POMO

An entertaining portrait of young Donald Trump as a go-getting property developer with an enormous appetite for business. Not as a politician. Trumps first wife, Ivana, his father, mafioso Tony Salerno, Andy Warhol and especially attorney Roy Cohn, who helped Trump break into the real-estate elite of New York – the important characters in Trump’s life are depicted with refreshing authenticity and documentary-style veracity, in 4:3 television format, often even with VHS tape noise in the picture, giving us that exact feeling of the eighties and nineties that we haven’t had in any feature film for a long time. Director Ali Abbasi takes the characters on a journey through the megalomaniacal American Dream, without pointing a finger at any of them, but rather taking them as people with their own specific priorities and weaknesses. Sebastian Stan is good as Trump and Jeremy Strong is excellent as Cohn. Just don’t expect Scorsese, who’s better suited to the glamorous veneer of Casino. The Apprentice has the nature of a made-for-TV movie. [Cannes FF]

A stultifying and unappealing directorial debut. Needlessly drawn-out scenes with feeble directing (half-baked details in the actors’ behaviour), empty and restrained psychological moments with the main character’s monologues, which don’t take anything anywhere and only to serve to further drag out the film. Trying for a mysterious atmosphere where there is none, dream sequences that we’ve already seen from David Lynch, copying of Memento. And an unoriginal plot with an uninteresting main character. [Cannes FF]

Sorrentino’s visual poetry paying tribute to Naples and feminine beauty (what else?). The first third of the film offers a nice exposition of the characters, from which the writer played by Gary Oldman stands out not only in terms of acting, but also in terms of his nature. Later in the film, there are more and more fragments of emotion whose context and significance in the plot elude me, thus diminishing the enthusiasm for the form of their presentation. What the hell was that “beauty and the beast” character of the ugly priest fingering Parthenope in the church supposed to mean?? Two and a half stars. [Cannes FF]