Steve Jobs Review

3.5 Stars

 

In 1965, Jim Sutherland believed a computer could be small enough and practical enough to be in an average American home.  Steve Jobs would have been 10 years old at the time.  In 1969, the Honeywell Kitchen Computer was set to be the pioneer in home computing, except for one problem: they didn't sell a single one.  It wasn't until the late 1970s with the mass production of the microprocessor that the first home computers were made available to the general public and they became popular in the 1980s for video gaming and writing documents.  By 1982, it was estimated that 621,000 computers were in America's homes costing an average $530.  Many credit Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s.  

Jobs and his co-founder Steve Wozniak fought over control and Jobs was eventually forced out of Apple.  He took a few of his employees and started NeXT, a computer platform development company that catered to the higher-education and business markets.  He funded a visual effects company Pixar that released the first ever fully computer animated feature film, Toy Story.  Apple purchased NeXT in 1997 and Jobs returned as CEO, saving Apple from the brink of bankruptcy.  He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor in October of 2011.  

His power struggle with co-founder Wozniak (Seth Rogen) wasn't his only battle.  Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) fathered a daughter with his girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) that he denied publicly for years.  His marriage, his family, his business relationships and his health all suffered as the genius struggled to make the ideas in his head become a reality.  Fassbender was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Steve Jobs.  The preview alone would warrant that nomination not only for his acting portrayal of Jobs, but also the physical transformation that took place through the film as Jobs aged and also ailed.

The movie starts in 1984 with the release of the Macintosh.  Jobs is a control freak and berates his entire team and alienates those who have helped him get to where he is.  He has a confrontation with his ex girlfriend Chrisann and his daughter Lisa who he denies is his daughter.  The movie ends in 1998 at the triumphant launch of the iMac that started the Mac revolution in America.  In 1998, Jobs would have been married to Laurene Powell for 7 years, something that is never brought up in the movie.  And, according to several sources I've read, the movie takes several things out of context and pulls things from different times to fit snugly in a 2 hour movie over 3 major events in Jobs' career.  So, like so many other "based on actual events" movies, the point of this is not going to be accuracy, but effectiveness as an entertaining movie with bits and hints of facts thrown in throughout.  To that end, Steve Jobs was a success.

 

Steve Jobs is one of those movies that makes my rating scale a little tough.  I feel the need to remind you that my scale is based on two things: first, how accurately the preview represented the final product; and second, the likelihood of a movie making it to my home collection.  A film could have received bad reviews and been nominated for no awards, but if I loved it and know I will own it, I will give it between 4 and 5 stars.  On the flip side, I can watch a film and appreciate the talent both on and off screen and I can agree in the slew of nominations that a movie might receive; however, if it's one that I know I will not own, it will still only receive 2 or 3 stars on my scale.  I originally went in with very low expectations giving an anticipatory 2.5 star rating.  However, like Moneyball or The Social Network, regardless of the accuracy of the events or timelines, it was a fascinating story based on things that actually happened.  It was entertaining and extremely well acted.  So, I'm raising my rated to 3.5 stars.  It was worth it to watch and I'll surely catch it again when it's on TV.   So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.

Steve Jobs Preview

In 1965, Jim Sutherland believed a computer could be small enough and practical enough to be in an average American home.  Steve Jobs would have been 10 years old at the time.  In 1969, the Honeywell Kitchen Computer was set to be the pioneer in home computing, except for one problem: they didn't sell a single one.  It wasn't until the late 1970s with the mass production of the microprocessor that the first home computers were made available to the general public and they became popular in the 1980s for video gaming and writing documents.  By 1982, it was estimated that 621,000 computers were in America's homes costing an average $530.  Many credit Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s.  

Jobs and his co-founder Steve Wozniak fought over control and Jobs was eventually forced out of Apple.  He took a few of his employees and started NeXT, a computer platform development company that catered to the higher-education and business markets.  He funded a visual effects company Pixar that released the first ever fully computer animated feature film, Toy Story.  Apple purchased NeXT in 1997 and Jobs returned as CEO, saving Apple from the brink of bankruptcy.  He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor in October of 2011.  

