grit of the film is palpable, which in the age of sterile CGI, is always welcome; there is also a matter-of-fact lack of sentimentality that melds well with the harshness of the environment; and the picture introduced Tangerine Dream (Thief, Risky Business, Near Dark) and the synthy soundtrack is dissonant but effective, as the environs seem almost otherworldly.    

Bill Burr, Quentin Tarantino, and my son (his biting rejoinder pending) are decidedly more enthusiastic. Hell, Tarantino deems it “one of the greatest movies ever made.”  

On Amazon, for $3.99.

White Lightning – 2.5 stars

March 11, 2025
2 stars, 70s, Action/Disaster, Drama
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I was abandoned this past weekend, and I don’t do well alone. With an empty house and the care of a disinterested 15-year-old cat entrusted to me, I took the time to catch up on a few 70s flicks in my queue, including this strange creature.

Burt Reynolds – not at the height of his popularity, but post-Deliverance – is Arkansas inmate Gator McCluskey. He’s in the federal pen for illegal liquor running when he learns that a crooked sheriff (Ned Beatty) has murdered his younger brother. Why? Because the brother was a meddlesome hippie, and Beatty does not like hippies. So, Gator gets out, insinuates himself into the county, and exacts his revenge.

There’s a lot bad to meh here.  The “I hate hippies” thing is unexplained – we never really know what the kid did to deserve being dumped in the swamp, and a sit-down between Beatty and Reynolds never happens. And the women of the Arkansas county are so carnal in their attraction to Gator, it seems cartoonish. Worse, there are tons of car chases, but not of the ilk of The French Connection or The Seven-Ups or Bullitt. Just a lot of banal vrooming around dusty country roads. From this demon seed sprouted Smokey & the Bandit and Cannonball Run (Hal Needham was a mere stuntman for the picture, but a few years later, he was second unit director on a reprise, Gator, and then he moved on to directing the slop that was Smokey and the Bandit I & II and Cannonball Run I & II). The first glimpses of Reynolds’ giggling, slapsticky, “I don’t give a fuck” mien can be found in the flick as well.    

There are a few notes on the plus side of the ledger. Reynolds connects. He has movie star gravitas and just enough menace left over from Deliverance to project power and fear. Beatty is also strong, exuding a meanness and lethality in the guise of a portly bureaucrat. The film also takes a few runs at a healthy cynicism.

Fun facts – at the tail end of his career, the picture’s screenwriter, William Norton, did 19 months for ferrying guns to the IRA. After being released from prison, he moved to Nicaragua, where he shot and killed an intruder in his home. He then spent a year living in Cuba, was unimpressed, and was smuggled into the U.S. by his ex-wife.

Where is this film?

On Amazon, not recommended except as a curio.      

Killers of the Flower Moon – 1.5 stars

February 10, 2025
1 star, 2023, Drama, Historical
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I pledged to go to the theater Saturday to see the three-and-a-half hour The Brutalist. I begged off at the last minute, but then, the guilt of it made me do penance.

I watched Killers of the Flower Moon, another glaring omission, especially on the part of an unpaid film reviewer. Killers was adapted from David Grann’s best-selling book about a series of murders of Osage Indians in the 1920s, crimes borne of their oil wealth and societal vulnerability.

The good.

Martin Scorsese is no slouch behind the camera, and he ably presents the grandeur and sweep of Osage life and the peculiar opulence that sprouted about it. The film looks and feels like a $200 million picture. The detail is impeccable and the feel authentic (not the garish, silly design of Gangs of New York).

Lily Gladstone. Her job as the stoic sufferer of any number of depredations could have been capably performed with simple solemnity. But she infuses it with charm, passion, and subtle resignation. In a film during which I often found myself stifling a yawn, she was captivating.     

To the bad.

Scorsese seems to be having a late-in-life problem with repetitive scenes. Here, we are treated to at least a half dozen scenes of Robert De Niro (the bad guy) telling Leonardo DiCaprio (his nephew and henchman) what to do, DiCaprio getting more and more upset, and De Niro just yelling at him again and again. Much like The Irishman, the movie is 3.5 hours. In that film, it was “1.5 hours … trying to get Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) either to his senses or a meeting.” Here, it is De Niro and DiCaprio bickering.

