Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Toronto’s fall film festival season is in full swing with Planet in Focus, celebrating it’s 25th anniversary. It’s running from Tuesday through Sunday next week, with international features and shorts on climate change, activism, environmentalism  and indigenous issues. And on Friday, October 18, there’s a free screening at Hot Docs of We Will Be Brave, about Good Guise, a Toronto collective that sparks conversations around healthy masculinity through art. That’s part of the For Viola series honouring Viola Desmond.

But this is also October, when ghouls and ghosties flock to our screens. So this week, I’m talking about three new movies about various types of monsters. There’s a monstrously popular music producer from Virginia Beach; a notorious real estate developer trained by a monster in New York; and two guys searching for ghosts in Winnipeg.

The Apprentice

Dir: Ali Abassi (Review: Border)

It’s the mid 1970s, and  New York is a wreck, with soaring crime, homelessness and bankruptcy. When the Mayor asks the feds for help, Gerald Ford tells them to “drop dead”. Into the world emerges an ambitious young developer. Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) was born rich, but cowers under his oppressive father’s rule. Fred Trump (Martin Donovan) a real estate developer from Queens, made his fortune building segregated public housing. Donald is stuck at crap jobs, collecting rent and evicting destitute tenants. But he has big ideas. His plan? To buy the venerable Commodore, an old hotel with 2000 rooms on 42nd street a hotbed of porn palaces and drug dealers. But how can he raise the money with his dad being sued by the feds for his racist rental practices? Donald has an idea. He joins an exclusive club with the hopes of meeting a certain lawyer he thinks can solve all his problems. The lawyer is Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) a notorious rightwing  attorney with ties to organized crime. Cohn played a central role in the McCarthy Hearings, and still brags about executing the Rosenbergs. He agrees to take on Donald as his protege, and teaches him his three crucial rules: Attack, attack, attack (whether lawsuits, blackmail or intimidation)  Deny everything , and always declare victory, even when you lose. (See: 2020 election). The club is also where he meets the beautiful and brash Ivana (Maria Bakalova), whom he is destined to marry. She will instill in him a love of garish, nouveau-riche interiors. The film follows these three people’s intertwined lives through the 70s and 80s until Cohn’s death. 

The Apprentice (absolutely no connection to Trump’s much later reality show) is a very dark biopic about the origin of Trump’s bizarre motivations and strategies. Sebastian Stan gives an excellent portrayal of Trump; he’s actually sympathetic for his earnestness and naivety in the beginning, but who spirals into something deeply disturbing by the end. This is not an SNL parody, it’s a realistically developed character. Likewise, Strong plays Roy Cohn as a dead-eyed, sybaritic bully, hosting gay orgies, even while publicly denying his sexuality to the end. He doesn’t look like Roy Cohn, but he sure does act like him. With a great selection of 70s and 80s pop songs throughout the film, and the grotesque golden opulence of Trump’s homes captured on grainy colour film of  the era, The Apprentice is a funny and disturbing biopic.

Piece by Piece

Co-Wri/Dir: Morgan Neville (Review: Best of Enemies)

Pharrell Williams is a highly successful music producer, musician, singer, composer and fashion designer. His work spans the genres from hiphop, to pop music and electronica. But his life hasn’t always been that way. He grows up in a working-class housing area in Virginia Beach, Va. and starts drumming at an early age using kitchen utensils. He’s into Star Trek, Stevie Wonder and Greek Gods (his apartment is actually named Atlantis!) He soon forms a band with his schoolmates, and later, starts working at a nearby recording studio, learning the ins and outs of music producing. 

He soon rises in popularity, both for his own work, and that of the stars he works with, a who’s who of hip hop and pop. He has a succession of hits with Kendrick Lamar, Snoopdog, Timbaland, and Jay-Z, then branches out to include pop stars like Justin Timberlake, Gwen Stefani, Robin Thicke, and Daft Punk, all producing worldwide hits. They come to him for the tracks he creates and samples, as well as a certain je ne sais quoi he adds to their music. But how long will his popularity last?

Piece by Piece is a documentary about the life and career of Pharrell Williams. It’s narrated by Pharrell himself, in an interview with the director, as well as talking heads of most of the stars he’s worked with. What’s unusual about this doc is it’s all done using LEGO animation. Instead of the actual people, you see LEGO people who waddle when they walk and have basic faces painted onto cylindrical plastic heads. But does it work? I’m of mixed feelings. I was expecting a LEGO movie — fast moving, constant jokes, mind-blowing psychedelic animation —  featuring Pharrell, but what I got was an interview with Pharrell using the style of LEGO. (Picture the movie Barbie, but without people just Barbie and Ken dolls) There are some cool creative parts. I love the animation of waves on the beach, the re-creation of video clips, and a cool conceit running through the story — Pharrell’s magic musical touch symbolized by glowing geometric shapes that he puts together for that perfect beat. And I loved the constant music. But in general the images and interviews were more or less the same as any music doc venerating its star— largely unremarkable.  A LEGO recording studio is still just a recording studio. And those  LEGO people are just irritating. This movie is OK, but I was not blown away. 

Don’t F**k with Ghosts

Co-Wri/Dir: Stuart Stone

Stu and Adam (Stuart Stone and Adam Rodness, who co-wrote the script) are a pair of Toronto filmmakers pitching their latest project — Bigfoot! But their financiers have another idea in mind: put together a film proving the existence of ghosts, and it’s sure to be a hit. But, just in case, they take their contract to a ginger- bearded entertainment lawyer (Josh Cruddas) for help.  He warns them to find some real ghosts or else they won’t get paid. So they head off to Winnipeg “the Murder Capital of Canada”. And to help them find the spooks, they enlist a series of experts to help them in their quest. It seems Winnipeg is also the capital of supernatural hustlers: ouija board specialists, psychics, aura readers, fortune tellers, magicians, clowns… even a “ghost sherpa” (Tony Nappo), who takes them on a strange journey involving smoking jackets,  psilocybin and a jacuzzi. They finally locate a house where some grizzly murders once took place. But will they ever find any real ghosts?

Don’t F**k with Ghosts is a low-budget, semi-supernatural Canadian comedy, done in the form of a reality show. So there’s the usual bickering between the two main characters (who also happen to be in-laws), hot mic “gotcha” scenes, and various other embarrassments “accidentally” caught on camera. And no spoilers, but I will say there are some unexpectedly well-done special effects toward the end.

Is Don’t F**k with Ghosts scary? No, not a bit. But is it funny? Well, not too bad…

The Apprentice, Piece by Piece, and Don’t F**K with Ghosts all open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.