Giving Another Dick Billionaire a Pass

Steve Jobs (2015) - Boyle

The first question is: do we really need another Steve Jobs movie? Then, what merits does the life of the billionnaire co-founder of Apple have, to prompt 3 movies about him within 2 years? Yes, Apple product is cool, but what else is there to talk about?

I have to admit, that I've been an Apple user all my adult life. It's not because of brand loyalty, but because I inherited a Mac Classic II from my ex-girlfriend in college. Since then I rarely used PC other than some odd office jobs I've briefly held. I was too young to have seen the famous 1984 Apple commercial and has never been a good consumer who would grow feeling of attachment with inanimate objects, to be honest.

The new Steve Jobs movie, called Steve Jobs, is based on Walter Isaacson's biography, scripted by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, is as exciting as a production of a High School play. This ill conceived film stars Michael Fassbender as Jobs, an innovator of series of Apple products, Kate Winslet (in her annoying Polish accent) as his trusty long time marketing director Joanna Hoffman and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak as the disgruntled engineer and co-founder of Apple. For the next breezy two hours, we go from one launching event (the launch of the original Macintosh computer in 1984) to another (NeXT in 1988) to another (iMac in 1998), signifying 3 phases in Jobs's career.

It is Seth Rogen who steals the show as Wozniak though. Forever not credited by ungrateful Jobs for creating Apple II which was bread and butter for the company for a long time, he is the only one who show some real emotions in the film, demanding Jobs to mention him and his team in all three launching events. His cuddly presence also balances out the dead-eyed, angular Fassbender and their antiseptic surroundings. Jeff Daniels cakewalks through the screen as John Sculley, a Pepsi executive turned CEO of Apple who fired jobs from Apple but was apparently a father figure for Jobs.

No one disputes Sorkin's penchant for snappy dialog and just like in The Social Network, Steve Jobs is full of it. So much so, you wonder, if casting these esteemed actors were really necessary, when they are just mouthing the great Sorkin dialog when there is so little drama. In The Social Network, however artificial Fincher's filmmaking generally is, there was movement, fluidity, breath and scope. Jobs, boxed in convention halls and other indoor spaces, one can't escape the feeling of watching a play.

So meat of the story is this: whatever chips he has on his shoulders, Jobs wouldn't recognize Lisa (played by Makenzie Moss and Perla Haney-Jardine, respectively) as his daughter. There is 28 percent of all man in the country can be her father, according to his algorithm). Her no-good mom Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) keeps asking him for money. He is also ruthless and egotistical leader who is never wrong. Would he find his way to admit that he is not perfect?

This trend of 'giving a billionaire dicks a pass in life because they are only human and have flaws' storyline is getting on my nerves. Sorkin hit it big with the young, hip demographic (under 25, white, college educated) with The Social Network but his HBO series The Newsroom was only viewed and appreciated by my mother-in-law. His street cred is gone. Steve Jobs is a massive waste of talent and money and Danny Boyle is not the director who is up to the challenge of making gold out of nothing, which Steve Jobs is.

Head Trick

Frank (2014) - Abrahamson

Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) really wants to be a musician. He composes music in his head day in and day out during the commute, at work, on the streets, at home. After witnessing a suicide attempt of a man who happens to be a keyboardist in a band, Soronprfbs, he is scooped up as the replacement by the group's eccentric lead singer, Frank (Michael Fassbender). Jon is told that Frank never takes off that big papier mache on his head and nobody has seen his real face, not even Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal, in her possibly the best role), the band's theremin player who worships him and detests Jon's presence. The group retreats to a remote mountain cabin to record their album. Frank is a musical genius and his methods are truly eccentric. They spend a long time to prepare themselves before recording the album. Jon even spends all of his 'nest egg' to provide the group's food and lodging. Everyone believes in Frank and what they are doing is great. Jon, in the meantime, with twitter and youtube, records his dealings in the band like crazy, accumulating a huge following on the internet. But when he announces that they are going to play SXSW Music Fest, everyone's extremely skeptical, except for Frank, who is sold on the idea of having their music listened by more people. So they go to Texas and everything falls apart. As everyone predicted (except for Frank), Jon turns out to be and unbeknownst to himself, a combination of Salieri and Yoko Ono.

