It’s nice when a movie has such an informative title, and this one, like the movie it describes, is amusing while also being realistically descriptive. I’d hoped it would relate to a minor but persistent flaw I see in so many romantic comedies, which is that the happy couple always seem to be able to organize an elaborate wedding for 200 within weeks. Here Violet (Emily Blunt) and Tom (Jason Segel) get engaged at the start of the movie, but upon making arrangements Violet is told that her preferred facility has no open dates for three years—unless she’d like to book for September 11. She would not. However, as with a few other recent romantic comedies—or perhaps comedy-drama would better fit the tone here—the real source of the couple’s difficulties is career options, and geography. Tom is an aspiring chef in San Francisco, but Violet’s opportunity lies in Ann Arbor, MI. Her field is social psychology. (You don’t see that so often in films.)
Written by Segal and director Nicholas Stoller, the team behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and the recent Muppets revival), it has a mostly realistic feel to it with only the occasional dick joke. (Decent ones, actually.) The assorted side characters are mostly recognizable from TV sitcoms, include Chris Pratt and Alison Brie as the best friend and sister, respectively, of the two leads. At the engagement party, Pratt’s character sings an altered version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” to an accompanying slide show of Tom’s previous girlfriends. However, this is about as broadly comic as the film gets. Several of the scenes are purely dramatic. Although I don’t find Blunt and Segal to be an ideal on-screen couple, their disagreements are pretty well done. The movie is just over two hours, but the ending is abrupt.
IMDb link
viewed 5/20/12 1:35 pm at Riverview and reviewed 5/20–21/12
Showing posts with label chef. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chef. Show all posts
Friday, April 27, 2012
Friday, November 19, 2010
Today’s Special (***)
I haven’t seen that many films about Indian Americans, but I’m pretty sure all of them, not to mention British films like Bend It Like Beckham, deal with issues of family and culture clash. Even the titles of such films—Mississippi Masala, American Chai, American Desi—reference these themes. This adaptation of Aasif Mondvi’s play may be the lightest version of this story. Mondvi, the erstwhile Daily Show correspondent who shares screenplay credit, plays Samir, a Manhattan sous-chef who steers clear of all things Indian—the cuisine, cricket, and the women on the Indian dating sites his mother tries to fix him up with. But when a family emergency forces his father away from the family’s run-down Indian restaurant, Samir is forced to put his own plans on hold and pitch in. And, with the help of an Indian-born cabbie he meets who just so happens to also be a master chef with lots of free time, pitch in he does.
This very likable comedy may be too likable for its own good. Samir’s potential girlfriend (Jess Weixler, of Teeth) has a kid? No problem; we never even find out whether there’s a father somewhere. His new chef doesn’t believe in menus? No problem! (Seriously? An Indian take-out place with no menus?) Of course, everything will work out in this sort of gentle comedy, and that’s fine, but a little doubt in the meantime would have made it more satisfying. The chef is a too-good-to-be true man of the world who can conjures up a full-course meal in no time. Still, as played by Bollywood veteran Naseeruddin Shah, he’s the most captivating of the characters. More downbeat, but realistic, is the relationship between Samir and his father, who simultaneously looks down on Samir for his choice of career and resents him for seeming to disregard his family traditions.
IMDB link
viewed 12/14/10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 12/14/10
This very likable comedy may be too likable for its own good. Samir’s potential girlfriend (Jess Weixler, of Teeth) has a kid? No problem; we never even find out whether there’s a father somewhere. His new chef doesn’t believe in menus? No problem! (Seriously? An Indian take-out place with no menus?) Of course, everything will work out in this sort of gentle comedy, and that’s fine, but a little doubt in the meantime would have made it more satisfying. The chef is a too-good-to-be true man of the world who can conjures up a full-course meal in no time. Still, as played by Bollywood veteran Naseeruddin Shah, he’s the most captivating of the characters. More downbeat, but realistic, is the relationship between Samir and his father, who simultaneously looks down on Samir for his choice of career and resents him for seeming to disregard his family traditions.
IMDB link
viewed 12/14/10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 12/14/10
Friday, June 25, 2010
I Am Love (**1/4)
The rich, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different from you and me. Servants wait on them, they live on great estates, and they pass large fortunes on to their progeny. But their fears and desires are not unfamiliar. When an Italian patriarch makes a surprising choice as to who will succeed him as the head of the family-run textile business, we wonder if it will cause a rift. When the daughter of the family secretly confides to her mother than she is a lesbian, we wonder why it must be a secret. When the son ponders opening a restaurant with a new friend, we wonder if he’ll abandon his role in the business.
Don’t wonder too much, because the main subject of the movie is the mother, Emma, played by Tilda Swinton. Learning that her son’s friend is a cook, she takes an interest in the younger man. Swinton’s gifts apparently include speaking Italian with a Russian accent, as her character is an immigrant. (There is here the curiosity of having two native English speakers in significant roles, as Marissa Berenson plays Emma's sister-in-law.) In fact, the drama comes out of an earlier documentary director Luca Guadagnino did about the actress.
