by way of

‘The Apprentice,’ by journalist-turned-screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, is a well-considered distillation of Trump by way of Roy Cohn.

Lawsuits and criminal cases “are social post-mortems; they do not deal with the diagnosis of living situations, but with judgments as to dead and past events. All that is available by way of data for the task is the report that individuals can give of the present state of their recollection of past observation and whatever record may be contained in existing documents and, occasionally, other things.”

In what counts as the present day — there is an earlier timeline in which young Valya is played by Jessica Barden and Tula by Emma Canning — the sisters have lifted themselves to positions of influence by way of the newish Sisterhood, later the Bene Gesserit; they’re nuns, basically, who have learned to bend minds.

Nothing much happens by way of action, yet unspoken tensions simmer under the surface, and by the movie’s surprising end, you sense that a tremendous transformation has quietly taken place.

Paxton is a sweet and eager missionary born into the faith; Barnes joined by way of her mother’s conversion and seems a bit more streetwise.