Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine
Before Apple, computers were a source of anxiety and even fear in popular culture. Steve Jobs taught the world to love the machines. After his death, the odd outpouring of grief indicted that he was loved as well. In his documentary (not to be confused with Aaron Sorkin’s dramatization), director Alex Gibney explores how this ruthless, deceitful, cruel yet philosophical genius endowed computers with the spirit of poetry and made the world dependent on them.
“The Making of Trump”
The experts dismissed Donald Trump’s primary run as a sideshow—until it became the show. This History Channel documentary is an engrossing look at a man without shame who got where he is by being loud and extreme. Trump has always played the media like a maestro, spinning failure into gold and leveraging negatives into success. Norman Vincent Peale was his childhood pastor; the gospel of his own success is Trump’s one certain belief.
Donovan’s Brain
Mild-mannered Lew Ayres (who played kindly Dr. Kildare in a series of flicks) stars as a researcher who crosses ethical lines by preserving a dead man’s brain. The brain belonged to the sort of aggressive, tax-evading tycoon the Koch brothers would love—and is still alive, capable of controlling people and working its elaborate financial machinations. The 1953 film is mad science in America’s heartland and co-stars the woman who became First Lady Nancy Reagan.
The War Between Men and Women
The 1960s and early ’70s saw many “battle of the sexes” comedies—until the ascent of feminism changed the rules of the game. In The War Between Men and Women (1972) Jack Lemmon plays a cynical, sharp-tongued, vision-impaired cartoonist who stumbles (literally) into the woman who might become his wife (Barbara Harris). Inventively incorporating James Thurber animation and soliloquies directed to the camera, the film espouses the freedom of bachelorhood from feminine constraints. Jason Robards co-stars.
