Biopic

Steve Jobs

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  • Title: Steve Jobs
  • IMDb: link

Steve JobsSteve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) has been the subject of several movies and documentaries in recent years. Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay, based on the book by Walter Isaacson, isn’t your typical biopic. Rather than a look through the man’s life, Steve Jobs is instead a series of conversations between Jobs and the people closest to him behind-the-scenes at various product launches. Given how much has been covered about the man’s career, life, and personality the film’s choice skips over well-covered events such as the creation of Apple computers to focus on Jobs’ continual struggle to deal with the people closest to him.

Filling in gaps with montages and dialogue, the script focuses in on the Apple Macintosh launch in 1984, the NeXT Computer launch in 1988 following Jobs’ removal from Apple, and the launch of the iMac following Jobs return to Apple in 1998. Through these events we see Jobs’ relationships with longtime assistant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), and Chrisann (Katherine Waterston) and Lisa Brennan (played by Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine).

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American Sniper

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  • Title: American Sniper
  • IMDb: link

American SniperAdapted from the autobiographical story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood offers an old fashioned character study with strong patriotic leanings and not as much introspection as one might ultimately like. Bradley Cooper is terrific in the starring role of a soldier obsessed with serving his country and protecting his brothers-in-arms overseas while struggling with even the idea of life back home with his wife (Sienna Miller). The result is an engaging, if incomplete, story as Eastwood careful cuts away anything that doesn’t quite fit Kyle’s heroic narrative including an ending that leaves much unsaid.

Following the soldier’s own interests, the scenes that take place during Kyle’s four tours of Iraq which made him the most lethal sniper in U.S. Military history work better than the limited amount of time we witness him back home. While acknowledging the character’s hero complex, Eastwood mostly shies away from how the length of Kyle’s service effected him emotionally choosing instead to celebrate (one might even argue glorify) the man’s war record. Eastwood tells the story he wants well, even if the result begins to feel a bit too much like pro-military propaganda.

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The Theory of Everything

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  • Title: The Theory of Everything
  • IMDb: link

The Theory of EverythingTheoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is undeniably one of the brightest minds of our time, a fact that The Theory of Everything struggles to prove while being far more interested in the man’s personal life than his professional breakthroughs. The result is a strong romantic drama between Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) and his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) that is far less insightful of the man’s work.

Dumbing down Hawking’s theories for the audience, the script by Anthony McCarten based on Jane Hawking‘s book spoon-feeds us extremely basic doses of Hawkings theories without ever examining the work that went into studying or proving them. Instead the ideas seem to come from nowhere, take little effort to prove, and are instantly lauded. Does that sound like the cut-throat world of academia to you?

More concerned with showcasing the effects and unique challenges presented to Stephen and Jane after his diagnosis of motor neuron disease, The Theory of Everything succeeds far better here getting the most of its stars (even if the film, intentionally or not, turns Jane into a martyr).

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Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

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  • Title: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
  • IMDB: link

Mandela: Long Walk to FreedomAdapted by sreeenwriter William Nicholson, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is a solid biopic based on the autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Idris Elba). After a brief montage of his life as a child and a glimpse at his role as an attorney in Johannesburg, the film focuses primarily on the events that led to his involvement with the ANC as a leading voice in the fight against apartheid (without getting too specific about his exact role when the organization moved away from nonviolent resistance) and his eventual imprisonment of 27 years for his crimes.

The highlight of the film is the performances, particularly Elba taking on such a daunting role and Naomie Harris as Mandela’s wife Winnie who we see faced several of her own hardships. During the early part of Mandela’s imprisonment the film’s focus momentarily shifts to Winnie’s various battles against the government including her own incarceration. The film introduces the idea of how Nelson and Winnie both react differently to their situations but, as with other aspects of the story, the theme is presented but never fully developed.

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Saving Mr. Banks

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  • Title: Saving Mr. Banks
  • IMDB: link

Saving Mr. BanksWritten by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, and based off pieces of the life of P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), Saving Mr. Banks is half of a really good film. The story is broken into flashbacks of Travers’ childhood and decades later when Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) was attempting to buy the rights from the author’s children’s books to make Mary Poppins.

Although there is much to enjoy in the later Disney years (despite the oversimplification of Travers’ stubbornness) the film gets bogged down in the weight of the constant flashbacks which may offer a peek at the real story that first created Mary Poppins on the page but ignores much of the life story of the woman who wrote her.

The scenes involving the young Travers’ () drunken but imaginative father (Colin Farrell), troubled mother (Ruth Wilson), and larger-than-life aunt (Rachel Griffiths) fall in the realm of Dinsey-ized melancholy, but the scenes in California between the equally stubborn Disney and Travers provide its magic.

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