I’ll call it a film triptych as three periods of time, three locations, and three types of cameras parallel Jobs’s three historical product launches.
If you’ve watched The West Wing or The Newsroom, you’ve already taken a class in “sorkinese.” Aaron Sorkin writes with poignant, often profane cutting banter but has an uncanny ability to allow great actors to shine and the characters they play to remain flawed but incredibly likable.
Fassbender is to Jobs as Reeves was to Superman. Put on the turtleneck and white tennis shoes and away he goes. 
Meanwhile, Kate Winslet’s sweeps the rest of the audience in under her protective umbrella to watch the rest of the performance. She is caretaker and necessary foil to Jobs’s hero.
Sorkin weaves fictional story plots into true history with provocative threads of conversation. He builds an intricate spiderweb of verbal sparring between those closest to Steve Jobs, whose pride and potential trap him in the center of the web. The illusive enemy and savior become one as iNnovation thrusts the world forward simultaneously cutting friendly and familial ties. His own daughter is among the collateral casualties. 
Jobs conducts the creation and release of the future of personal computing while his orchestra of brilliant tech and financial wizards play in the pit. They all must play the roles they are given, but without the sacrifice and leadership of the front man, all would be lost. Jobs sees this. It takes a strong, driven leader with unparalleled focus to make history like he did. The question posed, as always, is: is it worth it at the expense of relationships. Must genius doom itself to solitude?
As films go, this one haunts. The Tron-esque pulsing score matches the blood pressure of the film’s namesake. 
Danny Boyle, the director, uses people as props and lighting as sets, playing on the algorithms and symmetry of people on the move, of friendly connections severed, of puzzle pieces placed over decades as industry stretches forward to match the dreams of innovators.
A few flashbacks literally flash in between scenes of dialogue as the three art pieces, poised and playing in real-time hand-cam style stand adjacent in order to be appreciated as a singular masterpiece in three parts.
Joe Wright’s Pan is a kiss and a miss.
But then he missed…well a followable plot. It opens with an explanation in narration that this is a set up, a prequel, pre-Pan the backstory. Audiences most likely presupposed that this film would stray from the beloved J.M. Barrie novels, but not to this degree of confusion.
Sadly, this one poses too many questions then fails to answer them. Is Pan the one? Who is good vs who is evil? Matrix and monomyth connections ensue, and it’s just too much. Too many cooks in the kitchen, as they say. Too many swirling ideas. Too many supernatural cards in play. Blake Snyder calls this “Double Mumbo Jumbo.” 
The storyline pours in in irreconcilable duos: grief over dead parents AND kidnapped by pirates, fear of heights AND space travel, belief in fairies AND eternal life.
These themes of kidnapping, death, and slavery, as well as long scenes of violence make this film far too dark for its target audience: small children. It takes deep, pendulous swings from death and fear into pirate hijinks AND a quirky trampoline UFC fighting. Odd duos.
Small Peter, played by Levi Miller, was lovely and vulnerable as a young Pan, but lacked the sass and strong will that Pan is known for. His deathly fear of heights was also a plot twists for the age-old flying Pan ideal. Sky pirate, Blackbeard, kidnaps slaves from around the world to work in the mines of Neverland hunting for the precious pixie rock dust, “Pixum.” We later assume, though it is unclear, that “Pixum” is both the key to flight AND long life. Pan leans on far too many assumptions. It plays like a hero journey outline with whole sections stolen from other films and some unfinished Polar Express-esque graphics spliced in. It’s basically Star Wars, but it made me want to go home and watch Hook with Robin Williams.
He becomes Han Solo swooping in on his ship to rescue and woo princess Tiger Lily and save the day by helping the boy Pan meet his destiny. Huh? 
Tiger Lily is the Princess Leia type. She sassy and cause-driven. She can fight, and she bravely stands up against the man in black after watching him kill her family members. Despite the script, Rooney Mara almost saves this film as she underplays Tiger Lily bringing the only subtlety and therefore believable balance to a gentle Peter waiting to become the Pan.
The “score” exemplifies the film’s bipolar trends. Classic orchestrated film score turns rock opera upon arrival in Neverland as the whole cavernous mountain area filled with mining boys and old men pirates sing Nirvanva’s “Smells like Teen Spirit.” Hugh Jackman makes his Blackbeard entrance singing “Here we are now, entertain us.” 
It all could have perhaps worked had this effort repeated itself like in A Knights Tale or in Moulin Rouge, or had they not gone to such lengths to set the film in WWII decades before Nirvana fans tripped similarly into their own Neverlands.
I couldn’t believe the depth and youthful innocence that a young Robert Duvall gave his almost voiceless role of Boo Radley. Brilliant. And, I fell in love with Gregory Peck, who called Atticus his greatest role of all.
The opening sequence seems to show quintessential childhood – collections in a box, removed and replaced. Scenes from Amelie (2001) and The Fall (2006) echo as token tribute to this film’s classic opening. 
A child narrator can speak unfettered by adult inclinations toward between-the-lines political double-talk or gaged intentions. Scout tells it like it is. Innocence is allowed a voice that reminds the world to see people as only a child can and to care for all others unconditionally.
Despite kid show channels’ certain and obvious attempts at making grown-ups, especially parents, look ridiculous, this story gives the child’s perspective but makes the father the hero. This badge he wears with honesty, care, some sense of failure, and deep love.
In a parallel portrayal, the real mad dogs of the town come to commit acts of citizen justice before the courts have a chance to free a black man accused of raping a white woman. Atticus stands alone in moral courage against the growling crowd.
Even as his Oscar fame faded to a distant echo, Peck remained a father figure to the little actress who played Scout. They always called each other by their character names, and kept in touch. Rare indeed.
Even more rare were the events shaping American history at that time. Martin Luther King Jr. wore the heavy burden of speaking to the world on the same matters of civil importance as found in Lee’s book. King spoke of Atticus. King’s message was the same as that of Lee’s novel: living breathing human beings should all be given the same right to live and breathe. Timeless truth.
Splatter: on FILM 
