In this Ashton Kutcher biopic, we find Steve Jobs to be abrasive, rude, maniacal, and an all around asshole. And yes, those are his GOOD features. We start off with Steve and fellow Apple alumni hanging out and coming up with the idea for something called a personal computer. Right off the bat Steve demands perfection and summarily fires anyone who gets in his way. He makes the classic creative genius mistake of forming a corporation and giving away control of his company by not putting butts he owns in those seats on the Board. It’s no surprise when he…
Category: movie review
The Great Gatsby
There are some books that should never be made into films. The Great Gatsby has always been one of them. The Great Gatsby is a short novel of 136 pages, the film starring Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, etc, etc, etc is a long film clocking in at 2 and half hours. The opening sentences of the book see our narrator Nick remembering advice from his father-“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” In the film version, Nick’s…
About Time
Time travel stories are often more fantasy than science fiction and so it is in About Time. Our hero turns 21 and his father takes him aside and says-‘Men in our family can travel through time.’ Oh, right-and that’s it for any explanation as to how or why this might be so. We then spend the rest of the film watching him bounce around in his own past, changing anything and everything that strikes his fancy, but mostly concentrating on finding the love of his life. His fathers sets a few ground rules, he can’t go forward in time and…
Searching for Sugar Man
Image that Elvis only recorded two albums and they were both flops. Everyone forgot about him. Except for a small country on the other side of the world, where his music takes on mythic qualities and everyone knows the words to all his songs. You should go and watch Searching for Sugar Man now, any more hints about the story will be a major spoiler to the film. Searching for Sugar Man is a documentary that tells the story of a singer named Rodriguez who recorded two albums that were flops. Except in South Africa, where everyone knows the words…
Upstream Color
I recently found a site called ScriptShadow and they have a list of the Ten Worst and Best Movies of 2013. I’m always interested in the movies that makes these kinds of lists as they seldom agree with my own ideas about the best and worst films of the year. Upstream Color was the Number 2 Worst Film, right behind The Host. Shane Carruth’s other movie was the time travel story Primer and like Primer, Upstream Color is not an easy movie to understand. Unlike Primer, Upstream Color looks more like a movie with a budget. Is it one of…
The Hobbit:The Desolation of Smaug
Peter Jackson makes his cameo appearance in the first few frames of The Hobbit:The Desolation of Smaug. After that Jackson takes his time dragging out the tale of a Hobbit, a Wizard, and a collection of random and interchangeable dwarfs. There is a tiny but more character development on the dwarf front, but I still can’t recall any of their names-even with one of them falling in love with an Elf. I can’t help but think of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof-a fish may love a bird, but where would they build a home? I have to think that…
Catching Fire
We open with our hero Katniss brooding in the woods surrounded by snow and emptiness. She is soon joined by her one true love, sort of, Gale. They talk about the hard times in the kingdom and how they should run off into the wilds, the sooner the better. Katniss heads home to the Victor’s Village, where she now lives with her two fellow Victors. It’s a surprisingly run down place, though it is nicer than the rest of District 12. Katniss and Peeta head off to take a victory lap around the 12 Districts, where they end up stirring…
Ender’s Game
Orson Scott Card wrote Ender’s Game in 1985 and it was pretty much an instant Sci Fi classic. It’s been a long time since I read the book, but the film seems pretty close to what I remember. The main difference being that Ender’s brother and sister have much smaller roles in the film than they did in the novel. Ender’s Game is the story of a military academy which trains children to do battle using complex computer simulations. This is necessary because, well, I’m not sure why it’s necessary. Something about the youthful mind. At any rate our boy…
Lovelace
Linda Lovelace was the stage name of a woman who said she wouldn’t let her seventeen days in the pornography business define her life. So naturally, the film Lovelace is all about those seventeen days and how they defined her life. Deep Throat was a porn movie made back in the good old days when you could see X rated films in local theaters and the people who made them liked to pretend they were real movies. Deep Throat is one of the first porn films to have a plot, such as it is. According to Lovelace, Deep Throat made…
Gravity
Bad things happen in space. Especially in movies. In Gravity Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are busy on a routine mission when they run into a bit of a problem. A couple of tons of space debris is working it’s way around the earth every ninety minutes, and it randomly destroys everything not in direct contact with Sandra Bullock. Gravity is a damned good movie. The pacing is such that time seems to fly by as George and Sandra float and drift and tumble in the void. There are time limits, such as running out of air and running out…