The new Steve Jobs movie starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs, written by Aaron Sorkin, and directed by Danny Boyle is a pretty artificial movie bordering on not being a movie at all and is pretty amazing. What I mean is that it’s written and produced more like a stage play with a level of artificiality that comes from Aaron Sorkin writing his fast-paced, walk and talk dialog in just three scenes across three time periods and cramming 100% detail into each event. Real life doesn’t work this way, heightened drama with actors working at the top of the game can and do.

This is a Steve Jobs story told almost in real-time during three different product launches (the original Mac in 1984, the NeXT in 1988, and the iMac in 1998) where everyone and everything in Jobs’ life has to occur in back to back scenes in dressing rooms, hallways, and on stages… it’s not reality in that of course he didn’t have this big blow out with Woz at that moment and probably didn’t meet Scully just a few minutes later and his daughter Lisa wasn’t there just a couple minutes after that. I think, given the way the film was directed and written, any argument that it doesn’t reflect reality is missing the point of what this film is doing.

It’s artificial in the way a stage play can be and it’s electric. See this movie for a master craftsman look at acting, at writing, at editing, and direction.

There are problems with the movie though. The primary one is that it assumes you have familiarity with the history of Jobs and Apple. If you don’t, then the movie isn’t interested in slowing down to explain things. This is supposedly based on the Walter Isaacson biography (which is pretty great) but it doesn’t cover nearly the number of bases that book does. So read that book, catch the imperfect Steve Jobs documentary from earlier in the year, or do some research maybe… (which is not a notch in the movie’s favor, I suppose).

Also, the movie only covers the events in those three periods with the occasional (and very artfully edited) flashback to earlier moments. Not enough to cover the bases and it doesn’t go past 1998 and cover iPods, iPhones, or his death so this is not a biopic. It would have been nice to see the earlier and later scenes but that would have altered what made this a great movie (and, at two hours as it stands, made for a MUCH longer flick).

But, for what they did put on screen, they knocked it out of the park. One of the best movies of the year, easily. As long as you don’t want explosions or demand 100% reality from your movies and can roll with some artificiality, this is a pretty great film.

Score: 90