Alex Gibney

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on Alex Gibney:

Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker traces a tennis star’s epic fall [Apple TV+ review] ★★☆☆

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Tennis champ Boris Becker takes aim at a ball in archival footage from sports docuseries ★★☆☆
Nothing could stop Boris Becker's rocket ride to the top of tennis.
Photo: Apple TV+

TV+ ReviewNew Apple TV+ docuseries Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker centers on a famous tennis player embroiled in a scandal. Directed by prolific but utterly predictable documentarian Alex Gibney, the two-part series charts the rise and fall of the youngest Wimbledon champion in history.

Debuting today on Apple TV+, the straight-ahead documentary goes from Boris Becker’s historic wins to his similarly historic losses on the world stage thanks to dicey financial decisions. And it does so in the most formulaic fashion possible. That’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s no ace, either.

Elizabeth Holmes failed to copy Steve Jobs in one critical way

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Elizabeth Holmes
Now showing on HBO.
Screenshot: HBO/YouTube

Disgraced tech entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes was known to worship the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and she wore a black turtle neck every day to show it.

How could someone who tried to emulate Jobs become a fraud that puts her in the company of Bernie Madoff?

Alex Gibney gave a thoughtful response to that question this week when his documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley debuted on HBO.

Controversial Steve Jobs documentary airs on TV this weekend

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man in the machine
Something something dark side.
Photo: Magnolia Pictures

If you haven’t suffered Steve Jobs overload already (and the disappointing box office results for Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs suggests that many people have), Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s controversial feature-length Jobs documentary, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, debuts this Sunday on CNN.

Controversial Steve Jobs documentary hits theaters today

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Alex Gibney's Steve Jobs documentary opens Sept. 4th.
Probably not a Steve Jobs portrait his friends would enjoy.
Photo: Magnolia Pictures

Movie fans may be waiting on Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic, but another Jobs-related project arrives in theaters today. And, boy, is it not a film Apple is happy about!

Titled Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, the feature-length documentary is directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, who has previously made docs exploring the dark side of Enron and the Church of Scientology.

Yep, you can probably see where this one is going!

Controversial Steve Jobs documentary gets its first trailer

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Alex Gibney's Steve Jobs documentary opens Sept. 4th.
Alex Gibney's Steve Jobs documentary opens Sept. 4.
Photo: MAGNOLIA PICTURES

The first trailer for Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine, the controversial documentary by Sir Alex Gibney, debuted online today, giving us our first extended glimpse at a film that supposedly pulls no punches when it comes to the late Apple CEO’s life and legacy.

You can watch the first trailer for the film, which Gibney described as an “impressionistic” depiction of Jobs, below.

Steve Jobs documentary director says Apple is a Scientology-like cult

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On balance, we prefer the look of Apple's spaceship campus.
On balance, we prefer the look of Apple's spaceship campus.
Photo: PictorialEvidence / Wikipedia CC

One is a cult-like organization which bilks its (often celebrity) followers out of huge amounts of money, while intimidating people who dare to speak out against its dangers. The other is Scientology.

Or at least that’s the parallel drawn by Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney, who claimed to see similarities between Apple and the L. Ron Hubbard-founded religion during a recent screening of his Steve Jobs documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.

Eddy Cue blasts new Steve Jobs documentary

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Eddy Cue, Apple's Mr. Fix-It, leaving a New York courtroom like an OG. Photo: Apple
Eddy Cue, Apple's Mr. Fix-It, leaving a New York courtroom like an OG. Photo: Apple

Alex Gibney’s documentary about Steve Jobs debuted at the South by Southwest film fest in Austin this weekend, and the first reviews have called film a “coolly absorbing, deeply unflattering portrait of the late Silicon Valley entrepreneur.”

Eddy Cue took to Twitter this morning to blast the Oscar-winning director’s film, saying he was “very disappointed in Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.”

Here’s what Cue had to say about the documentary:

New Steve Jobs docu depicts a man ‘utterly lacking in empathy’

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Citizen Jobs? Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC
Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC

Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney’s Steve Jobs documentary, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, debuted over the weekend at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival in Austin, Texas.

Financed by CNN Films, the 127-minute doc was described by its maker as delivering a “far more complex interpretation” of Jobs than any of the previous movies depicting the life of Apple’s iconic co-founder.

But what did the press think? Well, the first reviews are out and, while they’re generally strong, they certainly don’t describe a documentary that paints Jobs in a favorable light — or one that contains too many revelations that will be new to anyone who read Jobs’ maligned 2011 biography by Walter Isaacson.

Despite Apple hostility, director promises ‘impressionistic’ portrait of Steve Jobs

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What was it really like to work for Steve Jobs?
New documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine paints an "impressionistic" portrait of the late Apple chief. Photo: Jigsaw Productions
Photo: Jigsaw Productions

The director of a new documentary about Steve Jobs says his film won’t be a straightforward biography of the late Apple leader. Instead, Alex Gibney says he “set out to do an impressionistic film, structured in a way like Citizen Kane.

He also says his film, titled Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, will delve into Jobs’ character and whether he abandoned his counterculture values after turning Apple into a tech behemoth.

Steve Jobs documentary by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney will debut at SXSW

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Woz, doing his part to help computers takeover the world. Photo: Apple
Woz and Jobs with an Apple II motherboard. Photo: Apple

The SXSW Film Festival lineup revealed today that Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney will show his latest film, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, for the first time next month in Austin, Texas.

Details on the documentary are scant, but the SXSW blurb describes Gibney’s creation as “an evocative portrait of the life and work of Steve Jobs that re-examines his legacy and our relationship with the computer.”

Here’s the official synopsis: