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Five Must-See Movies

dorriolds — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 08:42:24 +0000

Yes, it’s sad to bid adieu to another summer, but don’t despair, the movie lineup for fall softens the blow. This month you’ll see stars and filmmakers reaching for Oscar gold. From an unrecognizably blue-eyed, balding Johnny Depp with bad teeth to blistering documentaries, there’s a plethora of titillating flicks to take in. Here’s my list of September’s Top Five.

SEPT. 4: “STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE”

Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”), the man who brought us “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,” “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” “Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place” and so many more searing docs, does it again. This time he turns his investigative camera onto why fans who’d never even met Apple’s visionary Steve Jobs mourned his death as they would a rock star’s.
The fascination never ends with ole Jekyll-and-Hyde Jobs — both cutthroat and the man who brought us our most personal and beloved gadgets. Interviews include a chilling account from the mother of Jobs’ first child, Lisa, about his refusal to accept any responsibility for his daughter until a court-ordered DNA test and the battle to collect a mere $385 per month (upped to $500 after Apple went public) from the multi-millionaire. Definitely a must-see. Documentary. Rated R. 127 min.
Watch the trailer:

SEPT. 16: “PAWN SACRIFICE”

Tobey Maguire is in top form playing complex chess prodigy Bobby Fischer. This is a journey into genius and madness. “Ray Donovan” fans, rejoice: Liev Schreiber stars as Soviet World Chess Champion Boris Spassky. Peter Sarsgaard plays chess-playing priest Bill Lombardy. Written bySteven Knight (“Eastern Promises”), this is a window into a gripping tale plucked from 1972, the time of Vietnam and Watergate, when Fischer and Spassky brain-battled each other in the chess world’s “Match of the Century.” This is not just a retelling of Liz Garbus’ 2011 doc, “Bobby Fischer Against the World.” Director Edward Zwick leads you through high drama at the height of the Cold War. Go. It’s your move. Biography drama. Rated PG-13. 116 min.
Watch the trailer:

SEPT. 18: “BLACK MASS”

If you only see one film this month, make it this one. Three-time Oscar nominee Johnny Depp (“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” “Finding Neverland,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”) nails it as real-life mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, the stone-eyed killer from South Boston who debased the FBI. This is a “true” story, but poetic license was taken to insure the audience would care about the now-octogenarian Bulger, who is currently serving two consecutive life terms for a number of felonies including 11 murders (there were at least 19).
I’m not saying he comes across as a nice guy, but the movie intentionally leaves out some of the more gruesome details like Whitey’s murder of Louis Litif who he stabbed 38 times with an ice pick before shooting him in the head (talk about overkill). But, that’s entertainment, right? The ever-dreamy Benedict Cumberbatch plays Whitey’s conflicted brother, Massachusetts Senate President William M. Bulger. Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart”) directs. (Cooper also directed one of my favorite crime thrillers, 2013’s waaaay-too-underrated “Out of the Furnace,” which starred Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson and Casey Affleck.) The “Black Mass” screenplay, written by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, was based on the 2001 book “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob” written by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill. The movie also stars Kevin Bacon, Joel Edgerton, Sienna Miller and Dakota Johnson. Biography crime drama. Rated R. 122 min.
Watch the trailer:

SEPT. 18: “SICARIO”

You will never look at Emily Blunt the same way. Here, the actress rockets into acing the role of Kate Macer, a Clarice Starling-type of FBI newbie assigned to a task force at the border of the U.S. and Mexico. As Jessica Chastain did in “Zero Dark Thirty,” Blunt conveys the required backbone for a woman working in male-dominated worlds like the FBI and drug cartels. Go, Blunt, go; I’m with you, Sista. “Sicario” took me to my favorite place in a blackened theater — the dark side.
As with the aforementioned thriller “Out of the Furnace,” this opus of human depravity may fall under some viewer’s definition of too bleak, but not mine. It’s captivating, and I’ll watch Benicio del Toro in anything. Josh Brolin also stars, and the movie’s directed by French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve, best known for “Prisoners.” The current issues of drug smuggling across the U.S. and Mexico make this a timely topic. (Who can forget Donald Trump’s suggestion to build a divisive wall and name it the “Great Wall of Trump?” But I digress.) Gear up for an onslaught of action, hitmen, mercenaries and a potential Oscar nom for Blunt. Action crime drama. Rated R. 120 min.
Watch the trailer:

SEPT. 25: “WILDLIKE”

With no father and abandoned by her addict-in-a-rehab mother, Mackenzie (Ella Purnell), 14, is sent to live with her uncle (Brian Geraghty of “Ray Donovan” and “Chicago P.D.”) in Juneau, Alaska. The traumatized Mackenzie flees. Unable to reach her mother and terrified she’ll be caught by authorities, the in-over-her-head teen takes on the Alaskan wilderness to find a way back home to Seattle. Through a chance meeting with an experienced, yet sealed-off, backpacker (Bruce Greenwood), Mackenzie Velcros herself to him as a way to survive in the untamed wilderness. It’s an awe-inspiring setting for this story of a troubled girl and unlikely friendship that kept me near tears throughout. Deeply moving, this indie directed by Frank Hall Green is mesmerizing and gives a big payoff at the end. Drama. Not rated. 94 min.
Watch the trailer:

