Steve Jobs
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
The first voice you hear in Steve Jobs is from legendary writer Arthur C. Clarke, explaining in a decades-old interview the many ways computers will one day affect human life.
It’s not only a clever way to introduce a film anchored in the rise of personal computers, it’s a subtle reminder that some people just see the future better than others.
From there, writer Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle take a visionary approach themselves, crafting an appropriately intense and completely engrossing profile of Jobs’s history with Apple, Inc.
We get a character study in three acts: the launch of the Mac brand in 1984, Jobs’s start of Next computers in ’88 after his ouster from Apple, and his triumphant 1998 return to the company he co-founded. A more traditional biopic style may still have been compelling, but it would never be the mesmerizing time capsule film Steve Jobs is.
Sorkin and Boyle understand that a man so self-aggrandizing and obsessed with design deserves a treatment that is both. Sorkin’s wordplay – always of the smartest-guy-in-the-room variety (because, let’s face it, in most rooms he probably is) is piercing and ambitious, barely pausing for air before another sharp line finds its mark.
The settings seldom move beyond the backstage areas of convention halls, but Boyle – as he did so masterfully with the claustrophobic 127 Hours – expands the film’s universe with effective flashbacks and fluid camerawork. The look is appropriately sleek and almost poetic, highlighted by a beautiful image of Apple board members voting to fire Jobs beneath windows being pummeled by the pouring rain.
Michael Fassbender delivers a masterwork as Steve Jobs, making him an utterly fascinating enigma. This is miles away from a complete biography, but Fassbender takes full advantage of the chances Sorkin and Boyle give him to offer glimpses behind the bluster and into Jobs’s psyche.
The sublime supporting cast offers more greatness. Kate Winslet (as Jobs’s longtime marketing exec and all-around right hand Joanna Hoffman), Jeff Daniels (Apple CEO John Scully) and Michael Stuhlbarg (computer scientist Andy Hertzfield) display the nuance and humanity that they so often do, while Seth Rogen doesn’t shrink from his call up to the big leagues.
As Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Rogen brings impressive dramatic chops to a role integral to some of the film’s most powerful scenes, as “Woz” pleads with his old friend to give a small measure of credit to someone other than Steve Jobs.
It is a movie that’s overly dramatic in spots and yes, idealistic as well, but that feels more than fitting for a look at the wages of genius. Challenging and ferocious, brilliantly conceived and performed, Steve Jobs is nothing short of thrilling cinema.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
“That doesn’t conclude anything!”
This – the disappointed outcry from an audience member as the closing credits rolled on Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension – only scratches the surface of the problems with this film.
The sixth feature in the series begun in 2007 with Oren Peli’s ultra-low-budget indie seeks to tie together all the various strands of storyline spun from the previous efforts and put the final bow on the franchise.
Ryan (Chris J. Murray) inviteshis heavily mustachioed brother Mike (Dan Gill) to spend some post-breakup time with him and his family over the holidays. Also visiting – Toby. You may remember Toby from such hauntings as Paranormal Activity 3.
Mike will wish he’d visited his mom instead.
The entire cast does a perfectly serviceable job, and Ivy George is devastatingly adorable as young Leila, the object of Toby’s interest. But Jesus, her parents are stupid!
Mike and Ryan come across a giant, old, eighties-style camcorder when digging out Christmas decorations. It’s so nutty! With it you can see things like giant black tar monsters lurking over your baby daughter’s bed – too crazy. Wonder whether you should do something about that immediately, or debate with your wife about whether the camera’s just broken. Because, you know, it’s not like your daughter’s in jeopardy.
Once a priest is attacked in the house, you might expect the houseguests to politely exit – particularly the friend of the family who’s visiting for no important reason. But no! There is apparently nothing that will make her spring for a hotel while she’s in town for her yoga retreat – not even the malevolent presence of a demon.
Speaking of – and I know I’m picking nits here – but why go to the bother of explaining to us film after film after film that we are dealing with a demon, not a ghost, and then call the final movie in your franchise The Ghost Dimension?
For what it is – a low rent found footage spookfest – this franchise has actually managed to break the law of diminishing returns for a long time, but their luck began to slip a couple episodes ago. Let’s hope this really is their final effort.
Rock the Kasbah
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
“Star Waaaaars! Nothing but Staaar Waaarrrs!”
It’s been nearly forty years since Bill Murray’s Nick the Lounge Singer crooned on SNL. Wouldn’t it be a kick to check in and see how life has treated Nick Ocean?
Rock the Kasbah could have been that movie. Too bad, because instead we get a few solid moments of Murray lunacy amid the wildly unfocused whitewashing of one courageous woman’s journey.
Murray is Richie Lanz, a struggling L.A. talent agent who catches a break when his client/secretary Ronnie (Zooey Deschanel) gets booked on a USO tour…in Afghanistan. Ronnie quickly regrets entertaining in a war zone, so she hires local mercenary Bombay Brian (Bruce Willis) to get her out of the country post haste.
