Buzz Blog

The Apprentice **1/2
There’s the version of this movie that’s genuinely inquisitive about the circumstances that created Donald Trump, and the version of this movie that exists strictly as an excuse to laugh at him—and then there’s this version, which falls squarely between the other two. It opens in 1975 New York, with Trump (Sebastian Stan) trying to make his own mark outside the shadow of his slumlord dad Fred (Martin Donovan). But that first requires getting out from under housing discrimination lawsuits, and a meeting with infamous lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) gives Trump a life-changing mentor. While Stan’s performance ultimately finds him employing now-ubiquitous Trump impression mannerisms, it’s also surprisingly deft at recognizing the ambitious but clueless blob of clay he was before being shaped by Cohn’s ruthlessness. And Strong similarly nails Cohn’s amoral ferocity, and how adrift he finds himself when he’s suddenly no longer the alpha. The problem with Gabriel Sherman’s script is that he doesn’t know what to do with Trump as a character if he’s not going to be either a buffoon or genuinely sympathetic. That leaves merely a string of events—like meeting and courting Ivana (Maria Bakalova)—and touchstones like first hearing his eventual campaign slogan, leading to the non-revelation that Trump is a self-absorbed fabulist and narcissist. This may be a tale of how the monster was created by Frankenstein, but as one where the monster asked to be created, it ends up focusing on the wrong things. Available Oct. 11 in theaters. (R)

In the Summers ***
There is a kind of Sundance movie which you can identify as “a kind of Sundance movie,” but which nevertheless can work extremely well if properly executed. Writer/director Alessandra Lacorazza spans approximately 15 years in covering four individual trips from California to Las Cruces, New Mexico by sisters Violeta and Eva to visit their father, Vicente (René Pérez Joglar). Multiple actors play Violeta and Eva for those individual segments, and it can be a challenge for a filmmaker to maintain a consistency of tone and performances in such a structure built on episodic storytelling. But Lacorazza finds great young performers to touch on the various phases of these characters, including Violeta’s growing self-awareness about sexual and gender identity, and Eva’s shifting feelings about her father. Anchoring it all is Pérez Joglar, whose Vicente is a unique mix of obvious intelligence—he moonlights as a physics tutor—who too slowly comes to understand what it means to be a parent. It’s a quiet, deliberately paced drama, with Lacorazza employing simple touchstones as a director like the state of the pool at Vicente’s house, and the filmmaker isn’t interested in trafficking in big confrontations. There’s more patience on display in conveying how dysfunctional familial relationships can shift over time, as people try to untangle the hurt they’ve experienced from the memories of love and caring. Available Oct. 11 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

The Last of the Sea Women **1/2
Documentary filmmakers often start a project not knowing where it might lead them, but director Sue Kim seems to follow this one in a way that leaves it without a cohesive narrative. Her subject is an undeniably fascinating one: the haenyeo of Korea’s Jeju Island, a tradition of exclusively women making their living by free-diving for abalone, conch, urchin and the like, and one which seems on the verge of extinction both due to climate change and fewer young women following in the footsteps of these mostly-older-than-60 veterans. Kim wisely focuses on just a few of the long-time haenyeo, as well as a pair of 30-something relative newcomers, effectively conveying the physical challenges of their work and the bond that develops between those who do this work. Yet there’s eventually a shift to an impending release of irradiated waste water from the Fukishima nuclear plant in nearby Japan, and how the haenyeo become reluctant activists and international spokespeople for the potential environmental impacts of that decision. While that material is somewhat interesting on its own, it feels out of balance with the content about what it’s like to be a septuagenarian seafood forager. Their lives and livelihoods clearly are being impacted by forces beyond their control, but the resulting movie occasionally seems to drift on the same tides. Available Oct. 11 via AppleTV+. (NR)

Lonely Planet ***
There’s a tradition of romantic dramas like Eat Pray Love and Under the Tuscan Sun, about women at transitional points in their lives looking for a new start while in an exotic location; this one tries to carve out a unique space by being as much about the ostensible heroine’s male counterpart. At a Moroccan “international writers’ retreat,” those two characters meet: Katherine Loewe (Laura Dern), a successful novelist struggling to finish her latest book in the midst of a breakup; and Owen (Liam Hemsworth), a private-equity finance bro accompanying his writer girlfriend (Diana Silvers). Writer/director Susannah Grant certainly takes advantage of her locale, both in terms of the desert landscape and the lush confines of the retreat itself, while making the characters’ sense of dislocation a genuine part of the story. The eventual connection between Katherine and Owen plays out with a welcome degree of patience, rushing neither to connect them nor to contrive artificial impediments to their relationship. Hemsworth and Dern are both solid, though the former actually gets a richer character to play as Owen struggles with both his job and his relationship; his quest for finding self-respect and a partner who respects him almost overwhelms the relative thinness of focusing on Katherine’s writer’s block. It’s an uncomplicated, smoothly executed story, only disappointing by surprisingly underrepresenting the female point of view. Available Oct. 11 via Netflix. (R)

Piece by Piece ***
There’s no particular reason why director Morgan Neville’s documentary profile of Pharrell Williams needed to be presented in a LEGO Movie-esque animation style; there’s also no particular reason why any previous documentary couldn’t have opted for the same lively approach, except that Williams had the creative imagination to consider it. The movie otherwise takes a fairly standard bio-doc approach, following Williams from his youth in Virginia Beach (where classmates included the likes of Pusha T, Missy Elliott and Timbaland) to his initial successes in the writing/producing duo The Neptunes with childhood friend Chad Hugo, through his solo career and hits like “Happy.” Nothing about the story suggests that it would have been particularly compelling as a standard live-action rags-to-riches story, full of celebrity talking heads singing Williams’ praises, though The Neptunes' string of jams like “Hella Good” and “Drop It Like It’s Hot” would have energized any movie. It really all comes down to the visual style overseen by animation director Howard E. Baker, which offers neat concepts like giving Williams’ beats a physical form of combined LEGO pieces, or turning a period of Williams’ personal and professional upheaval into a tidal wave. Williams and Neville understand how to take existing components and turn them into something fresh—which is as good a reason as any to make this a LEGO movie. Available Oct. 11 in theaters. (PG)

Saturday Night **
It certainly feels like co-writer/director Jason Reitman is aiming for the structure and sensibility of early Saturday Night Live in his mythologized celebration of the show’s origin, but somehow he can’t even reach that level of uneven, occasionally brilliant anarchy. Set in more-or-less real time over the 90 minutes leading to the premiere broadcast of what was then called NBC’s Saturday Night on Oct. 11, 1975, primarily following producer/creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) as he tries to make sure the show actually makes it to air. That alone might have made for a more cohesive narrative about the tightwire act of trying to do something unique on broadcast television, even if it involves giving Michaels the biggest, sloppiest of kisses as a visionary genius. But the script keeps trying to turn the movie into a genuine ensemble piece, pausing to touch on the tense marriage of Michaels and writer Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), or the insecurities of Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) as the experienced actor wonders about his role on the show. And as impressive as some of the cast members are at embodying their real-life counterparts—notably Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Tommy Dewey as manic head writer Michael O’Donoghue and Nicholas Braun doing impressive double-duty as both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson—the scenes often just feel like showcases for impressions rather than actually funny in their own right. Which, come to think of it, is kind of quintessentially SNL. Available Oct. 11 in theaters. (R)