ON A FINAL NOTE FOR SEPTEMBER …

The documentary “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead,” which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival this year, hits theaters Sept. 25. It’s a romp through the madcap world of “Saturday Night Live” precursor, National Lampoon. The bittersweet doc includes the magazine’s history, the movies it spawned, hilarious film footage of John Belushi, Chevy Chase and a boatload of stars and their stories. Documentary. 98 min.
Watch the trailer:

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Filmmaker Alex Gibney Examines Adulation of Steve Jobs in New Doc

dorriolds — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 08:35:33 +0000

Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney answered questions after an intimate press-only screening of his new doc, “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.” The film is an exploration into the odd phenomenon of the public’s adulation of Jobs.
Four years ago, the Apple co-founder’s death launched worldwide public weeping during which mourners brought flowers and held each other as if they’d lost John Lennon. Gibney wanted to know why. What was it about this man that defied logic?
Gibney films include his Academy Award-winner “Taxi to the Dark Side” about the Bush Administration’s policy on torture, “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,” the Oscar-nominated “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “The Armstrong Lie,” “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” “Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place” and the list goes on.
This time, Gibney turns his investigative lens on Jobs, the cutthroat businessman who thought nothing of stealing thousands from close friends, raging, bullying and wearing employees down to their breaking point. He drove a plate-less Mercedes, parked in handicapped spots and called philanthropy a waste of time. Worst of all, he vehemently denied responsibility for his first child, Lisa. Oddly, despite his insistence that Lisa wasn’t his, Jobs christened one of Apple’s first personal computers with her name.
Jobs had to be court-ordered to take a DNA test, which proved his paternity. While he was raking in the mega-bucks, Lisa’s mother, Jobs’ former girlfriend Chrisann Brennan, struggled as a single parent waiting tables, house cleaning and turning to welfare. When the court ruled that he send money, Brennan received a piddly $500 a month. Jobs, at that time, had a personal net worth of $225 million.
What was it about this guy that made people revere him? Simple: It was the machines. Jobs changed our world when he made computers personal. He plugged us in by inventing our most prized possessions. A boy in the film landed a huge laugh when he exclaimed, “He invented the iPod. He invented the iPhone. He invented the iPad. He invented everything!”
One of the film’s most revealing testimonials of Jobs came from Bob Belleville, the former director of engineering at Apple. He speaks as if he’d been under Jobs’ spell, telling Gibney that working for Jobs cost him everything that mattered, including his wife and kids.
Watch this clip:
Because this film comes right after Gibney’s Scientology doc, the comparison was unavoidable. The director was asked if he saw a parallel between that religious cult and the Apple culture and worship of Jobs.
“Yes. There is a cult of Mac, and there are certain parallels with the church of Scientology,” he replied. “I’m not aware, though, of Apple technician’s showing up on doorsteps with GoPros on their foreheads trying to intimidate you. Nevertheless, there is this feeling like there is a passion for the person and the products that is so deep that any criticism cannot be tolerated. That I do find interesting. I think, ‘Why should that be?’ Is it not possible that we can just discuss how pitifully paid are the workers in China and how badly treated is the environment there, even as we may admire some of the technological aspects of the Apple products? There seems to be a need to deify … in a way that broke all criticism, and that does verge on the religious.”

Director Alex Gibney (photo by Dorri Olds)

GIBNEY’S BEST QUOTES OF THE EVENING:

“I was conscious of the fact that a lot had been done, a lot had been written about Steve Jobs, much of which I also read. I wanted to find a way to focus that, so it didn’t just piggy-back on that material. It ended up being not just about Steve Jobs, but also about us.”
“I think there were a lot of people who knew Jobs, and were close to Jobs that had very good things to say about him. A couple of them are in the movie. I think that to the people he was interested in, he could be not only a very charismatic figure, but a very engaging, inspiring, and transformative figure.”
“Over and over and over again, Steve Jobs keeps talking about the values of Apple. If I had an opportunity to ask Steve Jobs one question, it would’ve been, ‘What are your values? Please express your values.’ That I would’ve liked to have learned from him, in an honest and straight-forward way, if he had been willing to do it, which people like Steve Jobs rarely are when you’re a filmmaker or a person in the press and trying to get them to speak honestly of themselves.”
“He said, not in effect, he said it straightforward, ‘Giving away money is a waste of time.’ It’s hard for me to understand that. That he felt his focus was to make great products, but it was the focus of a monk without the empathy. His job was to make great products. Fuck everything else.”
As we walked out of the screening room side-by-side, I asked Gibney if he thought that Jobs’ obsessive nature bordered on insanity. He turned to look at me and said, “Yes, I think people who are that creative, that obsessive and that successful, yeah, there’s always a bit of crazy.”
“Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” opens in theaters and
becomes available on VOD platforms on Friday, Sept. 4.
CNN Films will premiere the film on TV in early 2016.
Documentary. Rated R. 127 min.
Watch the trailer:
Dorri Olds is a contributing journalist for TheBlot Magazine.

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Apple’s New iPhone Prototype Lost in a Bar

dorriolds — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:56:30 +0000

Another reason not to get drunk and sloppy. An Apple employee had too many beers and forgot his iPhone 4G prototype on the bar stool. It was cleverly disguised as a 3GS iPhone. But was then taken apart and inspected which revealed it to be a next gen iPhone. The 4G will not be called that. Rumors have it that the new iPhone will be called iPhone HD. It’ll have a front video chat camera, a better back-camera with larger lens, camera flash, micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad), improved display, a secondary mic for noise cancellation, split buttons for volume, metallic buttons for power, mute, & volume.

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