A weekend screening of "Steve Jobs", a biopic about Apple Inc's famous co-founder, received high praises and mixed impressions from critics according to reports from The Business Times. Some critics went as far as saying Michael Fassbender can be an Oscar contender for his lead role as Steve Jobs.
The same team that got the Social Network on the big screen was assembled to create the life of the late Steve Jobs in film however David Fincher ultimately dropped out along with Sony and the script eventually landed into the lap of Danny Boyle with Michael Fassbender as the lead actor. Boyle isn't an automatic fit for the material considering his hyper-kinetic style wouldn't suit the fact-based life of the tech icon. However in the world premiere of the film as a "work in progress" last Saturday, Danny Boyle's talent and Aaron Sorkin's storytelling left impressive reviews from Variety:
"Aaron Sorkin provides the words but Michael Fassbender turns them into music."
"So call it a contender. 'Steve Jobs' just made perhaps the biggest splash of the 42nd Telluride Film Festival so far. And count on Universal hoping that five-year streak of best picture screenings here in the San Juans extends to six."
More from Justin Chang of Variety:
"For those who subscribe to the generally held view that the late co-founder of Apple was both an iconic visionary and a monster with a silicon chip where his heart should be, rest assured that writer Aaron Sorkin, director Danny Boyle and star Michael Fassbender have given their subject the brilliant, maddening, ingeniously designed and monstrously self-aggrandizing movie he deserves."
"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."
More positive reviews from Indiewire:
"Factor in the Oscar race". On Fassbender and Kate Winslet, who plays Macintosh Marketing Chief Joanna Hoffman, "dazzle with their fleet-tongued performances, unlike anything they have done before".
However The Guardian gave a mixed review saying that the movie might only appeal to Apple geeks. It said, "Boyle's best film in years." however it appeared "to be admirably unsentimental in its portrayal of Jobs, by the end we're getting close to Apple-sponsored hero iWorship." Along the same line, The Chicago Tribune said, "The results are never less than entertaining visually, but a little toothless dramatically."
Michael Fassbender acted alongside Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels and Seth Rogen. The film is expected to be shown at the New York Film Festival before it will be released in the United States on Oct 9. Boyle will still be editing the film before the New York screening. Here is the official trailer of the movie:
