There's this thing that always happens to me when I watch a movie written by Aaron Sorkin. For roughly the first fifteen or twenty minutes, I'll roll my eyes at the breakneck pacing and all-too-witty dialogue, and I start to wonder if his charm has finally worn off. But then, without fail, I find myself slowly getting sucked into his story and characters, and I end the movie thinking "that son of a bitch did it again."
Steve Jobs is a heavily fictionalized biopic in the vein of The Social Network and Moneyball, and while it's not quite as flawless as those comparables, the strengths are pretty much identical: keen structuring (and I love that it's broken up into three distinct parts, all centered around press conferences), sharp back and forth, and an emphasis on emotional truth over facts. Once I was on its side, I was captivated the entire way - especially in the confrontational third act.
But it's not just Sorkin. Danny Boyle and cinematographer Alwin Küchler capture the screenplay's energy by implementing three different film formats (16 mm, 35 mm, and digital) to make each era unique, and Michael Fassbender, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, and especially Kate Winslet bring these words to life with some killer performances. And the result is yet another in a long line of elegant-yet-complex products to carry the Jobs name.
Grade: A-
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