Steve Jobs (2015)

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Steve Jobs (2015)

Steve Jobs is an excellent movie in every aspect. Its grounded in the clever screenplay by Aaron Sorkin who chooses an unusual structure and pulls it off better than anyone could have imagined. The other foundation of the movie’s success is Michael Fassbender in the title role. Fassbender is always brilliant but here he shows some facets I hadn’t seen before from him. Kate Winslet is amazing too in an interesting role. Danny Boyle’s direction also helps to keep the film entertaining, with unusual camera angles, different film stock and a fascinating color scheme. The movie is not realistic or authentic, but one of its charms is that it is fully aware of that and never claims to be. It breaks a lot of rules that normal Hollywood movies tend to follow and proves that sometimes that’s the right way to go. I mean, I’m not a big Apple fan (to put it mildly) and I have a hard time admiring Steve Jobs, but none of this stopped me from enjoying the movie so much, which proves how successful it is in telling a compelling, intelligent story.

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Modern Problems at the Zombie Lake: The Movies of 1981, Part 1 [1981 Week]

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Modern Problems at the Zombie Lake: The Movies of 1981, Part 1 [1981 Week]

So, I watched 15 movies for this theme week and write about two of them separately. What about the 13 others? Will they just vanish and be forgotten? I decided to write one article about all of them instead and focus on different aspects. After I was done, it was too much for one article, so I decided to split it in two articles.

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Blow Out (1981) [1981 Week]

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Blow Out (1981) [1981 Week]

(spoilers ahead)

Blow Out is an incredibly cinematic movie but it never becomes just an exercise in moviemaking by actually having something to say. Still, director Brian de Palma uses every trick in the book to enhance this story and to (often) visually explore an aspect of moviemaking that is not visual: sound. That alone is fascinating to watch but the movie also works as a dark conspiracy thriller about a disillusioned generation that mourns the 60s and 70s. John Travolta delivers a great performance here with a wide range of hopelessness, excitement, anger and despair. But this is a director’s movie and I’m not the first to suggest that this might be de Palma’s finest moment both as a director and a writer. The use of split-screens, change of focus with special lenses, long takes and a circling camera (in one spectacular scene that doesn’t ever seem to stop) are impressive and effective at the same time. After watching so many movies from 1981, this one stands out so spectacularly that even weeks after seeing it, it makes me feel good to see so much passion on the screen.

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Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) [2004 Week]

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Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) [2004 Week]

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is awkward, but not in the way it wants to be. It wants to be Tim Burton-awkward, with strange characters in a weird world full of unusual locations, visual effects and props. And it has all of those ingredients, but its tone is what is really strange about it. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but I personally didn’t think it was very funny. Jim Carrey is so over-the-top and so much of the movie focuses on him that it’s almost distracting, like a one-man-show. I can’t really put my finger on it, but the movie didn’t work for me. I’m not even sure what its intended audience is as many jokes are not for kids but overall the movie isn’t all that appealing to adults either.

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Badlands (1973) [1973 Week]

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Badlands (1973) [1973 Week]

(minor spoilers)

When I checked for 1973 movies and saw Badlands, I knew I had to take it. I had never seen it before, but how I could not use the opportunity for watching Terence Malick’s first movie? I really liked all of his movies I have seen up to now and I really had been wanting to see Badlands for a while. Anyway, it is definitely a good and fascinating movie. It worked better for me in the first half than in the last, but overall the story of those two young people drifting through the U.S. is worth watching and is not at all the way you would expect it. The images are beautiful and haunting and even if you think you’ve seen all of Malick’s insertion of nature images, I always find it powerful. Early on, he shows this holistic view of the world and you see that in Badlands as much as you see it in The Tree of Life thirty years later. The acting is great, the music is excellent (I had an epiphany when I realized that my favorite music from True Romance is no original Hans Zimmer score, but a classical track by Orff that Malick used in his spiritual predecessor to True Romance. I never knew…) and increases this strange, dream-like, melancholy atmosphere that accompanies ever killing and escape from civilization. I’m not sure about the ending of the movie because I felt similar to Sissy Spacek’s character in the end, which made it harder to engage with the movie.

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Music Box: Gang of Four's "Entertainment!"

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Music Box: Gang of Four's "Entertainment!"

After Marie Antoinette I couldn’t help but wonder, why I haven’t written anything about Gang of Four’s Entertainment! before. This is one of my most influential albums that is so bold in deconstructing our society and goes beyond the “everything sucks” ideology of many punk albums. This is post-punk, of course, and while there are other political albums in music’s history, at least for me nothing achieves what this album achieves. It’s angry without being loud, it’s intelligent and challenges the listener because it doesn’t provide easy answers. It’s simply brilliant, lyrically and musically. If I ever need inspiration for change, for doing something, I put this one on and get going.

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