Film

Big Apple

Steve Jobs

Since I didn’t know the guy, I can’t really say if Michael Fassbender’s portrayal of Steve Jobs in Danny Boyle’s new firecracker of a movie is accurate. I can say that it is, dramatically, one of the best things you will see in cinemas this year. Steve Jobs, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by the ever-reliable Boyle (127 Hours, Sunshine), plays out in three parts. Apart from a few flashbacks, we see Jobs backstage at three product launches during his career. The film is expertly staged, playing out like the most entertaining and brutal of Shakespearean dramas.

5As Jobs ties his bowtie and prepares to launch the Macintosh in 1984, his personal life is messing with his mojo. Estranged lover Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) is distressed over the paltry sum Jobs pays her and their alleged daughter Lisa (Makenzie Moss) in child support. Jobs is worth millions, but offers up only hundreds per month because he doubts being the father. Chrisann has some good arguments. A paternity test puts the likelihood of Jobs being the dad at over 94 percent, and Lisa looks an awfully lot like him. No matter to Jobs, who spends years fighting his fatherhood while reluctantly turning over more than the court mandated cash because part of him really likes Lisa. He even names a computer after her. We see Steve Jobs at his very worst, a man so obsessed with the new gadgets his companies come up with that he wouldn’t face the reality of his fatherly duties. Lisa, portrayed at different ages by Moss (6), Ripley Sobo (9) and a show-stopping Perla Haney-Jardine (19) is a girl any dad would be proud of, but Jobs can’t really be bothered. He has a couple of goofy-looking computers to sell.

While Jobs won’t be a dad to his daughter, he tries to be one to Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), the engineer who actually built the board that launched Apple computers. Mind you, Jobs isn’t a good father figure. While he claims he will always protect and nurture Wozniak, he fails to come through on key issues, including the acknowledgment of by Bob Grimm Wozniak and his team in the Apple legacy. Fassbender’s Jobs is every bit that charmbgrimm@ ing man we saw introducing computers, iPods newsreview.com and iPhones to drooling masses at Apple events. He had such nice, warm tendencies in public that it was hard to imagine him as the right bastard behind the scenes that his coworkers and employees claimed he was. Unfortunately, his quick wit and ability to reason are often wielded as weapons against his perceived enemies, whether they be a justified Wozniak begging for recognition or Chrisann begging for money. As far as this movie is concerned, Jobs was a brilliant but not very nice man. In fact, he was a major dickweed. The major coup in the Fassbender performance is that Fassbender makes Jobs somehow likeable. It’s easy to hate the man’s actions, and it’s also very easy to root for his redemption. Fassbender puts pedal to the metal with this performance, and he never lets up for the entire running time. Say hello to Seth Rogen— actor! In his few pivotal scenes, Rogen breaks hearts as Wozniak, a good-natured, wellmeaning man who obviously loves and admires Jobs, but can’t fathom his stubbornness. It’s a revelatory performance from a man usually relied upon for laughs. This time out, you’ll feel his character’s emotional pain and hurt. Kate Winslet, even though her accent morphs from time to time, is equally compelling as Jobs’ confidant and mother figure, Joanna Hoffman. It’s an incredible performance. The same can be said for Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, the advertising giant who essentially became Jobs’ boss. That relationship goes to combustible places, and Daniels blows up the screen. Steve Jobs will make you forget Jobs, that other biopic that featured a heavily madeup Ashton Kutcher playing with an iPod. Fassbender and Boyle deliver the kind of movie Jobs deserved, warts and all. It’s a mesmerizing film about a complicated man. Ω

“I thought I was going to advance the paperless office.”

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Poor

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Fair

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Good

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Very Good 5

4Bone Tomahawk In this Western infused with horror, Kurt Russell essentially transplants his character from John Carpenter’s The Thing into the Old West as Sheriff Franklin Hunt, a lawman looking for some kidnap victims. As things turn out, the victims are in the hands of a cannibalistic tribe ready to give Hunt and his cohorts a sick time in the film’s final act. Those cohorts include Richard Jenkins as his clumsy deputy, a hobbled Patrick Wilson looking to rescue his wife, and a never-been-better Matthew Fox, along for the ride and offering swift justice to those who dare to approach their camp. Writer-director S. Craig Zahler makes a very impressive debut, crafting not only an authentic Western but a truly memorable monster movie. Russell, as he so often does, owns his part and makes Hunt one of his best roles in years. Jenkins seems as if he’s made hundreds of Westerns before. He’s right at home in dirty saloons and by the campfire. Fox makes his best mark since getting his face licked by a dog in the Lost finale. Watch out, because some of the things that happen in the film’s final act are the stuff of nightmares. I should know, because I’ve had some. (Available for rent on iTunes, Amazon.com and On Demand during a limited theatrical release.)

2Bridge of Spies Steven Spielberg continues a mini slump with his second good-looking yet terminally boring historical drama in a row after Lincoln. This is Spielberg’s fourth collaboration with Tom Hanks, and their first since 2004’s terrible The Terminal. It doesn’t represent a return to Catch Me if You Can and Saving Private Ryan glory. This film certainly had a lot going f or it. Not only is it Spielberg’s take on spying during the 1960s Cold War, which sounds like it should be exciting, but it’s also a collaboration with the Coen Brothers. Joel and Ethan chipped in on the screenplay, which usually means good things are afoot. I wish Joel and Ethan had directed it, too. Hanks plays James B. Donovan, a U.S. tax attorney who lands the unenviable task of representing recently captured alleged Russian spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance). While Donovan’s law firm and the courts see the whole thing as an open-and-shut case, Donovan makes it known that his intentions are to represent Abel to the full extent of the law. In a parallel story, some pilots join the CIA in a new spying program with U-2 planes. One of those planes getting shot out of the sky at 70,000 feet gives the Russians their own spy prisoner in Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell). With the construction of the Berlin Wall, yet another “spy” is captured when Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), an American student who picked a crappy time to study in West Berlin, is apprehended by the East Germans. It all adds up to a rather boring time at the movies despite a typically strong Hanks performance.

3Crimson Peak Director Guillermo del Toro, who has long sung praises for Disney’s Haunted Mansion amusement ride, makes a startlingly beautiful and creepy ride of his own with this twisted ghost story. Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), an aspiring writer, must pick up the pieces after a tragic loss, and she finds herself swept away by Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a strange Englishman who looks a lot like Thor’s jerky brother. They marry and wind up in his family’s home, which rests atop a red clay mine. The red clay seeps up through the ground and even the floorboards of the house, giving the appearance that everything is bleeding. As Edith spends more time in the house, and gets acquainted with its ghostly inhabitants, she finds out that the red stuff isn’t always clay. Jessica Chastain is memorably psychotic as Thomas’s selfish and conniving sister. The visuals are the real star here, including some over-the-top, bloody ghosts that Walt would never allow in his Mansion. As for the actually living characters, Hiddleston and Chastain steal the show as siblings who definitely need an extended time-out. Future del Toro projects, like sequels to Pacific Rim and Hellboy, were put into turnaround before this film’s release. The fact that this film inexplicably bombed at the box office means those sequels will probably remain on the studio merry-goround for a long time. For del Toro fans, this is bad news. 4 The Martian Ridley Scott’s latest is a fun and funny movie that represents lighter fare for the often dark director. Yes, it’s about some poor sap getting stranded on Mars but, no, aliens don’t burst from his belly after breakfast. Matt Damon spends a lot of time onscreen by himself as Mark Watney, a botanist on a mission to Mars who becomes the unfortunate recipient of a satellite dish to the gut during a storm, a violent squall that mandates the evacuation of his crew. After an attempt by his commander (Jessica Chastain) to retrieve him, the crew bugs out thinking Watney has bought the farm. (Yep … that’s a botanist pun I just dropped right there.) Watney awakens to find himself alone on the red planet with a piece of metal stuck in his gut. After another Ridley Scott directed self-surgery scene—reminiscent of that yucky self-surgery scene in Scott’s Prometheus—Watney commences survival mode. The film has fun with science facts involving things like the creation of fertilizer, the surprising need and effectiveness for duct tape and tarps on Mars, and trying to make fire out of mostly fire-retardant materials. Scott and his writers present these overtly nerdy aspects of the movie with great humor and the right amount of intelligence without making things too complicated.

4Mississippi Grind Two powerhouse performances are at the center of this film, delivered by Ben Mendelsohn as Gerry, a depressed gambler, and Ryan Reynolds as Curtis, his artificially upbeat counterpart. The two meet at a low stakes poker game, share some bourbon, and wind up on a road trip to New Orleans with the intent of getting in on a huge money game. Things don’t quite work out that way, with Gerry recklessly gambling the money Curtis stakes him, and Curtis womanizing and stealing bicycles. Still, the two men remain drawn together, and it all leads up to some big events. Reynolds is having a banner year in smaller projects, proving he has more than blockbuster good looks. The man is talented, and this is his best performance to date, a fully realized character backed by the kind of script and direction his talent deserves. Matching Reynolds note for note is the always amazing Mendelsohn in the film’s main role. His Gerry is everything you would expect from a person with gambling addiction. He’s desperate, he’s unruly, but he’s also a genuinely good human being trying to make things right. Gerry is somebody that is easy to feel sorry for rather than somebody to be written off as a selfish bum. Mendelsohn gives him a beating heart, and makes him somebody worth rooting for. Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, responsible for the very good Sugar and Half Nelson, wrote and directed. They are, without a doubt, one of the more underrated and under-appreciated writer/director teams going. (Available for rent on iTunes and On Demand during a limited theatrical release.)

4Sicario Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), an FBI Agent who deals with kidnappings, inadvertently finds herself in the middle of a Mexican drug cartel war after being enlisted by a shifty government type (Josh Brolin). After finding a houseful of dead bodies, Brolin’s character shows up, has a little meeting, recruits Kate, and puts her on a private jet with Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), a mysterious sort who seems to be along for the ride in some type of consultant role. After being told she is going to Texas, she winds up in Juarez, Mexico, and eventually fighting for her life in a border gun battle. Director Denis Villeneuve (Enemy, Prisoners) keeps things intense, especially when Del Toro is on the screen. The real reason for his character’s presence, revealed late in the film, is a real kicker. Brolin is great as the crusty agent who wears sandals to meetings and sleeps on planes. However, in the end, this is Blunt’s movie, who is dynamite as Kate. It’s another action-intensive role for the versatile actress—she was great in Edge of Tomorrow—and she’s a contender for a Best Actress Oscar.