Barbie: A Review - Pink Bubblegum Bullshit

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Underwhelming and disappointing. If you’re desperate to see it I’d say save your money and wait until it hits a streaming service.

I had no intention of seeing Barbie, the new blockbuster about the iconic Mattel doll starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, because I didn’t HAVE to see Barbie. You see, when I worked as a cultural critic for RT I had to watch and write about a lot of stuff I wasn’t that interested in simply because other people were interested in it which meant that it was culturally relevant. Well, I no longer work for RT so I no longer have to do that.

So, when Barbie came along, I just thought, due to the film’s obvious cultural politics and the fact that the film’s writer/director is Greta Gerwig – someone whose work I’ve never thought much of, it wasn’t for me so I’d skip this new battle in the endless and tiresome culture war.

But then Barbie, due to its relentless and highly effective marketing campaign, became an undeniable phenomenon, hauling in over a billion dollars at the box office and igniting a fan frenzy not seen at cineplexes in years, so I thought maybe I should see it. And then my wife said she wanted to see it…and whatever Lola wants…Lola gets! My thinking was, if people are going so nuts for this film - then maybe it’s worth seeing.

I went to a 10:30 AM screening on a Tuesday morning. Barbie had been in theaters for over two weeks at this point and still my screening here in mundane Middle America was totally sold out. Barbie is, like the recent Taylor Swift tour, satiating a primal need among our collective feminine culture for a massive communal “event”. An example of this eventizing impulse was that the theater I attended, which admittedly is not particularly big, looked like a sea of Pepto Bismol as it was overwhelmingly packed with pink wearing middle aged women (including one wearing just a big pink t-shirt…which didn’t cover nearly enough of her nether regions as it should have!) as well as teenage and pre-pubescent girls donning a ton of pink…along with some rather unfortunate looking pink-clad teen boys imprisoned in the friend zone desperate to win favor with their girl crushes with whom they were attending the screening.

My hope in seeing Barbie was that it was good and that I’d like it – I wasn’t the least bit interested in hate watching it. I fully expected to dislike the de rigueur girl power politics – something which I find to be pitiful and pathetic, but I hoped to like the film despite its predictable politics…something which I often do (for example my review of Promising Young Woman) if for no other reason than my own personal politics are so unorthodox.

The opening scene was a perfect example of what I was hoping for…as the film opens with a glorious homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Gerwig replaces Kubrick’s monkeys with little girls playing with baby dolls and the mysterious monolith is replaced with a towering Margot Robbie as Barbie. While I was off-put by the visual of little girls smashing babies (even if they are dolls) in reaction to their newfound Barbie evolution, I still nodded in approval at this brilliant bit of moviemaking and it filled me with great anticipation for what followed.

And then I watched the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there as the film meandered aimlessly through a convoluted yet corporate cookie-cutter plot, allergic to profundity or purpose, and never even remotely approaching the genius of its opening.

In totality Barbie is an underwhelming, disappointing, cheap, shoddy, shitty, bland, boring, corporate money-grab wrapped in a vacant, vapid and vacuous feminist manifesto. In other words, Barbie is a poorly made version of exactly the thing it often pretends to belittle and/or satirize.

The film begins in Barbieland, a matriarchal utopia devoid of not only male power but babies or children….even the lone pregnant Barbie is exiled to the outskirts of girl boss heaven. The bit of the film initially set in Barbieland is ever-so-slightly amusing at first and then it gets old very, very fast. There’s a dance number in this Barbieland sequence that is supposed to be fun and funny but that is so anemic and tiresome as to be astounding. The low point is when Gerwig uses a ridiculously cliched record scratch to inject reality into the phony festivities. Yawn.

The final two-thirds of the film feature Barbie venturing to the “real world” – which is nothing like the actual real world, and the “real world” venturing in to Barbieland. All of it is sloppy but the scenes in the “real world”, in particular, are a total storytelling and cinematic shit show devoid of any redeeming cinematic qualities. The Barbie in the real-world, fish-out-of-water stuff shockingly doesn’t even muster a minimal amount of comedy.

To be fair, I did laugh out loud a few times during Barbie, all thanks to the aggressively amusing Ryan Gosling who absolutely crushes it as the desperate and dim-witted Ken. Gosling is destined to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his unbreakable and unshakeable performance as Barbie’s platonic boy toy.

Speaking of the Oscars, it’s 100% guaranteed that there will be a Barbie-themed musical number at this year’s Oscar ceremony. You can absolutely bet your life on that. You can also count on Mattel to turn the success of the Barbie movie into a Broadway musical…which is an eerily similar concept to the hysterically funny Marvel musical featured in the Disney Plus series Hawkeye…except Mattel won’t be making the Barbie musical ironically.

Margot Robbie is ridiculously gorgeous and perfect as Barbie but there isn’t much there, there. Robbie’s physical perfection is all she needs to play this part and when she’s asked to do more than that her acting is undercut by a really abysmal script that is chock full of cringe, freshman level women’s studies diatribes that ring hollow and feel forced making Barbie feel less human than she already is.

Besides the glorious Gosling, the other supporting performances in Barbie are shockingly devoid of life.

Who knew that both Kate McKinnon and Will Ferrell could not only be so unfunny, but so bland and so forgettable? You’d be hard pressed to find two more energized comedic actors but on Barbie they seem constrained to the point of comatose.

Somewhat surprising is that for a movie full of Barbies, there’s only one attractive one in the bunch – Margot Robbie…and she is certainly very attractive despite the sneaky and obtuse internet marketing campaign prior to the film’s release arguing that she isn’t. I have no problem with a Barbie movie featuring the vast diversity of the Barbie doll collection…which means we get a black Barbie, a fat Barbie, a wheelchair Barbie, a trans-Barbie and so on…but what befuddles me is why do all these Barbies have to be so “beauty-impaired” and visually unappealing?

The rest of the supporting cast are all interchangeable, dull and completely forgettable. Issa Rae and Simu Liu are like two sides of the same charisma-deficient coin. Neither one is remotely interesting or likeable.

Michael Cera as Allan feels like he’s in an entirely different movie…maybe because the script he has to work with is so incoherent and idiotic.

America Ferrera plays Gloria, a mom and Mattel employee, and she is utterly abysmal. She does get to have the big monologue in the movie which begins with “it’s literally impossible to be a woman…” and goes downhill from there. This monologue has middle-aged women across the nation pumping their fists in the air like gold chain and muscle shirt wearing Guidos at a Rocky movie when the Italian Stallion gets off the canvas and beats the shit out of the villain du jour. But here’s the thing…I understand the perspective behind the “it’s literally impossible to be a woman” monologue, but the fact is it isn’t “literally” impossible to be a woman…billions of women do it every minute of every day. Yes, it is no doubt difficult to be a woman due to the constant contradictions one must navigate…but you know what else is equally difficult…being a man. The obstacles and difficulties one must face and overcome as a woman are no harder than the ones men must overcome, they’re just different.

