The new Steve Jobs movie penned by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle made its much-anticipated debut at the 42nd Telluride Film Festival in Colorado this weekend. Early reviews praise Michael Fassbender’s portrayal of Jobs, and just about everything else.
We’re yet to stumble across a negative review of Steve Jobs; every single one so far has been incredibly positive, with praise for Sorkin’s script, Boyle’s direction, and Fassbender’s acting. David Ehrlich of Time Out calls it “astonishingly brilliant.”
Steve Jobs the movie is a lot like Steve Jobs the person: astonishingly brilliant whenever it’s not breaking your heart. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who’s written about America’s Great Flawed Men with such fire and hyperarticulate pathos that he’s threatened to become one himself, outdoes his work on The Social Networkwith an even sharper and more savage script about a tech visionary whose genius threatens to corrupt his ethics.
Rodrigo Perez of The Playlist echoes the acclaim for Fassbender and Sorkin, and calls Steve Jobs a “deeply captivating portrait of the high cost genius” that led Apple to become one of the most successful companies in history.
A deliriously quick-footed and orchestrally pitched character study, “Steve Jobs” is an ambitious, deeply captivating portrait of the high cost of genius. The Danny Boyle-directed “Steve Jobs” is a dazzling showcase of the brilliant, multi-layered, and rat-a-tat delivery of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. For all its dimensions of an iconoclastic, trailblazing thinker and digital revolutionary, “Steve Jobs” is also a movie about fatherhood, absentee fathers, rejected children (Jobs was also adopted), and the price of committing yourself to a visionary way of thinking.
Gregory Ellwood of HitFix describes Sorkin’s writing as “an acquired taste,” but goes on to credit Fassbender and the “universally brilliant supporting cast” that’s made up of Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, and Jeff Daniels.
Beyond Fassbender’s impressive performance the movie is assisted by a universally brilliant supporting cast. Winslet gives one of the best performances of her career providing Hoffman with a gravitas that isn’t always in the script. Rogen does more for Wozniak’s legacy with his performance in this one film than any of the computer pioneer’s recent public interviews ever have. Daniels makes you root for Sculley even though he’s supposedly to blame for the dismal Apple Newton (it should be noted the movie depicts Sculley’s run as CEO as a complete disaster which simply isn’t the case).
Deadline’s Pete Hammond also acknowledged the excellent performances from the supporting cast in his “first impressions” piece.
Boyle told me at the 221 South Oak dinner after-party that it was unlike anything he had ever done before, and a bear to edit due to Sorkin’s precise style of writing. His direction is flawless and really keeps this thing moving, avoiding the static pace it might have been in lesser hands. The result is well worth it, and those magical words provided lots of opportunity for great acting performances led by Michael Fassbender’s spot-on and relentless portrayal of the not-very-likable computer genius. Kate Winslet as his trusted confidante and associate, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak are also standouts.
Even Steve Wozniak, who publicly criticized Ashton Kutcher’s Jobs movie, had plenty of good things to say about this one. The Apple co-founder told Deadline that unlike the Kutcher movie, this one is “totally authentic.”
I saw a rough cut and I felt like I was actually watching Steve Jobs and the others (including Rogen’s dead-on portrayal of Wozniak), not actors playing them, I give full credit to Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin for getting it so right.
Finally, Variety’s Justin Chang describes Steve Jobs as an “actors’ showcase,” and labels it one of this fall’s must-see movies.
Straining like mad to be the “Citizen Kane” (or at least the “Birdman”) of larger-than-life techno-prophet biopics, this is a film of brash, swaggering artifice and monumental ego, a terrific actors’ showcase and an incorrigibly entertaining ride that looks set to be one of the fall’s early must-see attractions.
Following these reviews, fans of Apple and Steve Jobs are surely going to want to catch this movie as soon as it hits theaters. Thankfully, we don’t have too long to wait now; Steve Jobs makes its theatrical debut on October 9.
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