STEVE JOBS

Steve Jobs

Grade: B+

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Seth Rogen, Michael Stuhlbarg and Katherine Waterston, and with Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo and Perla Haney-Jardine as Lisa Brennan at ages 5, 9, and 19

Premise: Computer pioneer Steve Jobs must deal with overworked colleagues, bitter acquaintances, company superiors, the press, and his turbulent personal life just before three of the major product launches of his career.

Rated R for constant strong language

Steve Jobs might be the greatest movie ever that is all dialogue and no plot.

Put another way, Steve Jobs might be exactly the kind of film movie studio executives were describing—though they may not have known it—when they came up with the term “talkies” in the late 1920s, because that is what this movie is: people talking.

That that talk was thought up and put on paper by Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, TV’s The West Wing) means it’s going to be rat-a-tat, balls-to-the-wall, English-language-fireworks talking, which can be thrilling in its execution but can be dread-inducing and exhausting to an audience because it means the characters onscreen are never going to stop and think what they’re about to say, which means they will never defuse or avoid conflict or take the easy way out. Directed by Oscar-winner Danny Boyle (whose diverse resume includes Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours), and adapted from the biography “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs is a feisty, fiery, unflinching verbal circus that depicts what it was like to be in the immediate circle of Jobs just before three of the landmark product launches of his career. The result is a film that is a masterpiece of acting and blocking--featuring several awe-inspiring moments that ensure Oscar is going to come a’calling--but can, admittedly, get a bit wearying as it works through its third act. There’s no doubt it doesn’t get much better than this when it comes to high-level filmmaking, though.

Plot

In 1984, fresh off the success of its legendary 1984-themed Super Bowl ad, Apple was preparing to unveil the Macintosh, and the front-man for the Macintosh was none other than Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender), who, along with Steve Wozniak, had put Apple on the map with the hit personal computers Apple I and Apple II. Already worth hundreds of millions, the headstrong, titanically-driven, hyper-focused Jobs is surrounded by critics, well-wishers, and exasperated employees. One such employee is his assistant, Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), who alone seems to be able to talk sense into her boss and make him see reason. Another employee, software expert Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) is pushed to the absolute brink by his perfectionist boss’s unyielding technical demands (Jobs wants to put on a good show for his audience at the launch). There’s Jobs’ boss, Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), who, though not a tremendous fan of some of Jobs’ marketing schemes, can only toast his front man and then sit back and watch the dough roll in. There’s Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), Jobs’ old friend and colleague, whose relationship with Jobs has soured over Jobs’ continued success, widespread appeal and gargantuan ego. Finally, there’s the not insignificant matter of Jobs’ old girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston), who’s on welfare and has a 5-year-old daughter, Lisa (Makenzie Moss), who has proven through tests to almost certainly be Jobs’.

In 1988, after a fall from grace at Apple, Jobs is with computer programmer NeXT, which is ready to launch a nifty, specially-shaped cube, which he calls his comeback but which those close to him (like Joanna) know is really his “get back at Apple” item. Even as he relishes the idea of the cube bringing him back into relevance, he carries a massive chip on his shoulder, which can’t help revealing itself even during well-wisher visits by Wozniak and Sculley.

Ten years later, after Apple has nearly gone out of business following the failure of an early tablet-like device, Jobs has been re-hired as the CEO, and his sleek, colorful iMac is about to hit the market. Its projected sales figures are historic. But Jobs is still dogged by a grumbling Wozniak, still fretting over the flake his daughter’s mother turned out to be, still hissing at his employees’ grumbles about him, and battling his me-first mind to determine how, exactly, to relate to and parent his now 19-year-old daughter (Perla Haney-Jardine).

What Doesn’t Work?

In high school, I had to read and write a report on Jonathan Swift’s classic Gulliver’s Travels. While I enjoyed the book, as I moved into the novel’s latter sections, I noticed it seemed to be recycling the same elements and ideas over and over again—Gulliver would happen upon a new civilization, be adopted into the civilization, be marveled over, learn the civilization's customs and language, and soon become as one of them. It happened four times, first with the famously-tiny Lilliputians and then with the giant citizens of Brobdingnag and so on. It was all interesting, but it started to lose its effect after a while, as ideas were very clearly recycled. While Steve Jobs’ three sections don’t fall into formula nearly as easily, the nonstop chatter, all among the same four or five characters and most of it about the same topics (including a lot of big words and/or difficult-to-understand concepts like the size and speed of computer hardware and software) becomes wearying. It’s true it helps build Jobs’ character—things could work differently if he wasn’t such an A-hole a lot of the time—but, as marvelously-acted and rat-a-tat as most of these scenes are, it’s a lot to sit through.

