Steve Jobs: Film Review

Steve Jobs: Film Review

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Seth Rogen
Director: Danny Boyle

There's just something about Steve Jobs that continues to fascinate.

Books and an Ashton Kutcher movie and a planned Alex Gibney doco, the well is yet to dry up.

127 Hours and Slumdog Millionaire Director Danny Boyle is the latest to fall under his thrall in the slightly unusual bio-pic about the man, based on Walter Isaacson's biography.

Centring around three product launches in Jobs' life the film throws as much personal drama backstage as the kitchen sink will allow.

Beginning in 1984 with the Apple Macintosh's launch, then spiralling to 1988's ill-fated NeXT computer launch and ending up in 1998's unveiling of the iMac, it centres more around the arrogance of Steve Jobs and his treatment of those around him in what is essentially a three-act play with as much hubris as you'd expect from a Shakespeare play.

With a terrific score from Daniel Pemberton, this essentially stage set piece works very well for its first 2 sections before tying everything up neatly in a syrupy sentimental bow that appears to betray everything which went before. 

When it boils down to it, Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs is more about the pivotal relationship between Jobs and his daughter Lisa through the launches and very little else. Sure, other dramas such as Voice demos failing and Wozniak's quest for recognition for the Apple 2 team come and go but they all swirl around the vortex at the centre of Jobs' life.

Fassbender's never anything short of commanding as Jobs

He makes sure that the arrogance and seething inability to act like a human are front and centre of this portrayal. There's never anything less than an unlikeable man on the screen - and despite Rogen's humanising Wozniak trying to get him to see the bigger picture and focus on the people, Fassbender's Jobs is an aloof dictator, caught up in his own delusions of grandeur and single-mindedly determined to get to his destination or ensure his machinations are personally successful. 

Which is potentially why the third act's resolution during the iMac launch jars so badly as it races to ensure a happier ending - bizarrely, his arc is never earned and despite the performance of all involved, never one that calls for cinematic closure. (One of Steve Jobs' more pressing problems is the fact the film feels cold and emotionally aloof).

Winslet's empathetic as Joanna, his much-maligned work wife and effective spin doctor; Daniels is nothing more than an impressive analyst of Jobs' behaviour as the CEO of Apple John Sculley who appears from time to time and Rogen throws some dramatic weight behind Wozniak and gets to the nub of the apparent love and daily frustration with the man (in fact, it's never looked like a truer fraternal relationship than on this screen).

While Sorkin's trademark dialogue is in place (and lots of walking and talking), it never feels as fully accomplished as perhaps it might and if anything, suffers from an over-polish and the fact situations have to manifest themselves at the most inopportune moments. This is not always a film that feels like anything more than a hyper-real collision of coincidence, a coming together of events for dramatic gain rather than naturalistic purposes.

And yet, there are moments when the human condition comes to the fore and events play out in those traditional Sorkin tropes - a major downfall of a character is choreographed to soaring scores and constant rain; it's unmistakably and undeniably a Sorkin joint from beginning to end. (And having written Mark Zuckerberg in the Social Network, his second look at a major character from the zeitgeist).

As Jobs himself remarks, "I play the orchestra" and it's a role that Danny Boyle fulfills admirably as the director in this movie. Events naturally build to a crescendo of chaos, a whirlwind of melodrama and a discourse of dialogue, but Boyle elegantly manipulates them all into place to ensure the biopic is elevated from the usual fare.

The Transporter Refueled - DVD Review

The Transporter Refueled - DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent


The Transporter is synonymous with Jason Statham.

His relative charm and charisma, plus his utter dedication to kicking some serious bottom, meant that you were able to forgive the wildly ludicrous plots on offer and set your brain in neutral until the end.

Sadly, there's nary a Stath in sight in this attempt to restart the franchise - instead it falls toGame of Thrones' Daario Naharis aka Ed Skrein to suit up and fill his shoes. Skrein (soon to be seen in Deadpool) plays Frank, back in 2010, who finds himself caught up in a revenge plot on the French Riviera. That's been kicked off by four prostitutes who kidnap Frank's dad to help him bring down a Russian gang boss who once forced them into his employment.

And that's really it for plot.

But you've never come to a Transporter film for a cerebral offering - it's about the fights, the action and the car chases.

So, it's sad to say that Delamarre brings absolutely nothing new to the table, but employs every cliche in the book to bring it all to life.

