STEVE JOBS (15, 122 mins)

Director: Danny Boyle

4 stars

It’s been an on and off project, this portrait of Steve Jobs, the man who changed the face of modern technology. Various directors and actors have come and gone over the past couple of years, sometimes throwing doubt over whether the movie would ever be made.

Not to mention whether there was even the need for one at all considering there was already a movie about Jobs in 2013 with Ashton Kutcher in the title role - not that anyone actually saw it.

But thankfully all the right elements aligned and the results have been worth the wait.

What makes Danny Boyle’s take on the persona of Jobs different and a cut above the usual biographical fluff is a unique structure that means there are only really three scenes in the entire film.

Each of the sequences take place before a product launch, with Jobs (Michael Fassbender) and his associates marching around the back rooms and corridors in the bowels of theatres and conference centres (if it recalls anything in its visual form it’s probably Birdman).

Each demonstrates his determination and single-mindedness and delves deep into his personality. He doesn’t care if a problem appears unfixable, it needs to be fixed, even if that involves turning off the building’s fire exit lights.

It begins in 1984 at the launch of the Macintosh home computer, as Jobs’ marketing exec Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) pleads with him to manage expectations, while Jobs believes everyone in the country will want one.

He’s largely painted as an unpleasant egomaniac, but a ruthless genius all the while. Someone points out that everyone who works for him seems to have the skills, that they are the components of the successful orchestra while it isn’t clear what he actually does. To this Jobs responds that he plays the orchestra.

Further launches in 1988 and 1998 find him at critical points in his career, and bridging each of the sections we get fed plenty of information through news reports.

The Mac flopped and Jobs ended up fired from Apple, his own company, but that didn’t stop him from roaring back.

Of course you can hardly hope to have an entire film revolve around a man trying to sell some computers, and a vital human component is added with regard to his daughter, Lisa. At first he refuses to acknowledge that she even is his daughter, but over the years their relationship builds and develops.

It may be a film that’s all talk, but not a word is wasted.

The quickfire dialogue is typical of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (who brought a similar energy to his Oscar-winning script for The Social Network), and the screenplay is a tremendous juggling act, proving funny and provocative while smuggling in exposition and characterisation at the same time.

Ashton Kutcher may have looked more like Jobs, but that matters little, and Fassbender is tremendous, finding depth and layers in his portrayal.

This is no mere biography then, but a meaty drama about finding success versus being good at life. The traditional biopic as a viable film platform was already dead; it’s twice as dead now.

THE LADY IN THE VAN (12A, 104 mins)

Director: Nicholas Hytner

4 stars

Alan Bennett adapts his own memoir and play into this charming drama from frequent collaborator Nicholas Hytner.

Based on his own experiences, it stars Maggie Smith as Miss Shepherd, an elderly bag lady who one day in the 70s parked her van in his north London driveway and stayed there for 15 years.

It's laudable stuff, with Bennett (Alex Jennings) too polite and timid to do anything about it, tolerating her unpleasant demeanour while also admitting he might get a writing project out of it.

It's the sort of film that lives or dies by its performances and Maggie Smith is remarkable, doing much more than just a variation on her crusty Marigold Hotel shtick, and proceedings are consistently amusing thanks to her rude and curmudgeonly ways.

Jennings is splendid too and there's poignancy to Miss Shepherd's backstory and Bennett dealing with his own issues, resulting in a fully rounded and wholly enjoyable experience.

TANGERINE (15, 86 mins)

Director: Sean Baker

4 stars

Filmed entirely on mobile phones to far better effect than that might suggest, this remarkable indie drama takes us into the lives of transgender prostitutes working the streets of Hollywood.

There are a few different story threads going on, with the focus on Sin-dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) as she searches for the woman she has heard has been having an affair with her pimp while she was in prison.

Her pal Alexandra (Mya Taylor) meanwhile is excited about singing at a local club that evening while a taxi driver and sometime client of both of them tries to balance his predilections with a family Christmas that may be about to get away from him.

Fresh, eye-opening and extremely funny, Tangerine rattles along, bursting with energy and colour thanks to its cracking performances and a lively script. Above and beyond that it presents all of its varied characters with frankness and compassion and without judgement, and the result is a gem that’s well worth seeking out.

FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS (15, 116 mins)

Director: Gabriele Muccino

2 stars

This soggy drama stars Russell Crowe as an author involved in a car crash in 1989 which leaves his wife dead and him with severe seizures following a mental breakdown.

He has to go to hospital for several months for treatment leaving his young daughter Katie with her aunt and uncle, then suddenly it’s 25 years later and Katie has grown into Amanda Seyfried, a social worker training to be a psychologist.

She’s empty and emotionless and in order to find out what the root of her problems may be we jump back and forward in time to when she was young, with her aunt and uncle vying to adopt her due to Crowe still having the seizures.

While some of the father and daughter scenes are effective during the flashbacks, elsewhere this suffers from clumsy direction and over-explaining dialogue.

Big, showy performances don’t help either, with Crowe wildly overdoing it, leading to moments that are unfortunately unintentionally funny. The fact that we don’t know what’s happened to him in the intervening years is about the only thing that keeps the film going much of the time, but the answer isn’t really one that’s worth hanging around for.

THE HALLOW (15, 97 mins)

Director: Corin Hardy

2 stars

A scientist (Joseph Mawle) moves with his wife and baby to rural Ireland, there to study the local flora and fungi in this subpar horror. Amid the usual warnings from neighbours that they don’t belong there’s talk of the Hallow, the fairy people in the trees.

The focus on local folklore is an admirable but eventually doomed attempt to give it flavour, but this is a film much too in love with its own mythology to offer the other required story elements.

As much as it would like to think it’s bringing more than the genre usually does, it’s punctuated by nothing more than cheap bumps when it’s not being extremely dull. After a while it’s a slow descent into guys in suits running around like it’s a school play, and The Hallow is bog-standard horror fare that would be swiftly abandoned if you stumbled across it on Netflix.