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Indian Express
7 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
Mountainhead movie review: Like watching the BTS of a Nikhil Kamath podcast, HBO's Succession successor punches up at plutocracy
When Nikhil Kamath interviewed Ranbir Kapoor on his podcast, he admitted that he hasn't quite figured out the art of detachment like Marcus Aurelius. 'You like Marcus' writing?' Kapoor asked. 'Yes, I like a couple of his books,' Kamath said. This bizarre exchange deserves to be unpacked in a separate article, but, for the purposes of this one, let's focus on two things. One, the Zerodha founder reads the work of a Roman emperor in his spare time, and two, the star of Jagga Jasoos probably thinks they were talking about someone who wrote a self-help bestseller. Several conversations of this nature unfold in Mountainhead, the new film from Jesse Armstrong, creator of HBO's Succession. Marcus Aurelius is invoked as well; in fact, so are Mark Antony and other great historical figures. The movie follows four men — three billionaires and one millionaire — who get together in a snowy mountain retreat for a weekend getaway, while the 'outside world' descends into chaos. 'No deals, no meals, no women in heels,' is the motto of the get-together, which seems like something of a tradition. Steve Carell plays a veteran named Randall, who has just received a disheartening cancer diagnosis. Corey Michael Smith, who was so good in May December and Saturday Night, plays Ven, the owner of a Twitter-like social media app. He's the richest man in the room. Ramy Youssef plays Jeff, whose company is making waves in the field of artificial intelligence, and Jason Schwartzman plays Souper, who feels insecure about being the only person whose net worth hasn't hit a billion yet. Also read – Don't Look Up movie review: Leonardo DiCaprio leads a galaxy of stars in Netflix's sharp satire While the agenda is to have no agenda, the four men arrive at Souper's snowy chalet with ulterior motives. Ven wants to acquire Jeff's company so that he can curb the spread of disinformation on his platform — not because he's an altruistic hero, but because he wants to avoid accountability. Randall wants Ven to consider starting work on uploading human consciousness onto computers, mainly to prolong his own life; Souper, on the other hand, plans on pitching his meditation app to the others. Each of them is petty, vindictive, self-centred — sort of like the characters in Succession. Jeff is the only one who seems concerned about the anarchy unfolding outside; much of the violence has been demonstrably incited by the disinformation being spread on Ven's app. The news says that 400 people were burned alive in a riot-like situation in Gujarat. There's violence in Azerbaijan, in Turkey, in regions all around the world. Ven keeps trying to deflect blame, pretending like this is the best advertisement for his app that he could've asked for. Things get real when he receives a call from the President, who gives him a slap on the wrist for his (significant) role in causing the global catastrophe. Jeff, meanwhile, knows that he's sitting on the cure for this disease. His AI system can sift through the fake news and provide real-time fact-checks. Unsurprisingly, his net worth sky-rockets over the weekend, much to Randall's chagrin. Mountainhead is like watching the BTS for one of Kamath's day-long podcasts, as if it were shot by a Stanley Kubrick devotee. It doesn't take the four men too long to plan a global takeover; Souper, it is decided, will become President of Argentina. He's delighted. Like Randall and Ven, he views this as an opportunity for humankind to 'evolve'. They actually view themselves as Roman emperors introducing the masses to the idea of civilisation. Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Souper, on the other hand, keeps talking about snacks. Through much of the movie, Schwartzman plays him like a needy tag-along who's used to being picked last during sports period. His significant wealth is basically loose change when compared to the fortunes that the other three are sitting on. For the most part, Mountainhead feels like an extended episode of Succession — directed by Armstrong himself, the narrative is photographed through long lenses, which, like it did in the HBO show, gives the impression that you're looking at zoo animals from a distance. The writing, as expected, is as sharp as anything that Armstrong has done before — besides Succession, he also worked on The Thick of It, Four Lions, and Veep. Most of the humour in Mountainhead is directed at the insecure personalities of the four men. Not a single punch is thrown — although, at one point, Randall drops a bowling ball on someone — but these dudes inflict more violence (upon more people) than Unni Mukundan did in Marco. Read more – Glass Onion movie review: Daniel Craig doubles the charm in Rian Johnson's giddily entertaining Knives Out sequel The tone shifts drastically in Mountainhead's final act, when Randall and Ven peer pressure Souper into committing a murder. The zinger-a-minute dialogue remains intact, but the satire makes way for farce. Randall continues quoting historical figures, Ven plays with his baby by putting it on the floor and looking at it from a distance, Souper does just about anything to feel included; people fall over each other in a comical fashion. The glaring cynicism on display will make Mountainhead almost impossible to watch for the sort of folks who follow Elon Musk on social media and consume portfolios for breakfast; the sort of folks who follow Finance with Sharan for investment advice and watch BeerBiceps to learn about geopolitics. But Mountainhead is a movie that understands the absurdity of existence; a 2 GB data plan can sometimes be more dangerous than a nuclear warhead. Mountainhead Director – Jesse Armstrong Cast – Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef Rating – 4/5 Rohan Naahar is an assistant editor at Indian Express online. He covers pop-culture across formats and mediums. He is a 'Rotten Tomatoes-approved' critic and a member of the Film Critics Guild of India. He previously worked with the Hindustan Times, where he wrote hundreds of film and television reviews, produced videos, and interviewed the biggest names in Indian and international cinema. At the Express, he writes a column titled Post Credits Scene, and has hosted a podcast called Movie Police. You can find him on X at @RohanNaahar, and write to him at He is also on LinkedIn and Instagram. ... Read More
Boston Globe
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Succession' creator Jesse Armstrong's ‘Mountainhead' is a too-literal-minded satire
Ven (Cory Michael Smith, who brought perfect smarm to the young Chevy Chase in ' They all have a direct line to the White House, and they all speak in the clipped, speedy patter of the Roy family — and of the characters from 'In the Loop,' Armando Iannucci's superb 2009 satire about bumbling British and America government operatives that Armstrong co-wrote, receiving an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. Armstrong has a gift for puncturing balloons of power and hoisting the self-important with their own petards. He's also a wizard with one-liners. Walking into Souper's soulless, sprawling Mountainhead, Jeff asks: 'Was your interior decorator Ayn Bland?' It's a great zinger that holds out hope for light touches that never really arrive. Advertisement (l to r) Steve Carell and Ramy Youssef. Macall Polay/HBO That's a problem, because this material could really use an infusion of levity to make it go down without choking. Make no mistake, 'Mountainhead' is a comedy, with fangs. But too often it also feels like a literal-minded screed or lecture, not unlike the 2021 Netflix satire 'Don't Look Up,' in which Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence's astronomers struggle to interest the powers that be in the fact that a comet is on an apocalyptic collision course with Earth. See the short-sighted technocrats, whistling past the global graveyard. Except this time they represent the Musks, Zuckerbergs and Altmans of the world, the new power brokers convinced that their obscene net worths somehow equate to forward thinking that's good for the rest of the world. As Ven and his friends/sycophants justify the destruction and chaos they create, it's impossible to miss the echoes of the current broligarchy's crowing. 'Mountainhead' is nothing if not au courant. Advertisement The second half of the movie takes a plot turn that unfortunately for our purposes falls firmly in the spoiler zone. It does give 'Mountainhead' a jolt of focus and energy, and brings some comic clarity to dark questions that linger over the whole affair: What is the human collateral damage of zero-sum tech bro thinking? Are we all mere negotiating chips in some bizarre big picture we can't quite grasp? The second act of 'Mountainhead' feels more concrete and human than the first. It also feels like it belongs to a different movie. 'Succession' aficionados might find themselves flashing back to some of that series' best and most 'Mountainhead'-relevant episodes. There's Season 2's 'Hunting,' in which the Roy family and associates head to a Hungarian mansion for a corporate retreat that becomes a ritual of humiliation (this is often referred to as the 'Boar on the Floor' episode). And Season 4's 'America Decides,' which finds the Roy-run, Fox News-styled network ATN leaning on the levers of power to determine the winner of a U.S. presidential election. These stories, too, express their share of incredulous outrage. But they also move with a dancer's nimble grace. 'Mountainhead' is more like a heavyweight boxer, slugging away. It is satire as blunt-force object. ★★ MOUNTAINHEAD Directed and written by Jesse Armstrong. Starring Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef, Hadley Robinson, and Amie MacKenzie. On HBO and Max starting May 31. 108 min. TV-MA (language, mild violence, adult content, wealthy people behaving badly). Advertisement
Time Magazine
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
With Mountainhead, the Creator of Succession Targets a Group That's Beyond Satire
We scrutinize their every public post, utterance, and gesture. But what do our most powerful and controversial tech titans—the Zuckerbergs, the Musks, the Thiels, the Altmans —have to say for themselves, and to one another, in private? Mountainhead, an HBO movie airing May 31 that was written and directed by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, is a darkly funny, sharply scripted, and gamely acted attempt to imagine such a gathering. The trouble is, especially in the DOGE era, the guys who the film aims to indict have no masks of civility left to tear off. After successfully skewering Murdochian media dynasties, Armstrong may have found a group so transparent about its bizarre ideas and ill intentions, it's virtually immune to satire. Conceived, pitched, shot, edited, and finalized in just seven months—the rush reflects Armstrong's sense of its timeliness— Mountainhead is a wild chamber piece that unfolds over a weekend in the mountains. Gotham alum Cory Michael Smith's Venis (pronounced Venice, but the spelling is surely no accident), a fratty social media founder who's also the richest man alive, has just rolled out an update to his platform, Traam, that, among other things, allows a user base encompassing roughly half the world's population to easily make and share deepfakes that aren't identifiable as such. These images immediately catalyze outbreaks of violence on multiple continents, just as Ven's advisers warned him they would. Instead of dropping everything to fix it, save lives, and stop the planet from hurtling into chaos, like anyone who possessed an ounce of empathy would do, he takes off to drive snowmobiles and consume drugs with three other masters of the universe. To his credit, though he doesn't deserve much of it, one reason Ven has come to the isolated, ultramodern Mountainhead estate is to hit up Jeff (Ramy Youssef) for access to an AI Jeff has developed that could automatically filter out Traam's most inflammatory user-generated content. More grounded in reality than his tech-utopian comrades and financially ascendant thanks to his skeptic's foresight about crises like the one Ven has caused, Jeff is reluctant to bail out his frenemy. Both men are protégés of Randall (Steve Carell), an ideologically driven Peter Thiel type whose startup funds, obsession with transhumanism, and self-serving misreadings of philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche have shaped their careers. (Yes, Mountainhead is a reference to The Fountainhead. Jeff jokes that it was decorated by Ayn Bland.) Another Randall mentee, their host, Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), is nicknamed Souper, short for Soup Kitchen—because, with a measly $521 million in the bank, he's the last among them still hustling to earn his first billion. Would he even have been invited on the trip if he hadn't been the one to organize it? Ven isn't the only one with an agenda. Because people this cutthroat and productivity-pilled never do anything just for fun, much less in the name of friendship, their initial agreement that no business will transpire during the weekend quickly buckles under the weight of each character's ulterior motives. Souper wants his buddies to invest in his 'lifestyle super app,' which is really just another meditation app. He even rehearses a bro-tastic pitch: 'If you bust a B-nut into this app, it will give birth to a unicorn.' Jeff may be the least swaggeringly arrogant of the bunch, but he clearly enjoys basking in his new-found wealth and power. Also, the trip is a convenient distraction while his girlfriend is in Mexico for what may or may not be a 'f-ck party.' Most delusional of all is Randall, who thought he'd beaten cancer but has just been diagnosed with an incurable recurrence. Instead of trying to process this news or accepting his oncologist's optimistic suggestion that the right regimen could keep him alive for another five to 15 years, he taunts the doctor for his lack of vision ('You're not a very intelligent person, are you?') before dumping him on a tarmac. Convinced that technology could give him eternal, disembodied life, Randall bombards Ven with inquiries about the timeline for realizing the pipe dream of uploaded consciousness. Death, he seems to believe, is for peasants and fools. About the escalating fallout of the Traam update, he shrugs: 'You're always going to get some people dead.' During the same conversation, early in the film, Ven casually poses a question so basic yet so alarming that it reverberates throughout the remaining hour and a half. 'Do you believe in other people?' he asks Randall. 'Eight billion people as real as us?' Randall: 'Well, obviously not.' He's laughing while he says it, but his eagerness to write off other people's lives while clinging maniacally to his own suggests that this extreme form of solipsism is no joke. Like Succession, Mountainhead is directed as a comedy, each scene a confrontation between ridiculous people, but built on a sobering message about the unchecked power those monsters wield over literally everyone on Earth. In this case, said message is that guys like Ven and Randall and Zuck and Elon don't even believe in the fundamental personhood of their fellow human beings. Armstrong implied in a recent interview that dehumanization is baked into the so-called 'first principles' approach to problem solving embraced by the likes of Musk and Jeff Bezos. Mountainhead weighs the consequences of Big Tech pseudo-mysticism in much the same way that Succession 's nightmarish Season 4 Election Day episode weighed the consequences of the media-monolith Roy family's manipulation of American political discourse. The difference is that Succession had three-and-a-half seasons before that episode to craft the detailed psychological portraits that rendered its characters' world-altering actions comprehensible. Because Mountainhead has less than two hours to both introduce these people and demonstrate how they bring about a sort of apocalypse, its fearsome foursome can feel a little flat, composited out of alarming news articles and bad tweets—sorry, X posts. It's not that Armstrong is wrong about the targets of his mockery. He just doesn't seem to have much more insight into them than the average extremely online observer who's spent years despairing over the same headlines. One thing that makes it tough to go deeper is that Mountainhead 's hyperverbal, dangerously uninhibited characters, like the real neo-eugenicists and blood-boy dads of Silicon Valley, don't leave much space for subtext. (Armstrong does make the effective choice to let viewers come to our own discomfiting conclusions about how Jeff, who flaunts his moral superiority, can keep berating Ven about Traam's body count when he's the one who could put ego aside, flip a switch, and end it.) They look like the kind of guys who'd rather capitalize on a cataclysm of their own making, justifying it to themselves as a 'controlled burn' of society's rabble, than take responsibility for the suffering they've caused. And that's precisely who they turn out to be. Not that the movie is devoid of pleasures for Succession -heads. The dialogue is gloriously delusional ('Cancer was net-net a big positive') and exhilaratingly obscene (the phrase 'frosted Pop-Tart of Palo Alto' will haunt you), the casting ideal. Smith is the smooth, self-absorbed alpha dog; no one would make a better beta than Schwartzman. Youssef makes Jeff bro-ish enough to hang with this crowd but outsider enough to chafe at its hubris. Carell's performance is the broadest of the bunch, but his character is also the most desperate. When Randall bellows 'I take Kant really f-cking seriously!' you may not believe he actually understands the categorical imperative, but you don't doubt he needs the others to think he does. If you like rich-people cringe, there's Souper whining that pitted olives mean 'some greasy little monster from Whole Foods has had his little fingers in them' and using lipstick to scrawl each guest's net worth on their bare chest. If sinister twists or Roy-style bad dads do it for you, hang on past the hour mark. If you prefer your topical wit with a side of slapstick, Mountainhead's glassy interior will facilitate that, too. Armstrong certainly hasn't lost his touch. It would just be more exciting to see his satirical talents directed at subjects who aren't already in the habit of telling on themselves.
Int'l Business Times
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Int'l Business Times
New Report Accuses Nicolás Maduro Regime of Post-Election Abuses, Including Killings, Kidnappings
Nine months after Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of Venezuela's 2024 presidential election by allegedly securing 51% of the votes, a human rights group released a report accusing his regime of widespread abuses against protesters and opposition members, including up to 25 killings and more than 2,000 political imprisonments. According to the 104-page report titled "Punished for Seeking Change: Killings, Enforced Disappearances, and Arbitrary Detention Following Venezuela's 2024 Election," security forces and government-aligned paramilitary groups known as "colectivos" were accused of committing grave human right violations after the July 28 election. As reported by the Miami Herald , the document, published by Human Rights Watch, presents evidence of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and widespread torture and mistreatment of detainees. The findings are based on more than 100 interviews with victims, eyewitnesses and members of human rights organizations, as well as the analysis of more than 90 videos and photographs documenting alleged abuses. Human Rights Watch said it received "credible reports" of at least 25 killings during protests that erupted across Venezuela after the July 28 election, in which Maduro was declared the winner amid allegations of electoral fraud. The document says most of the killings took place between July 29-30, with most of the victims being under the age of 40 and from low-income backgrounds. The evidence points to the involvement of Venezuelan security forces in some of the deaths, while others are attributed to the "colectivos." According to the findings, these armed groups played a key role in repressing protests across the country—often intimidating or physically attacking demonstrators when security forces failed to disperse crowds with tear gas. "The Venezuelan government has killed, tortured, detained and forcibly disappeared people seeking democratic change," said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. In the 104-page document, the human-rights watchdog revealed that more than 2,000 people have been detained for participating in demonstrations in support of the opposition. According to the Herald, those arrested were charged under vague national security