(Danny Boyle, 2015)
In Steve Jobs, director Danny Boyle mostly stays out of the way. This is writer Aaron Sorkin's movie, and Boyle is wise enough to realise that and attempt a just-subtly-stylish-enough film version of a Sorkin script that plays way theatrical, with its 3 locations, its artificially tightened timeframes and its triple echo three act structure. So no hyperactive editing or wild camera angles. Mostly just nicely shot talking heads in well-blocked, intelligently-framed scenes.
The performances, then, take much of the weight. The story focuses on Jobs (Michael Fassbender) at three crucial moments in his life: in 1984, in the minutes before the public launch of the Macintosh. In 1988, after Jobs has been fired from Apple and is about to launch the Black Box for his own company, Next. And in 1998, as he launches the iMac.
Each sequence is shot on different stock, set backstage at a different event centre, as Jobs jousts with his marketing executive and "work wife" Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), meets his old friend and colleague Steve "Woz" Wozniak (Seth Rogen), banters with engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) and deals with Apple CEO John Scully (Jeff Daniels). All this while preparing to face hundreds of people and the worlds media. And dealing with Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterson) the mother of his child, and with the child herself, as a cute 5 year old, needy 9 year old, and complex, wounded teen.
Sorkin's script portrays Jobs as a difficult egomaniac who is worth it; he's a genius. And Fassbender nails that - intelligence bubbling beneath his face, impatient and baffled by people, always rushing towards the future he feels like only he sees. Winslet and he share a few emotional scenes, but the biggest and best confrontations are with a raw Woz, demanding some recognition for his generation of engineers and telling Jobs without hesitation how much of an asshole he is, and Rogen is terrific. Just as good is Jeff Daniels, moving from fatherly to antagonistic to regretful over the course of the film.
For his part, Jobs changes. He begins believing he's right, and ends up absolutely certain of it. along the way he might just learn a bit about people, or at least himself.
Theatrical yes. But that is not a problem with actors like these saying words like this.
Showing posts with label Seth Rogen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seth Rogen. Show all posts
Thursday, 26 November 2015
Friday, 20 September 2013
THIS IS THE END
(Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, 2013)
Self-indulgent but largely in a good way, This Is The End takes a load of actors most famous for their work in comedy, asks them to play "themselves", then maroons them inside a designer-pretentious modern L.A. house while the End of Days happens outside.
Some of what follows is very, very funny.
It starts off a quite different movie. Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen's old friend from Canada, arrives for a week staying with his friend in L.A. Baruchel plays the only "normal" character in the film, his responses recognisable and relatively convincing, and he is reluctant to go to the showbiz party at James Franco's fancy new house.
Seth drags him along, and there is a brilliant party scene filled with excrutiating scenes of awkwardness, broad comedy as a coked-up Michael Cera debauches himself, some skillfully integrated characterisation and a series of dazzling cameos.
Then beams of light crack open the sky and lift people into the heavens, an earthquake strikes, a massive hole opens up in the ground outside swallowing up most of the party-goers, fires consume Hollywood, and the group retreat to Franco's house to wait it out.
After that its a study of friendship under pressure, with these exaggerated personalities and their big egos clashing over how to divide up the food, who sleeps where, the nature of the situation and who goes out for supplies.
There are a few hilarious sequences - a conversation about not seeming "rapey" overheard by Emma Watson, for instance, pretty much every conversation involving Danny McBride, playing his usual boorish creep, and when the situation ventures into horror territory there is a surprising amount of comic mileage in scenes of the men running around screaming in terror. But it is about 40 minutes too long, many of the comic ideas fall flat, and there is an inevitable air of smugness to it all.
That however comes hand in hand with audacity and bravery - this is a crazy idea for a film, but it works, and is even occasionally inspired. Plus you get to see James Franco (as game as the entire cast) eaten by cannibals.
Self-indulgent but largely in a good way, This Is The End takes a load of actors most famous for their work in comedy, asks them to play "themselves", then maroons them inside a designer-pretentious modern L.A. house while the End of Days happens outside.
Some of what follows is very, very funny.
It starts off a quite different movie. Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen's old friend from Canada, arrives for a week staying with his friend in L.A. Baruchel plays the only "normal" character in the film, his responses recognisable and relatively convincing, and he is reluctant to go to the showbiz party at James Franco's fancy new house.
Seth drags him along, and there is a brilliant party scene filled with excrutiating scenes of awkwardness, broad comedy as a coked-up Michael Cera debauches himself, some skillfully integrated characterisation and a series of dazzling cameos.
Then beams of light crack open the sky and lift people into the heavens, an earthquake strikes, a massive hole opens up in the ground outside swallowing up most of the party-goers, fires consume Hollywood, and the group retreat to Franco's house to wait it out.
After that its a study of friendship under pressure, with these exaggerated personalities and their big egos clashing over how to divide up the food, who sleeps where, the nature of the situation and who goes out for supplies.
There are a few hilarious sequences - a conversation about not seeming "rapey" overheard by Emma Watson, for instance, pretty much every conversation involving Danny McBride, playing his usual boorish creep, and when the situation ventures into horror territory there is a surprising amount of comic mileage in scenes of the men running around screaming in terror. But it is about 40 minutes too long, many of the comic ideas fall flat, and there is an inevitable air of smugness to it all.
That however comes hand in hand with audacity and bravery - this is a crazy idea for a film, but it works, and is even occasionally inspired. Plus you get to see James Franco (as game as the entire cast) eaten by cannibals.