What Works?

That being said, if it wasn’t made by the first-class pedigreed likes of Boyle and Sorkin, or acted out by this troupe of actors, it would certainly not be nearly as watchable. "Watchable” is a gentle term, however—watching Steve Jobs is like being in the passenger seat in a speeding car in which the driver seems capable of doing anything: running through a red light, making a sharp turn on two wheels, racing up a hill to get air-time at the crest and stopping or not stopping in heavy traffic. There’s rarely a moment to catch your breath, and for a movie that’s short on things happening and almost all people talking, that it generates that sort of effect is kind of terrific.

But what talking to get to do! Sorkin is the same kind of genius writer as Quentin Tarantino in that he’s a master craftsman who can just own a film, and he makes actors who master his dialogue look good. First, Sorkin led six different actors on The West Wing to acting Emmy wins over 7 seasons as one of TV’s most celebrated shows. Then he made household names out of Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer and Rooney Mara in The Social Network. And now, well, this acting crew may well divebomb the Oscars.

Certainly the first name to come to anyone’s mind regarding Steve Jobs should be that of Michael Fassbender, the celebrated actor (of Shame, 12 Years A Slave and X-Men) who appears in every scene—and nearly every frame—as Steve Jobs. Watching Fassbender’s performance here is like watching a quarterback throwing touchdown pass after touchdown pass. Jobs’ own biographer, Walter Isaacson, described Jobs as having a “passion for perfection and ferocious drive”—Fassbender gives you that and then some. He’s an inspiring and exciting but equally infuriating and even terrifying individual, portrayed here as someone who’s always the smartest, most magnetic man in the room and knows it. Jobs is both the villain and hero of this piece, and sure to land the Irish-born actor in the Best Actor category at the Oscars if not landing him the trophy outright.

Going up against Fassbender when he’s hitting it out of the park, the rest of Steve Jobs’ ensemble has to hold their own weight, and they do. Winslet, though hampered slightly by an Eastern European accent (her character is Polish) that occasionally disappears only to come back stronger in the next scene, is heroic (in fact, Joanna might be the hero of this piece) as the only person to land any punches on Jobs that he can’t just shrug off. Her commitment to sticking by her boss is, frankly, incredible, given the grief she takes. And a Supporting Actor nomination may well come calling, for the first time, for either Jeff Daniels or Seth Rogen or both—each has two magnificent verbal shootouts with Fassbender, with Daniels playing the corporate stiff for the second time this month (after The Martian) and Rogen bringing a wounded edge to the generally good-humored, but clearly overlooked, Wozniak. In smaller roles, Stuhlbarg, Waterston, and the three young actresses who play Jobs’ daughter Lisa each own their own small parts of the film, often providing the heart and emotion necessary for the movie to not be completely cold and hard-eyed.

Content

Steve Jobs is rated R for the four-letter words that creep up in Sorkin’s vast and heavy repertoire. There’s nothing else—no nudity, violence, sensuality, or over-the-top emotional moments—that's particularly off-putting…except, that is, for the film’s breakneck pace, its procedural structure, and the polarizing figure at its center.

Bottom Line

It’s difficult to believe the real Steve Wozniak watched this film and was quoted as saying it was “like watching the real Steve”. Parts of this movie make you wonder why, then, anyone bothered to put up with him. Well, other than the fact that about 99 percent of us enjoy one or more of his brainchild inventions (iPod, iPad, iMac, Macbook, iPhone, iTunes, etc…), as Steve Jobs—which is based on his official biography—argues, it's because he was a visionary. A self-centered, unrelenting taskmaster? Sometimes, sure…but a smart, charismatic, creative, colorful genius as well. This movie is all talk—all insanely-explosive, edge-of-your-seat dialogue—which can be tiresome for two full hours, but its top-flight, Oscar-worthy director, writer and actors make it worthwhile and, at times, spectacular.

Steve Jobs (2015)

Directed by Danny Boyle

Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin

Based on the biography “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson

Rated R

Length: 122 minutes

SICARIO

Sicario

Grade: B+

Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Daniel Kaluuya, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal and Maximiliano Hernandez

Premise: An idealistic FBI agent is recruited to a narcotics tax force battling the influx of drugs from Mexico. She is surprised to find almost immediately that the drug cartels aren’t the only ones who don’t play by the rules.

