Here’s the latest capsule review from Paul Schrader. This time around he’s tackling Ali Abassi’s “The Apprentice” which he calls “an excellent film” and yet admits that he still walked out of it because he couldn’t deal spending 135 minutes in the company of Donald Trump.
THE APPRENTICE IS A HEAD TWISTER. It's an excellent film but requires you to spend 2hr15min in the company of a shallow reprehensible person. This is neither Charles Foster Kane nor Howard Roark. This Trump person is someone who, if he came to your house, you would slip out the back door. So why spend 135 film minutes in his company? Because he is an ex President and possible future President. After an hour and a half I grew tired of being sulied by association and left.
Schrader is one of the very few who actually bought a ticket to “The Apprentice” this weekend. By all accounts, the film is bombing hard at the box-office, and it’s playing in close to 2000 screens. It’s now looking like it’ll only have a $1M opening weekend which is absolutely disastrous for Briarcliffe Entertainment.
It’s not like “The Apprentice” is bad film (it’s not), but there just really isn’t an audience out there willing to watch a Donald Trump movie in the middle of a media-infested election cycle, let alone just 25 days before we find out if Trump or Kamala wins the Presidency.
“The Apprentice” has been getting decent reviews. It’s currently at 77% on Rotten Tomatoes and 64 on Metacritic. It’s a film that’s driven by its strong lead performances — Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong are great.
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.