jOBS

The nerd-to-Nasdaq rise of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was decently dramatised in 1999 TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, with a narrative focus on his rivalry with Microsoft's Bill Gates. This bigger-budget retelling deletes Gates and pastes Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) centre stage. Told in obligatory flashback, Matt Whiteley's screenplay extends only to 2001, with a healthy Jobs announcing the birth of the "game-changing" iPod. This respectful distance from his subject's cancer-linked death in 2011 suggests hagiography, but the theme is early-70s hippy idealism versus the corporate world. While circuit-board compatriot Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) remains true to the "spirit" of their garage-based dream, Jobs becomes cold, alienating and ruthless, his strops well essayed by Kutcher. Serviceable direction from Joshua Michael Stern is strengthened by a well-chosen period playlist and supporting clout from Dermot Mulroney, Matthew Modine and James Woods. But after the barnstorming approach of similarly pitched The Social Network, it all feels a little conventional.