Rated R for bloody violence and disturbing images, language, scary moments, and some sexual content

Sicario is a dark, bruising film about what it means to live in a depraved, fallen world. It shows the dark side of battling the disease that is the drug trade. Denis Villenueve’s film (from Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay) suggests that, for something as dark and penetrating as the drug trade, it can’t always be as simple and righteous as kicking down doors, arresting the bad guys, and showing off piles of confiscated drugs and cash to the TV cameras. As one character tells another late in the film “If you want to live in the land of wolves, you have to be a wolf.” It’s a well-made, brilliantly-shot film with several fine performances, though if you were hoping for a more gung-ho, patriotic film about good guys stopping the bad guys in the name of justice, in a clear battle of right and wrong, wait for the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi movie from Michael Bay. It should tell you something that the title is Mexican for “hitman”. This is movie with a skewed, cracked moral compass, but it’s masterful and devastating in the way it portrays the shades of gray in one deep bruise on humanity’s conscience.

Plot

A high-flyer in the war on human trafficking, FBI Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is a crack operative, one of the best of the best. Her reputation has gotten around. One day—shortly after her team busts down a door and finds something even worse than kidnapped human beings in a small, cramped house in an Arizona suburb—she’s recruited to a specialized anti-drug task force in El Paso, led by smooth-talking Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). Matt and his mysterious enforcer Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) are at the front of a team looking to make a splash in the drug trade at the border by kidnapping the relative of a big-time drug lord in the hopes that the main man will show himself. Assuring Kate she’ll make a difference—after her recent gruesome findings and a hidden bomb that killed two men on her team, Kate is eager to find the people who would commit such atrocities—they immediately make an incursion into Juarez, Mexico, and nab a guy. But Kate has her doubts when Matt and Alejandro are vague in the details of who the man is or why they have him, and she has even more when their men initiate an armed engagement with drug runners in an area crowded with civilians. She soon suspects she is nothing more than a pawn, a front for Matt and Alejandro and their dark, subversive activities. But she has no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes.

What Doesn’t Work?

If you like everything laid out neatly for you, this isn’t your movie. Not even close. It can be frustrating how quiet and devoid of simple answers lots of Sicario is. It’s a movie about manipulation, and fighting fire with fire, and justifying any means with the ends achieved. The characters are given motivations but little in the way of backstory or personality—there’s nothing along the line of a big, character-building moment. It also doesn’t quite provide the action that seems to be promised—there is action, but it is dark and grueling, not the pocorn blockbuster variety. It’s a slow burn to a dark, dark climax.

If you didn’t get the hint yet, it’s not a movie that leaves you feeling very cheerful.

What Works?

It’s a gnarly flick, though, one where subtle hints and seemingly-meaningless scenes slowly become very, very important, as in life-or-death important. It asks you to consider whether the means are justified by the ends they achieve. What constitutes “making a difference” in something as ongoing and impossible as the war on drugs? What is an appropriate punishment for someone who would attempt to legitimize his role in the drug trade with the uniform he wears? What do you do to a man who has a nice house and a nice family and seems like a regular businessman, when he sits atop a veritable food chain of a drug cartel in which people are kidnapped, killed, tortured and taken advantage of every day?

The key performances are strong without being flashy. Blunt, who also played a conflicted action heroine in last summer’s Edge of Tomorrow, is the audience’s conscience, a toughie and a patriot but someone who believes in right and wrong and not crossing the line, even though she’s seen how some do cross the line. She’s solid, and her growing internal conflict is easy to sense and understand even as she uses minimal words to portray it. Brolin has his usual swagger but it’s here suffused by a determination to see everything through a sardonic, tinted, look-at-the-big-picture lens. Del Toro—who won an Oscar in 2000 for Traffic, another big movie about how the drug trade impacts everyone—uses his big frame and impassive visage to loom intimidatingly over the film long before he does anything significant, but he turns out to have a huge role to play, and he teaches Blunt (and the audience) the “become a wolf if you want to live among the wolves” lesson in the most dramatic, unsubtle way possible.

The cinematography is terrific, full of slow-panning shots of cities and country-sides that build the tension until even beautiful sceneries are seemingly bursting with horrifying possibilities. The camera also captures a few close-ups of certain characters’s faces that will stick with you. The tension is built all along by a muted but addicting drum-driven score. And the final, wordless scene brilliantly drives home the horror of the ongoing drug trade and the violence and darkness it creates even as it focuses on a calm, domestic environment.

