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The Review Geek
20 hours ago
- Business
- The Review Geek
Mountainhead (2025) Movie Review – Lacks novelty but entertains nonetheless
Lacks novelty but entertains nonetheless Two years after Succession, Jesse Armstrong brings us his feature film debut, Mountainhead. We follow a poker night between three billionaires and one multi-millionaire tech bros and their insufferably absurd minds. As a result, you might stumble upon a gold mine of dialogue like: 'Running a country like Paraguay is easier than breaking into a mature consumer sector' (they are talking about coffee shops, by the way). As their interests in the meeting come to the surface, so does their paranoia, and things start to get dangerous. The cast is incredible, and all of them are believable as these ridiculous satires. Steve Carell (Randall), Jason Schwartzman (Soup), Cory Michael Smith (Venis), and Ramy Youssef (Jeff) prove once again they're the right picks for any comedy movie. Adding to this, it delves not only into a credible problem but one we're already fighting to some degree. An unmonitored and deeply problematic AI is being used to create distrust, controversy, and even armed conflicts. Obviously Venis, its creator, doesn't listen to reason for a second and only thinks about increasing his net worth. Armstrong has the characters in the palm of his hand, fully understanding what goes through their heads. Venus is the best example of that. While talking with Randall, he asks his friend if he believes in people, displaying vulnerability that neither seems to see. This nuance only gets more interesting when we see that his AI is the start of a plan to transcend humanity and rely more on technology. His fears are in plain sight, but they're too superficial to realize. Every character gets moments like this, and we comprehend Soup is a suck-up and the punching bag of the group way before he admits his insecurities. Still, even with incredible stars and good nuances, Mountainhead has a jarring problem. It's lacking a sense of novelty or excitement. This satirical 'Eat the Rich' genre has been especially popular recently, with big names like Saltburn, Ready or Not, Triangle of Sadness, and Knives Out to name but a few. With that, the billionaire/tech bro archetype only feels stale. We've seen the same traits repeated there several times, and, in almost two hours, Armstrong unfortunately can't bring anything new to the table. Although he tries with the AI situation and the slapstick humor, it's a 'small fish in a big pond' problem. A big pond that — for better or for worse — he helped create with Succession. Even its absurdness seems grounded at times. During the second half of the feature, we see a fun twist when three of the characters decide they must kill their other friend. It's funny seeing they fail at that in the dumbest ways possible. However, the viewer can't shake the feeling that the script is confining the story's potential. It's as if the movie is always one more twist or genius idea away from becoming great. Even in its final moments, it feels like Armstrong tries to do that. But he never can, and the screen fades to black. Even though there's nothing groundbreaking about it, Mountainhead is still a good time. When some of the jokes land, they're hilarious. And the character's chemistry never feels off, only when intended. If you're a fan of the genre, it'll likely be a fun watch.
Toronto Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Sun
HBO's Mountainhead will make you laugh as the world burns
Published May 31, 2025 • Last updated 10 minutes ago • 4 minute read (L-R) Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Jesse Armstrong, Ramy Youssef and Steve Carell attend HBO's "Mountainhead" World Premiere at The Museum of Modern Art on May 22, 2025 in New York City. Photo by Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Over Succession's four seasons, series creator Jesse Armstrong made a name for himself as television's go-to chronicler of the uber-rich. The HBO show depicted the inner workings of a powerful, Murdoch-esque media clan and the way its members lived, travelled, celebrated and humiliated one another. It was a tantalizing look at what it might be like to have wealth so profound that it sets you apart from everyone and gives you the power to influence politics worldwide. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Now, after two years off the air, Armstrong returns to HBO on May 31 with a new movie, Mountainhead, which almost feels like it could be a Succession spinoff. (He says he even contemplated having ATN, Succession's Fox-like news channel, playing in the background.) The cool color palette is the same; so are the zingers. Nicholas Britell is back to compose the score. Instead of media scions, however, Armstrong has turned his attention to the newest generation of powerful elites — tech bros — and raised the absurdity of the scenario. And while Mountainhead can be a bit slapdash at times, it once again proves that if you want a glimpse at the masters of the universe — one that will make you wince and laugh in equal measure — Armstrong is your man. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Mountainhead came together quickly. Armstrong cast the movie while writing it in January and February of this year and shot for just five weeks in the spring. On-screen you can feel the urgency as well as the messiness that comes with such a compressed timeline. This is an extremely timely film about the dangers of artificial intelligence, the world falling apart and powerful men who care only about their own portfolios. It could be tighter, but it's still ridiculously entertaining. The plot revolves around a boys trip to the title's namesake location — a Utah estate owned by Jason Schwartzman's Hugo Van Yalk and named for The Fountainhead. (One of his buddies jokes that it was designed by 'Ayn Bland.') Hugo, known to his pals as 'Souper' or 'Soups,' is the founder of a mental health app more interested in hooking users than actually solving mental health crises and the least wealthy of the group, which means he is mocked for only have a net worth in the hundreds of millions. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The rest are billionaires. There's 'Papa Bear' Randall, the elder statesman hiding health issues, played by Steve Carell, and Ramy Youssef's Jeff, the most conscientious of the gang, who still believes his tech can be used for good. But the biggest whale in this toxic foursome is Venis, an Elon Musk-Mark Zuckerberg hybrid portrayed with an odious air by Cory Michael Smith. In the opening moments of the film, Venis launches an AI update to the software of Traam, his Facebook-like social media platform, called 'F***' but spelled with an extra 'u,' which is part of the gag. The explicative serves to highlight his obnoxiousness, but it's also apt in another way. Essentially, Venis has created a fake-news machine, and almost as soon as he arrives at Mountainhead, it's clear his latest creation is sowing worldwide chaos. People are using its functions to falsify images, resulting in murders and coups. While this could ostensibly put a damper on the four friends' poker night, instead it turns into an opportunity, as the men start to strategize on how to use this instability to their advantage. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Jeff also has an AI tool, which has more guardrails on it — a 'filter for nightmares,' as he puts it. Venis wants Jeff to sell it to him, to help solve the global crisis he helped create; Jeff sees more money in keeping it close. But quickly the scheming inside this austere but somehow tacky mansion — there's a bowling alley downstairs — starts to move beyond simple dealmaking. Lives are on the line inside and outside the structure. Left alone to their own devices, the men grow increasingly deluded about their own power, and Mountainhead goes from satire to a more overt critique of the greed that's currently shaping our world. The actors have a great time sinking their teeth into this fantasy. Schwartzman is hilarious as Soups, who has a massive inferiority complex that the others fuel. Carell takes on a professorial air as Randall, who quotes philosophers to support his own self-interest, which involves preserving his consciousness after his death. And Youssef is endearing as the closest thing we have to a 'good guy' — who also happens to be a megalomaniac. Smith is perhaps the least famous of the bunch but the standout of the cast, his face oozing smarm as the loathsome Venis. The shagginess of the plot starts to weigh things down as the movie heads toward its conclusion. Certain moments, especially those related to the characters' outside lives, are underdeveloped, and there's an immediacy to Armstrong's satire that's almost impulsive. But the anger that spurred Mountainhead's creation is also its best quality. Armstrong is pissed off and has decided to channel that into brutal jokes. If we can't laugh at these people, what else can we do? 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UPI
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- UPI
Look: Anne Rice series 'Talamasca' gets photos, Oct. release date
1 of 5 | Jason Schwartzman guest stars as a vampire in "Talamasca." Photo courtesy of AMC Networks May 30 (UPI) -- AMC Networks shared first-look photos and a release window for Talamasca, a new series in its Anne Rice Immortal Universe, during the ATX TV Festival Friday. Talamasca, which premieres in October, is about "a secretive society called the Talamasca, comprised of the men and women responsible for tracking and containing the witches, vampires and other creatures scattered around the globe," according to a press release. Celine Buckens and Jason Schwartzman join the cast as Doris and Burton, respectively. Doris lives on a houseboat among witches, while Burton is a vampire residing in a penthouse in New York. Buckens will appear as a series regular, while Schwartzman will guest star. Nicholas Denton, Elizabeth McGovern, William Fichtner and Maisie Richardson-Sellers were previously announced to star. Executive producer Mark John told UPI in January that the show is "almost a spy story, with a hint of the vampires and witches and other things we associate with Anne Rice." Like Mayfair Witches and Interview with the Vampire, Talamasca is inspired by the late author's books. The network also announced the Mayfair Witches writers are now discussing the show's third season, while Interview with the Vampire is about to begin filming Season 3.