Life is hard for human beings, and for modern day feminists to claim empowerment by perpetually play the victim all while demonizing men, is pretty repugnant and frankly counterproductive.

Barbie also does what our awful culture has normalized which is to conflate masculinity with toxic masculinity, a perilous proposition since it is unquestionably masculine men that carved out a safe space in a dangerous world where women are free to make insipid and insidious films about how awful men are.

My wife, a very, very independent, powerful and, dare I say it, feminist woman, turned to me after the film and the first thing she said was that she found it to be “damaging”. As the mother of a young son, she felt the film sent a negative message to girls and woman not just about the nature of men and boys but about what it means to be a girl/woman, so much so that it depressed her and made her fear for the future. And I must say, I completely concur with her astute observations.

I’ve heard it said that Barbie is Black Panther for white women, and that is very true as Black Panther was an overhyped, shitty movie too that became super successful because seeing it was an act of cultural-political virtue signaling.

Other movies have somewhat captured the cultural political zeitgeist in the same way that Barbie has but from a different angle. For example, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper was a terrible movie but flag waving numbskulls flocked to see and support it because it reinforced their patriotic – or rather anti-liberal, bona fides. That American Sniper was a God-awful movie regardless of its politics was irrelevant as all the flag-wavers loved it even before it started – they loved it simply because it existed…just like the pink clad buffoons are enamored by Barbie regardless of how obviously bad it is.

Sound of Freedom is another movie that is a virtue signal movie currently in theatres. Sound of Freedom is about the scourge of child trafficking and has become a cause celebre for anti-libtard right wingers and as a result has done exceedingly well at the box office – raking in over a hundred million dollars. No doubt the crossover of American Sniper fans with Sound of Freedom fans is enormous. I’ve not seen Sound of Freedom…mostly because I just assume it is poorly made…but I can plainly see that it’s a virtue signal movie just like Barbie.

Another film I thought of when watching Barbie was, ironically enough, The Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson’s 2004 film smashed box office records for an independent film and made him something like half a billion dollars since he financed it himself. Gibson wisely marketed the film directly to churches and church groups and it became a cultural signifier among Bush loving right wingers.

The marketing of The Passion of the Christ was remarkable, as, just like Barbie, everyone was talking about it even if they hadn’t seen it. Barbie’s marketing was brilliant because it removed the film’s politics from the campaign, made it seem as if it were for adults AND kids (it’s not for kids!) and it was absolutely everywhere. You couldn’t escape the Barbie marketing machine, and frankly still can’t. That the marketing campaign has succeeded in making Barbie a cultural phenomenon doesn’t diminish the fact that the movie is garbage.

Truth be told I’ve never understood the critical love for Greta Gerwig’s films. Gerwig’s 2017 film Lady Bird was so overrated as to be astonishing. Critics adored the film yet I found it to be painfully thin and embarrassingly amateurish. It seemed to me that Gerwig, much like Jordan Peele who came out with Get Out in the same year (2017), was cashing in on the angry liberal political hysteria of the post-Trump election and were being elevated due to their race and gender, not their talent. Having seen both of Gerwig’s and Peele’s films since 2017 has only reinforced my belief regarding their lack of talent and skill and the absurd critical love they’ve received.

As for Barbie, I’ve had a rather interesting perspective on the film as I’ve watched from a distance as the usual suspects on both the left and right instinctively and reflexively loved or hated the film. Having finally seen the movie I can say that people who love it, who when pressed on its numerous shortcomings all say the same thing in defense of it, namely that “it’s fun!”, are delusional dupes and dopes. On the flip side, many of the critics reflexively hating it are so stuck on its politics that they don’t even care to examine the filmmaking….which feels less delusional than just plain disingenuous.

As for me, I didn’t like Barbie for the sole reason that Barbie isn’t a good movie.  Barbie isn’t funny and it isn’t interesting. That the film pretends to be rebellious, if not revolutionary, in its messaging, but then spews out the most corporate-friendly and approved, pedantic neo-feminist pablum, wrapped in a cavalcade of visually listless, dramatically lifeless, comedically flaccid scenes, makes it feel like watching a pink-hued Human Resources film for corporate employees to learn the new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office rules.

The bottom line is that the masses being so enamored of Barbie says considerably less about the quality of the movie than it does about the easily manipulated morons populating our world and their astonishing level of group-think and gullibility, as well as the sorry state of our society and cinema.

Unfortunately, so few people nowadays are self-aware or introspective enough to resist massive marketing campaigns like the one around Barbie, which brainwashed otherwise intelligent people into not only mindlessly devouring this odious, rancid corporate pink taco but declaring they love it. I too succumbed and took a bite of the gigantic, rancid corporate pink taco that is Barbie, but to my minimal credit I at least am not foolish enough to don an oversized pink t-shirt sans pants and shriek “yummy…how fun!”

In conclusion, it is literally impossible for me to recommend Barbie.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming...to Shoot a Movie in Space!

To: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, RAF Exchange Officer

From: Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, U.S. Space Force

CC: Dr. Strangelove – The War Room, General Buck Turgidson – Joints Chiefs of Staff, President Merkin Muffley – President of the United States of America.

Dear Captain Mandrake –

I regret to inform you that the Russians have once again beat us to the punch in the space race, this time by shooting the first feature film in space, and I’m deeply concerned that all American’s precious bodily fluids are now in grave danger.

Let me explain, Mandrake. For my entire life as a proud American, I was dutifully marinated in establishment media propaganda that long ago indoctrinated me with the holy belief that all things Russian are nefarious and evil. It was through this lens of star-spangled truth that I read the news that Russia had successfully sent actress Yulia Peresild (Battle of Sevastopol – 2015) and director Klim Shipenko to the International Space Station in order to shoot a feature length film in space, something never before accomplished.

What makes this space-based movie shoot for the film Challenge, which tells the tale of an emergency mission to the international space station to tend to an ailing cosmonaut, all the more villainous, is that it beat Hollywood legend Tom Cruise in the moviemaking-space-race, as the Mission Impossible star had hoped to be the first to pull off the stunt with the help of our friends at NASA and SpaceX.

Russians have long been scoring firsts when it comes to the space race against us, Mandrake, as they put the first satellite (Sputnik), first dog (Laika), first person (Yuri Gagarin) and first woman (Valentina Tereshkova) into space and also did the first space-walk (Alexei Leonov), but none of those victories came at the expense of American icon Tom Cruise.