His power struggle with co-founder Wozniak (Seth Rogen) wasn't his only battle.  Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) fathered a daughter with his girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) that he denied publicly for years.  His marriage, his family, his business relationships and his health all suffered as the genius struggled to make the ideas in his head become a reality.  Fassbender was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Steve Jobs.  The preview alone would warrant that nomination not only for his acting portrayal of Jobs, but also the physical transformation that took place through the film as Jobs aged and also ailed.

Steve Jobs is one of those movies that makes my rating scale a little tough.  I feel the need to remind you that my scale is based on two things: first, how accurately the preview represented the final product; and second, the likelihood of a movie making it to my home collection.  A film could have received bad reviews and been nominated for no awards, but if I loved it and know I will own it, I will give it between 4 and 5 stars.  On the flip side, I can watch a film and appreciate the talent both on and off screen and I can agree in the slew of nominations that a movie might receive; however, if it's one that I know I will not own, it will still only receive 2 or 3 stars on my scale.  And I'm afraid that Steve Jobs will fall into the latter category.  I think I'll enjoy it, appreciate the story and the acting talents, agree with the nominations it's received, but have a feeling that seeing it once will be enough.  It's because of that, I'm giving an anticipatory rating of 2.5 stars. However, the film was directed by Danny Boyle who also brought us Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours and was written by Aaron Sorkin who was responsible for Moneyball, The Social Network and A Few Good Men.  So maybe they'll deliver more than I'm anticipating. Am I right?  We shall see.

In the Heart of the Sea Review

3.5 Stars

 

"Call me Ishmael."  It's the opening line of Moby Dick written by Herman Melville in 1851 and is one of the most famous first lines in literary history.  It's right up there with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" from A Tale of Two Cities.  Melville's account of events that supposedly took place in New England in 1820 is also hailed as "the greatest book of the sea ever written" and "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world".  In the Heart of the Sea is Ron Howard's film that is not an adaptation of the novel by Melville and the infamous Captain Ahab's unhealthy obsession with the great white whale.  It is, instead, a film about the actual events that lead the Melville's story.  It's about Captain George Pollard, Jr. (Benjamin Walker) and his first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) about the Essex.  The ship was destroyed by a giant sperm whale as chronicled by Chase.

The preview looked absolutely incredible.  It looked like the the kind of action-packed yet character-driven films that Ron Howard has mastered over the years as he's brought us such incredible movies like Backdraft, Apollo 13, and Cinderella Man.  Even his earlier works of Cocoon and Willow are still watched with fondness as stepping stones of ingenuity and story-telling.  However, my hesitation came from knowing they could not have filmed this with an actual giant whale. In the Heart of the Sea could very easily have lost its audience with so much of the movie relying on the whale to sell it.  At least, that's how it looked from the preview.  However, the whale wasn't as much in the story as the preview made it seem.

 

In the early 1800's, it was found that whale oil produced a flame that lasted much longer than other oils previously used.  Whalers were paid good money to be gone on long and dangerous expeditions to kill whales and bring back barrels of their oil.  Author Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) heard a story passed down through the years about a monster whale that had taken down several whaling ships and went in search of a first hand account.  Reluctantly, Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), a fourteen year old cabin boy aboard the Essex and one of the few survivors, agreed to tell Melville the story some 30 years after the harrowing experience.  The story and the characters were excellent as expected.  95 per cent of the special effects were amazing and flawless.  I did notice during the first scene where whales were spotted, the use of a blue screen, but that might just have been because I was looking for it.  I also was slightly disappointed in how little the whale was in the movie, but that was because of the expectations set up by the preview.  Because of those things, I knocked my original 4.0 star prediction for In the Heart of the Sea down slightly to 3.5 stars.  A great Ron Howard film that has a decent chance of making it to my home collection.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.

In the Heart of the Sea Preview

"Call me Ishmael."  It's the opening line of Moby Dick written by Herman Melville in 1851 and is one of the most famous first lines in literary history.  It's right up there with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" from A Tale of Two Cities.  Melville's account of events that supposedly took place in New England in 1820 is also hailed as "the greatest book of the sea ever written" and "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world".  In the Heart of the Sea is Ron Howard's film that is not an adaptation of the novel by Melville and the infamous Captain Ahab's unhealthy obsession with the great white whale.  It is, instead, a film about the actual events that lead the Melville's story.  It's about Captain George Pollard, Jr. (Benjamin Walker) and his first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) about the Essex.  The ship was destroyed by a giant sperm whale as chronicled by Chase.