So how to describe Frank the movie? Is it a take on eccentric musical genius, the downside of stardom, selling out, childhood trauma, jealousy, hollowness of hipster scene, desire to be loved? By the end, Frank is not about anything. Definitely not about music. But is it not funny? Tons. Fun to see Fassbender in papier mache? Oh yeah. It's a great, unique, silly comedy.

Memories Eternal

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Singer

This franchise, along with its Wolverine spinoffs, has been dragged out long enough, even though there are plenty more characters, subplots and parallel universes to cling on to until the end of days. Singer and co. decides to put a semi definite "." on the X-Men series with Days of Future Past. The plot: The world is destroyed by the war between humans and mutants. Only a few mutants remain, hounded by Sentinels- indestructible creatures borne out of shape shifting Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence)'s DNA when she was captured after assassinating a military industrialist Trask (Peter Dinklage). The only hope is to go back in time and prevent Mystique from killing Trask. Kitty (Ellen Page), a mutant who possesses the power of "phasing", sends Wolverine, who has unlimited instant cell regeneration, therefore, only one who can withstand destructive long term phasing, to 1973 to stop Mystique. There he has to convince both young Prof. X (James McAvoy) and his rival young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to team up and stop the development of Sentinels. A lot is at stake here, folks.

Days of Future Past in its seriousness, invalidates the first 3 X-Men movies since its timeline doesn't match with the existence of Sentinels. It's more of a continuation of X-Men: First Class with Fassbender's showy Magneto in the center with Wolverine thrown in. The mood is grim and no one smiles. Wolverine has skeletal blades instead of metal in his paws. Prof. X is struggling with spine damage and lost his way. Magneto is still scheming to end humanity. Someone's got to save prez! In the mean time, Sentinels are picking up mutants like daisies - they get crushed in graphic detail - they burst in to flames, bodies explode, heads crushed, etc.

What's left is that Wolverine remains the most tragic character in superhero franchise. He is the sole witness to all the destruction and death of the loved ones and when it's all fixed, it's only he who remembers all for eternity.

Collective Amnesia

12 Years of a Slave (2013) - McQueen

Masterful filmmaking. It does limit the shameful American slavery experience to 12 years and have unwanted famous faces popping up to say hello. But McQueen's focus is all on Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his unjust slavery. Even Michael Fassbender's powerhouse plantation owner Epps doesn't eclipse Solomon and other slaves' harrowing experiences. The punchline is that without a big payback or satisfying epilogue, we are left to grapple with the fate of the fellow slaves Solomon leaves behind at the end.

It gave me a pleasure seeing this in a packed theater the day after Thanksgiving in one of the beautiful screening rooms of the Brooklyn's cultural mecca, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) with very mixed audiences. I couldn't help but comparing this film to the best film I've seen this year, The Act of Killing- for both dealing with a collective amnesia of sort, especially when witnessing older white audiences wincing in their seats during many of the film's difficult moments.

My minor issue with the film is what Solomon went through in the film didn't feel like 12 years. If McQueen's intention was that of a surprise that, indeed it's been 12 years and his kids are all grown up, that he's been unjustly kept as a slave, it didn't work for me. It would have a better impact if there was some kind of indication of passage of time. I totally understand how that come across as anything but cheesy, but McQueen would have found the way to show it, just like the rest of the film not being anything but cliché. Definitely among one of the best this year.

Alien Prequal

Prometheus (2012) - Scott

Making a prequel/sequel out of a horror movie is always a flimsy proposition. Alien, perhaps Ridley Scott's second best in his spotty filmography, was a no nonsense, tight sci-fi horror which was, if anything, atmospheric and thrilling. Prometheus then, is just an upscale version of the franchise, explaining pointlessly, the origins of that HR Giger backdrop of the original, at the expanse of the actors who are wasted here (especially Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce). There are inevitable plotholes, unexplained motivations, shoddy deaths. What Prometheus has though, are a gorgeous production design, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Idris Elba.