Worse, their interminable mugging is to the detriment of more interesting characters and subplots, from the resistance of one white man (played quite ably by Jason Isbell), to the genesis of the federal investigation, to the intervention of an Indian investigator, to the actual murders themselves.  Simply put, no one gives a flying fig about these two one-dimensional, barking characters, but there they are, hogging all the scenery at the trough.

The film is also painfully confused. Is this a testament to a historical wrong? A little. But that factor seems mailed in, with scenes of Osage registering objection, but no real agency. Which is fine.  Most people in history have little to no agency. They are subject to the cruelties of their surroundings. It leaves us the machinations of the criminals. But they are so simple (Osage sheep, whites sheep shearers), they don’t lend themselves to captivating drama. Also, Scorsese’s tie to the Tulsa race massacre seems cheap and manipulative.

Is it a procedural or whodunit? Nope.  We know the villain from moment one, he only lacks a mustache to twirl, and when the case is cracked in the last third, it is by far the best part of the picture. But the way it is solved is mundane. They try to break a guy, he gives a bit of guff but soon talks. The book was very much a whodunit and a procedural, grippingly so.

Is it a love story? Scorsese tries, but there is no real chemistry between DiCaprio and Gladstone, certainly, not enough to sustain his serial abuses, i.e., his central part in the murder of her family and friends. The lovable scamp!

Is it a psychological portrait? Perhaps. DiCaprio is the guilty henchman, no doubt, but he is so glaringly stupid (Scorsese even give him pointless unwieldy teeth, this side of Simple Jack), you wonder if the character’s psychology is worth the inquiry.

The writing is not so much weak as it is misdirected. If you’re going to pay $5 million for adaptation rights to a book, why jettison the most interesting parts? The book really digs into the strange origins and dichotomy of the Osage and their oil wealth, which was borne of their savvy as much as their geographic fortune. Here, they hit oil, and the rest is a surface coverage of their spendthrift ways and the fact that to access the wealth, they need white guardians. Scorsese presents this in a sort of mashed up montage. Similarly, the book covers the birth of the FBI and the investigation of the corrupt locals from a federal agent, a first. Here, the Feds just show up (led by a criminally underutilized Jesse Plemons) and start to brace some dudes.          

Like The Irishman, I felt this would never end, and like The Irishman, the universal plaudits feel like they are being artificially elevated on the vapor of Scorsese’s status and the ennobling of the cause.          

My Old Ass – 0 stars

January 7, 2025
0 stars, 2024, Comedy, Drama
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Elliott, a vacuous, self-satisfied, snarky Canadian teenager (Maisy Stella) is visited by her 39 year old self (Aubrey Plaza) during a mushroom trip. Plaza’s old ass has much to say to Elliott’s young ass, much of it a violation of the Prime Directive, the guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations.

Yes. I watched Star Trek. What of it?

The set-up is well worn. Elliott wants to get off the family cranberry farm and find herself in the big city of Toronto. She is meant to be celebrated for her freedom and grab-life-by-the fistful approach. She’s gonna’ shake the red juice off her small town boots and let loose before global warming interferes with her cell service. She’s a rebel. But she’s also a loudly stupid and narcissistic rebel, and all the soft piano, oboe, and terrible acoustic dirges cannot make her interesting.

With a lead who could act and a less obvious, smarter script, My Old Ass could have been a clever twist on the coming of age flick, Freaky Friday meets A Christmas Carol.

Stella (member of the music duo Lennon & Maisy), however, cannot act. She is one-note, snotty, and charmless. She makes Disney Channel kids seem method. 

The film has a few genuine moments where Plaza, Elliott’s mother, and her would-be first boyfriend all present Elliott with a remembrance, a well-rendered insight, a moment of tenderness. In response, Elliott – not allowed to say “dude, what the fuck? for the umpteenth time- offers a “dude, what the fuck?” countenance. Any expressed emotion crashes into her stubbornly smug visage, where it thuds. Such that we are thinking, “Miley Cyrus could have really done something with this role!”