Yes, we did beat those commie bastards (and we all know they’re still commies because a commie leopard can never change its spots!) by having Stanley Kurbick shoot a fake “moon landing” in Burbank…oops…that’s the pure-grain alcohol talking, please disregard that last statement. What I meant to say is that at least we beat those Rooskies to the moon. But still, Mandrake, I can’t help but feel that we’ve taken a hit on this one.

To add to my aggravation the New York Times is reporting that Dmitri Rogozin, head of the Russian state space agency Roscosmos, “hopes the mission will make ‘a truly serious work of art and a whole new develop of the promotion of space technologies’, in order to attract young talent to Russia’s space program.”

A movie as a “serious work of art”? How un-American can you get? Ami right, Mandrake?

Furthering my irritation is that NBC News reports that Rogozin said, “Movies long have become a powerful instrument of propaganda”, and that he hoped this new film would “counter the West’s attempts to ‘humiliate’ the Russian space program.” Can you believe he just openly admitted that this commie Russian movie is propaganda, Mandrake?

Personally, I’m proud to live in a free country that doesn’t manipulate movie audiences with mindless militarism and nationalist narratives meant to propagandize and indoctrinate them. By the way, Mandrake, did I ever tell you that my favorite Tom Cruise movie is Top Gun? I loved it when he slaughtered those MiG flying Soviet sons of bitches at the end.

Mandrake, understand this, as a devoted fan of Rachel Maddow and a devout consumer of American corporate media, I’m smart enough to connect the dots regarding this Russian movie-making space venture and can no longer sit back and remain quiet about the true nature of this devious mission.

I confidently declare to you that this mission is about using a mysterious microwave weapon, the same one used against our noble and loving intelligence agency operatives in Havana and across the globe, to sap and impurify all American’s precious bodily fluids.

Just like the mainstream media, I have no proof or any clear understanding of the plan, or how it works, or if this mysterious microwave weapon that impurifies American’s precious bodily fluids even exists, but that won’t stop me from acting against it.

To counter this cinematic microwave space-attack I believe we need to put into motion Operation Starlet Starship. If you’ll remember, Operation Starlet Starship gathers together every nubile young starlet in Hollywood, along with a select group of government and military leaders, like us, as well as Tom Cruise, and sends us into space so that we can run a breeding program in order to repopulate the U.S. after the microwave weapons attack wipes out all precious bodily fluids of every American.

I believe it was Buck Turgidson who came up with the idea of Operation Starlet Starship, and he recommended a Starlet to Stodgy Old Man ratio of 10-to-1. Wise old bird that General Turgidson.

If we can’t round up the requisite number of starlets, I suppose another option is to just get Tom Cruise up to space immediately and have him shoot an all-American, non-propaganda movie where he kills some evil commie cosmonauts as he dismantles their microwave weapon before it impurifies all our precious and vastly superior bodily fluids.

I’d love to see that movie, Mandrake, almost as much as most Americans would want to see all of Hollywood shot into deep space and never seen again. Hopefully we can get Tom Cruise into space before the Russian’s cinematic space plan gets too far advanced!

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

A Clockwork Orange - Kurbick's Masterpiece Turns 50

‘A Clockwork Orange’ is fifty years old and rings as even more true today than it did in 1971.  

Kubrick’s masterwork of sex and violence is an insightful work of art that is deeply relevant to our depraved modern era.

Fifty-years-ago the Beethoven-loving Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) donned his droog uniform of all white, false eye-lashes (on one eye), a bowler hat and prominent codpiece, and sang and danced into our twisted hearts with his brutally ironic and ironically brutal rendition of “Singin’ in the Rain”.

Yes, it’s been fifty years since A Clockwork Orange, director Stanley Kubrick’s controversial masterpiece, was unleashed upon the public. Apparently, time flies when you’re busy doing all that old in-out in-out and ultra-violence.

Kubrick’s highly-stylized, now iconic film, which was chock full of sex and violence and sexual-violence, shocked many, as even esteemed film critic Pauline Kael notoriously lambasted the film and called Kubrick a “pornographer”.

I recently bellied up to the Korova Milk Bar, put my feet up on a distractingly attractive nude mannequin, downed some Moloko-Plus (with drencrom) and re-watched the film and discovered that Kael is still egregiously wrong and that Kubrick’s vision has only gained in strength over the years.

Seeing the movie through the eyes of 2021 is an alarming exercise, not because the film is bad pornography but because the world of A Clockwork Orange bears an uncomfortable resemblance to our own.

The film is set in a dystopia that is both decaying yet decadent, where every relationship and inter-action is clouded by a will to power and will to pleasure that dehumanizes everything it touches. Alex’s universe is authoritarian and cruel on both an individual and institutional level, where everything and everyone is deeply marinated in a corrosive moral and ethical corruption. Sound familiar?

Turn on a television, read a newspaper or wade into the fetid swamp that is social media and you’ll experience the same ghastly, grotesque world Alex inhabited with only minor details being different.

Like violent cops, flag-waving militarists, MAGA members, Black Lives Matter, identity politics adherents, CRT proponents, or cancel culture Twitter mobs, for Alex and his droogs, cruelty isn’t a bug – it’s a feature, as it gets their blood pumping and gives their meaningless lives a momentary purpose.

Another striking similarity between the film’s world and our own is that everything is performative.

Whether it be the droogs fight against Billy Boy and his Nazi adorned gang – which is reminiscent of an Antifa v Proud Boys battle where the anti-fascists are just as fascist as the fascists they fight, occurs under a proscenium arch, or his infamous song and dance as he assaults the Alexander couple, or his on-stage humiliation under the spell of the Ludovico technique, or his smiling, steak-eating photo-op with the Minster of the Interior, Alex is always performing. And so it is with our time, where social media has morphed both the mundane and the monstrous and the personal and the political into performance art.

The most intriguing revelation of my re-watch was the realization that Alex’s odyssey down the bloody brick road of A Clockwork Orange is a journey to the most exalted position of power in any decaying and inverted civilization, that of victim.

Alex is a sort of anti-Christ, not in the sense that he is Satan but rather that his suffering ultimately does not bring about any personal or spiritual catharsis, but rather solidifies in him the fallen nature of man.  

Like the apes in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey who evolve to use bones as weapons, victimhood just becomes another tool for Alex to reap violence. When he is labelled a “victim of the modern age” the wily Alex quickly recognizes that moniker as a powerful new weapon and thoroughly embraces it.

This evolution doesn’t turn Alex from a barbaric beast into a beatified being, but instead makes him an even more monstrous predator able to swim with a higher class of sharks, namely the Minister of the Interior who fills Alex’s gob with filet in front of a mindless press who eats up the story like Alex does his well-served meal.  