Once upon a time, Ridley Scott was a visual and tonal lyricist. There were duelists in the Napoleonic era who duel each other throughout their entire life without any explanation. There were unicorns in slow-mo. He even took away silly (debatable) narration of Dekkard from Blade Runner. That man is dead now. Prometheus was entertaining and pretty enough, but nowhere as great as his older stuff.

Bright Lights Big City

Shame (2011) - McQueen

It's an odd choice for Steve McQueen after his breakthrough debut, Hunger, to do a film about a hotshot Manhattanite's hollow sex life. The premise is so very 1980s NY, circa Bright Lights, Big City - decadence, soullessness, cynicism. The only difference, besides the cyber age references, is how it is done. McQueen lets us know from the first frame, that he is not a normal filmmaker. As a visual artist, his visual approach is completely unique and refreshing.

Michael Fassbender again, teams up with McQueen and plays another physically demanding role (there are a lot of frontal nudity and sex scenes in this). Brandon (Fassbender) lives a high life in a posh midtown apartment, enjoys anonymous sex and pornography at home and at work. His magnetic good looks gets glances everywhere and he answers them back. His life style is sabotaged when his little sister Cici (Carey Mulligan), a lounge singer and an emotional wreck invites herself into his apartment unannounced. It gets complicated when Cici sleeps with his womanizing boss.

In a 5 minute long take, their backs to the camera and a black and white cartoon playing on TV in front of them, the siblings argue. The scene is just as compelling as the one long take in Hunger with Bobby Sands and the priest. Then there is an uncut restaurant scene where Brandon takes his lovely co-worker (Nicole Behari) on a date. Perhaps because of her down-to-earth quality, he confesses to her that his longest relationship with anyone was about 4 months. The following morning he takes her to the posh hotel suite overlooking the Chelsea Pier in order to have sex. He can't perform, all captured in agonizing 5 minute uncut take. The long takes require enormous amount of trust put on the actors and Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan oblige with perhaps the two of the greatest performances this year. What I like about Shame despite its rather conventional plot is it's deeply rooted in reality. Characters are very naturally drawn and believable. Mulligan's adorable as a hard edged, suicidal little Cici who might be Brandon's only salvation.

A reflective/introspective look at society's ills in the time of economic crisis and the world in turmoil is perhaps not very well timed. And Brandon's sexual escapades in the last act reach almost a comedic level. But Shame demonstrates a major talent stretching his cinematic muscles and I'm looking forward to McQueen's next project.

Neurotics

A Dangerous Method (2011) - Cronenberg

A big disappointment. Based on a play and script by Christopher Hampton, A Dangerous Method feels more like a stuffy stage play than a Cronenberg film. The problem with Hampton's script is that it fixates on the drama of three main characters - Freud, Jung and Sabina Spielrein, there is no room for historical background of the early 20th century, characters fantasies or anything else. It is nice to see Viggo Mortensen stretching his acting ability a bit while buried in suit, pipe, fake nose and dark contacts, stubbornly professing human sexuality as the root of all psychological problems. Michael Fassbender is adequate as young Jung, a family man, thrown into exercising 'talking therapy' on Spielrein and then moving into hanky pankies. Keira Knightley has no range or physique to do a sexually dysfunctional young woman justice (to her credit, she does an amazing human barracuda impression unintentionally).

I wished that at least some of the dream talks among them would materialize on screen, to give some Cronenberg touch- especially Jung's dream of a horse suspended in the air and a heavy log placed in the way and keeps the horse advancing forward and Freud suggests, "the log is, perhaps, your penis?" No luck. Berg keeps everything too classy.

Only interesting part is when Hampton and Berg treating Freud as a neurotic Jew trapped in a society where everyone's poised to tear him down when given a chance. Hence, his unflinching stubbornness in his theories. This is a masterpiece theater with a brief nudity of a skinny flat chested girl. Thumbs down.