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Movie Review: A tech bro-pocalypse in Jesse Armstrong's 'Mountainhead'
'Succession' fans rejoice. Jesse Armstrong has again gathered together a conclave of uber-wealthy megalomaniacs in a delicious satire. 'Mountainhead,' which the 'Succession' creator wrote and directed, is a new made-for-HBO movie that leaves behind the backstabbing machinations of media moguls for the not-any-better power plays of tech billionaires. Or, at least, three billionaires. Their host for a poker weekend in the mountains at a sprawling estate named after Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead' is Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), the solo member of the group not to reach, as they say, 'B-nut' status. His net worth is a paltry $521 million. The others are three of the wealthiest men in the world. Randall (Steve Carell) is their senior, a kind of Steve Jobs-like mentor they all call 'Papa Bear.' Jeff (Ramy Youssef), who runs the world's leading AI company, calls Randall the 'Dark Money Gandalf.' Lastly, but maybe most notably, is Venis (Cory Michael Smith), whose social media platform boasts 4 billion users globally. But the latest update to Venis' platform, named Traam, is causing havoc. As the four gather at Hugo's isolated perch in the Utah mountains, news reports describe violence sweeping across Asia due to an outbreak of deepfakes on Traam that have wrecked any sense of reality. Yet what's real for this quartet of digital oligarchs — none of whom has a seemingly direct real-life corollary, all of whom are immediately recognizable — is more to the point of 'Mountainhead,' a frightfully credible comedy about the delusions of tech utopianism. Each of the four, with the exception of some hesitancy on the part of Jeff, are zealous futurists. On the way to Mountainhead, a doctor gives Randall a fatal diagnosis that he outright refuses. 'All the things we can do and we can't fix one tiny little piece of gristle in me?' But together, in Armstrong's dense, highly quotable dialogue, their arrogance reaches hysterical proportions. While the cast is altogether excellent, this is most true with Smith's Venis, a tech bro to end all tech bros. As the news around the world gets worse and worse, his certainty doesn't waver. Earth, itself, no longer hold much interest for him. 'I just want to get us transhuman!' he shouts. Progress (along with net worth) is their cause, and much of the farce of 'Mountainhead' derives from just how much any semblance of compassion for humanity has left the building. It's in the way Venis blanches at the mention of his baby son. It's in the way, as death counts escalate in the news on their phones, they toy with world politics like kids at a Risk board. In one perfectly concise moment, Venis asks, sincerely, 'Do you believe in other people?' If 'Succession' filtered its media satire through family relationships, 'Mountainhead' runs on the dynamics of bro-styled male friendship. There are beefs, hug-it-out moments, passive-aggressive put downs and eruptions of anger. Part of the fun of Armstrong's film isn't just how their behavior spills into a geopolitical events but how it manifests, for example, in which room everyone gets. All of 'Mountainhead' unfolds in the one location, with white mountaintops stretching in the distance outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. It could be a play. Instead, though, it's something that either hardly exists anymore or, maybe, exists everywhere: the made-for-TV movie. There's no lack of films made for streaming services, but many of them fall into some in-between aesthetic that couldn't fill a big screen and feel a touch disposable on the small screen. But 'Mountainhead' adheres to the tradition of the HBO movie; it's lean, topical and a fine platform for its actors. And for Armstrong, it's a way to keep pursuing some of the timely themes of 'Succession' while dispensing lines like: 'Coup-out the U.S.? That's a pretty big enchilada.' 'Mountainhead,' an HBO Films release, is unrated by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 109 minutes. Three stars out of four.
South China Morning Post
5 days ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Mountainhead review: Succession creator mocks uber-rich tech bros in satisfying satire
Jessie Armstrong isn't done skewering the rich and powerful. The creator of the acclaimed HBO series Succession, a satire inspired by the Murdoch family and its media empire that ran for four seasons, is back on the premium cable network and its streaming offshoot, Max, with the TV film Mountainhead, which he wrote and directed. Funny and thought-provoking, the film sees four friends – all tech titans – getting together for a poker weekend in the new mountain retreat one of them has had built in a snowy and entirely picturesque chunk of the US state of Utah. Hugo (Jason Schwartzman) is hosting Randall (Steve Carell), Venis (Cory Michael Smith) and Jeff (Ramy Youssef). They call Hugo 'Souper' – short for 'Soup Kitchen' – because while they are worth billions, he is good for only about US$500 million and some change. Play The weekend is to involve 'no meals' – the men will really rough it with cold cuts and the like – and 'no deals' – this is not a time for business to be done.