With parts resembling an extended advert for an Audi, complete with slow-mo shots of the pristine vehicle, and with such a predilection with Skrein's suit, it's nothing short of cliched and soulless. It doesn't help that Skrein's relatively charisma-free, delivering his whispered Cockney lines through sunken cheeks and reverting to smirking (and at times, looking like Nicholas Hoult's older, more stubbly brother).

The whole thing resembles something short of a mess too, with only a smattering of fight scenes giving you something to amuse - Skrein channels Jackie Chan at one point using a series of drawers to vex some assailants; it's the only real scene that shows any kind of creative flair as it treads through its ludicrously logic free scenario for its fights. Equally, a sequence where the car takes out fire hydrants in a pivoting circle to maximum effect is crisply executed - unlike the rest where the camera swoops in, swirls around and pulls out again (but only after the Audi's been caught in all its glory).

There's an attempt to set up some kind of father / son bonding with Frank Sr spending most of the film jibing his son as Junior and trying to channel a Harrison Ford / Sean Connery in Indiana Jones vibe, but it's flat in its delivery and tedious in its continuing execution (though fans of the series may claim giving Frank some more backstory helps flesh him out).

The problem with the Transporter Refuelled is that it's yet another soulless reboot, that feels formulaic and is going through the motions. Granted, some teen boys may enjoy the shots of scantily clad women gyrating for their Russian mobster bosses, but this cacophony of fast cuts and slow mo shots loses its charm within 15 minutes.

There's one moment in the film where Martin says "Pretty soon, they won't need people like me" - I'd politely suggest that based on the utterly pointless reboot, The Transporter Refuelled has already outlived its use - and needs to be permanently shelved because right now, it's running on empty.

Rating:

Sicario: Blu Ray Review

Sicario: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

Seared in unease, blasted in a sense of dread and swept up in suspense, director Denis Villeneuve continues his cinematic path to darkness with Sicario, a blistering drug cartel drama that also once again indulges his predilection for bodies within walls stories.

In themes that seem remarkably redolent of this year's NZIFF docoCartel Land (even down to one of the Mexicans who bears more than a passing resemblance to Dr Jose Mireles), Emily Blunt plays Kate Macer, an FBI field agent who's co-opted to a task force aimed at cracking the cartels whose insidious grip is growing on both sides of the border.

Headed up by Josh Brolin's Matt and the equally enigmatic Alejandre (a practically-wolf-like Benicio del Toro) Kate finds answers to her questions not forthcoming and her faith tested as the operation continues.

To say more about Sicario (the Mexican word for hitman) is to betray its sense of unease and its paranoia that anyone is a potential target or perpetrator.

As previously demonstrated in earlier flicks, Incendies,  Enemy and Prisoners, Villeneuve has a way of seriously ramping up the unease and atmospherics and in this latest, he makes no effort to ease that off, constructing sequences that are nerve-jangling to say the least. As the sense of uncertainty increases, a crashing, low-rumbling and dissonant Johann Johannson score adds to the atmospherics substantially and pushes you further to the edge of your seat.

If a Mexican based sub-plot about a man named Silvio is less successful than it should be (and reminiscent of the story of the American on the border that swirls around in Cartel Land), Blunt's eager agent, who's clearly out of her depth given the grand scale of events and the reach of the cartels more than makes up for it in the initial stages of Sicario. Her place in wider scheme of things and the jurisdictional issues and politics is never overplayed but is all the more powerful for it. Though, admittedly, towards the back half of the film, she seems to be a little underwritten and drifts disappointingly away in the final mix.

However, it's del Toro's almost muted and dialled down performance as Alejandro that remains in the mind long after the lights have gone up. A coiled and be-suited del Toro even utters at one point "This is a land of wolves now" with no hint of irony or sense of which side he's on. However, with his semi-closed eyes and on-point performance, and with the constant guessing as to his motives, he, along with Brolin's enigmatically charismatic turn propel the central mystery as we're kept in the dark as much as Emily Blunt's character is.

Villeneuve and his script-writer Taylor Sheridan delight in holding their cards close to their collective chests, with answers only forthcoming in a shocking final third-act denouement that rings as true as it does horrific. Using some stunning aerial vistas and location shots of the deserts and roads as well as ramping up the tension (one border crossing is particularly nerve-wracking), the pair have concocted a slick tale that never stops to lecture merely demonstrate how out of depth some people are as they seek revenge - and it also stops short of delivering commentary on what is, no doubt, an escalating and insidiously growing problem with the war on drugs and the cartels on the borders.