While Richie is trying to figure out a way home himself, he’s befriended by a native cabbie (Arian Moayed), the local hooker with a heart of gold (Kate Hudson), and two crazy ammunition peddlers (Scott Caan and Danny McBride).
It’s all silly, contrived and only mildly amusing, but when a job offer from the ammo guys takes Richie to Pakistan, he hears the young Salima (Leem Lubany) singing and instantly decides he needs to introduce her to the world.
Richie is told singing in public would bring a death sentence for Salima, but she stows away in his cab back to Kabul, and defiantly auditions for the TV show Afghan Star.
It’s all built around real events in the life of Setara Hussainzada, who still faces death threats after revealing her face and competing on Afghan Star. Her story has been told in two documentaries – 2009’s Afghan Star and 2010’s Silencing the Song – and is certainly deserving of a serious dramatic treatment. Though she does get a nice acknowledgment before the credits, screenwriter Mitch Glazer and director Barry Levinson are more interested in the “white savior” angle and creating a comedy vehicle for Murray.
Thud.
Characters disappear at will, plot lines are invented and ignored, no one really seems interested, and the Kasbah is left more bored than rocked.
“Please let these Star Wars……staaaaaaaaay!”
If only.
The Last Witch Hunter
by Christie Robb, MaddWolf.com
Perhaps it’s for the best that I find it nearly impossible to understand the words that come out of Vin Diesel’s mouth. The man sounds like my half-broken garbage disposal when I try to run a bunch of coffee grounds through it.
I don’t think a greater understanding of the dialogue would have significantly improved my enjoyment of the Last Witch Hunter, though. The strength of this supernatural/detective/action movie lies in the visuals.
800 years ago a vaguely Viking looking guy named Kaulder (Diesel) took on a Witch Queen and won, getting cursed by her with immortality in the process. Fast forward to modern day and we catch up with him. He’s older, a collector of art (and apparently of stewardesses), and working with an organization called the Axe and Cross to keep the peace between witches and humanity, making sure that magic isn’t used against humans.
He’s aided by a retiring handler, Dolan the 36th (Michael Caine), who, on the eve of his retirement, is attacked using prohibited magic. With the help of the replacement Dolan the 37th (Elijah Wood) and good witch Chloe (Rose Leslie), Kaulder must unravel a nefarious plot by bad witches to bring back the Black Plague, force muggle society to its knees, and return the earth to its more natural state.
Let’s set aside the fact that Diesel is completely unconvincing as an 800 year-old man. He seems entirely too well-adjusted and jovial to have seen over 30 handlers die on him.
The plot of the movie is also rather thin. Not enough time is spent explaining the politics of the Axe and Cross, the Witch/Muggle peace process, or the exact rules of “immortality.” However, that time is instead spent on visual effects that range from the grotesque (plague flies squirming around just under the skin), the beautifully stark (an ancient tree set against snowcapped peaks), the whimsical (a witch cocktail bar), and the action-y (flaming swords against enchanted beasts made of wood and bits of human carcass).
Like Vin Diesel, the movie is enjoyable enough to look at. Just don’t spend too much time trying to understand it.
The Final Girls
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Part of the satisfying lull of a slasher film is its predictability: idiotic characters behave lasciviously and are repaid for their indignities with the hard justice of a machete. They are scary movies for people who don’t really want to be scared, they’d rather enjoy the idiocy.
People like, I think we can assume, co-writers M. A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller, whose The Final Girls celebrates the genre and its fans with a meta-flick brimming with genre affection and upbeat carnage.
Max (Taissa Farmiga) never really got over the loss of her mother, scream queen Amanda Cartwright (Malin Akerman). She and her friends find themselves pulled into Mom’s most famous film – the ‘80s slasher Camp Bloodbath – and need to use their knowledge of slasher conventions to survive.
The film is far more a comedy than a horror flick – the casting of Adam DeVine (Workaholics) alone clarifies that. But don’t expect a spoof or cynical parody. There’s real love for the ironic pleasures of the genre that keeps the film lighthearted and fresh.
Director Todd Strauss-Schulson deconstructs the overly familiar genre, replacing its mean spirit with broad strokes of goofiness. He and his cast see these characters as something one-dimensional, but still worthwhile – rather than presenting them as simply the ingredients for Camp Counselor Slurry.
Supporting work from DeVine, Tom Middleditch, Angela Trimbur, and Alia Shawkat freshens up the predictability with sharp, spontaneous comedy that elevates the film above its clever gimmick.
The film shoehorns in some emotion as well, but it’s at its best when reveling in the familiar. Farmiga is saddled with the least playful, mostly humorless role, but her dour presence is offset by the fun lunacy around her.
There are flat spots, and the film is never the laugh riot of other recent horror comedies (Deathgasm, for instance), but it is a spot-on send up that entertains throughout.