Content

Sicario is a hard R, with plenty of splattery head shots and pools of blood, plus a few unexpected shocks and plenty of bad words. Also, with its gloomy outlook, it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. Leave the kiddies and the optimists at home.

Bottom Line

One of those dark, brooding films you sit through waiting for some awesome gunfight or car chase, only to get to the end and realize dang, that actually was a pretty good movie, Sicario shows just how dark the world can be, both in terms of the drug trade and the human tendencies for sin and vice that created it. An effective musical score, strong cinematography, and notable performances by Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin make this a solid, thought-provoking venture for the tougher, more daring moviegoer.

Sicario (2015)

Directed by Dennis Villenueve

Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan

Rated R

Length: 121 minutes 

THE MARTIAN

The Martian

Grade: B+

Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean, Benedict Wong, Sebastian Stan and Aksel Hennie; also featuring Mackenzie Davis and Donald Glover

Premise: Stranded after a terrible storm, a lone member of the first manned mission to Mars struggles to survive on the planet’s airless, waterless, non-living surface. Meanwhile, NASA, Mission Control, and his surviving crewmates in space try to devise a way to rescue him before he runs out of food.

Rated PG-13 for language, intense scenes of peril and suspense, and some bloody/disturbing images

In 2013, audiences were wowed by Sandra Bullock’s desperate struggle for survival on the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere in Alfonso Cuaron’s taut, terrifying Gravity. Last year, audiences tried to hold back tears as Matthew McConaughey searched for a new home for the human race amongst the stars, even if it meant leaving his beloved daughter behind, in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Gravity, which had exactly two characters whose faces were ever shown onscreen and took place largely in real time, was 90 minutes long, won 7 Academy Awards, and earned $274 million at the box office in the U.S. alone. Interstellar, which was 169 minutes long and had a plot that spanned nearly 80 years, won 1 Academy Award and grossed $187 million in the U.S.

So, space movies that are more than mere “space adventures” like Star Wars or Star Trek have become a new regular pastime, thanks largely to the advances in CGI and other special effects. This weekend’s new film, The Martian, is the first “big space film” of recent years that isn’t an original work. Based on a best-selling novel by Andy Weir, this Ridley Scott-directed film follows capably in the footsteps of those intergalactic predecessors, but it may, ultimately, prove the most audience-pleasing. Lacking the white-knuckle intensity of Gravity and the slightly overblown “epicness” of Interstellar, The Martian is a well-paced, well-thought out, accessible film that has its astonishing visuals and its moments of pathos but is, ultimately, a solid, well-rounded motion picture that should please audiences.

Plot

Just days after becoming the first humans to set foot on Mars, the highly-trained crew of the research mission Ares III is forced to evacuate when a stronger-than-expected storm descends on their base camp. Rather than risk having their shuttle knocked over by the high winds, stranding them on the planet with no way to return home, they abort. However, during the hurry to the shuttle, one of the team members, botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is struck by debris and nearly buried in sand. With limited visibility and the information that Watney’s vitals have ceased, the remaining crew, running out of time, make the crushing decision to leave him and begin their journey back to earth. Back on Earth, the Director of NASA (Jeff Daniels), the head of Mars Missions (Chiwetel Ejiofor, of 12 Years A Slave) and the Ares III crew director (Sean Bean) debate how soon to send another mission. They wonder if one of the key objectives of a new mission should be to retrieve the body of the astronaut for whom they have had a full, decorated funeral.

However, Watney isn’t dead. He awakes in pain, half-buried and alone, but he manages to get back inside the base structure, treat his wounds, and consider his situation. He is alone with no means of contacting anyone (the communications disk torn asunder is the very item that hit him during the evacuation), and, worse, he has limited food and water. He can survive several months, maybe a year if he rations. He’s on Mars, a planet millions of miles from Earth where nothing grows and there is no water. A botanist, he begins to use canvas tarps and energy from the base’s solar panels to fashion his own greenhouse, and he tries to make himself at home, using the video log recorder to record his daily activities and give himself a reason to talk out loud. On Earth, a NASA specialist (Mackenzie Davis), viewing satellite images from the planet’s surface, notices objects from the base camp have been moved, re-positioned, cleaned. It slowly becomes clear to NASA that Mark Watney must be alive. Debates arise. Is there a way to contact him? What do they have to tell him even if they do contact him? Should they tell his surviving crewmates, who are on their nearly year-long return journey, believing him dead? Should they hurry another mission, potentially cutting corners and endangering others’ lives, to try to get to him before he dies of starvation? Watney, who knows he has limited time, begins searching for his own answers.

