Steve Jobs (2015) [Blu-ray]
Biography | Drama

Tagline: Can a great man be a good man?

Witness the founder of Apple like never before. Steve Jobs paints an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at the epicenter of the digital revolution, backstage in the final minutes before three iconic product launches. Directed by Academy Award winner Danny Byole (Slumdog Millionaire), written by Academy Award winner Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogan and Jeff Daniels.

Storyline: His passion and ingenuity have been the driving force behind the digital age. However his drive to revolutionize technology was sacrificial. Ultimately it affected his family life and possibly his health. In this revealing film we explore the trials and triumphs of a modern day genius, the late CEO of Apple inc. Steven Paul Jobs. Written by Anonymous

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, February 3, 2016 -- The biopic is a staple of the Hollywood landscape. Filmmakers love to rediscover and reintroduce interesting historical subjects through the lens of film, and often to excellent result. From Mozart to Gandhi, the breadth of history, the weight a name carries, and the skill of the top filmmakers to tell the life stories of the world's most famous figures in detailed, imaginative, and engaging fashion are, combined, practically without match in any other genre. A little more uncommon are subjects deemed worthy of multiple pictures over the years, those whose tales transcend a single moment on the cinema timeline and, with a revitalization on film, speak to new generations of audiences. That's a shorter list that includes individuals like Jesus, Joan of Arc, and Jobs, all of whom changed the world in their time, and beyond. It's the latter individual whose life is brought to extraordinarily rich and oftentimes moving detail in Steve Jobs, Director Danny Boyle's (Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire) 2015 biopic that dwarfs the other Jobs film from 2013, both coincidentally from Universal Pictures. Boyle's film explores Jobs' personal and professional life evolution in visually disparate but tonally consistent and ever absorbing three-act fashion, each set against the backdrop of the tech industry legend's frantic preparations for key product introductions.

Steve Jobs isn't about technology, even as various products are featured and their introductions (the Macintosh, the Black Cube, the iMac), or discussions centered around them (the Apple II, the Newton, the iPod), play central to the story. Yet it's impossible to watch the movie without appreciating Jobs' role in developing and advancing not the nuts-and-bolts, circuits-and-motherboards side of computing, but the personal side, the way technology has so effortlessly integrated into modern society, not always for the greater good but to astounding convenience and, if the future holds the right cards, the betterment of mankind. The movie opens with a fascinating black-and-white clip that features Arthur C. Clarke describing, in surprisingly clear and visionary detail, the future integration of high technology into society. The movie transitions to Jobs and his team struggling to get the original Macintosh working to his exact specifications. It cannot say "hello" to the soon-to-be assembled audience (imagine what they would think if they could see the late Jobs' Apple now and products that don't simply regurgitate preprogrammed courtesies but can speak real-time weather, sporting scores, tell the user when Steve Jobs starts at the local cinema, or place a wireless call to a friend for a video chat, all from an item many times smaller than the original Macintosh's mouse). At the same time, Jobs can barely bring himself to say "hello" to his estranged girlfriend or his daughter Lisa, whom he cannot even acknowledge as his own.

From there, the movie begins a personal journey that starts with that 1984 introduction and follows on through to Jobs' departure from Apple and return to the company to make a big, industry-changing splash with the iMac's introduction in 1998. Boyle's three-act structure perfectly frames Jobs' life, hitting the career highlights of his prime while, more importantly, discovering the individual, through both his working relationships and, much more importantly to fleshing out the character, his relationship with his daughter. The movie's parallels between his immersion into work and technology and personal life are obvious, but never overwhelming. The "hello" dilemma that dominates the gritty opening act, the "Black Cube" middle -- which may as well have been labeled "black hole" instead, as both a metaphor for the machine and the man behind it -- and the more user-friendly, revolutionary, and world-changing iMac all perfectly reflect Jobs as a man beyond the confines of the technology that shapes his fortunes in business. The movie comes full circle in an extraordinarily touching final moment that both solidifies its dramatic arc and reaffirms Jobs' progress both in the technological world and in his personal life.

Boyle has crafted each of the three acts to tonally represent the time, the themes, and the technological and personal progress alike. He shoots the opening in gritty 16mm, when the technology was bulky and imperfect but promising of greater things to come. It also reflects Jobs' more cantankerous and controlling attitude both around his co-workers and with his family. Boyle transitions to a more refined 35mm shoot in the film's middle stretch and transitions to digital in its last, a final segment in which the technology, though hopelessly antiquated today, offered cleaner aesthetics and a more approachable user interface. But it also represented a cleaner character, too, an individual whose public persona, working relationships, and personal life are all on the rebound, reflective of a more organized, understanding man, understanding not only of the world around him but, more importantly, of himself. He admits his flaws and discovers who he is. It's amazingly assembled and complimentary of the film's unique structure and astounding writing that so effortlessly compiles all of its story arcs. What's even more fascinating is how the movie constructs its character so close to his public persona yet so far away from it. Jobs was best known for his on-stage presentations -- product introductions and "one more thing" proclamations to adoring fans -- but the film operates almost entirely behind that curtain, literally opening up the Steve Jobs few understood right against the backdrop of the Steve Jobs everyone knows. More, the film is dotted by several incredible performances. Michael Fassbender offers a career defining and remarkably transformative performance as Jobs, capturing not just a basic look but more importantly an essence of a man whose world is in a constant state of flux and whose ability to understand it all evolves from, literally, complicated algorithms that distance himself from his humanity to an appreciation and acknowledgement of life's smallest but most important treasures that remake him in the image of a man rather than the machines by which he's surrounded.

Steve Jobs is a remarkable film -- narratively, technically -- that doesn't just show the Steve Jobs who stood on stage, but explores him as the man behind it. Danny Boyle's direction and Michael Fassbender's performance are world-class, the former of which was painfully neglected at the recent Oscar announcements but the latter of which was rightly recognized with a Best Actor nomination. This is a wonderful work of art that should be remembered amongst the greats of Hollywood's many important and acclaimed biopics. Universal's Blu-ray release of Steve Jobs features stellar video, excellent audio, and several high quality supplements. Steve Jobs earns my highest recommendation.

[CSW] -3.1- If you have no idea at all of the man and want to think of him as super wonderful you need to skip this film. Many people confuse art and artist and think that if the art is great so is the artist. Rarely if ever is that true. Since I was already aware of a large portion of Steve Jobs life and his personal makeup this film came as no great surprise to me. It was more of an illumination of some of the dark corners of his personality that helped shed light on some parts of his makeup. I still personally credit Steve Wozniak with the creation of Apple computer but I have to admit that Steve Jobs might truly be considered the founder of Apple. According to this most recent of several Apple-founder biopics, Steve Jobs the man (Fassbender) was a delusional, self-absorbed pioneer with a God-complex to end all god-complexes. He was a less-than-fun dude, to say the least, who changed the world by gathering brilliant people to deliver products whose elegance belies the intricate complexities at their core. These huge revelations have become his legacy…but should they have? Fassbender, Boyle and writer Sorkin, each among the best at their jobs, propose that Steve's professional successes may have been the cause of his personal flaws. The plot is a screenwriting construction; set during three different product launches and the minutes that lead up to them, Jobs (barely) tries to balance his two children, the more important his current product. The entire film is Sorkin's patented "walking-and-talking" trademark, yet never drags even at its 2+ hours length. Director Boyle, while relatively restrained, finds plenty of appropriate moments to display his skill for visual pop. However, the main cinematic thrills all come from the dialogue, as if the words are explosions in an action movie. Some people criticize Sorkin (Social Network, "West Wing") because his dialogue doesn't feel natural, the rapacious repartee undercut by over-explanation, and moments standing out as feeling "written". However, I usually just find myself wishing my friends and I spoke the way he writes. Add in line-deliverers like Fassbender, Winslet, Rogen, Daniels, and Stuhlbarg, Jobs end result is a hypnotic and highly entertaining capsule of a man at the center of the computer generation.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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