Worse, no one has bothered to make the trick explainable. After the drug trip ends, inexplicably, Plaza still texts and calls and visits Elliott. Tripping as portal to an Apple data plan? This is lazy mush and indicative of the ragged nature of this endeavor. 

The script is mostly middling sitcom. Plaza and Elliott say cool stuff like “when do we …?” Followed by “oh my God. This happens …” Plaza says to Elliott: “Moisturize!” Elliott replies with a form of “What the fuck? Dude!???” Elliott to Plaza: “Can I kiss you?” Plaza replies with “ewwwwwwwwwwww!” or some derivation of same. Stella says “fuck” and “dude” and “like” and “sick” a lot. She spouts hip cliche’-ridden observations that may tickle the fancy of an 18 year old peer, but test the patience of anyone who has read a magazine. Or a cereal box.

When we get to the meat, Plaza reveals a particular thing Elliott must prepare for, something so obvious, it seems a perfunctorily preordained. It is asked to serve as the emotional linchpin of the movie, yet the most Stella can muster is the disappointment of a girl who pours a bowl of Lucky Charms only to find a low marshmallow count. 

Sometimes, in these flicks, you get some funny, well-drawn secondary characters who maybe could drag Stella along. But everybody is pretty vanilla and meh. When they have something to say, it is leaden with announcement and unforgivably banal. 

The film might have been saved if Plaza told Elliott not to take a particular hike and she did it anyway and then she was almost murdered by the Green River killer.

Missed opportunity. 

Last point. Yes, teens say “like” and “fuck” nonstop, like men in war curse beyond any comprehension. But to actually let characters lapse into this doggerel in a script? Jesus. It may as well be serial farting. 

The picture was on a few top 25s and 50s and very highly rated on Rottentomatoes.com.

Undeservedly so. Like dude, what the fuck. 

On Amazon. Thankfully, for free. 

A Real Pain – 5 stars

January 2, 2025
2024, 5 stars, Comedy, Drama
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A beautiful, meditative story about family, and the disconnect between ancestry, past, and shared blood. Writer-director Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), and Kieran Culkin (Succession) are disconnected cousins who used to be very close when young, and are now held together by a strong attachment to their recently deceased grandmother. In remembrance and per her wishes, they join a tour group to Poland to visit her origins, including the concentration camp she survived. In that journey, they hash out some old differences, reveal their insecurities and grievances, and otherwise, commune with the past. Culkin is enagaging,  charming, yet emotionally dictatorial, and peripatetic. Eisenberg is OCD, eclipsed, a little bit pissed off about it, and, yet, desperate for his cousin’s ability to connect while at the same time weary of having to clean up his emotional messes.

The film is never overt, but it is very touching, particularly when the fissures between the cousins arise in the midst of a supportive group of fellow tourists (one of whom is Jennifer Grey, from Dirty Dancing, who is really quite good, even if she looks nothing like she used to given the radical plastic surgery she underwent many years ago). They are all on their own journey for different reasons, and they quickly become another family to the two protagonists.

Eisenberg’s script is sharp and his direction leisurely. At times, his take felt a little like Sofia Coppola, such is his comfort with the silences and the scenery (his shooting at the camp is haunting). The pain of the characters, as juxtaposed against the history, is made more acute, but again, there is no resolution, no great battle royale, no truly deeper understanding. But, quite tenderly, the bonds are strengthened. The experience may not change their trajectories, but that seems baked into Eisenberg‘s cake.

A lovely, bittersweet picture.

The Apprentice – 3 stars

December 13, 2024
2024, 3 stars, Drama, Historical
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There are figures who defy biography. Some are dolts who we lionize because of an electric public persona, but after we peel back the skin, dig in, and nothing but soft goo is revealed, we adorn them with meaning if only to combat the dullness and our disappointment. Some are opaque, having lived a purposefully secretive life that does not lend itself to exposition. Some are so mythic, hagiography follows, lest a god be sullied. And many are just boring through and through, even if their impact was monumental.

