BlackBerry

Hamilton, Ontario, 1996. Two mismatched entrepreneurs—quiet, nerdy genius Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel, This Is the End) and brash, cut-throat businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia)—joined forces in an endeavor that was to become a worldwide hit in little more than a decade. The device that one of them invented and the other sold was the BlackBerry, an addictive mobile phone that changed the way the world worked and communicated. But just as BlackBerry was rising to new peaks, it also started losing its way through the fog of Smartphone wars, management indecision, and outside distractions, eventually leading to the breakdown of one of the most successful ventures in the history of the tech and business worlds. Distinguished by his own brand of savage humor, triple-threat Matt Johnson amazes us with this rollicking, surprisingly gripping nostalgia-fueled biopic that recalls both The Social Network and HBO’s Silicon Valley as it delivers a hubristic lesson about greed and ego. Stellar performances and an outstanding supporting cast including Cary Elwes, Saul Rubinek, Michael Ironside, and Rich Sommer help make this endearingly scrappy tech-world satire a story for the ages.