The preview looks absolutely incredible.  It looks like the the kind of action-packed yet character-driven films that Ron Howard has mastered over the years as he's brought us such incredible movies like Backdraft, Apollo 13, and Cinderella Man.  Even his earlier works of Cocoon and Willow are still watched with fondness as stepping stones of ingenuity and story-telling.  However, my hesitation comes from knowing they could not have filmed this with an actual giant whale.  So, the question is, how will Howard deliver us Moby Dick in real life?  Will he use a live model like in the Jaws movies?  Will he use computer animation that has comes leaps and bounds over the years, but is still not quite perfect enough to pull off being undetected? Either method leaves the door wide open for the slightest flaw, the faintest hint of a green screen, the smallest bit of mechanical movement versus nature taking you right out of the movie.

Movies and theatre often ask you to do something called "suspend your disbelief".  They ask you to buy in to what they are selling.  George Lucas had us sold with the original trilogy of Star Wars and then lost us with Episodes I - III.  We knew Yoda and Jabba the Hut were puppets, but we weren't thinking that when we watched the movies because they were so well done.  These characters were re-introduced as computer animations and it was obvious to the point that you were taken out of the movie, taken off of Naboo, and reminded that it was fake, it was a movie, and it lost you.  In the Heart of the Sea can very easily lose its audience with so much of the movie relying on the whale to sell it.  If it was any other director, I'd have my expectations low at 2.5 stars.  But it's Ron Howard.  So I'm putting a lot of faith in him giving this a 4.0 star prediction, a movie well worth the money to watch and having a good chance of making it to my home collection.  Am I right?  We shall see.

Concussion Review

4.0 Stars

Mike Webster was a center for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Kansas City Chiefs from 1974 to 1990.  Nicknamed "Iron Mike", some say Webster is the best center in NFL history.  He died at the age of 50 and was the first NFL player to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease caused by multiple concussions.  Concussion focuses on Nigerian pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) who first diagnosed Webster (David Morse) and embarked on a study of other NFL players.  The results of his findings put him at odds with the NFL and some of his fellow doctors as his efforts to bring light to the problem are met with stiff competition to keep him quiet.

Omalu, under the supervision of Dr. Cyril Wecht (Albert Brooks), believed the NFL would be pleased to hear of his discovery so they could prevent it from happening any more.  Wecht believed Omalu would ultimately become an American hero.  Instead, he was met with opposition from the NFL, from fellow doctors, and even received death threats against himself and his family, forcing Omalu to make the impossible decision to continue pressing for his findings to become public knowledge or to retreat for his safety and the safety of those he loves.  

Webster's death was officially reported as being due to heart failure.  Omalu commented that "cardiac arrest may be how he died, but not why".  More players died, but the NFL continued to silence and shun Omalu until 2009 when Cincinnati Bengals' wide receiver Chris Henry was diagnosed with CTE after his death at the age of 26.  Omalu had moved to California with his wife and started a family.  He was invited to speak at an NFL convention dealing with head injuries and offered a prominent position at Washington, D.C.  Players began to sue the NFL for concealing Omalu's findings.  The cases were settled with the condition that what the NFL knew and when would not be revealed.

Movies like Concussion are tough.  It's based on a true story, but without significant digging, it's hard to know how much of the movie is true and how much has been embellished or changed to make it more of a movie-going draw.  The all-star cast would indicate that enough of Hollywood's big hitters felt this was a good enough story to tell.  It's a story that has the NFL vigorously figuring out new equipment, new training methods, new treatment and new rules to help prevent CTE from continuing to take lives.  I predicted 3.5 stars, thinking it would be a movie I'd enjoy, hopefully be able to discern between fact and fiction, and may or may not make it to my home collection.  

 

I thought Will Smith gave a wonderfully honest and subtle performance as Dr. Omalu.  The movie is nearly two hours long, but I could have used a little more.  There is a scene where Omalu proposes to his girlfriend at a plot of land he has already purchased for the both of them.   Later, after being threatened by the FBI, they leave the home to move to California and he is completely broken up about it.  I would like to have seen some more of their relationship develop and their investment into the house to support the heartbreak a little more.  I felt the explanations of what was going on in the brains of the NFL players was very effectively addressed so that anyone would understand.  I bumped up my star rating to 4.0 stars as this was well worth the money to watch it and has a decent chance of making it to my home collection.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.