Steve Jobs

Posted on October 22, 2015 at 5:01 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	References to drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense and angry confrontations
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	September 23, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	February 15, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0168UF2PS

If you want a straightforward, fact-checked biography of Apple visionary Steve Jobs, watch Alex Gibney’s documentary, Steve Jobs: The Man In the Machine, or the Ashton Kutcher biopic (better than its reputation), simply titled Jobs. You can read the meticulously researched biography biography by Walter Isaacson. This film, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin, does to the traditional biographical movie what Jobs himself did to traditional ideas about computers. A lot of people won’t like that, but for me, after years of diligent, comprehensive and increasingly formulaic biographical films, my view is that of Patrick Henry (who might have been considered a candidate for Jobs’ “Think Different” ad campaign) — If this be revolution, make the most of it.

So, let’s get it straight from the outset. A lot of stuff in this movie didn’t happen or didn’t happen when and where it is shown here or between the characters who appear in the film. And no one in history, even Aaron Sorkin, can snap out dialog as dazzlingly crafted as this in normal conversation.

This is not a “and then this happened, and then there was this revelation, and then there was this setback, and then there was this triumph” sort of movie. This movie respects its audience enough to assume that either we already know the parameters of Jobs’ life or that if we do not know the details, we are more interested in the essence. Think of it this way. It is not a photograph of Steve Jobs; it is an abstract painting. Or, it is not Julie Andrews singing “My Favorite Things;” it is John Coltrane’s 14-minute meditation on the Richard Rodgers tune. This is pure cinema, and it is thrilling to watch.

The movie takes place in three acts, three moments in real time, as Jobs (Michael Fassbender, capturing the fury, magnetism, brilliance, and shocking selfishness of the man). Jobs is backstage, preparing for three product launches: the Macintosh in 1984, the Next computer in 1988, and the iMac in 1998, after Jobs had been fired from Apple and then brought back in utter vindication to the company he co-founded. Each act is filmed (literally, mechanically shot) and scored to meld form and content.

Composer Daniel Pemberton wrote three entirely separate movie scores. The first was played exclusively on the technology of 1984. The second, reflecting the grand setting of the launch in San Francisco’s opera house and the operatic drama of the disastrous launch of a wildly overpriced product, is a full-scale symphonic piece with an Italian libretto (the lyrics are about machinery). And the third, with Jobs’ triumphant restoration to the role that meant everything to him, was composed entirely on Apple products.

Sorkin’s favorite tools are all here — hyper, rat-a-tat dialog as characters race around to meet a deadline, people who are superb at their jobs and lousy in their family and social relationships, and people who bring the trauma of their personal failures into the professional context (some vice versa as well). He moves people on and off stage at the pace of a door-slamming Feydeau farce. We see Jobs’ hyper-focus and grandiosity as he barks orders to (illegally) turn off the exit signs in the auditorium so the light won’t interfere with the total darkness he wants for the presentation and complains that he was not on the cover of TIME’s Man of the Year issue. He understands something important, not what people want because they do not know it exists, but what they will want. Computers are designed by engineers for engineers. He wants them to be not just tools but friends. He wants them — literally — to say “hello,” to be so “warm and playful” that English majors and bakers and fire fighters and musicians will want to use them. He wants an ad campaign that tells people they (all) can “think different” like Jim Henson (perfect for a generation that grew up on “Sesame Street”) and Cesar Chavez by using his products. And he wants to “make a dent in the universe.”

People who make a dent in the universe usually do serious damage to their relationships. We see that through the years as Jobs battles with his ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterston), cruelly denying paternity of their daughter Lisa, with his longtime partner, Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), his programmer (Michael Stuhlbarg), and with the professional manager he brought in to run the company, Pepsi’s John Sculley (a very sympathetic Jeff Daniels). He agonizes over the double rejection of being put up for adoption and then being brought back by the first couple who tried to adopt him. He talks to Lisa about two versions of the song “Both Sides Now,” a double double. And, crucially, he knows going into the first two launches that both will be disasters.

The film opens with archival footage of another visionary, Arthur C. Clarke, predicting the future of computers. A movie like this is what helps us understand the future of humanity.

Parents should know that one of the themes of this film is a disputed paternity test and failure to meet the financial or emotional obligations of a parent. There are references to neglect and drug usage and some tense and angry confrontations.

Family discussion: What did the revelation about the TIME cover mean to Steve Jobs? What was his most important contribution and what, at the end of his life, mattered most to him? Should he have thanked the Apple II team?

If you like this, try: the Gibney documentary, the Isaacson book, and “The Social Network”

Bridge of Spies

Posted on October 15, 2015 at 5:58 pm

Following World War II, Lord de l’Isle and Dudley was harshly criticized when he organized a legal defense fund for a Nazi general. He responded, “Had I met General Manstein during the war I would have shot him on sight. I am not concerned with whether von Manstein is guilty or not…I want Britain’s reputation upheld.”

Like the nobleman, American insurance lawyer Jim Donovan (Tom Hanks) understood that it means nothing to win a war against tyranny if we then become tyrants ourselves. Donovan, an assistant to future Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg Nazi war criminals trials who had been litigating insurance claims, was asked to defend an artist accused of spying for the Soviet Union. No one would have complained if he provided a less than vigorous defense. His wife (Amy Ryan) worries about the impact that his defense of an enemy spy will have on their family.

But Donovan had two fundamental principles. First, he recognized that the spy was doing for his country what others were doing for the US and he deserved to be treated as we would want our spies to be treated when they got captured. Second, he understood that if even one small rule was bent or one small step was skipped, it could do more damage to the essential principles of justice that define us than the theft of nuclear secrets.

Those secrets were hidden in a hollowed-out nickel. And the man who had them was a British artist named Rudolf Abel, superbly played by Broadway star Mark Rylance with wry resolve. There is a running joke in the film as he is repeatedly told he does not seem nervous or scared and he replies, “Would it help?” Donovan does his best to defend Abel, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court to argue that the evidence against Abel was taken in violation of the 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. He is unsuccessful in the appeal but does manage to persuade the judge (in a dramatic but highly unlikely and completely illegal ex parte visit to the judge’s home) not to impose the death penalty.

That comes in handy a few years later when American pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down over the Soviet Union in what the United States calls a mistaken detour by a “weather plane.” But he was flying a spy plane outfitted with special cameras for the CIA. The US wants him back. So they call on Donovan.

Meanwhile, as the Berlin Wall is being constructed, an American PhD candidate named Pryor (Will Rogers) found himself on the wrong side and was captured and accused of spying by the East Germans. Donovan’s government contacts tell him not to worry about Pryor, but Donovan is determined to get both young men home.

Spielberg and Hanks are an unbeatable combination, and their work here, with an unironic and sincerely gripping screenplay by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, is as good as it gets. Donovan’s time in Berlin, crossing back and forth over the dividing line as the wall is being built — and as people trying to escape are being shot — is so evocatively cold, physically and emotionally, you will want to button your coat and you will feel for Donovan, who loses his to thugs on the East German side. The nuclear age minuet of politics, statecraft, diplomacy, and ego is tense and compelling. As Donovan warns, any mistake they make could be the last one. Spielberg’s signature touches include scenes of American schoolchildren watching real-life “safety” movies telling them to duck and cover and a quick glimpse of a wrenching parallel as Donovan sees children at recess, climbing in a way that echoes the desperate escape attempts he had just seen. It is too bad to see Ryan underused in a “honey, I’m worried — maybe you better not go” role, with a superfluous coda scene at the end. But the movie is still one of the best of the year, with a stunning sequence when Powers is shot down and sheer masterful storytelling.

Parents should know that this is a cold war story of spies with threat of atomic bombs, shooting down a spy plane, and extensive tension and peril including guns and abuse of prisoners, drinking, smoking, and brief strong language.

Family discussion: What do we learn about Donovan from his negotiation over the insurance payout? Why did he insist on including Prior?

If you like this, try: “13 Days” and Donovan’s book about the negotiation, Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers

Related Tags:

Based on a true story Drama Spies

Room

Posted on October 15, 2015 at 5:50 pm

Jack (Jacob Tremblay) wakes up on his fifth birthday and says hello to everything in his world. Through his eyes, and his narration, we gradually come to understand that his world is so entirely circumscribed by the walls of his tiny home that no definite or indefinite articles are needed. There is only one of everything, and everything means very little.

Where Jack and his mother, Ma (Oscar winner Brie Larson) live is just called “Room.” And anything outside of Room, the world Jack glimpses in the flickers of a broken down television, is, his mother tells him, just pretend. Their entire world is contained in Room, and anything they have is brought to them by a gruff-voiced man they call Old Nick (Sean Bridgers). When he comes to Room, opening the locked door whose combination Ma is not allowed to know, Jack hides in Wardrobe until he is gone.

It is only gradually that we come to understand what Jack still does not see. Ma was a teenager when Old Nick captured her and locked her in the shed behind his house so he could rape her and keep her there as his prisoner. She became pregnant with Jack two years later.

Keeping Jack safe and happy is what has kept her from despair. As horrifying as her circumstances are, they have enabled her to maintain a sense of control over Jack’s world that helps her through the absence of control she feels, having to cajole Old Nick for even the smallest accommodation and with no way to escape or contact her family.

But she cannot control Jack’s getting older, challenging her authority, and wanting to know more about what is really happening. That means he may be getting old enough to help her with a daring plan of escape.

Irish writer Emma Donoghue wrote the screenplay, adapted from her book. While it was inspired in part by a real-life case, this is not a true crime story or a woman in jeopardy thriller. Like the post-apocalyptic “The Road,” this is a heightened dramatic exploration of universal experiences all parents — and children of parents — struggle with: the challenges of setting boundaries in an ever-shifting relationship and balancing the need for protection with the need for independence.

And that is why Ma’s greatest challenge comes after the escape. It is surreal to be back in the bedroom she left as a teenager, with her parents who are both the same and different. At first, Jack is terrified. Ma is numb. Everything outside of Room has to be re-evaluated and re-negotiated. Issues of identity, control, separation, boundaries, and what parents and children owe each other are sensitively explored. Larson is one of the finest young actors making movies today and her interaction with the gifted Tremblay is natural, fiercely devoted, and deeply moving.

Parents should know that this movie deals with abduction, rape, and abuse. While they are portrayed sensitively, the material is disturbing. The movie includes strong language, tense scenes, and a suicide attempt.

Family discussion: How was going home different from what Ma expected? How did Ma and Jack differ in their reactions to the escape? Why didn’t Ma’s father want to look at Jack?

If you like this, try: another magnificent performance by Brie Larson in “Short Term 12”

Related Tags:

Based on a book Drama

The Walk

Posted on October 1, 2015 at 12:17 pm

If you have vertigo or acrophobia, you will have trouble with “The Walk,” the story of Frenchman Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the towers of the World Trade Center. If you don’t have vertigo or acrophobia, you might have after you watch the movie, with the most stunningly realistic 3D effects ever put on screen. At least I think they’re still just on the screen. It sure feels like it goes on way, way behind it.

“Man on Wire,” a documentary about Petit’s 1974 stunt, or, as he might prefer to say, coup, won an Oscar in 2008. In this film, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, with an accent that just manages to avoid Pepe LePew dimensions, plays Petit, a street performer who saw a photograph of the World Trade Center in the waiting room of his dentist and was instantly consumed with the dream of a walk in the sky, more than 1300 feet above the sidewalk, between the towers. Like Petit himself, the movie does not bother with the question of why this might be a good thing to do. If pressed, he might just say, like Mallory, “Because it’s there.” The problem is that he doesn’t have an answer but still keeps talking and talking. For no reason we keep going back to Petit narrating the story from the torch of the Statue of Liberty. It is distracting and dull.

Petit could not or would not articulate it, but I think I know why. When huge institutions get together to create a world-record setting edifice — taller than the Eiffel Tower, the Frenchman notes — there is something irresistibly enticing about coming back as a lone soul and literally topping it. Director Robert Zemeckis, who can get more excited about the technology than the story in his films, may identify with that challenge. Petit wanted to walk across the sky, with an audience to appreciate it. And Zemeckis wants to recreate that experience for us, taking us to the roof of the Towers, and inviting us to look down.

Still, while we love movies about dreamers of impossible dreams who make them come true, we do like to have a reason, and Petit edges over the line from audacious dreamer to inconsiderate narcissist, despite Gordon-Levitt’s considerable appeal. This lends a hollow quality, overcome less from the story of the film to what is in our own hearts as we watch, knowing what the tragedy that lies ahead for the World Trade Center.

What works well in the first part of the film is Petit’s tutorials with a tightrope master played by Sir Ben Kingsley and the procedural elements once Petit and his team get to New York and start preparing as though they are getting ready to rob a bank. Indeed, it becomes a heist film of a sort because they have to find different ways to sneak into a building that is still under construction and gather the information they need to figure out how to install the cable and keep it from swaying or buckling. And then to install it. There are a lot of problems along the way, including Petit stepping on a nail and injuring his foot and dropping his black turtleneck from the roof when he is trying to assume his performer persona. They omit, however, my favorite detail from the documentary: Petit explains that in America, if there’s pencil in your pocket everyone assumes you are part of the construction team and are entitled to be there. Like the loss of the buildings themselves, Petit’s ability to exploit lax security is a poignant reminder of what we no longer have.

The last half hour or so of the film is breathtaking and well worth the price of admission in IMAX 3D. You will feel that you are on the tightrope with Petit. As the crowd gathers below and the police arrive (who thought a police helicopter would be a good idea?), Petit is suspended in the clouds, mentally, emotionally, and physically. For just a moment, Zemeckis and Gordon-Levitt bring us up there with him, and his dream, however frivolous and ephemeral, becomes ours.

Parents should know that this film has very risky and dangerous behavior, vertiginous 3D effects, brief nudity, some strong language, and smoking and drinking.

Family discussion: What big dream would you like to make come true? Who would you want to be your team?

If you like this, try: the documentary “Man on Wire”

Related Tags:

3D Based on a true story Drama IMAX

Stonewall

Posted on September 25, 2015 at 8:00 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for sexual content, language throughout, some violence and drug use
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Police brutality, riots, reference to murders
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	September 25, 2015

In 1969, when the federal government prohibited the firing of gays and lesbians, when it was illegal for them to congregate in a bar or even to have consensual sex, when police harassment and brutality was not only permitted but expected, a man threw a brick, shattered a window, and began four days of riots that galvanized the fight for GLBTQ equality. The window was in a bar called Stonewall, and its name lives on as the symbol of the moment that ignited a revolution.

The movie “Stonewall,” intended as history and tribute, instead throws a brick through the meaning and the moment, shattering both. This movie is more than bad and worse than disappointing. It is a tragic distortion of a vitally important story that insults the people it tries to honor and insults its audience as well. Director Roland Emmerich (known for movies with a lot of big explosions and stunts) and screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz so vastly underestimate their audience that they apparently believe cannot understand a movie about the GLBTQ community unless we have an all-American-style high school football hero from the heartland to identify with. How do you make a movie about the Stonewall uprising and so completely miss the point?

Our point of entry is handsome but bland Danny (Jeremy Irvine), a Hoosier who has a crush on the quarterback. He is Goldilocks to the three bears of his family, spread out to represent all points on the gay-friendliness spectrum: a taciturn father (also his football coach), a passive mother, and a devoted and free-thinking younger sister (Joey King). When his assignations with the quarterback are discovered, “faggot” is scrawled on his locker and he is shunned by everyone. He refuses to tell his father that it was a one-time thing and leaves for New York.

And so we shift from tone-deaf cliches about the Midwest to tone-deaf cliches about Christopher Street, with a group of adorably scruffy and flamboyant runaway Lost Boys who spend their time tricking and clubbing. Their leader is an Artful Dodger type known as Ray (Jonny Beauchamp). They sit on the stoop and talk about Judy Garland, alternately enjoying shocking decadence and longing for home. Around the edges of the story are the real-life characters who are far more interesting, or at least who were in real life.

This is a bad movie, purely from the standpoint of drama. It is poorly constructed, with cardboard characters and worst-of-the-year category clangers in dialog, provoking snicker and then outright snorts from the audience. “I’m too angry to love.” “These kids have nothing to lose.” But the monumental failure here is the disrespect for the real-life courageous souls who fought back nearly half a century ago and for the audience, who would relish a film that does them justice.

Parents should know that this film has explicit sexual references and situations, including predatory behavior, abuse, and prostitution, homophobic and bigoted insults, police brutality, and riots. Characters use very strong language, drink and smoke, and use drugs.

Family discussion: How was the gay rights movie like and not like other civil rights movements of the 20th century?

If you like this, try: “Longtime Companion.” “Pride,” and “Milk”