By Susan Granger
“Steve Jobs” begins in 1984, when the Apple co-founder (Michael Fassbender) unveiled the MacIntosh, changing the computer world forever. But behind the scenes in Cupertino, California, there’s turmoil.
Tech genius Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), Jobs’ friend/collaborator, and CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) have serious issues, while Jobs’ trusted marketing chief, Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), wrangles monetary demands from Jobs’ ex-girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston), the mother of his illegitimate daughter Lisa.
Four years later, after Jobs’ ouster from Apple, there’s another product launch crisis as Jobs arrogantly presents his NeXT Black Box, followed by his return to Apple, introducing the iMac in 1998.
Within this fragmentary “backstage” framework, Michael Fassbender (“12 Years a Slave”) embodies Steve Jobs’ relentlessness, subtly revealing how he coldly views the world through a “reality distortion field” and how he ruthlessly bullies those around him, particularly when he’s under stress.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network,” TV’s “Newsroom” and “West Wing”) and director Danny Boyle (“127 Hours,” “Slumdog Millionaire”) cleverly create a complex, dialogue-driven character study, based on Walter Isaacson’s bestseller, coupled with obviously fictionalized encounters.
Significantly, Sorkin was able to interview Jobs’ daughter, who didn’t participate in the creation of Isaacson’s profile. And it’s Jobs’ relationship with Lisa that serves to humanize him, particularly when he discovers that his chief engineer, Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), paid her $25,000 Harvard tuition.
As the years unfold, Lisa is played by Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine.
Unlike a traditional biography, there are only patchy mentions of Jobs’ adoption, childhood rejection and pioneering, formative years – and its chronology stops before the now-ubiquitous iPhone or Jobs’ ill-fated battle with cancer, leading to his death at age 56.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Steve Jobs” is a kinetic, enigmatic 8. It’s extraordinary entertainment, eminently suitable for its iconic, yet inscrutable subject.
“Labyrinth of Lies” reveals how in Germany after World War II, the majority of the population tried to forget the atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich. That led to a postwar generation that either never heard of Auschwitz or dismissed it as American propaganda.
So in 1958, when Johann Radmann (Alexander Fehling) becomes a junior prosecutor in Frankfurt, he’s intrigued when an investigative journalist, Thomas Gnielka (Andre Szymanski), reports that an artist, Simon Kirsch (Johannes Krisch), recognized a schoolteacher as the former SS guard who brutalized him.
Naïve Radmann immediately encounters resistance to his inquiries. Prosecutor General Fritz Bauer (Gert Voss) says that it’s a lost cause because he’ll need proof of murder, since all other war crimes expired under the statute of limitations, adding that the entire German civil service is filled with former Nazis.
Nevertheless, with Gnielka’s help, Radmann launches an investigation encompassing 8,000 people who worked at Auschwitz. The odds are daunting as Radmann views the U.S. Army Document Center archives in Wiesbaden, where records of 600,000 suspects are haphazardly stored.
Driven by shame and guilt, along with complicity involving his own family, Radmann becomes obsessive in his arduous research. Eventually, 22 former Nazis were tried for murder, none of whom were repentant or apologetic.
Unlike the famous Nuremburg trials, the Auschwitz trials (1963-1965) were prosecuted by Germans themselves against fellow countrymen.
Italian-born German director Giulio Ricciarelli and co-writer Elizabeth Bartel created Radmann as a composite of three real-life German prosecutors; he’s an idealist battling an entrenched bureaucracy.
There’s also a romantic subplot involving an enterprising dressmaker (Friederike Becht) whom Radmann indicted in traffic court. And an attempt to capture elusive Dr. Josef Mengele.
On the Granger Gauge, “Labyrinth of Lies” is an engrossing, enlightening 8. It’s Germany’s Academy Award submission as Best Foreign Language Film.
‘Tis the season for vertigo-inducing cinematography: first, “Everest,” now Robert Zemeckis’ “The Walk,” a chronicle of how French aerialist Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) walked across a wire that he and his accomplices strung between the New York’s ill-fated Twin Towers on Aug. 7, 1974.
Beginning with Petit, standing atop the Statue of Liberty, gazing at the World Trade Center, it traces his early days in Paris, working as a street mime/juggler/unicyclist, who first gains attention when he wire-walks between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Armed with advice from a circus-trained mentor (Ben Kingsley) and the support of his girlfriend (Charlotte Le Bon), Petit arrives to begin the planning and execution of what he calls “the coup,” an illegal caper involving importing suspicious gear, disguises, shooting a wire from one tower to another, and details of the feat.
It all leads up to the digitally-created, death-defying 140-foot stroll – 1,362-feet above the ground – as Petit crosses between the 110-story buildings eight times over the course of 45 minutes.
Covering the same ground as James Marsh’s “Man on a Wire” (2008), based on Petit’s 2002 memoir “To Reach the Clouds,” it’s been whimsically fictionalized with far too much voiceover narration by Zemeckis, best known for “Back to the Future” (1996), “Cast Away” (2000) and “Forrest Gump” (2004).
Zemeckis pioneered the use of computer-generated imagery and performance-capture work, beginning with “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) and including “The Polar Express” (2004) and “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” (2009),
On the Granger Gauge, “The Walk” is a dazzling, dizzying 6, a daredevil experience.
( Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