Gripping and thrilling, the intensity of the occasionally bleak but intoxicating Sicario is nigh-on asphyxiating from beginning to end. It's unrelenting in its release as it inveigles its way under your skin and, thanks to its stunning execution, it's one of the best of the year.

Rating:

Everest: Blu Ray Review

Everest: Blu Ray Review

"The mountain will have the last word."

With this year's Sherpa playing at the New Zealand International Film Festival and the recent Nepal earthquake foremost in Kiwi minds, Everest can certainly lay claim to being topical.

It's the story of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, when, during a busy climbing season and in the impatience of the early days of adventure tourism, tragedy struck resulting in Kiwi mountain guide Rob Hall and two others forfeiting their lives.

However, despite the sensitive touches made to Everest's script throughout, and the lengths gone to by the writers to add shades to Hall's evidently nice guy persona, Everest is a disaster movie through and through, steeped in the traditions and tropes of many a film of its ilk before it.

Crowding on the mountain with players, 2 Guns and Contraband  director Baltasar Kormakur surrounds Jason Clarke's Hall with relatively cardboard characters and paints them with the broadest brush strokes possible (including some terrible attempts at the New Zealand accent - largely from Emily Watson, who channels South African in parts and seems to be challenging Ben Kingsley's attempts in Ender's Game). It's disaster movie 101 when broken down in to the sum of its parts - time spent to introduce characters and have them dashed cruelly by nature's force.

And yet, with sweeping stereoscopic 3D cinematic vistas conveying the scale of the mountain and some stunning shots (a peek out onto the mountain in the dark of midnight when all the stars are out is nothing short of magnificent), Everest summits the limitations of its characters to produce a piece that's emotionally draining in parts when the storm rolls in - and which almost feels intrusive in its ultimate finale and execution.

But aside from nature, Everest really peaks with Clarke's stoic performance.

His grounded and human Hall is a masterpiece of subtlety, an all-round good guy who collects rubbish from the mountain, while offering a mailman who wants to summit the peak a discount on his third attempt and a guy who when the chips are down puts everyone else first. Clarke's take on Hall works at an emotional level and transcends the written limitations of a slower first half that takes time to only build on a few character traits of those in the ensemble around Hall (witness Hawkes' mailman, Brolin's Texan swagger, Gyllenhaal's laid-back mountain guide to name but a few).

If the disaster comes in too quickly and the climbers are lost within a swirl of coats and goggles, perhaps that's symptomatic of conditions on a mountain - but it could also be some of the limitations of a script that's spent time building an ensemble of characters and which doesn't quite know what to do with them all (eg the South Africans who are so vocally against the climbers but who disappear) and there's certainly no shortage of cliched language and exhortations throughout. Wisely though, this Everest steers clear of apportioning blame for the disaster, preferring instead to signpost moments throughout.

However, there's no denying a feeling that these are real people who died on the mountain and who suffered, so moments of queasiness and unease pervaded my viewing of the film - particularly given that the movie is a Hollywood piece that proffers little hope come the end. But the palpable sense of emotion when the end finally comes is tangible and there won't be many who leave Everest feeling nothing - occasionally though, a little more subtlety, a tighter script and a little less by-the-numbers disaster flick would have benefited this already tense and occasionally coldly claustrophobic film greatly.

Rating:

Newstalk ZB - Reviewing The Danish Girl, Spotlight

Newstalk ZB - Reviewing The Danish Girl, Spotlight

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-spotlight-and-the-danish-girl/

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-spotlight-and-the-danish-girl/

The Finest Hours: Film Review

The Finest Hours: Film Review

Cast: Chris Pine, Holliday Grainger, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Eric Bana
Director: Craig Gillespie

It begins with barely a hiss and ends in hardly a roar.

The Finest Hours, based on a true story and from the director of Lars and The Real Girl and Million Dollar Arm, is a muted tale that hardly gets out of dry dock.

In February 1952, Massachussets, and one of the worst storms to hit the East Coast hits, ripping an oil tanker in half.

However, for Coastguard Bernie Webber (Star Trek star Chris Pine), there's a storm of a more emotional intensity raging closer to home as he heads on a date with Miriam for the first time. But when the ocean-bound problems get bigger, Webber and three colleagues are despatched from the Coast Guard to try and save the 30 strong crew of the stranded tanker as the storm gets worse...

