Michael Fassbender stars as Steve Jobs in a scene from the film, “Steve Jobs.” (Universal Pictures/AP)
“Steve Jobs,” the new bio-pic about the iconic Apple entrepreneur, is a film in love with men (a man) who possess prescient clarity.
To underscore that notion, the film opens with a clip of Arthur C. Clarke back in the ‘70s, extolling the virtues of the computer and how it will change the lives of humans one day. H.G. Wells scored some great future picks too, but both those men were primarily writers, neither of them produced or pushed product, something, that the film, helmed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin, asserts Jobs did with unbridled ardor and rabid commitment.
Clearly Boyle and Sorkin have swallowed the “visionary” pill and are all in. It’s easy to get that too as they’re working with Walter Isaacson’s biography, which Jobs had a hand in before his death. As the film suggests, the digital maestro, currently in everyone’s pocket, was also a master strategist laying the roots of his stratagem and giving them years to germinate before reaping the rewards. As a result, one can’t walk away from “Steve Jobs” without a sense that maybe Jobs saw this coming, his own hagiography, and planted the seeds to brand his legacy and ensure the enduring future of Apple and all things preceded with a lowercase “i”.
The film’s told uniquely in three chapters, each taking place in the moments leading up to a product launch (staged demos in velvet adorned opera houses) that Jobs, a fan of simple design and closed systems so hackers and hobbyists can’t muck with his perfection, proclaims will change the computing industry.
We launch back in 1984 with the unveiling of the Mac, but Jobs (played by Michael Fassbender) is in a mad arrogant snit because the machine crashes when it tries to say “Hello” and the fire department won’t allow him to shut off the exit signs to gain total darkness for the overall wowing effect. In the first five minutes, as Jobs runs through a gambit of nail-in-the-coffin problems, much akin to Michael Keaton’s stressed thespian in “Birdman,” but a far different bird, one drinks in an effortless multitasker, a brilliant human able to pull from both the left and right lobes, and an intolerable a—hole with small glimmers of compassion within. In all three product launches, he’s tended to by his loyal head of marketing, Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet bringing great nuance to a woman clearly in a thankless role and radiating with a deep care for her beloved tormentor) who’s the only one who able to push back and still have a job. Continue reading
The story of how Bulger undermined the North End Mafia and rose up to became the city’s criminal kingpin, then vanished for almost 15 years, all while being the brother of Massachusetts’ most powerful politician, always seemed bigger than the papers it was printed on (or for the broad screens of the first generation of flat-screen TVs sold at Lechmere). Here, in the hands of director Scott Cooper, who did well with “Crazy Heart” (2008) and “Out of the Furnace” (2013), the narrative become a bit too broad to settle in and gel. It’s choked with details and not enough nuance. That’s understandable in part because it is based on the book “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob” by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill (since retitled “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal”), but still, screenwriters Jez Butterworth (“Edge of Tomorrow”) and Mark Mallouk never free themselves and take chances. The framework of FBI interrogations, whether in the now or in flashbacks, doesn’t add much; it only cuts into Depp’s screen time as his steely-eyed Whitey and his posse off gruesomely anyone who looks at them the wrong way. There’s also the late development in which O’Neill and Lehr drop in as Bernstein and Woodward on the case. 
Larry’s not a bad guy, he’s got an inert French Bulldog with the greatest facial expressions and he looks after his ailing nana (Olympia Dukakis ) who’s in a nursing home, but he does get fired from his waiting job for stealing booze – and keys a coworker’s car on the way out. Around the corner at the same shopping mall complex, Larry quickly lands a job at a Quick Lube oil change shop, where her enjoys the discipline of assembly line work (he vacuums out the cars and has to pay a loose-money finders fee to the lube monkeys higher up the food chain) and falls for his new boss Lupe (Eleanore Pienta).
“The Visit,” Shyamalan’s latest, is a minor rebound of sorts. It’s laughably silly at times, but in a campy, good way – though I’m not convinced Shyamalan’s always in on the gag. One such curio is the old-timer named Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) who shits his adult diapers and stores his accidents in the shed out back of a farm house in rural PA. Pop Pop and his Nana (a lithe grand-matronly Deanna Dunagan), while estranged from their daughter (Kathryn Hahn) who left home at 19 for an older man and winds up dumped and a single mother, get their first visit from the grandchildren in 15 years. Mom’s happy about this arrangement too, which lets her jet off on a cruise with a boyfriend who likes to enter hairy-chest contests.
Out of the earth rises a needed jolt when Tim discovers a gun and a bone poking out of a hillside. Is it human or animal? Without an active case, the police aren’t all that inclined to investigate, but Tim, ignited by his imagination and his need for a tax-filing procrastination, keeps digging. Lee doesn’t share Tim’s curiosity and, despite some killer house parties and much merriment, the two drift further apart, so Lee is doing her own thing while Tim hosts digging parties with his immature, boozed-up posse. Eventually, each principal ends up with a fetching member of the opposite sex. For her, it’s the charming Orlando Bloom, who should’ve been doing more films like this long ago; for him, it’s a nubile waif (Brie Larson) hanging out at one of the house gatherings.
For What it's Worth 