Sunday, 6 March 2011
PAUL
(Greg Mottola, 2011)
Cruder and broader than either of the other Simon Pegg and Nick Frost collaborations (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, both, tellingly, co-written and directed by Edgar Wright, whose visual wit and lightness of touch are sorely missed here, competent though Mottola is), this explicitly combines elements of various genres, from the character dynamics of a buddy movie, some Kevin Smith style geek comedy, Spielbergian alien encounters, and X-Files agents, with car chases, gunfights and fist fights all played mainly for laughs. The tone is odd; perhaps because the narrative throws in some fish out of water comedy as two British geeks complain about American tea and justify the fact that British police arent armed as they are terrorised by various Yank stereotypes, their very presence providing some "comedy of embarrassment" along the way.
As such it's a mixed bag, some of it very funny (Kirsten Wiig's Fundamentalist Christian discovering swearing and doing it wrong), some of it not (far too many smug geek references), but it's breezy enough and sporadically charming.
Neither Pegg nor Frost registers all that strongly, their characters slightly generic and drab, and both utterly blown away by the CGI alien of the title, nicely voiced by Seth Rogen, whose way with sarcasm and irony are well-utilised. The alien gets all of the best lines, and is by far the films most charismatic performer.
Cruder and broader than either of the other Simon Pegg and Nick Frost collaborations (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, both, tellingly, co-written and directed by Edgar Wright, whose visual wit and lightness of touch are sorely missed here, competent though Mottola is), this explicitly combines elements of various genres, from the character dynamics of a buddy movie, some Kevin Smith style geek comedy, Spielbergian alien encounters, and X-Files agents, with car chases, gunfights and fist fights all played mainly for laughs. The tone is odd; perhaps because the narrative throws in some fish out of water comedy as two British geeks complain about American tea and justify the fact that British police arent armed as they are terrorised by various Yank stereotypes, their very presence providing some "comedy of embarrassment" along the way.
As such it's a mixed bag, some of it very funny (Kirsten Wiig's Fundamentalist Christian discovering swearing and doing it wrong), some of it not (far too many smug geek references), but it's breezy enough and sporadically charming.
Neither Pegg nor Frost registers all that strongly, their characters slightly generic and drab, and both utterly blown away by the CGI alien of the title, nicely voiced by Seth Rogen, whose way with sarcasm and irony are well-utilised. The alien gets all of the best lines, and is by far the films most charismatic performer.
Monday, 24 January 2011
THE GREEN HORNET
(Michel Gondry, 2010)
Seeking to marry the wry irony and braying adolescent wit of some modern comedy with the Superhero genre is a brave - or foolhardy - venture. It also seems quite pointless. Superhero films skirt comedy in their every contrived and restricted aspect: plotting, characterisation, design, visuals, music are all tied to the conventions of the Comics medium, and mainstream comics, at that, often making for deformed cinematic texts. To try to gently tease that easily parodied side of the genre while also playing a deadpan buddy comedy overloads The Green Hornet. That it also has to fulfil the base requirements of the genre by including fight scenes and car chases and confrontations means that it's basically a strange mess, tonally confused, narratively awkward and emotionally hollow.
Gondry - obviously an original and distinctive talent - is marooned by the screenplay and he shoots the majority of the spectacle like a competent tv director. Three scenes bear his obvious imprint: a contract spread by word of mouth reproduced as a split screen symphony, a fight scene making virtue of Kato as a 3D effect in his own right, and a sped up sequence of Seth Rogen and a girl snogging their way through a garage full of classic cars.
But this odd concoction ultimately pleases nobody, since it partly fails in each of it's aims: it's neither a fine Superhero blockbuster, nor a hilarious comedy. Rogen, always good for an off-kilter one-liner, is never a likeable or convincing lead and Christoph Waltz lacks any of the menace or charisma evident in his villain in Inglourious Basterds. He is not helped by a a character with a single quirk (an obsession with how scary he is) instead of a personality. Cameron Diaz scarcely registers at all, leaving Jay Chou to steal the show as Kato, getting most of the best action scenes to himself.
Seeking to marry the wry irony and braying adolescent wit of some modern comedy with the Superhero genre is a brave - or foolhardy - venture. It also seems quite pointless. Superhero films skirt comedy in their every contrived and restricted aspect: plotting, characterisation, design, visuals, music are all tied to the conventions of the Comics medium, and mainstream comics, at that, often making for deformed cinematic texts. To try to gently tease that easily parodied side of the genre while also playing a deadpan buddy comedy overloads The Green Hornet. That it also has to fulfil the base requirements of the genre by including fight scenes and car chases and confrontations means that it's basically a strange mess, tonally confused, narratively awkward and emotionally hollow.
Gondry - obviously an original and distinctive talent - is marooned by the screenplay and he shoots the majority of the spectacle like a competent tv director. Three scenes bear his obvious imprint: a contract spread by word of mouth reproduced as a split screen symphony, a fight scene making virtue of Kato as a 3D effect in his own right, and a sped up sequence of Seth Rogen and a girl snogging their way through a garage full of classic cars.
But this odd concoction ultimately pleases nobody, since it partly fails in each of it's aims: it's neither a fine Superhero blockbuster, nor a hilarious comedy. Rogen, always good for an off-kilter one-liner, is never a likeable or convincing lead and Christoph Waltz lacks any of the menace or charisma evident in his villain in Inglourious Basterds. He is not helped by a a character with a single quirk (an obsession with how scary he is) instead of a personality. Cameron Diaz scarcely registers at all, leaving Jay Chou to steal the show as Kato, getting most of the best action scenes to himself.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)