The Finest Hours is clearly aiming to recapture some of the intensity of The Perfect Storm from back in 2000 with its digital FX and story of communities under threat.

However, what emerges is as muddied and choppy as the water from the East Coast.

With little time (bizarrely over the 2 hour run time) to create characters to care for, the crew of the tanker are simply no more than once-over-lightly stereotypes that have barely time to register before they're plunged into danger.

Casey Affleck's headstrong and calculating Ray Sybert clashes with the others on board the tanker as they believe he's more wedded to the ship than them; Outlander star Graham McTavish brings his salty sea-dog countenance to bear towards the start of the film before fading away.

Back on land others fare equally unevenly; Grainger's Miriam oscillates wildly from strong-willed woman to damsel in distress and while she captures some of the glamour of the 50s, she barely gains in screen stature despite her presence. Pine also fares unevenly with the depth of the writing and over-simplifications so it's left to a few facial tics and shaking hands to show his state of mind.

Along with the usual hoary on-the-water cliches and some truly atrocious 3D that simply serves to muddy the experience rather than enhance it, leading to scenes on the water looking nothing but a muddled mess, The Finest Hours is, unfortunately, anything but Gillespie's.

Hints of a better story float occasionally and frustratingly to the surface (a failed rescue that ripped apart the community years back, lives torn asunder by living on a coast are just two themes that causes ripples rather than waves) and the inspiration Disney wants us to feel in this ultimate denouement is lost after a sea of dour countenances and a predilection for changing scenery when the action is underway prove fatal to this sea-set tale.

Rating:

Straight Outta Compton: Blu Ray Review

Straight Outta Compton: Blu Ray Review

Like any good record, Straight Outta Compton boasts both an exciting A side and a bloated B side.

The biopic of the formation of seminal 1980s rap group NWA is all street and all bluster as it predominantly depicts the rise and fall of Dr Dre, Eazy E and Ice Cube. Starting in the ghettos of Compton, the film sees Eazy E (Jason Mitchell) teaming up with Dre (Hawkins) and Cube (Ice Cube's real life son O'Shea Jackson Jr) to try and break their version of rap through the clubs that were more concerned with R'n'B - or as one club promoter puts it early on, "pussy, not pistols".

Igniting a simmering rage that underlies the streets thanks to the continual harassment of the African American community by the mainly white LA police force and against a backdrop of their own personal experiences and the Rodney King beating, NWA rises to the top.

But, along the way, tensions simmer within the group when it's discovered that Eazy E and manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti, in his second record svengali role of the year after the brilliant Love and Mercy) appear to be making more money than the rest of the band members. Most put out about this is Ice Cube, whose lyrics arguably contributed to the band's rapid ascent....


There's no denying that Straight Outta Compton is a searing biopic and depiction of the social times and climes within an America that's continually ripped by race.

But there's also no denying there's a powerful film here that soars in its first half as it charts the rise and documents the energy and electricity of the performances of the band before it becomes bogged down. The second half of the film is mired by a myriad of plot strands and too many piecemeal threads being tied together, as well as drama that's not particularly dramatic as it negotiates contract disputes with Heller et al and the appearances of the likes of Snoop Dogg. It also suffers from a melodramatic soundtrack that crashes and underscores very heavily every dramatic beat in the back half.

Equally, there are tantalising hints of life outside the group for the main trio, specifically Dre, whose family tensions are hinted at with his wife but frustratingly thrown to one side, almost as if they had forgotten about Dre. And don't even get me started on the treatment of the mainly topless sexualised women within (yet another barb to be thrown at rap music in general)

Thankfully, some incredible performances from O'Jackson Jr, Hawkins and Mitchell give Straight Outta Compton its heart, humour and braggadacio. O'Jackson Jr in particular feels like you're watching a young Ice Cube, thanks largely to the son looking like the father - and he brings an energy to the early performances, which galvanise and unite the crowd, while ignoring some of the real controversy NWA's lyrics brought to the fore.

It's probably no surprise that with Dre and Cube being producers on the film that it's somewhat of a whitewash, glossing over the meatier parts of their career, the debate provoked by their rap and while the tensions with the police give an insight into the simmering feelings of the time, it's never anything more than black and white.

When Straight Outta Compton concentrates on the electric performances of NWA and their effect on a trodden on society, it's nothing short of searing and tremendously successful - it's just unfortunately that in the best part of 2 and a half hours, the energy lags and the second half of the film is like a B-side that you'd quite happily skip to go back to the A side again.

Rating: