Yesterday

Posted on June 27, 2019 at 5:30 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for suggestive content and language
Profanity:	Some strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and tipsiness
Violence/ Scariness:	Bicycle accident, some graphic injuries
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 28, 2019
Date Released to DVD:	September 23, 2019

“Yesterday” would have made a cute seven-minute sketch on “Saturday Night Live” (or, as this movie would say, “Thursday Night Live”) but it does not work as a movie. I wish I could say they ran out of ideas in the last third, but it’s worse than that. They had ideas; they just ran out of good ones. There’s a curious disconnect in watching the film between the weakness of the storyline, including a major jump the shark swerve near the end, and the imperishable music of the Beatles. Every time we hear “In My Life” or a rocking “Help!” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand” we say, “That sure is a great song” and forget for a moment that the movie is not very good. Richard Curtis admitted as much in an interview on Morning Joe: “When I type and run out of ideas I just put in ‘The Long and Winding Road.'”

Jack (Himesh Patel) has been trying to make it as a musician for ten years in his small home town on the English coast. His best friend Ellie (Lily James) believes in him and acts as his manager when she isn’t teaching high school math. But he is not making much progress. He is ready to give up when a mysterious worldwide blackout shuts down all power for twelve seconds and he is hit by a bus as he is bicycling home. During that twelve seconds, somehow the world is rebooted in a slightly different form. The Beatles never existed. Some other random cultural touchstones are missing as well, including Coke. Jack, just out of the hospital and still missing two front teeth, thanks his friends for the gift of a new guitar by playing “Yesterday.” Which they have never heard before and think he wrote. And of course they love it, though one of them says it’s not up to the level of Coldplay’s “Fix You.”

Jack starts playing Beatles songs and people like them. Ed Sheeran, charmingly playing a version of himself, invites him to tour as his opening act. In Moscow, Jack plays “Back in the USSR,” which is a huge success with the crowd, even though most of them were not born when their country was the USSR. Ed Sheeran challenges Jack to a songwriting competition, and has to admit defeat. “You’re Mozart and I’m Salieri,” he says.

An agent named Debra (Kate McKinnon in a sizzling performance) arrives to offer Jack “the poison chalice” of fame and money. Jack, who has waited so long for success as a musician and performer, says yes.

This is very much a lesser work from Richard Curtis, the man who wrote “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” “Pirate Radio,” and “Love Actually.” There are lovely moments — the first recording session, the fun of the astonishment when people are stunned by songs we all know so well they are a part of us, the fantasy of being adored by worldwide audiences, the hilariousness of playing one of the greatest songs of all time for your parents and their not having a clue. And it is intriguing to see a person of color appropriate white musicians’ work for a change. But the friend zone/romance storyline and a bad swerve at the end show that even the world’s greatest songs cannot prop up a script that outstays its welcome. The songs are all sublime, but these new versions do not add anything special.

George Martin, who worked more closely with the Beatles than anyone else, said that their charm was as important to their early success as their music. That early success gave them a chance to develop and grow and take huge risks and reflect on their experiences, all of which became a part of their endlessly innovative and ground-breaking work.

To have even some of their greatest hits all thrown into what is supposed to be one performer’s series of songs, unrelated to what is going on in the lives of the songwriter or in the world, and, to adapt the title of an ex-Beatle song, imagine there’s no Beatles, gives the music an unearned power, relying on our love for the songs and what they mean in our lives, whether we first heard them in kindergarten, at spin class, or as they first came out. That makes this story empty at its Apple Corps.

Parents should know that this movie includes sexual references and situations and some strong and crude language.

Family discussion: Why did Deborah call what she was offering the poison chalice? What did Jack learn from his meeting with John?

If you like this, try: “Begin Again” and “Across the Universe” and the Beatles movies

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”

Trailer: Michael Fassbender in “Steve Jobs”

Posted on September 14, 2015 at 12:00 pm

Director: Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire”)

Writer: Aaron Sorkin

Subject: Steve Jobs

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, and Seth Rogen

Opening: October 9, 2015

Me: there

Danny Boyle’s Rules for Making Movies

Posted on May 28, 2013 at 3:59 pm

Danny Boyle has directed movies in a broad range of genres, from the edgy “Trainspotting” to the award-winning “Slumdog Millionaire” and “127 Hours” to the charming “Millions” and the trippy “Trance.” Moviemaker has his 15 “Golden Rules for Moviemaking,” worth reading for its applicability to many different fields of endeavor. I especially like what he says about being true to yourself but not being afraid to explore other cultures or absorb feedback — and about the daunting challenge of following a big hit.

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Trance

Posted on April 11, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, some grisly images, and language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Violence and peril with guns, fire, chases, car accident, taser, choking, and torture, some very disturbing images, characters injured and killed, graphic wounds, dead bodies
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	April 12, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	July 22, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00D3DJI3Q

Before he was the establishment figure who won Oscars for prestige projects (“Slumdog Millionaire”) and masterminded the fabulous opening ceremonies for the London Olympics that had the Queen and James Bond jumping out of a plane, Danny Boyle was a skillful director of highly styled and deliciously nasty films about not-so-deliciously nasty people doing dreadful things (“Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave”). His latest is “Trance,” a deliciously nasty heist film about the theft of a 27 million dollar masterpiece by Goya, tellingly titled Witches in the Air, and about the mistrust and betrayal that comes next.

Part of the fun comes from having our assumptions turned upside down — and then inside out. So I don’t want to give too much away. The title comes from a hypno-therapist named Elizabeth (the stunningly beautiful Rosario Dawson), brought into the den of thieves because one of them has misplaced the painting and, thanks to a head injury, cannot remember where he stashed it. The problem faced by alpha-thief Franck (ferret-like Vincent Cassel) is how to arrange it so that Elizabeth can get inside the amnesiac’s head to find the missing painting but not let her find that that by doing so she is abetting a rather notorious crime. Dawson, too often underused, gets a chance to show what she is capable of in a performance of intelligence and subtlety. As she explained in an interview, “I wanted to be specific on who she was and make her disappear at the same time.”

The film itself becomes a sort of trance, with deeply saturated colors that shimmer like a dream, and Dawson’s magnetic voice. We, like the characters, must begin to mistrust what we see and what we think we know as the story turns upside down, inside out, and then, as soon as we think we’ve figured it out, Rubik cubes our minds again. This is a movie you’ll be talking about on the way home, and probably shivering about in your own nightmare.

Parents should know that this film includes sexual references and explicit situations, very explicit nudity, violence including guns, taser, car accident, torture, fire, characters injured and killed, disturbing and graphic images, very strong language

Family discussion: What do the title and subject of the stolen painting have to do with the story? What do you think will happen next?

If you like this, try: “Inside Man” and “Side Effects”