Steve Jobs (3/5 Stars)

Steve Jobs, an unconventional biopic about one of the founders of Apple, was written for the screen by the great Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network), directed by the great Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), and stars the great Michael Fassbender (Hunger, Shame) as the titular tech mogul. It is not a great movie and it seems to be mostly Aaron Sorkin’s fault. Let’s jump into it right away.

Jumping into it right away is the first big problem. Sorkin has structured his movie unconventionally to say the least. The movie is divided into three acts, each act being the hour before a product release. In 1984 it is the Macintosh computer, in 1987 it is the Next computer, and in 1996 it is the iMac. The hour before the house is full of chanting fanboys is a very nerve-wracking busybody time. Steve goes around being a total dick to everybody else in the story. In the first act he must have the Macintosh say “hello.” There is a system error and the technical people in the background cannot make it work. Who cares, they posit. It is two seconds in an hour and a half presentation. Steve does not take many perfectly reasonable explanations for an answer and at one point threatens a subordinate with public humiliation. He also gets angry when they can’t turn off the fire exit lights during the presentation. He also refuses to grant his co-founder Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen, interesting casting choice) a favor in mentioning the Apple2 team, seemingly because he does not personally approve of the product even though it is the company’s only bestseller. I have no doubt that all of these things actually happened. But that does not mean it is good movie making to dwell on these things. Or to put it a better way, it is not good movie making to only dwell on the aggravating things that happen before a public presentation. Why am I watching a biopic on Steve Jobs? Is it to dwell on the perfidies and sins of a very successful and famous man? Or is it to gain some greater understanding of why he was successful warts and all? This movie shows the warts but it doesn’t show or explain the greatness. The result is a main character that engenders no sympathy. We get hints at why his products are successful. At one point he says he got rid of the Newton hand held device because of its stylus. It does not utilize all of the digits on one’s hand, he explains. Unfortunately this is a throw away line and the enlightenment ends there. I want to know how he got to that realization. What explains why he had that insight? Once that is established he can be as much of an asshole as he apparently was and the movie will still work. But here, I’m just watching an asshole period. I don’t want to do that.

It fills very odd to say that Danny Boyle should not have been chosen to direct a particular movie, but there you go. Again the problem starts with the movie’s structure. It takes place in basically real time in only three places. If that sounds like the structure of a play instead of a movie, that’s because it is the structure of a play. Before each presentation Steve has a moment with four people, his technical engineer (Michael Stuhlberg), his estranged girlfriend and daughter, Steve Wozniak, and the CEO Jeff Scully (Jeff Daniels). In these conversations the characters speak as if they are in a play. What do I mean by that? In a play, because the writer does not have the ability to easily leave the scene and go to a completely different place, the writer makes the characters speak at great length about what happened in the past and how they feel about it. People in plays do not speak the way people do because the audience would not understand what is going on. This generally does not work in movies because the writer can go wherever he wants to go. Movies are not confined by space and time. So it does not make sense when the characters give exposition that everybody in the scene already knows. This happens frequently and leads to several characters saying several times inane things like “I already know that” and “didn’t we already have this argument?” A line that really takes the cake happens near the end where Steve Jobs having gone through the four torments for a third time wonders aloud if he has to see three ghosts before every presentation he does. That’s sort of funny but it is not good funny. The only reason Steve Jobs sees three ghosts is because Aaron Sorkin wrote the movie that way. This joke is the equivalent of somebody choosing to wear an idiotic shirt, pointing to it, and saying ‘who wears a shirt like this? What an idiot.” In essence it is the admission of clumsy writing and I’m glad Sorkin can laugh at himself but I would rather he did not write so clumsily.

But the greater probem with play writing is that it does not conform to the attention span of a movie audience. As Charlie Kaufman once said, “Theater is live. Movies are dead.” The immediate presence of a human being in front of you is more exciting than seeing one on the screen. How many times have you seen a three-hour play that felt like an hour and a half movie? Because of that, characters in plays can play speak (talking at length about the past and their feelings) without the audience growing tired of it. It generally does not work in movies because it gets tedious. Because movies can show instead of tell this is what they generally do. There are ways around this. A famous one is the Sorkin walk-and-talk but I had not really seen it pulled off until I watched “Birdman” and that was with an extraordinary directorial effort. The characters playspeak but it still works because the entire movie is in one continuos shot and that lends an immediate presence to the action. But “Steve Jobs” is not made in that way. It is made in the purely cinematic way that Danny Boyle generally directs his movies. It does not fit the way it needs to fit. That is what I mean when I say Danny Boyle is badly cast.

The movie has plenty of good stuff in it. The talent is just not focused on what will make the movie work as a whole. You have got a bunch of great people working at odds with one another. The silver lining is that the stuff that does not work is generally innovative. That means the astute filmmaker can watch this movie and have a good idea of why certain choices do not work. They may also have a hint at a good movie that was lost. Take the performance of Michael Fassbender. Notice how the character of Steve Jobs is noticeably softened (somewhat) and friendlier in the third act. What happened between the multiple failures of the first and second act and the ultimate triumph of the third act? It seems like the character changed and stopped being such an asshole. Perhaps that transformation would make a good movie someday. More conventional sure but better. 

Looper (5/5 Stars)

“Time Machine” by Simon Rich:

As soon as my time machine was finished, I traveled back to 1890, so I could kill Hitler before he was old enough to commit any of his horrible crimes. It wasn’t as gratifying as I thought it would be.

           

-       Oh my God. You killed a baby.

-       Yes…but the baby was Hitler

-       Who?

-       Hitler. It’s…complicated.

-       Officer? This man just killed a baby

“Looper” written and directed by Rian Johnson and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, is the rare movie that is far more interesting than its title or even its marketing campaign lets on. It is being sold as a movie about time travel in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a mob hit man named Joe. Joe lives in the year 2044. Time travel has not been invented yet, but thirty years later, it will have been. The mob in the future of 2074 uses time travel as a convenient way to get rid of people. They send them back in time to 2044 where Joe is waiting to kill them instantly in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. Joe is called a Looper. The odd name comes from the understanding that in order to get rid of all the evidence, the mob will one day send the future version of him back in time for Joe to kill. This is called “closing the loop” and is akin to being fired. Old Joe gets sent back with a bag over his head and his hands tied behind his back; Young Joe shoots himself and collects his severance package, many gold bars strapped to Old Joe’s back.

There is a complication however when Old Joe comes back to be killed. He doesn’t have the bag over his head and he isn’t tied up. Young Joe recognizes himself (btw Joseph Gordon-Levitt with a prosthetic nose does a rather good Bruce Willis impression), hesitates, and Old Joe gets away. In the trailer they allude to a chase and this is about it. What this leaves out however are two very good questions and answers that make this seemingly normal run-of-the-mill action movie one of the best movies of the year. The first question is why does Young Joe want to kill Old Joe instead of just helping him escape? The second question is why has Old Joe come back to the past without a bag on his head or tied up? If he had gotten the best of his captors in the future, why would he send himself to the past at all if he knows that his younger self is waiting there to kill him?

The first question is answered within the first twenty minutes and so I will give away the entire thing. For demonstration purposes, a fellow Looper, played by Paul Dano, lets his old self get away. The mafia reacts by kidnapping Young Dano and holding his body parts for ransom. There is a truly terrifying scene where Old Dano is escaping on the outskirts of the city when all of sudden he experiences a scar being written on his arm. It states to be at a certain address in fifteen minutes. Then Old Dano’s fingers start disappearing just in case Old Dano didn’t get the point. Old Dano races back as he loses his fingers, toes, nose, feet, and arms. He gets to the address with basically just his torso. A door to a warehouse opens revealing the mob, a saw, quite a lot of blood, and what is left of Young Dano. Yes, young Joe is reasonably motivated to track down and kill Old Joe before the mob tracks him down and does the same thing to him.

The second question is what really sets this movie on a level of greatness. I won’t be giving away too much by simply stating the premise. Old Joe has come back on a Terminator-in-reverse style of mission. Armed with only a birth-date and a hospital, he is tracking down the five-year-old version of a future Hitler nicknamed “The Rainmaker.” His mission is to kill every child with that birth-date from that hospital in order to save his wife who was killed in the wake of many other untold deaths. Young Joe figures it out the plan and stakes out the last house on Old Joe's list. What a moral conundrum! Young Joe is a killer and drug addict and Old Joe is sober and reformed, but that does not allow one to forget the fact that Old Joe is going around killing children! How that turns out, well, you will just have to find out, but ask yourself this one question before you walk into the theater: How do you want it to turn out?

There is a tendency for movie critics to withhold praise from a movie when it reminds them of movies that they have already seen. For instance you can see the futuristic dystopia projected in “Looper” and be reminded of “Blade Runner.” Or you can see the parallels of the time travel mission in “The Terminator.” Or you can recognize the weird sensation of seeing an older version of yourself being killed from “Twelve Monkeys” (with Bruce Willis!) or if you wanted to go back even further, “Le Jetee.” In this way, critics tend to take away credit from movies that are made in our time in order to bolster the reputation of films of the old ones. I don’t want to detract from “Blade Runner,” “The Terminator,” or “Twelve Monkeys,” (I haven’t seen Le Jetee although lord knows it keeps getting mentioned when movies like these are made) but just because a movie that is made today that has some similarities it should not amplify the worth of a previous movie because now it is all “Influential.” In the same way the similarities should not detract from the current movie because it was all “Influenced." I guess what I’m saying is that “Looper” is better than “Blade Runner.” I’ve seen both and do not particularly care that the better one draws from the previous one. And there is plenty in “Looper” that is original enough that I would suggest that Rian Johnson get an Oscar Nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Speaking of nominations, I think it is about time that Bruce Willis got one. This could be the year given he has had two great performances already, (I recommend the nomination for “Moonrise Kingdom.”) And Joseph Gordon-Levitt although perhaps not yet earning such a distinction, is fast becoming noticeable for his DiCaprio-esque ability to show up in a multitude of good to great movies. Look at IMDB and see where he will show up this year. “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Premium Rush,” “Looper,” “Lincoln,” “Django Unchained.” That is pretty impressive.  What can definitely be said about both of these actors is that they truly know how to share a screen. “Looper” is definitely an ensemble picture that engages the audience with multiple well-rounded characters. Paul Dano has an unforgettable part that lasts only about ten minutes. Then there is Jeff Daniels as “Abe” the mob boss from the future who instills a comedic been-there done-that fatalism to his persona. Finally there is boy Hitler, a five year old played by Pierce Gagnon, who can, dare I say, really act.

If there was an award for “Most Understated Title for  a Great Movie,” I think “Looper” would be a lock for that one as well.

Good Night and Good Luck 11/05/05

Edward R. Murrow was a newsman for CBS during the early fifties when a senator named Josephy McCarthy was trying suspected communists for being communists and convicting them with false testimony and hear say evidence. When most reporters ignored the McCarthy hearings for fear of being suspected, Murrow after a while stood up. He was the first, and that is why this first rate movie was made about him. I found the movie to be in a version like the 1975 film "All the President's Men," mostly because it skirted melodrama, and was about men in smoke-filled rooms working and talking seriously for a change. There is a tension in the air, but that is because of the seriousness of the situation. Nothing is exploited for gratuitous value, even McCarthy himself is shown as himself, pasted from Newsreels shown at the time. A movie like this is rare, because most studios today don't think that the American attention span is long enough to focus on something seriously for more than an hour and a half. If this movie becomes popular it will be of much help to us all. It will prove that Americans are willing to pay to hear a serious discussion, and if producers can catch that idea than maybe instead of the shouting debates that we now have on the 24-hour news networks, we may get lengthy and educating debates that actually look into the issues instead of just glancing at them. In a paraphrase of Murrow, this may be wrong, but what harm can it do. In the opinion of this critic, I hope we get more enlightening movies like these made. We as a people can help this by making them profitable to make. That's all. Good Night, and Good Luck.