Film Review: Steve Jobs

"We Will Know Soon Enough If You Are Leonardo da Vinci Or Just Think You Are..."

Let's get this straight. I am seemingly one of the minority in the world where shopping in an Apple branded store for Apple branded products to me would be in similar vein to shopping at Waitrose. Sure everything looks nice and flashy, but it's price tag and lack of distinction from the norm really makes me want to shop elsewhere. With this thought in mind, I ventured into my local world of cine and into a midday screening of Steve Jobs with rather mixed expectations. On the upside, I love Danny Boyle, with his entire filmography stretching all the way back to Shallow Grave being something I will always love and cherish, and I love Micheal Fassbender, with his recent performance in Macbeth being one of my favourites of the year so far. So all in all, the signs were mixed, was Steve Jobs set to be a success in my own point of view after hearing of possible award ceremony attention heading its' way? Was Fassbender set to reel us in with his portrayal of Jobs and leave us wanting more by the end of it? After leaving the cinema my instant reaction to both questions was a sincere, yes, with Steve Jobs being one of the most entertainingly and highly engrossing written movies I have watched in recent memory.

Set in the form of three acts, each taking place before the launch of a major Jobs'-led product, Steve Jobs is a masterpiece in how, if written with extreme delicacy and understanding, a two-hour film set basically in one confined space, can become a work of art. Much like the Apple products themselves, Steve Jobs is a rife and intelligent beast, if rather fundamentally lacking in a sense of depth and scope, with Danny Boyles' latest relying heavily on the influence of Aaron Sorkin's script, a man best known for The West Wing and the simply brilliant The Social Network, a film which can draw a lot of similarities with Steve Jobs due to both having an extensive amount of the "walk and talk" nature of their scripts, a feat in which Sorkin is proudly famous for. Within the fundamental intelligence of Sorkin's script, is a heavy sense of theater and stage, giving room for the cast that includes the likes of Jeff Daniels, Seth Rogen, and particularly the one-two of Fassbender and Kate Winslet, room to go completely full on, adapting scenes of dialogue from Sorkin's script into a real sense of dramatic power and steel.

  Of course, Steve Jobs is not set to be for everyone, with its' heavy reliance on dialogue and concentration not entirely being set for mass appeal, whilst Fassbender's inhuman and simply cold portrayal of Jobs himself may be rather too alienating for some of the more humane audiences out there, yet for me personally, Steve Jobs exceeded my rather mid-level expectations twice-fold with its' flashy and intelligent script and rather brilliant performances of almost everyone involved, but with standout nods to particularly Fassbender, Winslet and Daniels, making Steve Jobs a real joyous surprise. Oscars, you may be right. Steve Jobs is a-coming.

Overall Score: 9/10

Film Review: The Martian

Life On Mars

When the first theatrical trailer for Ridley Scott's new sci-fi movie The Martian was released to the world a few months back, the two-minute clip was so spoiler-heavy in terms of some rather important plot points, you could have been easily forgiven for not choosing to pay to watch what essentially might have been a two and a half hour extension of the ideas highlighted in that particularly short amount of time, and when a following six-minute trailer for the film was released soon after the first, I completely blocked it in order to save some of the excitement for the film's release. If you were one of the many who chose to watch The Martian in its' six-minute release format, I can't imagine you could have been overly impressed by the complete package, with it, like Everest recently, suffering from the now-familiar problem that its' core shocks and storylines were overtly spoiled before the film's release in a vain attempt to sell the film to the masses via that of a trailer, something of which detracts the film from the excellence it could have possibly become.

When the NASA led Ares III manned mission to Mars is forced to retreat due to heavy storms and dangerous weather, astronaut and acclaimed botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is left for dead on the planet after being hit by debris, yet soon after, NASA realise Watney is in fact alive and well on the planet after surviving the accident and is now attempting to survive on Mars for the duration of time it takes until the next scheduled NASA mission lands. Using the wide range of expertise of both Watney and those back on Earth, the two combine in an attempt to accomplish the miracle of getting Watney back home, a destination all of 33 million miles away. Directed by the genius that is Ridley Scott, creator of two of my favourite films of all time in the form of Blade Runner and Alien, The Martian proves to be one of his better works in recent times but ultimately fails to touch the greatness of some of his most prestigious work whilst feeling indirectly and unfortunately familiar to the masterpiece that was last year's Interstellar, with the film even going so far as having some of the same actors (Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain) whilst having an unbelievably uncanny plot point that derives straight from last years' Nolan epic (Matt Damon being stranded alone on a alien planet).

Areas in which the film succeeds is the way in which Damon's portrayal of the lone astronaut Mark Watney is strongly handled with him neither passing into the realm of annoyance or boredom and instead being an interesting and well-developed character throughout, whilst the interaction of geeks and gargantuan space-filled characters on Earth was also highly enjoyable with a wide range of unexpected comedic content, aside from the inclusion of Donald Glover's Rich Purnell whose annoying ten-minute inclusion almost ruined every scene in which he was present. Excellent also was the presentation of the desperate wasteland that is Mars, with Dariusz Wolski's cinematography being on tip-top form when confronted with the planet's desolate surroundings. The main problem in my opinion with The Martian, aside from it being around twenty-minutes too long, was there was no real sense of threat for the character of Mark Watney, with it being blindingly obvious that his escape from Mars was set to be a successful venture, something of which was rather disappointing, whilst the sometimes cheesy script and dialogue (That Iron Man scene...Eugh) resulted in The Martian being a solid return for Sir Ridley, but nothing actually that spectacular on the face of it. 

Overall Score: 7/10