In our current age where victimhood reigns supreme, there are hordes of eager new Alex’s yearning for this ultimate superweapon, and none of them even care a lick about Ludwig Van. These self-declared victims know to exploit their stories to gain power, while others emulate that manipulation and conjure victimhood where none exists in order to elevate their social status and bludgeon their enemies. Of course, the establishment media drink up this insidious victimhood narrative like its Moloka Plus with Vellocet.

Re-watching A Clockwork Orange made it abundantly clear that a movie like this, as great as it is, could never be made in a cultural climate like ours.

The film is too bold, too brash, too brazen in its honest yet stylized depiction of the foibles and failures of humanity and our society, and to unflinching in its artistic honesty and insight.

In addition, Kubrick, despite the fact he is one of the greatest filmmakers of all-time, would be deemed too ‘problematic’ and his politics too amorphous to pass the cancel culture test of 2021.

The film also features a prodigious amount of nudity and violence which in our oddly and performatively puritanical times would make it a no go for the corporate entities of Hollywood, which is ironic since our country and culture is so steeped in actual pornography and real-life violence.

Thankfully A Clockwork Orange did get made and it was a great film in 1971 and is even greater when seen in the context of 2021. Do yourself a favor and go watch it and see that Kubrick wasn’t just a cinematic genius, he was a prophet.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

'Patron Saint of Incels'? Woke Outrage over Joker is a Bad Joke

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 47 seconds

Critics and woke people are up in arms over Joker because they think “evil” white men will like it and be inspired to kill.

It used to be that it was right-wingers who would get outraged over movies they deemed “dangerous” because they offended their delicate sensibilities, Last Temptation of Christ and Brokeback Mountain being prime examples. Now it is left-wing scolds who reflexively denounce movies they find “problematic”, with the highly anticipated Joker having raised their self-righteous ire.

Joker opens on October 4th and is directed by Todd Phillips and stars Joaquin Phoenix. The highly anticipated movie is inspired by Martin Scorsese’s films Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy and is thought to be a breath of fresh air in the comic book genre and the antithesis of the corporate Marvel movies. Joker tells the story of Arthur Fleck, a disaffected white man who eventually becomes Batman’s nemesis, the super villain Joker.

Fleck being white has ignited a moral panic over Joker, because according to woke twitter, white men are inherently violent, and so Joker is dangerous as it will act as a pied piper leading lonely white men to commit Joker-esque mass shootings.

The criticisms of Joker on twitter are stunning for the shameless level of scorn and hatred brazenly heaped upon white men.

Tweets saying “I don’t want to be around any of the lonely white boys who relate to it”, and “Joker movie is starting to look like a sympathetic tale of a ‘wronged by society’ white dude and their entitlement to violence” and “in a time of increasing violence perpetrated by disaffected white men, is it really the best thing to keep making movies that portray disaffected white men doing violence as sympathetic?”, highlight the racial animus animating the Joker moral panic. It is inconceivable that such venom would be acceptable against any other racial group, such as African-Americans or Muslims.

The Joker panic has spread like a contagion from twitter to the real world, where police have vowed to increase their presence at theatres, and some cinemas are banning ticket holders who wear costumes.

The US Army and the FBI have issued a warning that some “incels” or involuntary celibates, may violently target screenings of Joker.

Family members of victims of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theatre shooting, have even written a letter to Warner Brothers, conveying their concerns over Joker and imploring the studio to support anti-gun causes. This is puzzling as the Aurora tragedy was during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, which didn’t feature the Joker, and while some early reports claimed the shooter dressed like the Joker and declared,  “I am the Joker”, those reports have been thoroughly debunked. This conflating of Joker with Aurora reveals the vacuity of the frenzy.

The hysteria around Joker has infected American film critics as well. When Joker premiered at the prestigious Venice Film Festival it received a twenty-minute ovation and won the coveted Golden Lion for best picture. The last two Golden Lion winners, Roma and The Shape of Water, went on to be nominated for twenty-three Oscars combined, winning seven. Joker’s reception at Venice would seem to be indicative of the film’s artistic bona fides, but American critics, who are more interested in pretentious pandering and virtue signaling, strongly disagree.

Stephanie Zacharek of Time, said of Joker, “the aggressive and possibly irresponsible idiocy of Joker is his (director Phillips) alone to answer for”.

Zacharek goes on to state that Arthur Fleck, “could easily be adopted as the patron saint of incels.”

Anthony Lane of The New Yorker opined, “I happen to dislike the film as heartily as anything I’ve seen in the past decade…”

David Edelstein of Vulture, described the film as “morally blech”, then went full on Godwin’s law in his review when he declared, “As Hannah Arendt saw banality in the supposed evil of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, I see in Joker an attempt to elevate nerdy revenge to the plane of myth.”

Film critics getting the vapors over a movie is nothing new, as cinema history is riddled with fraught hyperbole over “dangerous” movies.

In 1955 New York Times critic Bosley Crowther bemoaned Rebel Without a Cause because “it is a violent, brutal and disturbing picture.”

In 1971 esteemed critic Pauline Kael decried A Clockwork Orange, denouncing the film as “corrupt” and describing director Stanley Kubrick as “a pornographer”.

In 1989, Joe Klein, a critic for New York wrote an infamous piece on Spike Lee’s iconic film Do the Right Thing. Klein wrote, “If Lee does hook large black audiences, there’s a good chance the message they take from the film will increase racial tensions…if they react violently – which can’t be ruled out…”

Klein went on to write that the sole message black teens would take from the film was “The police are your enemy” and “White people are your enemy”.

In a great example of the intoxicating power of the Joker moral panic, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr wrote an article about Joker where he references Klein’s historically embarrassing take on Do the Right Thing, but instead of using Klein’s egregiously myopic article as a cautionary tale, Burr instead embraces the reflexive emotionalism of the Joker moral panic.

Burr declares of Joker, ““Is it “reckless”? Honestly, in my opinion, yeah, and if that makes me this year’s Joe Klein, so be it. To release into this America at this time a power fantasy that celebrates — that’s right, Warner Bros., celebrates — a mocked loner turned locked-and-loaded avenging angel is an act of willful corporate naivete at best, complicity at worst, and blindness in the middle”

As Burr concedes in his article, there is no causal link between violent movies or video games and mass shootings, and yet because Burr “feels” uneasy, he deems Joker guilty of being “dangerous”.

The bottom line is this, there have been shootings before Joker, and unfortunately, there will certainly be shootings after Joker, but Joker will not “cause” anyone to kill people. Human beings will be violent not because of movies but because they are human beings. As Kubrick so eloquently showed us in 2001: A Space Odyssey, evolution has not removed our violent impulse, only given us better weapons.