What Works?

As was evidenced by its intriguing trailers, The Martian has a killer premise that could scarcely be uninteresting even if it tried. It’s also much brisker and more procedural than, say, Interstellar—it takes great pains to explain ways that Watney tries to grow food, has to charge his land rover, how NASA has to make an emergency shuttle lighter to try and get to him. Yet it also has plenty of time with Watney mulling things over, talking and even laughing to himself about his situation, and it features plenty of scenic shots that drive home the concept of his being so utterly alone—millions of miles from the nearest known living things.

I’d be willing to argue that Matt Damon was the perfect actor for the role of Mark Watney. Clean-cut and All-American, usually with a little smile at the corners of his mouth, he’s always been a likable, , accessible presence, which is big here when he spends the vast majority of his screen time alone, in unfamiliar surroundings, just going through daily tasks and talking to himself. Roles like the super agent in the Bourne series and his surprise cameo in Interstellar make him easy to believe as an astronaut, and we’ve seen him in brainy roles before (Good Will Hunting, the Ocean’s series), so we can accept that he’s an enterprising, genius botanist as well. And he’s no less easy to watch, and root for, even once a great deal of time has passed and he’s thinned out, grown a scraggly beard, and developed a weary, somewhat haunted look in his eyes.

After the film lays the groundwork, though, there are significant passages where Watney is not onscreen and Damon’s large, diverse supporting cast has to pick up the slack. Since the movie is more a procedural, most of the actors are playing roles without back-story and with a lot of plot-driven, technobabble dialogue. They make it work, though. Standouts include Jessica Chastain (an Interstellar co-star of Damon’s), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, and Donald Glover.

Will The Martian be a big awards play? As was the case with Everest, the movie I saw and reviewed last week, it’s technically impeccable (it’s difficult to imagine how they put together and filmed this movie)—it looks great whether it’s on Mars, in space, or inside the shuttle with the crew members. It could well be in the running for technical awards like visual effects, editing, and sound mixing. Plus it's well-written and, despite a lot of space terminology, easy enough to follow. Overall, it’s a very impressive achievement.

What Doesn’t Work?

As entertained as I was by The Martian and as much as I enjoyed it, I didn’t find myself blown away. Two years ago, I was blown away after I saw Gravity. This movie didn’t quite have that effect on me. I think it’s because the movie is so generally riveting the whole time, it just isn’t able to conjure a moment or two of real, amazing movie magic that’s noticeably above and beyond its general pulse. It is very interesting and engaging and the last half-hour will have you on the edge of your seat, but no scenes quite took it to the point of greatness. For comparison’s sake, The Martian is exciting but, as a procedural, lacks the relatable emotional underpinnings of Interstellar (with almost no back-story for any characters, you don’t get quite as invested) or the high-pitched, feverish intensity of Gravity (there is a moment with two astronauts clinging to a tether, spinning in space, that is highly reminiscent of Cuaron’s film, but, here, you’re almost certain they’ll make it, whereas in Gravity, you had no idea and felt like you were hoping against reason). The movie also skips a great deal of time right at its conclusion, skipping several big, key scenes I thought would have been very important to the humanization of the main character as he adjusts to life back on Earth, amongst people.

Content

The Martian is the rare PG-13 film that gets away with two F-words, plus it has plenty of other swears. There’s no nudity or sexual content, no alien gore or anything (Red Planet, this isn’t), but the entire movie is pretty intense, and there are moments when the main character’s chance of survival seems pretty slim. There are at least one or two big shocks, and an early scene of Mark Watney tending to his wounds will have squeamish audience members covering their eyes.

Bottom Line

I liked The Martian. A lot. For the most part, I’m not disappointed. It’s a very, very good film in my opinion. Great? Not quite. But if you’ve seen the trailers, you know how intriguing the premise is, and the movie comes up with plenty of ingenious ways to keep things interesting and to keep you involved, even with plenty of technobabble dialogue. The always-likeable Matt Damon anchors a sprawling cast of recognizable actors, there are some gorgeous visuals and some heart-stopping, Gravity-style space action scenes. It’s a well-rounded film that will easily entertain you.

The Martian (2015)

Directed by Ridley Scott

Screenplay by Drew Goddard

Based on the novel by Andy Weir

Rated PG-13

Length: 141 minutes