Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle)

[Ezee E]

IMDB

[Henry Gale]

Liked this quite a bit, but man, those [UNFORTUNATE]last couple of scenes are so clunky.[/DOWNER] The movie actually does very little to try to humanize Jobs. Beyond the increasingly thin and overworked daughter plotline, it basically paints him as an amusingly smarmy, endlessly calculating and even dictatorial presence who treats every social interaction and business move as equal transactions to simply help himself move on, or move onto the next thing. I also can't decide if it's interesting and confounding where it decides to stop the story, as the growth of both his power with the Apple brand and the public relations of his own (majorly self-designed) persona didn't reach their meteoric highs until after the iMac timeframe, the last we see of him here. It feels like something Sorkin could've written well before the iPhone even existed, or especially prior to Jobs' passing, considering its ruthlessness.

Most important to its success is Boyle, who can't help but make something like this so look and feel undistractingly frenetic and visually sumptuous even when it's just two or three people in dressing rooms and empty auditoriums talking in Sorkin-y circles of the same talking points with increasing volume and emphasis for effect with metaphoric asides as time-outs (and I still really liked almost all of it as it was written, by the way). The cinematography gimmick of having each time period shot with 16mm, 35mm, and Alexa Codex is really nice, at least until the lush, gorgeously grainy range of the first two celluloid thirds arrive at 1998, when everything begins to look so flat, antiseptic and even dynamically bandy with a slimmer colour palette that's less striking in its depth and details. Apparently this is what post-Slumdog Digital Danny Boyle looks like with Anthony Dod Mantle. (Kinda ugly.)

The performances are all a lot of fun even when things like accents waver or during particularly cutesy dialogue an apparition of Sorkin himself feels like it's showing up to place its hands on the actors' shoulders and mouth each word along with them before winking at the camera and fading back away to allow the drama to get back to less overly-written characteristics once again.

It's a compelling movie, has moments where it feels like it's busted through a ceiling into floors of greatness, but it never quite settles in to get comfortable there. It's basically the Steve Jobs: A Life In Three Launches movie I was hoping for at its best in the years since it was first announced, but it didn't do too much to paint broader ideas about Jobs' role in the technological tide shifting of the times or even explore more unknown attributes about him that have reverberated since each event, and I say this only having been alive for the iMac one.

So basically, it's pretty damn good, but to me maybe the least interesting of Boyle's last three films. Visually, emotionally, cinematically, atmospherically, and stylistically less trangressive and audacious than 127 Hours or Trance, but STILL seemingly effortlessly interesting nonetheless. I was definitely impressed by it, but kinda indifferent to it by the end (especially as a potentially big awards-season player), and I'm not sure if it's just because it ends in such a confusingly inept way.

***1/2 / 8.1

[number8]

Really glad Boyle got the job instead of Fincher, because I think 100% of what's interesting about this movie is the three-act, real time format; and it was made all the better by Boyle's busy and impressionistic style that wouldn't let Sorkin's familiar dialogue dictate the rhythms of the scenes. I honestly don't think I've ever seen his script being treated like this before. A lot of times directors who work with Sorkin will quiet everything down except for his dialogue and let the musicality of it set the pace until the score can fill the wordless moments, but that's not the case here at all. Boyle would have that pulsing electronic score he's known for under Sorkin's dialogue for most of the movie, building up to either drowning the words in music or have the bubble pop for emphasis. It makes what is essentially a textbook chamber drama play deceptively bombastic in tone. There's really not a lot of things that are interesting with the story and the central question of whether or not being a successful mogul is incompatible with being a nice guy is way undercooked (though Rogen as Woz does a great job mouthpiecing that concern, a performance I was pleasantly surprised by), but it's a very technically exciting movie.

[Barty]

Great insights Ary. I thought the film was brilliant, and the most energetic and excitingly constructed film since Birdman. The performances were all outstanding, especially of course Fassbender, who will be hard to top as my favorite performance of the year. Oh, and the score was also absolutely brilliant. A wonderful combination of electronic and classical flourishes that really helps drive the picture.

[Watashi]

The real Steve Jobs was love.

[TGM]

So yeah, this movie was seriously fucking incredible. Easily lands in my Top 5 of the year so far. The whole cast was great, including Seth Rogan and Kate Winslet definitely impressing, but with the standouts being Jeff Daniels and, of course, my boy Michael Fassbender, who absolutely killed it in the title role. Those two have an argument in the second act that's seriously one of the best edited sequences in any movie this year so far.

Sorkin's writing and Boyle's direction worked hand in hand here, and in addition to the writing, I just loved the whole frenetic style, the editing, the use of music in this thing, everything just came together so perfectly well. I loved the structure of this thing, playing out in three acts, each playing in real time in the minutes leading up to one of Steve Jobs' big press events announcing one of his latest computers. The passion just oozed all over the screen, this thing just had an addictive energy to it that I seriously could've watched all night. An absolute must see, one of the year's best, definitely.

[number8]

I reviewed it this way.

[Mal]

Didn't care for it. It probably does do a better job than "Man in the Machine" at showing Steve the Dick, but that is one of the very few things this movie does well- and that is not even as good as the conflict portrayed by Noah Wyle in POSV. The staging of events between Jobs and Sculley were not done well, made the film drag. Kate Winslet and Michael Stuhlbarg however were perfection.

