(USA 2015)

While I always got the appeal of Apple products—and I made the switch from Microsoft to Mac almost ten years ago myself—I never jumped on the Steve Jobs bandwagon. He was, in my view, another capitalist baby boomer wunderkind who found his way to a billion dollars with a good idea. That’s not a bad thing—it just doesn’t make one a god or a rock star.

Even if it doesn’t dive deep, Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine does its job showing the flawed, cutthroat, and perhaps downright evil man the Mac maker became during his career. Comprised of footage of Jobs himself—much of it taken from a deposition in a lawsuit against Apple—juxtaposed between interviews with those who knew him mostly from work, it’s an interesting play in contrasts and contradictions. Neither Jobs not Apple are what they seem on the surface—and this is far from a flattering piece.

What ultimately lost me was the film’s unfortunate devolution into a hypefest of Apple products—I suppose one cannot discuss Jobs without discussing his many creations, but the way it came across seemed beside the point.

(Landmark Century) C-

http://www.magpictures.com/stevejobsthemaninthemachine/