Failed Oscar Campaigns: "Steve Jobs" (2015)

Michael Fassbender

As awards seasons pick up, so do the campaigns to make your film have the best chances at the Best Picture race. However, like a drunken stupor, sometimes these efforts come off as trying too hard and leave behind a trailer of ridiculous flamboyance. Join me on every other Saturday for a highlight of the failed campaigns that make this season as much about prestige as it does about train wrecks. Come for the Harvey Weinstein comments and stay for the history. It's going to be a fun time as I explore cinema's rich history of attempting to matter.

The New "Steve Jobs" Movie Bombs at the Box Office

Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs

Every year has their share of movie bombs. In recent months, the likes of Pan have opened to disastrous numbers. While most of the films that fall this fate usually have to do with bad reviews, some good films get sucked in due to less fortunate reasons. This past weekend marked arguably one of the worst box office returns of the year with no less than four new releases being appropriately called a "box office bomb." Of course, these films - Jem and the Holograms, The Last Witch Hunter, Rock the Kasbah - were met with generally bad reviews. However, there's one closely tied to this year's Oscar Buzz that is more surprising than all of these. Director Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs went wide released this week on 2,433 screens. The results weren't pretty.

Review: "Steve Jobs" is a Flawed Yet Captivating Masterpiece

Left to right: Seth Rogen and Michael Fassbender

Ever since the dawn of celebrity culture, the concept of the larger than life individual has always fascinated us. They seem like infallible life forms sent to Earth to entertain while serving no other use. It has been chronicled throughout film history going back to films like The Great Ziegfeld and The Pride of the Yankees. These are films that tell a story that is often stranger than fiction. To a large demographic, Apple founder Steve Jobs is arguably among the largest of the larger than life celebrity; revolutionizing technology and building himself up from nothing on multiple occasions. With the latest film from director Danny Boyle and writer Aaron Sorkin, the story plays like what happens when Dorothy pulls back the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. We see the fractured life of a charismatic man; creating one of the most artful, fast paced looks into acclaim that has been captured on film this year thanks in large part to Michael Fassbender's brilliant performance.