The purpose of art is to, sometimes uncomfortably, examine humanity and reflect the world in which it exists, and by examining and reflecting, hopefully give the audience a deeper insight and understanding of themselves, their fellow humans and the world in which they inhabit. I have not seen Joker, so I don’t know if it does those things well, but from the plethora of negative reviews I’ve read from American critics, their problem with Joker is that it does those things all too well.

These critics, both professional and amateur, prefer not to examine the origins of the isolation, alienation and rage felt by disaffected white working class males who are inundated with messages from the media and the education system that stigmatize and/or criminalize whiteness and traditional masculinity.

They want to ignore or malign these men, particularly those in middle age, even though they are dying from deaths of despair (suicide, drug overdose or alcoholism) at alarming rates that have more than doubled over the last twenty years.

Joker is not a clarion call to white male violence, it is a desperate attempt at a diagnosis of the pandemic that is killing white men and will eventually kill America.

Joker’s effete and effeminate critics, the eunuchs sprawled on fainting couches at the thought of having to bear a cinematic meditation on the heart of darkness at the center of an iconic super villain, are a bad joke. Their insidiously overwrought outrage and moral panic over Joker exposes their egregious unworthiness as thinkers and critics, and frankly, the vapid unseriousness of our culture.

 A VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCTOBER 1, 2019 AT RT.

© 2019

Ad Astra: A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!! THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE. IT. NOW. A profound meditation on masculinity that boasts an Oscar worthy Brad Pitt performance in one of the very best films of the year. But be forewarned…this film is more art house than blockbuster.

Ad Astra, directed by James Gray and written by Gray and Ethan Gross, is the story of Roy McBride, an astronaut who goes to space in search of his father. The film stars Brad Pitt as Roy, with supporting turns from Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland and Liv Tyler.

I have not been to the movies in quite a while, the reason being that there has been nothing playing that I considered worthy of paying $15 to see. Ad Astra was one film that I was aware of and which intrigued me so I thought I’d take the plunge. I did not have particularly high hopes for the movie because the director, James Gray, has consistently turned out beautiful misfires of movies. I have seen all of Gray’s movies, which include The Lost City of Z, The Immigrant, The Yards, Little Odessa, We Own the Night and Two Lovers, and he is certainly gifted at making moody, cinematically gorgeous films with solid performances that should be good but just never are. Gray’s films have consistently failed to resonate with me because the narratives are always so unfocused and his film’s structures so fundamentally unsound.

Ad Astra, which for some reason I keep inadvertently calling Ed Asner, actually means “through hardships to the stars” in Latin, and that is an apt description not only of the film’s story, but of Gray’s cinematic ambition and Pitt’s performance. The bottom line is this, Ad Astra is an intimately profound and profoundly intimate film that is absolutely stunning.

While Ad Astra is, like all of Gray’s films, deliberately paced, it is very well put together and flows seamlessly and effortlessly along its journey. The film never lags and has a forceful emotional and narrative momentum to it that makes it thoroughly compelling.

The film is set in the near future and the plot is about an astronaut going into space to track down his highly revered space exploring father. Ad Astra is similar to two other recent “space” films, First Man and High Life, that use space as a narrative device for the compartmentalization, isolation and emotional frigidity of manhood. I loved both First Man and High Life, and Ad Astra is a quality finale to this makeshift thematic trilogy.

At its core Ad Astra is a mediation on masculinity, its accompanying rage and the afflictions passed down from fathers to sons. I was deeply moved by this film because these themes have been the existential epicenter of my entire life. As a father, I am trying not to pass on the afflictions that were passed onto me by my father, down to my son. The tragedy of the masculine life though, and of my own life, is that men are often consumed by the flames of their afflictions, and no matter how hard they try, they fail in stopping the transmission of their wounds onto their male offspring. As Ad Astra tells us, “the son suffers the sins of the father”, and I know in my case I fail in the endeavor of sparing my son from my own affliction the overwhelming majority of the time. My only feint hope in redemption would seem to be my son being strong enough and resilient enough to eventually forgive me for my failings. I only hope I live long enough to see that happen…but there are no guarantees.

As I watched Ad Astra I couldn’t help but think of the 1997 Paul Schrader film Affliction, as that movie, which was set in the forbidding cold of New Hampshire which seems as isolating as the cold of space, was also about the madness of wounded masculinity being passed down from father to son like a genetic disease. Seeing Affliction for the first time rattled me to my bones, whereas Ad Astra moved me to my soul.

Ad Astra is also reminiscent of both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Apocalypse Now (there are a bunch of small clues paying homage to Apocalypse Now in this film…from Brad Pitt’s voice over to his answering a question by saying “that’s classified”, to a detour with a brief but distinctly surreal musical number…among many others), as the demanding evolutionary journey of the main character is not only outward but inward. McBride’s journey deeper into space is like Willard’s journey down the river in Apocalypse Now. The compulsion, bordering on madness, to make that journey, is akin to Hamlet’s musings on the “undiscovered country, from whose bourn, no traveller returns”. Put another way, you never go back up the river (if indeed you are even able to go back up the river), the same man you went down, and the same is true of space.

2019 is turning into the year of Brad Pitt. This past July, Pitt garnered raves and Oscar buzz for star turn in Quentin Tarantino’s blockbuster Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. That movie, and Pitt’s charismatic performance in it, put Brad Pitt squarely back in the center of the cultural zeitgeist, with women swooning over his shirtless antenna repairs (a weird connection between Ad Astra and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Brad Pitt repairing antennas! What does it mean?!?!?!) and men wanting to be cool like him.

Pitt has always been more a pretty face than an actor of any heft, but as he enters his late middle-age, he seems to have settled into himself and found a more grounded place from which to build his characters and to be genuine on screen, and that has never been more evident than in his powerful performance in Ad Astra.

Pitt’s work in Ad Astra is a thing of subtle beauty and genius, and is easily the greatest work of his long career. Pitt’s Roy McBride is a layered creature, wrapped tight enough to control the volcanic, primal rage that courses through his veins, and to regulate his own heart beat, but that control is a tenuous thing when McBride’s inner wound pulsates. Pitt’s once flawless face is now weathered, and his every wrinkle and every slight movement of his facial muscles in Ad Astra, tell epic stories of the emotional pain suffered and psychological crosses borne deep within McBride.

Pitt, the charismatic, eye-candy movie star, was on full display in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and his star power carries Ad Astra from start to finish too, the difference here though is that Pitt also gives an exquisitely precise and detailed acting performance that gives his character, and the movie, depth and profound meaning.

The rest of Ad Astra’s cast all do splendid work, with Ruth Negga, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland making the utmost of the rather small roles they inhabit.

The cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema is simply gorgeous. Hoytema’s use of shadow and light is stunning as he creates a precise, austere yet visually vibrant background upon which the emotional journey of the film takes place. Hoytema, who won the prestigious Mickey©® award for his spectacular work in Christopher Nolan’s 2017 film Dunkirk, is among the best cinematographers working today, and Ad Astra is among his greatest work.

The entire aesthetic of the film is superb as the visual effects of the film look fantastic, as the near futuristic world in which the story takes place is entirely believable, and the script also enhances the authenticity of the film, as the minute details of the future world seem mundanely accurate, as does the science. The soundtrack, made by Max Richter, is brilliant as well, and helps to create an unnerving and ominous mood that flows through the film like a river, inevitable and occasionally swelling.

In conclusion, Ad Astra is the film where James Gray’s peculiar talents, aesthetic and style finally come together in a supernova of cinematic brilliance, and the result is a psychologically insightful and poignant film that speaks profound truths about the affliction and isolation of masculinity as it struggles to find its place in our cold, forbidding modern world.

As to whether I can recommend this film to people or not, I find myself in a conundrum. Ad Astra, which is definitely more art house than blockbuster, resonated so deeply and personally with me that I do not know if it will do the same with other people. I think women in particular might have a hard time connecting with the film, which has a paucity of female roles and minimal female dialogue, only because it is exclusively focused on masculinity. That said…maybe women, who often bear the burden of the wounded masculinity of the men in their lives, will find solace and understanding in the film. I honestly do not know…all I know is that Ad Astra was one of the very best films I have seen this year, and spoke eloquently and astutely to the seemingly endless war that forever rages within me. If a war rages within you or within someone you love, maybe you should go see this movie, it might be a salve for wounds unseen, or better yet, an impetus for a much needed cease fire.

©2019

High Life: A Review

***THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!***

My Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. But be forewarned, even though it is in English, it is a very “French” film and is definitely at home in the arthouse. If you have conventional tastes in movies, this one is not for you, but if you are a cinephile defintely check it out in the theatre.

High Life, written and directed by French auteur Claire Denis, tells the story of Monte, a young man who is caring for a baby on a mysterious voyage into deep space. The film stars Robert Pattinson as Monte with supporting turns from Julliette Binoche, Andre Benjamin and Mia Goth.

Claire Denis, the writer/director of High Life, is the critical darling of French cinema and the American arthouse. Denis has a distinctive film making style that appeals greatly to film critics but that the general public often finds impenetrable. A good example of this is that her last film, Let the Sunshine In (2018), which starred Juliette Binoche and could sort of be described as a French/arthouse romantic comedy, has an 86 % critical score and a 29% audience score at the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.

Part of the problem with Denis work, at least for American audiences, is that if you market a film as a romantic comedy, Americans will expect a rather simple Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan cute fest and not the verbose philosophizing, existential thesis that is Let the Sunshine In. Expectations play a big part in audience perceptions and thus in the ultimate success or failure of a film.

High Life may face the same marketing struggle as Denis’ other films, at least in terms of the general public. High Life is being sold as a sort of action-thriller, science fiction, space movie…in the vein of Ridley Scott’s Alien. High Life is a lot of things, but action-thriller is not one of them, and if audiences are aware of that and understand how to digest the film, they may come away with a greater appreciation for it…because there is a great deal to appreciate.

High Life is not Alien meets 2001, but rather is a beguiling, at times bewildering, dark, moody, existential and philosophical meditation on the meaning of life and what it means to be a human. The film is Claire Denis at her very best, using her signature style to create a deliberately paced, deliriously claustrophobic, non-linear dream/nightmare that is intentionally disorienting.

The film opens with Pattinson’s character Monte caring for baby all by himself on a space craft. The film then unwinds and reveals the who, what, when, where, why and how this strange combination of Monte, a baby, and deep space, came to be.

Being a parent is hard. Being a single parent is a Herculean task. Being a single parent in deep space is a circle of hell that Dante could never have dreamed up. Monte’s struggle to care for this baby is palpable, and as the child’s cries pierce through Monte’s space suit to his core, they also cut viewers to the bone. This scenario of the deep space single parent and the vulnerability of an infant, intensifies the suffocating sense of claustrophobia and heightens the ominous sense of foreboding that permeates the entire film.

Pattinson’s work as Monte is extraordinary. Monte is a psuedo-monk, struggling to control his human desires in order to, ironically enough, stay connected to his humanity. Pattinson gives Monte a very specific internal intentionality that illuminates his every action and drives him through every scene. Pattinson is an actor I never would have given a second thought to after those dreadful Twilight movies, but his fine work in the not so good The Lost City of Z (2017) made me take notice. Here in High Life he commands the screen without ever demanding attention, in fact, it is Pattinson’s use of introversion bordering on camera shyness that make him so intriguing and compelling in this role.

The rest of the cast do solid work as well. Juilette Binoche as the witchy Dr. Dibs chews the scenery like a starving women hurtling through the universe looking for her final meal. Mia Goth also does notable work as Boyse, a destructive and self-destructive anima figure, the polar opposite of Monte.

Claire Denis knows what she is doing when it comes to making movies, and High Life is a testament to that. The film is technically first-rate, as the cinematography, particularly the framing and lighting, as well as the editing, are superb but never overwhelm the tone and theme of the movie.

High Life is deliberately paced, and may be too slow for more conventional tastes, but I found the film to be captivating to the point of hypnotic. Denis’ ability to disorient the viewer’s perception of space and time was a master stroke that simulates for the audience the psychological, emotional and philosophical vertigo that Monte must struggle with and through as he goes along his hero/anti-hero’s journey.

High Life asks a lot of questions but gives no clear answers, which is maybe why I liked it. There were no easy escapes from the void of space or the existential issues raised. Ideas as varied as human value, spirituality, morality, physical purity, incest, humanity, witchcraft v. science, and even cats v. dogs, all come up in the movie and propel the philosophical narrative forward, backward, up, down and all around.

At the end of the day, High Life, like most space movies, is really an homage to, and imitation of, Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. High Life is no 2001, but to Claire Denis’ credit it is a very distant, but worthy enough, cinematic step-cousin, as it wrestles with the same question of human evolution and being born into, and cast out of, the Garden of Eden with nothing but our humanity to guide and protect us.

Space is cold and forbidding, and the struggle to maintain life amidst that black void is colossal, but not nearly as gargantuan (or heroic) as the struggle to maintain humanity. Monte’s evolution…which may result in being reborn the Starchild from 2001 or left to an eternity in the empty void of nothingness, lies on the other side of a black hole. He isn’t sure he is ready to make the trip…are you?

