Chef

Chef - Dir. Jon Favreau (2014)

Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) is the head chef of a trendy bistro in Venice Beach and things are looking up for him. He's about unveil a brand new menu to herald the arrival of renowned food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt, whose brother, Adam, is a food critic for New York magazine), the blogger who raved about Casper's work a decade ago. Alas, the restaurant's owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman) demands Casper stick to the regular menu, which includes caviar-topped egg and a chocolate lava cake. It backfires as Michel lambasts the stale food and manages to insult Casper's weight, "…he must be eating all the food sent back to the kitchen."

Casper storms into the restaurant when Michel returns and launches into a heated tirade that is captured by numerous cell phones and uploaded to YouTube. He becomes persona non grata in the LA food scene just as he becomes an internet sensation. Looking for a fresh start, Casper reluctantly accompanies his ex-wife, Inez (Sofia Vergara), and son, Percy (EmJay Anthony), on a trip to Miami. Once there, he purchases a decrepit food truck and turns it into the snazzy El Jefe, serving up cubanos and arroz con pollo. This new venture reinvigorates Chef Casper's passion for cooking as well as repairing his strained relationship with Percy as they make the cross-country trip back to the west coast.

The plot of Chef draws immediate parallels to Jon Favreau's own career as a filmmaker. He made a splash as the writer and producer of Swingers before following it up with his directorial debut Made. Since then, his profile in commercial films has grown with Elf and the runaway success of Iron Man, which set the foundation for Marvel's cinematic universe. However, it was clear Favreau was not the primary decision maker anymore for Iron Man 2 and Cowboys & Aliens met with tepid reactions from audiences and critics alike. With Chef, Favreau has returned to his indie roots and created a comedy/drama driven by rich characters rather than expensive CGI.

At the heart of Chef is the relationship between father and son, the latter of whom is played without a hint of precociousness by EmJay Anthony. To Favreau's credit, he doesn't go the easy route by painting Casper as an insensitive prick. He's just a workaholic and a little oblivious from time to time. Watching the two together is just one of the joys of Chef, along with Casper's interactions with other characters, such as Bobby Cannavale and John Leguizamo as two of his kitchen comrades or Scarlett Johansson in a small role as a comely hostess. Sofia Vergera gives a more natural performance as compared to the over-the-top antics we usually see from her on Modern Family. Favreau also made sure to call in Iron Man for assistance as Robert Downey Jr. pops in for a cameo as Inez's eccentric ex-husband. He makes everyone who visits his office wear surgical booties over their shoes, including his leggy assistant's six-inch stilettos. Amy Sedaris should not be overlooked for her cameo as an overly tanned publicist trying to get Casper to sign on to a cheesy reality show ala Gordon Ramsay.

Of course, what would any self-respecting chef movie be without mouth-watering cuisine? Chef is food porn cinema right up there with Eat Drink Man Woman, Tampopo, and Big Night. Chef Roy Choi of Kogi BBQ fame not only served as a consultant, but tutored Favreau in gastronomical ways. The director lovingly preps, cooks, and plates numerous delicacies and these sequences are intricately shot and cut, even for something as simple as a grilled cheese sandwich. You'll want to toss those stale movie theater concessions to the sticky floor when you watch Favreau slice into a juicy, rare steak or curl pasta around his fork. Chef brings the local flavor by shooting on location in Miami, New Orleans, and Austin with El Jefe tailoring their menu to each city. You'll get fresh beignets in the French Quarter and beef brisket for you fanatics of Texas barbecue.

Dustin Hoffman makes an excellent point when he tells Casper that people would riot at a Rolling Stones concert if Mick Jagger didn't sing "Satisfaction." While Favreau clearly enjoyed the freedom of independent film, he never lambastes the idea of playing it safe or sticking to the hits. Chef is comfort food, a pleasant, lightweight comedy. There are no high stakes and very little conflict, which isn't a bad thing though the ending is too pat and hews too closely to Ratatouille.

Rating: *** (*****)

Ride Along

Ride Along - Dir. Tim Story (2014)

Is there anything new to say about the buddy cop movie? Recent attempts like The Other Guys and 21 Jump Street brought the laughs by lampooning the genre and satirizing action movies in general. Ride Along is perfectly happy to coast on every convention established since 1982's 48 Hrs. Not a surprise since Kevin Hart has long aspired to having a career like Eddie Murphy and comparisons between the two have been made by many. Hart is perfectly cast as the fast-talking comedic foil while Ice Cube steps into the Nick Nolte role as the stern and short-tempered straight man.

Hart is Ben Barber, a high school security guard in Atlanta who loves playing first person shooting games. He's just proposed to his beautiful girlfriend Angela (Tika Sumpter) and been accepted into the police academy. Ben should be content with his life if not for Angela's other brother James (Cube). James is a hard-nosed detective who doesn't believe Ben is worthy of marrying his sister, let alone becoming a police officer. In an effort to get rid of the little runt, James decides to take his prospective brother-in-law on a ride along. Ben seems ready to throw in the towel when he's forced to deal with a biker gang, a mouthy pre-teen, and a lunatic in a supermarket. Yet, Ben provides improbable help in James's investigation into a mysterious crime lord known only as Omar.

Just as The Heat did with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, Ride Along relies almost solely on the chemistry between Ice Cube and Kevin Hart. Despite featuring four screenwriters in the credits, the script doesn't bother to do anything clever with a recognizable premise. Their idea of comedy involves quoting lines from Training Day and an opening car chase (with Ice Cube driving through a fiery explosion) appears to have been lifted right out of Other Guys. While director Tim Story has shown a knack for character-based comedies (Barbershop), he has a distinct lack of flair for action (Fantastic Four).

It's left entirely up to the leading stars to keep the audience's interest intact as the lackluster plot plods along. Hart is a bit like Chris Tucker with proper restraints. He knows when to play it to the hilt, but knows the right moments to dial it back. His manic energy is a strong contrast to the stoic Ice Cube, who ironically portrays the type of cop Cube railed against in his NWA days. Bruce McGill co-stars as the exasperated superior that's become a genre requirement along with John Leguizamo and Bryan Callen as fellow detectives. Laurence Fishburne manages to kick Ride Along up a notch when he makes a third act appearance as the enigmatic Omar.

Ice Cube struck a nerve when he took to social media to complain after he and Kevin Hart failed to win the MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Duo. They lost to Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Sorry, but Cube must have an overinflated opinion of himself. His supporting work in Jump Street was much funnier. As it stands, Ride Along is a pedestrian comedy strictly for fans of Cube and Hart.

Rating: ** (*****)

Kick-Ass 2

Kick-Ass 2 - Dir. Jeff Wadlow (2013)

Scotsman Mark Millar is one of the top writers currently in the comic book industry. He's able to find a unique slant to traditional superhero tropes. Millar's magnum opus, Superman: Red Son, is a brilliant look at what would have happened if baby Kal-El had landed in Stalin Russian instead of Smallville, Kansas. Millar's talent as an author is frequently lost by his proclivities for being a provocateur. His works, such as Wanted and Nemesis, are known to frequently use profanity and violence for shock value. Millar has also come under fire for his cavalier attitude towards the depiction of rape. This leads us to Kick-Ass, which initially debuted as an 8-issue mini-series in 2008 and gained notice for Hit-Girl, a 10-year old vigilante described as a cross between Rambo and Polly Pocket. Hit-Girl casually cursed like a sailor and eviscerated bad guys with a variety of deadly weapons. When it came time to turn the comic into a live-action movie, director Matthew Vaughn raised the $30 million budget himself when studios balked at the violence and the young age of the character that caused most of it. The first Kick-Ass film didn't do blockbuster numbers, but it did enough off a modest budget to warrant sequels.

Kick-Ass 2 is based on the second mini-series and the Hit-Girl spin-off that bridges the gap between the two stories. Some time has passed since the events of the previous picture in which geeky Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) donned a green wetsuit to moonlight as the superhero Kick-Ass. He mostly got the crap beaten out of him while pint-size dynamo, Mindy Macready aka Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), did all the real damage. Dave has hung up the tights, but dons them once more to escape his dreary existence as a high school senior. His past exploits as Kick-Ass have inspired dozens of other New Yorkers to put on their costumes, including Dave's best friend Marty (Clark Duke), now known as Battle Guy. Together, they join Justice Forever, a superhero team founded by Col. Stars & Stripes (Jim Carrey), a grizzled ex-mob enforcer who went legit after finding Jesus.

Now that he's playing in the big leagues, Dave receives further training from Mindy, but the sparring sessions end when her guardian and late-father's former partner, Marcus (Morris Chestnut), catches her in costume during a Ferris Bueller race to the house. Forbidden from being Hit-Girl, Mindy must acclimate to civilian life and dealing with one of her most fearsome foes ever, mean high school girls. Meanwhile, Dave's archenemy, Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), vows revenge and transforms himself into the Motherfucker, the world's first supervillain. He gathers his own team of thugs and killers led by a buff KGB assassin dubbed Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina).

There were mixed message with Kick-Ass. It wanted to deconstruct the superhero genre and show real world consequences to costumed crime fighting. Then, it ended with the title character flying around on a jetpack and blowing a man up with a bazooka. Still, it was a fun action movie that hung on a bravura performance from young Chloe Moretz. Kick-Ass 2 is just a mess.

Matthew Vaughn had a flair for action, but he only serves as producer for the sequel. The reins are handed over to writer/director Jeff Wadlow, whose uninspiring resume includes Cry_Wolf and Never Back Down. Somehow, he's also managed to land X-Force as his next picture. Wadlow has no knack for action, employing the same choppy approach that too many American filmmakers adopt. A sequence where Mindy clings to a van full of mobsters is the movie's most poorly constructed set piece. Close-ups of Moretz in front of a green screen are embarrassingly obvious.

Kick-Ass himself has regressed as a character. He's less competent and less interesting in Kick-Ass 2 with his primary motivation being boredom. No, the true star of the sequel is Hit-Girl. Moretz manages to convey all the heartbreak that comes with bullying and adolescent awkwardness. However, Wadlow has embraced Millar's preoccupation with juvenile humor. Any emotional payoff from that storyline is tossed out in favor of a sight gag involving projectile vomiting and diarrhea. In fact, any time Kick-Ass 2 tries to inject some semblance of gravitas; it's undercut by jokes done in poor taste. Two deaths are expected to be taken seriously, yet the movie has such a casual attitude toward death that we feel nothing, except maybe nausea. Mother Russia brutally kills several police officers to a rock version of the Tetris theme and an attempted rape scene is played for laughs. This is tame stuff compared to the source material, which featured a gang rape, children being gunned down, and a decapitated dog.

It's also a shame that Kick-Ass 2 doesn't fully utilize its fantastic supporting cast. An unrecognizable Jim Carrey gives his liveliest performance in years in the small role of the Colonel. Carrey really disappears into the part thanks to some prosthetics and thick New York accent. Taking on these character roles can really revitalize his career. Too bad they aren't in better movies. John Leguizamo and an exuberant Donald Faison are wasted along with Iain Glen from Game of Thrones in a throwaway cameo.

Kick-Ass 2 is an out and out disappointment rife with abrupt tonal shifts and sloppy storytelling.

Rating: * ½ (*****)

Repo Men

Repo Men - Dir. Miguel Sapochnik (2010)


"Can we have your liver?"

Repo Men takes us to a dystopian future where the economy and health care still sucks. The film was directed by Miguel Sapochnik, making his feature-length debut, working from a script by Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner. The screenplay was based on a novel by Garcia called Repossession Mambo. Repo Men bares several striking similarities to the Gothic rock opera, Repo! The Genetic Opera, which began life as a stage show.

Jude Law and Forest Whitaker star as Remy and Jake, a pair of repo men working for the Union. The monolithic corporation has created state-of-the-art artificial organs (artiforgs) which it provides to the public on a seemingly easy installment plan. What their lead salesman, Frank (Liev Schreiber), fails to tell his clients is that the repo men will cut the organs out of you should you fail to miss a payment. Remy is the Union’s top repo man, but he has a change of heart (literally) when a malfunctioning defibrillator lands him in the hospital in need of a new ticker. Now possessing an artiforg of his own, Remy can no longer continue his line of work in good conscience. He descends into the lower rungs of society as a fugitive along with Beth (Alice Braga), a sultry nightclub singer with an assortment of artiforgs and cybernetic upgrades. A jilted Jake, who seems to have an obsessive bromantic attachment to his partner,

There’s also a perfunctory subplot involving Remy’s son and estranged wife, played by Carice van Houten in a thoroughly thankless role.

Repo Men had the makings of a decent action flick with two very dependable actors in the lead roles. Instead, the filmmakers seem more than happy to tread water with an utterly unoriginal production. Repo Men references (or rips off, depending on your POV) numerous movies which only serves to remind you just how inferior it really is in comparison. Their look of the future cribs Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, the offices of the Union are right out of THX-1138 and Brazil, and there’s even a bizarre nod to David Cronenberg’s Crash. Worst of all, Repo Men also features the umpteenth knockoff of the famed hallway fight from Oldboy. In an advanced era of technology, it doesn’t make much sense for people to fight each other with meat cleavers and steak knives. On the other hand, there is a sly nod to the organ donor skit from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, a likely inspiration. That may have more to do with Monty Python’s sheer awesomeness than Repo Men.

Jude Law has starred in several underrated sci-fi films like Gattaca, eXistenZ (another of Cronenberg’s), and Spielberg’s oft-maligned A.I. Repo Men cannot be considered one of them. It isn’t underrated, just undeserving. Undeserving of its great cast and undeserving of anyone’s time.

Rating: *½

Righteous Kill

Righteous Kill - Dir. Jon Avnet (2008)


Two of the most celebrated actors ever, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, both starred in The Godfather, Part II, but they wouldn’t appear together on-screen until Heat. Even then, they spent most of the film apart as adversaries. In Righteous Kill, DeNiro and Pacino share the majority of screen time together as New York City police detectives Turk and Rooster. The veteran partners investigate a series of vigilante murders targeting criminals who have escaped justice.

You’d think putting DeNiro and Pacino together on screen would easily equal electricity. It doesn’t, at least, not here. Both actors are given bland roles that could have easily gone to any other performer. They essentially sleepwalk through the film with as minimal amount of charisma as will do. Righteous Kill features a talented supporting cast to back them up, all of whom are wasted in one-dimensional roles. Carla Gugino appears as Turk’s girlfriend, a fellow officer into rough sex, a character reeking of tackiness and misogyny. Melissa Leo, so incredible in Frozen River, appears briefly in a throwaway role as a grieving mother.

The script was unoriginal and ridiculously predictable. The film opens with a video taped confession from DeNiro’s character admitting to the murders. These confessions are played throughout the film and hammered into our heads so many times; it becomes blatantly obvious he didn’t do it. The weak plot comes as a shock considering it was written by Russell Gewirtz who penned Inside Man, one of my favorite films from 2006. I suppose being directed by the man behind 88 Minutes canceled that out.

2008 was the year of the crappy cop movie thanks to stinkers like this, Street Kings and Pride and Glory. You’d be better served turning on any random episode of The Shield.

Rating: * 1/2

Gamer

Gamer - Dir. Neveldine/Taylor (2009)

The purveyors of punk cinema and anarchic action, the duo known as Neveldine/Taylor wrote and directed Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage, two of my favorite guilty pleasures. Over-the-top, cartoonish, vulgar, and sophomoric, the Crank films were infused by video game conventions and sold like crack to today’s Red Bull generation. Neveldine/Taylor continues their brand of video game-infused cinema with Gamer, a film that acts as an updated version of The Running Man.

At some nebulous point in the future, mega-billionaire Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) develops a form of nanotechnology that allows one person to control another via the internet. Castle initially uses this new tech for Society, think The Sims with real people. Here, folks are dressed in neon day-glo pimp raver fetish gear and forced to copulate, drug themselves, and laugh off grievous injury. Castle’s next big hit is Slayers, where Death Row inmates can win their chance at freedom by competing in a real life first-person shooter.

The biggest star of Slayers is Kable (Gerard Butler taking on the Jason Statham role) who is only three games away from becoming a free man. Kable’s only thoughts are for his wife Angie (Amber Valleta), a reluctant cast member of Society, and their daughter who was put into foster care. Of course, forces are working against Kable to prevent him from winning the game, not the least of which is Kable’s whiny rich boy controller.

Crank has all the trademarks of Neveldine and Taylor’s sledgehammer sense of plot. There’s the morbidly obese pervert who controls Angie in Society while dipping his foot in greasy vats of maple syrup. There’s Hall’s evil tycoon character whose acts of malevolence include world domination, a bad country fried southern accent, and wearing loafers without socks. The world of Slayers looks like a futuristic combination of Saving Private Ryan and Call of Duty while the action is shot with the usual handheld cameras and rapid-fire edits. However, Gamer has none of the breakneck energy of the Crank films. Neveldine & Taylor attempt to get more serious with Gamer by attempting to slow the pace and pile on the social commentary. The attempt falls flat on its face. It’s hard to take a dramatic turn when you’ve got Michael C. Hall leading a gang of goons in a song-and-dance number set to Sammy Davis Jr.’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

Gamer gathers together a strong cast with some surprising faces filling out the supporting cast. Neveldine and Taylor score their second failure in being unable to utilize any of them properly. Alison Lohman, hot off her lead role in Drag Me to Hell, appears oh so briefly as a member of a revolutionary hacker group. Zoe Bell pops in as a fellow Slayer only to get her head blown off a minute later. You’d figure if someone were to cast actors like Kyra Sedgwick or Heroes’ Milo Ventimiglia, they’d have them do something of note.

Gamer pales in comparison to District 9. It suffers from a poorly thought-out story full of bland action that builds to an incredibly anti-climactic ending. Sorry, but that dream match between King Leonidas and Dexter didn’t live up to expectations.

Rating: * ½

The Happening

The Happening - Dir. M. Night Shyamalan (2008)

The trees have it in for us.

The Village may have had an idiotic, twist ending, but at least it had an ending. Shyamalan's latest disasterpiece is all build and no payoff.

Shyamalan's keen sense of direction and suspense is enough to lift this above his last two bombs, but not enough to overcome laughable performances.

M. Night, swallow your pride. Hire a script doctor.