UKC

Oh dear. What a desperately disappointing, disastrously bad movie. One of those rare movies - and I've seen much brilliance of late - that has you praying, about 90 minutes in, for it to come to an end, to put you out of your misery. It's just so dull, so utterly tedious, and so totally uninvolving. And so verbose, with about 10 times more words than are needed, and no dramatic shape at all. It actually manages to make a complete mess of what could have been a moderately interesting story. One of the worse scripts I've ever seen 'committed to celluloid'. And so ineptly done. So uncinematic. No wonder it bombed in America.

Dire.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

iTurkey?

In reply to Clauso:

Absolute.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

yes, but what have you done on celluloid?















I'll give the film a miss

In reply to The Lemming:


Quite a lot actually.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I know.

In reply to The Lemming:

Good. Don't forget that.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I guess you have to be interested in the character to make the film of any interest. I dont happen to be interested in the Steve Jobs story, let alone a dramatised one.

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:


Look: I'm a complete Apple Mac fan, and have always been very interested by the Steve Jobs story. So, if it doesn't work for me, I don't see how it will work for anyone.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I like Danny Boyle as he usually makes interesting films that are not mainstream, so to speak.

Shame this film is a dudd.

In reply to The Lemming:

Yup. I was really impressed by the way he directed the Olympic opening ceremony (though I suspect that the art director was the untrumpeted true brilliance). But I'll have to confess that years ago I was distinctly underwhelmed by the 'Slumdog Millionnaire'.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


Have you seen Pirates of Silicon Valley? Might provide some entertainment.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I'm not an Apple fan but I think Jobs is an interesting character. The structure of this film with the three real time scenes sounds interesting, does it work at all?

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:


I wasn't particularly interested in the Facebook story, or for that matter, the James Pearson story - however I enjoyed both "The Social Network" and "Redemption". I think a good filmmaker can interest the viewer in just about anything.

In reply to aln:


Well, as I said above, it didn't work for me at all. The structure of the film was very messy and shapeless, and it had almost no light and shade. And not an ounce of humour in it. It mostly felt like the same scene/ very similar scenes being repeated about 20 times. Amazingly, it didn't even feel convincingly authentic. It didn't show Steve Jobs as nearly multi-faceted enough. It showed him mostly as nasty/eccentric. Above all, it was very boring.

In reply to planetmarshall:


Yes, it's up to the filmmaker to make the subject matter interesting. I try to go to a film with as few preconceptions as possible. Ideally, the less I know about a movie in advance the better. I guess one problem I had with the Steve Jobs film was that I already knew quite a lot about the character so was expecting the film to be interesting.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

No tripping scene I take it?

In reply to aln:

No. I think at one point he hinted that someone should smoke pot, that's all.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


"But equally suggestive, is a quote from Steve Jobs to New York Times reporter John Markoff. Speaking about psychedelics, Jobs said, “Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.” He was hardly alone among computer scientists in his appreciation of hallucinogenics and their capacity to liberate human thought from the prison of the mind. Jobs even let drop that Microsoft’s Bill Gates would “be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once.” Apple’s mantra was”Think different.” Jobs did. And he credited his use of LSD as a major reason for his success."

In reply to dread-i:

Hence my question above about a tripping scene.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I enjoyed it. No idea if the Jobs character reflected the real person but as a a depiction of an incredibly talented but deeply flawed, slightly autistic, individual and their relationship to others and their single minded passion to achieve their ends I found it believable and provocative

In reply to Postmanpat:

'Provocative' meaning what? It didn't stimulate me in any way. I've seen so many great movies recently, back to back, that I really had very little time for this astonishingly badly crafted piece of drudgery. (It had some very low points. The back projection in that corridor was one of the most embarrassingly inept scenes I've seen for a long while.) It felt so long. I think it must have been in excess of 120 minutes? Felt like about three hours.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Out of interest, what did you think of The Social Network?

I can't see myself watching The Jobbie, but I'd have said the same about Facebook: The Movie, which turned out to be a superb, compelling drama.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


I can't comment on the technical craft, although it all seemed fine to me as a punter. I am interested in people and businesses. So I found the contrast between Jobs as a a genius intellectually but barren emotionally, and how that plays out in terms of relationships with his colleagues and the running of his business very thought provoking.
I thought it interesting that a film in which there is zero action, and we pretty much know what happens, can pass so quickly!

Maybe it helps that I have zero emotional enthusiasm for my Apple products.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Thank you for confirming my suspicions. I saw the trailer and just thought what a daft idea for a film.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

They should have made the film about Woz instead of Steve Jobs. Anyone with any interest in seeing the movie (techies) knows that Steve Jobs was a salesman, the interesting stuff came from Woz who is largely overlooked when it comes to Apple. His book (I Woz) was very good.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I've only got one Apple product - it still works nearly 35 years after it was made. I couldn't get too excited about what they sell now though.

In reply to Removed User:

Thanks for that reference, I'd like to read it - the Apple II was the first computer I had real contact with (except for some silly session with BASIC on teletype terminals at Blandford in the early 70s) and it felt as if the future had arrived back in early 1979, somewhat stylishly!