Guadagnino’s direction tends to draws attention to itself. At its best, his use of long shots, quiet, and ambient sounds emphasizes both the grandeur and the singularity of the family’s lifestyle. At other times, the use of unusual angles, odd close-ups, and jarring compositions by modern classical composer John Adams seems off-putting and pretentious.
Food lovers may enjoy the movie; it’s hard to say which is more pruriently displayed, the sins of the flesh or of the palate. The leisurely sex scene, intercut with shots of insect on flowers, gauzy shots of torsos, and closeups of skin, is positively operatic. On the other hand, a loving close-up of a seafood appetizer lasts so long that I thought there must be a secret message, written in balsamic vinegar, on the plate.
All in all, this was like a coproduction of Architectural Digest and Food & Wine. The characters seemed distant, like they were in a magazine. In the end, I felt a little like the diner given the seafood dish. It was beautiful to look at, but in the end you realize there are only three shrimp on the plate, and you are left in want of something more substantial.
IMDB link
viewed 7/7/10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/11 and 8/3/10
Don’t wonder too much, because the main subject of the movie is the mother, Emma, played by Tilda Swinton. Learning that her son’s friend is a cook, she takes an interest in the younger man. Swinton’s gifts apparently include speaking Italian with a Russian accent, as her character is an immigrant. (There is here the curiosity of having two native English speakers in significant roles, as Marissa Berenson plays Emma's sister-in-law.) In fact, the drama comes out of an earlier documentary director Luca Guadagnino did about the actress.
Guadagnino’s direction tends to draws attention to itself. At its best, his use of long shots, quiet, and ambient sounds emphasizes both the grandeur and the singularity of the family’s lifestyle. At other times, the use of unusual angles, odd close-ups, and jarring compositions by modern classical composer John Adams seems off-putting and pretentious.
Food lovers may enjoy the movie; it’s hard to say which is more pruriently displayed, the sins of the flesh or of the palate. The leisurely sex scene, intercut with shots of insect on flowers, gauzy shots of torsos, and closeups of skin, is positively operatic. On the other hand, a loving close-up of a seafood appetizer lasts so long that I thought there must be a secret message, written in balsamic vinegar, on the plate.
All in all, this was like a coproduction of Architectural Digest and Food & Wine. The characters seemed distant, like they were in a magazine. In the end, I felt a little like the diner given the seafood dish. It was beautiful to look at, but in the end you realize there are only three shrimp on the plate, and you are left in want of something more substantial.
IMDB link
viewed 7/7/10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/11 and 8/3/10
Friday, December 25, 2009
Friday, June 29, 2007
Ratatouille (***1/4)
The latest animated effort from Pixar Animation Studios and Incredibles writer-director Brad Bird is a tasty treat about a Paris gourmet restaurant that gets a boost when the garbage boy morphs into its innovative new chef. Unbeknownst to its clientele, the mastermind behind the scrumptious new dishes is a rat called Rémy (Patton Oswalt).
Rémy must contend on the one hand with his rodent brethren who are content to scarf up the filthy scraps left behind by the humans, and on the other by the humans whom he seeks to emulate, but who regard him as vermin. Rémy takes as his inspiration the cookbook by the late great chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett) and, through a happy accident, winds up in the former kitchen of the great man himself. The inspired sequence by which the rat becomes the cook is too clever to describe. The only thing that might have improved it is UB40’s reggae classic “Rat in Mi Kitchen.” The bits in which Gusteau leaps off the page to have imaginary conversations with Rémy are also delicious.
Gusteau’s motto is “anyone can cook,” while Rémy reminds us that “not everyone should.” In this way, the movie combines the French egalitarian ideal with the American meritocratic one. Perhaps this explains why the rats and the garbage boy speak with American accents while the other humans have French ones. In any case, Bird suffuses the movie with a love of fine food that will appeal to the adult Food Channel crowd as well as kids, who could actually learn a little about how a restaurant works. Among the supporting characters, feisty cook Colette (Janeane Garofalo) and fulminating food critic Ego (Peter O’Toole) stand out, but almost all of the ingredients blend well here.
IMDB link
reviewed 7/8/07
Rémy must contend on the one hand with his rodent brethren who are content to scarf up the filthy scraps left behind by the humans, and on the other by the humans whom he seeks to emulate, but who regard him as vermin. Rémy takes as his inspiration the cookbook by the late great chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett) and, through a happy accident, winds up in the former kitchen of the great man himself. The inspired sequence by which the rat becomes the cook is too clever to describe. The only thing that might have improved it is UB40’s reggae classic “Rat in Mi Kitchen.” The bits in which Gusteau leaps off the page to have imaginary conversations with Rémy are also delicious.
Gusteau’s motto is “anyone can cook,” while Rémy reminds us that “not everyone should.” In this way, the movie combines the French egalitarian ideal with the American meritocratic one. Perhaps this explains why the rats and the garbage boy speak with American accents while the other humans have French ones. In any case, Bird suffuses the movie with a love of fine food that will appeal to the adult Food Channel crowd as well as kids, who could actually learn a little about how a restaurant works. Among the supporting characters, feisty cook Colette (Janeane Garofalo) and fulminating food critic Ego (Peter O’Toole) stand out, but almost all of the ingredients blend well here.
IMDB link
reviewed 7/8/07
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