If you have the courage, and the open mind, I recommend you set aside your expectations and conventions and make that journey with Monte. Yes, there are some bumps along the way, the most noteworthy being a rather odd scene with Juliette Binoche (you’ll know it when you see it - it was the catalyst for two sixty-something women in my screening to make a hasty exit) that serves a certain and minor purpose but which goes on for a distractingly and interminably long time. But if you can simply get into the rhythm of the film, and not try and figure it out as it washes over you but rather experience it and all of the good and bad that comes along with it, I think you may find it as satisfying a cinematic experience as I did.

Again, this movie is not for everyone…even though it is in English, it is a very, very French film, and it reeks of the art house, so if you simply cannot or will not overcome your cinematic conditioning for clear narratives and resolutions, then you should skip this one. But if you are feeling adventurous and in the mood to contemplate the meaning of life and humanity amidst the unrelenting sea of darkness that is space, then gear up, strap in and take the plunge. You may find you enjoy the high life.

©2019

Steve Jobs - A Review : Steve Jobs, 2001 and The Cult of Personality

***WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! CONSIDER THIS YOUR OFFICIAL SPOILER ALERT!!**

MY RATING : SEE IT IN THE THEATRE!!

"THE TWO MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE ALLIES WIN THE WAR, AND THIS. " - STEVE JOBS

As I sit here at my MacBook Pro, with my iPhone by my side, writing a review of Steve Jobs, the film about the late founder of Apple computers, I have to confess that I really didn't know or care very much about the man prior to seeing the film. My ignorance and ambivalence about Jobs, yet my near complete everyday reliance upon his life's work, is a testament to the magnitude of his achievement and an indictment of me and my incuriosity.  Sadly, I am woefully unqualified to comment on the historical accuracy of Steve Jobs, but thankfully, I am moderately qualified to comment on the dramatic and cinematic worth of the movie. 

Steve Jobs, written by Aaron Sorkin and adroitly directed by Danny Boyle, is an exquisitely crafted and impeccably acted film. The film stars Michael Fassbender as Jobs, and boasts very impressive supporting turns from Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg and Seth Rogan.

Michael Fassbender gives a fantastically magnetic and dynamic performance as Jobs. Fassbender is one of the best actors working today and his work as Job's is a tribute to his mastery of his craft and his enormous talent. 

Fassbender's performance is an approximation and not an imitation of Jobs, which is always a wise approach. As I am fond of saying, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but the least sincere form of acting"©. Fassbender focuses on the internal emotional reality of Jobs and not on trying to recreate the external appearance of the man. That is not to say that there are no outer manifestations of Fassbender's inner work, there are. For instance, Fassbender alters his voice as he ages Jobs. He hits an oh-so-slightly higher register as a young man and a lower one as an older man, it is done so subtly that it would be nearly imperceptible to anyone not looking for it (or trained in this sort of thing). It isn't a showy thing, but it is an extremely effective one, which is a credit not only to Fassbender's technique but to his artistic integrity.

Fassbender's Jobs is a shark (a symbolic power animal referenced in the film) which is always moving forward and never looking to the past. This manifests literally as Jobs constantly physically walking throughout the story, and figuratively as Jobs frantically running away from his past and his emotional wounds. Stasis is death to Fassbender's Jobs, and when he isn't actively trying to devour his opponents, his enemies or his feelings, he is unwittingly trying to avoid any notions of "regretfulness", a word strikingly evoked in the film by Jobs' daughter. This approach to life leaves Fassbender's Jobs as a single minded business/technological genius, with emotional blind spots the size of his gargantuan ambition. It is not Jobs struggle to conquer history and the tech world that makes the character so imperative, but rather his struggle to understand himself and his existential wounds.

I recently wrote about Jeff Daniels being mis-cast in a bunch of projects where I thought his work was sub-par, such as in Ridley Scott's The Martian and HBO's The Newsroom. In Steve Jobs, I was very pleased to see Daniels give a nuanced and poignant performance as John Sculley, the CEO of Apple and erstwhile father figure to Jobs.  This character, in the hands of a lesser actor, would have been easily overlooked at best or a two-dimensional disaster at worst. 

Kate Winslet plays Joanna Hoffman, Job's right hand woman and confidante, who is a force to be reckoned with. She gives a powerful performance that is laced with a delicate humanity, which makes her the perfect balance to Fassbender's humanity-challenged Jobs. Winslet is the consummate pro, and here she brings all of her formidable talents to bear in creating a character who is able to platonically and powerfully love Steve Jobs, but never be a victim to him.

Michael Stuhlberg and Seth Rogan also give solid supporting performance as Andy Hertzfeld, member of original Mac team and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, respectively. Although, I nearly fell over when I saw a talking empty-head on one of the cable news shows saying that if Rogan doesn't win an Oscar it would be a travesty. Rogan does a fine yet completely unspectacular job as Wozniak. I think that people often get unduly excited when an actor who has consistently been dreadful simply shows up and isn't as awful as usual. Rewarding mediocrity due to familiarity, or worse, confusing mediocrity with greatness, is often a result of lowered expectations and is sadly, a common occurrence across our culture, one need look no further than our politics with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, or Hollywood with Matthew McConaughey and George Clooney for proof of that.

WALKING, TALKING AND DRUNKEN MONKEYS

I often find writer Aaron Sorkin's style, which I call "walking and talking…quickly", to be off-putting because it can be so mannered, deliberate and disingenuous. Sorkin's writing style is as if David Mamet and a drunken monkey with a political science degree had a baby that wrote a screwball dramedy with all of the fast paced, witty repartee that genre demands. In the hands of lesser directors, such as on Sorkin's HBO show The Newsroom, Sorkin's writing can be unbearable in it's overbearing self consciousness. But in the hands of a true craftsman and artist, like Danny Boyle with Steve Jobs, or David Fincher with The Social Network, Sorkin's style can become captivating, if not down right hypnotic. 

With Steve Jobs, Sorkin's true stroke of genius comes not in his dialogue but rather in how he structures the story. Instead of falling into the usual traps of the bio-pic, basically showing the highlights of the man's life, Sorkin structures the film like a stage play in three acts, where the characters talk about what has happened between acts but what wasn't shown to the viewer. It is all about how people react and feel about events, not about the events themselves. It is a brilliant way to mine the depths of characters and relationships for all of the emotional drama they are worth. It is also a tribute to Sorkin (and director Danny Boyle) that he respects his audience enough to not feel the need to spoon feed them the usual bio-pic nonsense but rather trusts them to be sophisticated enough to understand context without having it shown to them. Turning the story into a stage play for the screen creates a character study and not a bio-pic, and that is what makes it such a compelling and satisfying film.