[Grouchy]

I'd read almost nothing about this film going in and so I had no reason to expect such a negative view of Jobs as a human being and an "inventor". What's funny is that the film seems to be almost exclusively devoted to debunking the ridiculous level of hero worship that started after his recent death while at the same time being based on an authorized biography of him. It took Hollywood two years to film the "nice" version of the biopic and another two years to do this? Times sure are a-changin'.

Regardless of any random nobody's moral judgement of Jobs (and, judging by everything I've read about his rise to power, Sorkin/Boyle got the right idea) this is a damn interesting film. Like 8 and others here have noted, Sorkin's verbose dialogue and Boyle's visually oriented cinema clash unexpectedly well and that clash turns what could have been an excellent piece of filmed theater into an exhilarating experience which builds a transcendent momentum in each of its three segments. The three-act structure of the film is perfect, with each mini film leaving dramatic clues which will come together on the resolution. I don't like so much the corny aspect of the father/daughter closing scene but I have to admit that it's fitting for this kind of movie, which is focused a lot more on a character study of megalomania and dehumanization than the usual Genius for Dummies beats of a Hollywood biopic.

[TGM]

The previous biopic was the "nice" one? That one arguably made him out to be even more of a monster than this one did. In fact, I'd say this new one did a far better job humanizing him than the previous effort.

[Grouchy]

I admit I haven't seen it. I naturally assumed it couldn't be worse than this one in that regard.

[Dukefrukem]

35 minute opening is brilliant. The 60 second pseudo-montage the follows feels un-Boyleian followed by 30 more minutes of Jobs in midlife. Followed by 60 seconds more of pseudo-montage. Followed by Job's late life. I dont like this structure, but I enjoyed watching Jobs grow, change, evolve. I wish it went back to the early years like the first Jobs movie. I think it would have been a better story.

The boardroom scene was 1000% over-dramatic and didn't happen that way.

[number8]

The boardroom scene was 1000% over-dramatic and didn't happen that way.

Nothing in the movie happened the way it was depicted. On purpose.

[Dukefrukem]

Nothing in the movie happened the way it was depicted. On purpose.

Then it was just 1000% over-dramatic and lame.

[Ezee E]

If that paint drawing existed, it would probably be the biggest piece of artwork in the last thirty years.

[Ezee E]

11 Things that Aren't True in Steve Jobs

If you read this, you may either think the movie is the dumbest thing ever, or one of the most original scripts in quite some time....

[Henry Gale]

Sorkin summed it up pretty perfectly when he said the movie is a painting, not a photograph.

Do people think that anything in The Social Network actually happened? Does it make it better or worse to know one way or another?

I just think films like these need to operate on their own terms to say larger things about the people, their creations and their influence on the world we now live in than to get hung up on what they might've actually said or done to one another on certain days along the way.

[Dukefrukem]

Do people think that anything in The Social Network actually happened? Does it make it better or worse to know one way or another?

http://www.informationisbeautiful.ne...ue-true-story/

[DavidSeven]

Sorkin clearly wrote Steve Jobs to be theatrical, highlighting the dramatization and obvious artistic licenses. It's a stage play on film, and I think it's meant to be perceived that way. Perhaps this was a reaction to some of the hits he took for the inaccuracies and misrepresentations in The Social Network, which was an overly glib film masquerading as authentic. This time, he wants you to understand that this isn't real.

I think the film's artistic ambitions are a lot more interesting than the story points or discovery of facts anyway. The structure is fascinating, foregoing short scenes and tying together three break-neck set pieces that hinge only on how interesting we find the dialogue between Jobs and the same five characters. It's a biopic that embraces its dramatic artifice rather than try to mask it or run from it. The pace relies entirely on Sorkin, who's in form as Hollywood's most formidable writer of rhythmic dialogue. This movie can't work as anything but a Sorkin piece; it's a closed system like an Apple product.

There are imperfections, the same as you find in most of Sorkin's work. Sometimes his writing is just too on-the-nose, too superficial, or too sentimental. The relentless references and foreshadowing to other Apple products and key events is usually ham-fisted. The one-note (and exclusively negative) characterization of Jobs's ex, Chrisann, is unfortunate -- even if based in truth, it's uncomfortable to see on film. In finding resolution, he again succumbs to his overly maudlin instincts. That said, he's still the only guy in the game who can consistently reach into transcendence by the way his dialogue hits your ear. Here, he's set up a structure that highlights his strength and allows his audience to really bask in it. It's not perfect, and it's occasionally annoying, but no one else could've written it. It's enjoyably Sorkin through-and-through.

[number8]

I know it's glib and smug in keeping with Sorkin's reputation, but I did enjoy how in the interviews surrounding the film, whenever he gets asked about the factuality he just starts making fun of people for thinking all the important people in Steve Jobs' life show up to his product launches to have important conversations with him.

[dreamdead]

Well directed but the film's structure contrives to bring thematic links to events that are ungrounded. At times it works, but the third cycling through conflict results in diminishing returns even if Boyle still works the emotions.

At its best, Sorkin dialogue is rich and reveals dynamics in wordplay and character. At its worst, it's thematizing and overdone. Winslet gets stuck with most of these lines, to my ears.

Better than expected, but still more middling than amazing.