Beast review – down-and-out MMA fighter film is predictable but still lands punches

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Directed by Tyler Atkins and co-written by Russell Crowe, this Australian feature follows a familiar playbook – but you’ll find yourself surprisingly invested Ah, yes: the promising fighter who could’ve been a contender, could’ve been a champion. But then life intervened: bad decisions were made, promises broken, the wrong paths taken. But what if the past came knocking on his door? What if our long-in-the-tooth hero could have another crack, set things right, get in the ring one more time? To say that Tyler Atkins’ Australian martial arts drama Beast plucks moves from a well-worn playbook is putting it lightly. This is one of those genre films in which nothing surprises in broad terms; it’s the small pivots and deviations that matter. Given the ring of familiarity surrounding everything, I was surprised to find myself as invested in the film as I was, particularly because so many chest-thumping sports movies are already out there, many of which I find about as intellectually engaging ...
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‘One of the most vicious people of our century’: Maria Bakalova on Donald Trump – and playing Ivana in The Apprentice

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Her breakout role in the Borat sequel grabbed attention after a scene with Rudy Giuliani on a bed. Now she’s playing Trump’s ex-wife in a controversial biopic – but insists it’s not a political film

The week Maria Bakalova was asked to consider playing Ivana Trump for the new film The Apprentice, she was in New York filming something else. With the meeting scheduled for her one day off, she spent the evening before trying to channel Donald Trump’s first wife. The film is set in the 70s and 80s, so she spent hours wading through photos of Ivana in that era. “A lot of makeup, a lot of hair,” she says. Bakalova laughs as she remembers spending the evening experimenting with a mushroom-like hairstyle and “heavy eyeliner with a lot of powder, like inches”, although she didn’t have an Ivana-esque wardrobe – “Am I gen Z or a millennial?” asks the 28-year-old. Either way, “We wear a lot of baggy clothes”, so she chose her most skintight outfit.

She met the director Ali Abbasi in the middle of the day, feeling a little clownish in her Ivana cosplay. They spoke for a couple of hours, “about people growing up in post-communist countries – because [Ivana] was from Czechoslovakia, and I was born and raised in Bulgaria – which shapes your inner world, your thoughts. We talked a lot about the similarities of our stories.”

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