The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
It's a realistic look at Theranos, a technology company that has caused a lot of fuss around the world, especially with billions of dollars. Its founder was Elizabeth Holmes, the youngest billionaire of self-serving women, but the company suffered a major collapse later. Perhaps the cause of the massive collapse was fraud and fraud that destroyed everything.
20 November 1942, Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA
23 October 1953, New York City, New York, USA
26 September 1981, Saginaw, Michigan, USA
January 8, 1958 in Holland, Michigan, USA
19 August 1946, Hope, Arkansas, USA
February 3, 1984 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA
March 19, 2019
In the end, Holmes remains the complex, magnetic, repulsive, odd, completely watchable star of a thriller that's ongoing.
March 19, 2019
In his penetrating new HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney weighs Holmes' alleged fraud in the context of the fantasyland that is Silicon Valley.
March 19, 2019
Perhaps a ten-hour-long, O.J.: Made in America-style docuseries could satisfyingly address the systematic, cultural context of Elizabeth Holmes; that's not this film by a long shot.
March 18, 2019
The Inventor is a fascinating look at a person who lives by the George Costanza mantra "It's not a lie if you believe it." Only this isn't Monk's Diner, and the stakes couldn't have been higher.
March 15, 2019
The Inventor has an ethereal atmosphere, enhanced in no small way by Will Bates's music, and conforms to Mr. Gibney's usual M.O.
March 19, 2019
We all want something to believe in-and, as Gibney suggests, if nothing worthy of our belief presents itself, we'll make do with a ripping yarn.
March 14, 2019
Like a lot of Gibney documentaries, it compresses a juicy, complicated story into a smooth, coherent retelling that occasionally glances at that story's deeper implications.
March 18, 2019
Gibney finds himself unable to show why Holmes was such a compelling figure. Instead, the viewer is lost in an endless maze of dry re-enactments and footage from Theranos promos and interviews.
March 19, 2019
But where the film loses any potency it might have had is in emphasizing the nobility of Holmes's professed mission.
March 18, 2019
Like most any Alex Gibney film, this one is sleek, well-produced, focused and journalistic. But The Inventor, given the Gibney-perfect subject, is a little surprising in its softness. As competent as it is, the film just doesn't bite very hard.
March 19, 2019
Gibney urges us to look Holmes in the eyes for two hours.
March 19, 2019
The Inventor does a lot of telling but not a lot of showing. We still don't know Holmes any better at the end. Is she just an invention too?