STEVE JOBS AND 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

There is a little secret hidden in plain sight about where Sorkin gets his inspiration, whether conscious or unconscious, for the structure of the film, and it is pretty brilliant. The opening of the film shows an old black and white industrial-type of film where Arthur C. Clarke, famed science fiction writer and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, stands in a 1960's computer room surrounded by a gigantic computer that nearly fills the entire room and talks with a young man and a little boy about what the future will look like. Clarke talks of a future where people will have small computers in their homes where they can do work and order theatre tickets and the like right from their computer. It is cool to see Clarke accurately predict the future and to see the amazement on the little boys face at the unlimited prospects in his future. That scene tells us all we need to know about the rest of the film, and I was even wondering as the scene played out, if it would be revealed that the little boy was Jobs in his youth.

This opening scene is a clue as to the blueprint for Steve Jobs. Sorkin uses the exact same structure as Arthur Clarke's and Stanley Kurbick's iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that film is subtly referenced throughout Steve Jobs. 

In 2001, mankind's evolution over thousands of years is covered in three acts. In Steve Jobs, Sorkin uses the same three act, evolutionary leaping structure to show the emotional growth of Jobs the man,  and technological growth brought forth by his company. While Jobs personal evolution and his company's technological evolution are only over a two decade span rather than thousands of years, they are still making as gigantic a leap as mankind does in 2001. Seeing Steve Jobs make emotional evolutionary jumps that are the equal to 2001's thousands of years of evolution only becomes believable if we are sub-consciously attuned to the archetype of mankind's overwhelming need to evolve set forth in 2001. 

In 2001's first act, Kubrick shows us primitive man at the moment he discovers, with the aid of a mysterious monolith, his first tool, which he quickly turns into a weapon to kill his rivals. Act One in Steve Jobs opens backstage of an Apple product launch (the new age monolith!!) in 1982 with Jobs not even admitting to the paternity of his daughter, and denying the child and her mother, any financial support even though his worth is over $440 million. Like the ape-man in 2001 who uses the technological advantage of the first tool to bludgeon his defenseless enemies, Jobs uses his technological advantage to gain wealth and power which he uses to emotionally bludgeon his ex-girlfriend and the daughter he denies.

In Kubrick's 2001 we then make a jump of thousands of years into the future into Act Two where man is colonizing and living in space. Act Two ends with man discovering a monolith on the moon, which is really just a stepping stone to the great discovery revealed in Act Three. In Act Two of Steve Jobs, we are once again backstage at another product launch, this time for Job's new company NeXT, which he started after being fired from Apple. This tech company, NeXt, like the monolith on the moon in 2001, is really just a stepping stone. In Job's master plan he intends to use the NeXT launch to get back on top and in control of Apple. In addition, Job's daughter has grown a bit, and while he is beginning to take an interest in her life, he still isn't capable of truly loving her or emotionally understanding himself. In being blind to the inner complexes that drive him, Jobs is just like mankind in Act Two of 2001, which has not yet evolved enough to truly understand the intelligence they are chasing across the solar system, nor do they understand what drives them to chase it. 

In Act Three of 2001, man and machine (the enigmatic computer HAL) travel into space in order to find the origin of this mysterious monolith near Jupiter. Eventually man and machine, in the form of HAL, do battle, with HAL fighting for supremacy and man fighting for survival. Man must overcome technology, his intellect, in order to integrate it and open up his true emotional self. The film ends with man having gone through a dramatic and personally apocalyptic evolutionary transformation and being reborn as the intellectually and emotionally advanced "Star Child".

In the third act of Steve Jobs, we are once again backstage at a product launch, this time for the iMac, which is a spaceship compared to the animal bone of Apple 2 that came twenty years earlier. In this final act of Steve Jobs, Jobs is finally able to overcome his drive for technological and business success and open his heart to his daughter. For the first time in the film he decides he'd rather start the product launch late in order to talk with his daughter, putting her emotional needs before his business needs. This is symbolic of his overcoming his intellect and his business drive and instead opening his previously underused heart/emotional drive. He then integrates his intellect and technology with his heart/emotion when he tells his music loving daughter he will invent a product for her which will carry thousands of songs, what eventually will become the iPod. Directly after that scene with his daughter, Jobs stands on stage at the product launch with lights and flashbulbs popping all around him. As his daughter looks on, Jobs is engulfed in a luminous glow of otherworldly light, symbolic of his final stage of evolution where he becomes the intellectually and emotionally advanced Star Child.

Steve Jobs, like 2001: a Space Odyssey, teaches us about human evolution on both the external/technological level, and the internal/emotional level. The journey at the center of 2001 is that mankind must go forth into deep space, both outer and inner, in order to truly understand our universe and ourselves. The self knowledge acquired on this galactic grail self-quest is what will propel us to through to our next stage of evolution. Steve Jobs teaches us this same lesson wrapped in a different mythology, that we must explore both our external/intellectual drive and our internal/emotional one. One cannot be a truly evolved human being if one doesn't strive to cultivate both outer and inner forms of development and growth.

"MUSICIANS PLAY THEIR INSTRUMENTS. I PLAY THE ORCHESTRA." - STEVE JOBS

Steve Jobs is one of those polished and elegantly crafted films that only master artisans could make. Danny Boyle's flawless and vibrant direction is the key to keeping Sorkin's dialogue, which can be unwieldy in lesser directorial hands, emotionally vital and palpable. Boyle's deft touch and meticulous attention to dramatic pacing, both of the actors and of the camera, create a mesmerizing, seductive and deeply gratifying film.

THE CULT OF TECHNOLOGY AND PERSONALITY

An interesting theme that Boyle explores is the idea of the cult of Steve Jobs. Boyle evokes a sense of the sacred and religious being present in each of the product launches. The audience in the auditoriums chant and move in unison, hungry for Jobs, their Pope, prophet and messiah to share with them his new holy revelations, shrouded on the altar of the stage, which will change their lives forever. Boyle also shows Jobs as being a tyrant and control freak who believes his power should always and every time be unquestioned. Boyle's Jobs has a whiff of L. Ron Hubbard about him, and there is a Jim Jones vibe lurking deep in the heart of both Jobs and his desperate collection of followers and fanatics, whose idolatry of Jobs could easily be turned into zealotry. This cult of Steve Jobs, could easily be the cult of any guru, be they business, technology, political or spiritual based. Boyle's glimpse into Steve Jobs, the man behind the myth, is a pulling back of the curtain to reveal the fragility at the heart of the man who yearned for, and was placed upon, the pedestal of genius.

In conclusion, Steve Jobs is a great film and is well worth your time and hard earned money. Go see it in the theatre, if for no other reason than to watch the theatre light up with iPhones coming alive after the film has ended. As enjoyable and well made a film as Steve Jobs is, audience members compulsively re-attaching themselves to Steve Jobs' technology the moment the film ends is more a tribute to the man's life and genius than any film could ever be.

  ©2015