laws such as "incitement to hatred" and "terrorism." Some detainees are reportedly being held in facilities with inhumane conditions. The Venezuelan non-governmental group Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones (OVP) reported that children have also been detained since last July and held in such centers. At one of the detention centers known as Zona 7, detainees described how the walls "cry" from humidity and overcrowding and some said they did not have access to a bathroom and that and cells were contaminated with human waste. Zona 7 was also the home to more than 20 children, who were held there between July and early August 2024, according to the OVP. According to Foro Penal, a Venezuelan human rights organization, at least 176 minors between the ages of 14 and 17 were arrested between July 28 and Dec. 21. As of April 30, five remained in detention. Although considered children under international law, some of the detainees have been charged with terrorism and other serious crimes carrying long prison sentences, the report said. "My son asked me what it meant to be a terrorist, because that's what the guards kept shouting at him in prison," one parent told Human Rights Watch. Originally published on Latin Times
The Guardian
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Masters: day one at Augusta
Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature There are so many traditions to be observed at the beginning of each Masters. Arriving via Magnolia Lane. The Amateur Dinner. The Champions Dinner. Skipping the water at 16. The par-three contest. The Honorary Starters. And someone unexpected nearly always flies out of the traps early doors, able to say for ever more that they once led the Masters, and even though there were only a handful of fellow pros out on the course at the time, facts are facts and there isn't anything anyone can ever do to rebut it. Step forward then Davis Riley, who took the opening shot of this year's Tournament and followed a par at Tea Olive with birdie on the par-five 2nd, reward for wedging his approach to ten feet. The 28-year-old from Mississippi is on debut, so this is some introduction to life at golf's most glamorous major. Great stuff, with the caveat that, unless Riley is to become the first debutant to win since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979, the only way from here is down. -1: Riley (3) E: Vegas (2), Weir (10), M Kim (1), Young (1), Z Johnson (1), Kirk (1) Share Welcome, patrons, to the 89th staging of the Masters Tournament. The contestants are invited guests and should be treated with courtesy and respect. Although cheering and positive responses to great play are encouraged, unsolicited or consistent calls from the gallery are prohibited. Running is considered to be unacceptable behaviour. Prohibited items include Cell Phones, Beepers, Electronic devices, Tablets, any device with recording and/or transmission capability, Flags, Banners, Signs, Ladders, Periscopes and Weapons of any kind (regardless of permit). Pimento Cheese sandwiches are $1.50 and Iced Tea is two bucks. Defending champion Scottie Scheffler is the favourite, all the tee times are below, and this is the famous CBS theme on a looooong loop to get you in the mood. It's on! Masters fever is real; won't someone please call Dr Golf? First-round tee times (USA unless stated, all times BST) 12.40 Patton Kizzire, Davis Riley 12.51 Nicolai Hoejgaard (Den), Jhonattan Vegas (Ven), Chun-An Yu (Tai) 13.02 Michael Kim, Mike Weir (Can), Cameron Young 13.13 Joe Highsmith, Zach Johnson, Chris Kirk 13.24 Nicolas Echavarria (Col), Davis Thompson, Danny Willett (Eng) 13.35 Noah Kent, Bernhard Langer (Ger), Will Zalatoris 13.52 J. T. Poston, Aaron Rai (Eng), Cameron Smith (Aus) 14.03 Fred Couples, Harris English, Taylor Pendrith (Can) 14.14 Corey Conners (Can), Brian Harman, Stephan Jaeger (Ger) 14.25 Byeong-Hun An (Kor), Max Greyserman, Patrick Reed 14.36 Nick Dunlap, Billy Horschel, Robert MacIntyre (Sco) 14.47 Min-Woo Lee (Aus), Collin Morikawa, Joaquin Niemann (Chi) 14.58 Keegan Bradley, Jason Day (Aus), Phil Mickelson 15.15 Jose Luis Ballester (Spa), Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas 15.26 Tyrrell Hatton (Eng), Joo-Hyung Kim (Kor), Jordan Spieth 15.37 Thomas Detry (Bel), Tony Finau, Maverick McNealy 15.48 Rafael Campos (Pur), Cameron Davis (Aus), Austin Eckroat 15.59 Angel Cabrera (Arg), Laurie Canter (Eng), Adam Schenk 16.10 Brian Campbell, Thriston Lawrence (Rsa), Jose Maria Olazabal (Spa) 16.21 Evan Beck, Matthieu Pavon (Fra), Bubba Watson 16.38 Christiaan Bezuidenhout (Rsa), Tom Hoge, Matt McCarty 16.49 Denny McCarthy, Charl Schwartzel (Rsa), Hiroshi Tai (Sgp) 17.00 Max Homa, Justin Rose (Eng), J. J. Spaun 17.11 Justin Hastings (Cay), Dustin Johnson, Nick Taylor (Can) 17.22 Daniel Berger, Sergio Garcia (Spa), Lucas Glover 17.33 Patrick Cantlay, Matthew Fitzpatrick (Eng), Rasmus Hoejgaard (Den) 17.50 Russell Henley, Sung-Jae Im (Kor), Brooks Koepka 18.01 Viktor Hovland (Nor), Xander Schauffele, Adam Scott (Aus) 18.12 Ludvig Aaberg (Swe), Akshay Bhatia, Rory McIlroy (NIrl) 18.23 Bryson DeChambeau, Shane Lowry (Irl), Hideki Matsuyama (Jpn) 18.34 Wyndham Clark, Tommy Fleetwood (Eng), Jon Rahm (Spa) 18.45 Sam Burns, Sepp Straka (Aut), Sahith Theegala Share