How best to approach Donald Trump? I was thinking about why Saturday Night Live has such a problem caricaturing Trump and concluded that it is difficult to lampoon a cartoon. Trump is thuggish, brash, bombastic, ridiculous, and his persona – both before and during his political career – is that of someone who is already playing a part, man as product. Someone once observed that Bill Clinton was the most authentic phony they’d ever encountered, which makes him Trumpian on one level. The persona so effectively swallows the person that the former becomes innate.

Now, I don’t know what Donald Trump (or Bill Clinton, for that matter) is like privately, and Hollywood has yet to take on Clinton in biopic (we’ve had snippets, most recently Ryan Murphy’s rendition of the Lewinsky scandal, but nothing penetrating or overarching). And neither does screenwriter Gabriel Sherman. But he takes a fair stab, and it’s a game effort, for a time.

We meet Trump (Sebastian Stan) in the 70s, an ambitious son of an old-fashioned real estate developer who strives for entrée’ into tony Manhattan clubs while working for Daddy, collecting his rents in cheap New Jersey apartment housing. Donald has a dream – to develop a hotel in the then-hellscape of 42nd Street – something his father (Martin Donovan) considers an ill-advised fantasy. But Trump persists and soon, he meets another father figure, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who becomes his tutor and mentor. Cohn, a sybaritic fixer, protégé’ of Joe McCarthy, and executioner of the Rosenbergs, blackmails those who attempt to thwart his new charge, facilitating Trump’s rise. We watch Trump ascend, while negotiating the death of his alcoholic brother, eclipsing his father, and falling in love with Ivana (Maria Bakalova), all the while with Cohn in his ear. This is the part of the film that works, as we see a progression, both maturation and degeneration.

When we hit the 80s, Trump is on top, Cohn is crippled by AIDS, and their relationship deteriorates. With what feels like the snap of a finger, Trump is callous and brutal, as he repeats the Cohn mantra (attack, deny, always claim victory). But we don’t really see him ever employ those rules. In fact, he just reappears as a brute, and we are treated to the litany of rumor, concoction or well-known unflattering fact without context or explanation. Trump abandoned his brother, raped and verbally abused Ivana, tried to take financial advantage of his doddering father, gave Cohn fake diamond cufflinks, swung and missed in Atlantic City, took a lot of speed, wrote The Art of the Deal, mused about a political future, got liposuction and a scalp reduction, and is a germaphobe. One box after the other perfunctorily ticked. Just overt capsules, with all character-development jettisoned for dizzying visuals of the corrosive jet set life.

I suppose Sherman was trying to portray the seduction of Trump in concert with the go-go 80s, but it was done much better by Oliver Stone with Bud Fox in Wall Street, and even that movie can be garish and obvious.  

What does work, however, works very well. The Trump-Cohn relationship is beautifully drawn. The elder sees talent and vitality in the son he never had and a young man he refrains from seducing sexually, while the understudy finds the father who truly believes in him. When the former imparts his wisdom, it would have been nice if Sherman could have employed it more directly as the basis for Trump’s rejection, but it is enough that the devil gets his comeuppance from his Frankenstein, and you know it works, because you kind of feel bad for the devil.

Stan and Strong are riveting and I expect both actors to be nominated. Even if they were undeserving, Trump is irresistible bait for the Oscars and given the unflattering vignettes of the film and the fertile environment for decrying the Bad Orange Man, we and the Academy shall not be denied.  

Luckily, the actors are deserving. Strong is quickly becoming one of the most innovative character actors of his generation (I cannot so on enough about his turn in last years’ Armageddon Time, which, ironically, also included a young Trump character), and Stan manages to humanize a cartoon while incorporating the now ubiquitous Trump cadence and physicality, but doing so in a way that shows the features in infancy, so we can envision what they will be when we turn on our TVs today. Per Sherman, “And I think what Sebastian did so brilliantly is that he doesn’t try to impersonate Trump. He finds his own version of the character. And it works in a way where you feel like you’re watching a real person. You’re not watching Sebastian trying to be Donald Trump.” Dead on.

A solid, game, entertaining, very flawed near-hit that peters out.

On demand.