On Screen: “Mountainhead”
Mountainhead
It was inevitable that “Succession” writer-director Jesse Armstrong would have more to say about how power corrupts — which is why he made “Mountainhead” — a satire in which four nihilistic Silicon Valley tech titans meet to decide the fate of the world.
This summit takes place at the palatial glass-and-steel vacation home belonging to Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman), nicknamed ‘Soupy’ — a.k.a. ‘Soup Kitchen’ — because he’s a lowly, insecure millionaire hosting three billionaires.
The Papa Bear eldest is venture capitalist Randall (Steve Carell), who mocks his physician’s dire cancer diagnosis; then there’s manic social media titan Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the richest man in the world; and Jeff ((Ramy Youssef), who controls an AI moderation system to block phony AI-generated images.
The plot unfolds just after arrogant, entitled Venis (rhymes with ‘menace,’ evoking Elon Musk) releases content tools that allow users to create deep fakes of ordinary people, flooding the Internet with disinformation. As the world plunges into chaos, violence erupts, markets collapse and governments fall.
Apparently, Jesse Armstrong hatched this idea while researching crypto-fascist tech-bro culture after reviewing Michael Lewis’s book about Sam Bankman-Fried for the Times Literary Supplement in 2023.
Armstrong began writing the script after Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2024, and this is his directorial debut. Significantly, President Trump’s current “big, beautiful bill” contains a 10-year moratorium on state A.I. regulations.
Unfortunately, what eventually emerges are four reprehensible, almost cartoon-like, tediously talking heads, speaking in a pretentious patois filled with insider references, profanity and computer allusions.
On the plus side, kudos to location manager Paul Eskenazi for finding the lavish, modernist, 21,000 square-foot ski chalet perched on a peak in Deer Valley, Utah. Designed by architect Michael Upwall, it has seven bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, a basketball court, bowling alley, rock-climbing wall, steam room and sauna.
“The house didn’t just support the story,” Eskenazi told the New York Times. “It became part of it.”
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Mountainhead” is a trivial, frightening 4, streaming on HBO Max.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.