Sebastian Stan

The hits and misses of the Super Bowl trailers

Traditionally, the Super Bowl advertising spots are not only the most prestigious and expensive of the year, but also serve to showcase the movies that will be the biggest and most thrilling blockbusters of the coming summer. Since the advent of social media and streaming, there is no longer the same giddy thrill at watching a few seconds’ footage, which is usually taken from a more expansive and detailed trailer, but it’s still a clear calling card for studios to suggest which of their forthcoming films they’re most excited by, and which have been quietly set aside. (Awful though I think it looks, however, James Gunn’s Superman, which lacked a new spot, did at least have a short clip with the hoped-for breakout star Krypto the Superdog.

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How controversial is The Apprentice?

Ali Abbasi’s new film, The Apprentice, may be named after the TV show that fatefully beamed Donald Trump into millions of homes for fourteen seasons before its star’s even more fateful run for the US presidency. But after watching Abbasi’s twisted and wildly entertaining bildungsroman, featuring Sebastian Stan as a young Donald and Jeremy Strong as his dark-arts mentor Roy Cohn, you recognize an echo of the sorcerer’s apprentice too. Abbasi starts the film with footage of Richard Nixon telling the world he is not a crook, before segueing to a punk-soundtracked montage of broke-down Seventies New York.

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