Chef

Posted on May 15, 2014 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language, including some suggestive references
Profanity:	Very strong and graphic language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	May 16, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	September 29. 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00KQTGWPC

You’re writer/director/actor Jon Favreau. You’ve been making big-budget films, mostly huge blockbuster successes (“Elf,” “Iron Man”), but also a big-budget bust (Cowboys & Aliens, which I liked). This might put you in mind of a simpler, more satisfyingly creative time (Favreau wrote the indie smash “Swingers” and wrote and directed “Made”). And that might inspire a movie like “Chef,” with Favreau as writer. director, and star and a small-scale story with, thanks to his connections, a big-scale cast, about an artist who, like a movie director, creates the kind of art that must be appreciated by others to be satisfying. And director Jon Favreau brings the same loving care to the creations made by his character that the chef does himself. This movie will be on lists of “Great Food Films” forever, along with classics like “Big Night” and “Babette’s Feast.” The food is so lusciously photographed you can almost smell it. And the music perfectly matches the food, sensual and spicy. This is an utterly delectable treat.

No surprise — it is about a guy who has a big-time, high pressure job, loses his mojo, his inspiration and his sense of creativity, and then finds it again in a smaller venue. The job is in the title. Favreau plays Carl, a passionate chef at a high-end restaurant, frustrated because the owner (Dustin Hoffman) wants him to stick to his “greatest hits,” the solid, reliable favorites that Carl now finds boring. “You remember what happened when you put guts on the menu?” When an influential restaurant critic gives him a bad review, Carl quits in a fury. Then, in an even bigger fury, he tweets what he thinks is a private response to the critic (he is not sure of the difference between Twitter and email). It goes viral. (“You’re trending, bro.”) Carl goes into a shame spiral fueled by self-pity and blame, both self and everyone else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP6SE65F-h4

Carl’s passion for his job led to the end of his marriage to Inez (Sofia Vergara). He is a devoted but harried father to Percy (Emjay Anthony), a young social media expert who enjoys the fun activities his dad plans for them when he has time but wishes they could just plain hang out more. Inez, wanting to get Carl out of his funk, invites him to come with her on a business trip to Miami, so he can watch Percy. It will get him away from the Twitterverse gaffe of the day crowd and give him some time with his son. She also has another plan. Her previous ex-husband (a movie-stealing performance by the scene-stealing master thief and “Iron Man” star Robert Downey, Jr.), who gives Carl a food truck. Well, apparently there is a food truck there underneath the layers of grime and fry oil. Joined by a friend (John Leguizamo) and Percy, they drive the truck back home to Los Angeles, stopping along the way to feed the people who have been following Percy’s social media updates.

There are no surprises in the story, and there is not one female character with any reason to exist other than supporting/adoring Carl, but the characters feel genuine and the food is mesmerizingly luscious. Favreau has his mojo back, and I hope he will keep ours going by serving us food truck movies along with his five star restaurants.

Parents should know that this movie includes very strong and crude language and some vulgar references.

Family discussion: What is your favorite meal to cook? Why was it hard for Carl to just hang out with Percy before the food truck?

If you like this, try: “Big Night” and “No Reservations”

A.C.O.D.

Posted on October 4, 2013 at 7:30 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and brief sexual content
Profanity:	Very strong language, some crude
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug references
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense family confrontations, some shoving, fire
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	October 4, 2013

Are today’s 20-and 30-somethings the least-parented generation in history, as a character explains in this film? To quote Rosie O’Donnell in “Sleepless in Seattle” about another depressing statistic, “It’s not true, but it feels true.” While the generation that came of age in the 1970’s and early 80’s were self-actualizing and consciousness-raising and yuppifying, their children were being raised by adults who were too often acting like, well, children.

Adam Scott (“Parks and Recreation,” “Party Down”) produced and stars in “A.C.O.D.,” which stands for “Adult Children of Divorce.” It’s an apt oxymoron. Scott plays Carter, who is very much the adult in his relationship with his long-divorced but still-warring parents and with his younger brother, Trey (Clark Duke). He is also the adult in his professional life, as the owner of a trendy restaurant. But that has a considerable advantage, he points out. “It may be like a family, but I could fire the ones I don’t like.”

Trey’s engagement creates some immediate problems. He and his fiancée Kieko (Valerie Tian) have only known each other four months. Trey cannot support himself; he is living in Carter’s garage. But those are minor concerns compared to the “9 year marriage turned into a 100-years war” — their parents, Hugh (Richard Jenkins) and Melissa (Catherine O’Hara). Trey wants them to come to his wedding and be civil to one another. Even though both have re-married (Hugh twice), their toxic mutual hostility is still the most powerful and all-consuming force in their lives.

Carter, himself allergic to marriage due to the childhood trauma of his parents’ divorce (and their self-absorption, bitterness, manipulation, and use of him as a go-between and subject of endless custody disputes), knows that Trey’s plans are unrealistic. But he can’t help being captivated, even a little wistful and the optimism and certainty of the couple. And he knows it is in part because he has worked so hard to protect Trey from the worst of his parents’ battles.

The stress of negotiating with his parents is so unsettling, Carter seeks help from a woman he saw after his parents split up (Jane Lynch). She is glad to see him again, but informs him that she was not his therapist. She was interviewing him for a book about the impact of divorce on children. And it became an international best-seller. This puts him even deeper into a tailspin, as he reads the book for the first time and discovers what his middle-school turmoil looked like to an observer. “Am I living in a shell of insecurity and approval-seeking?” It is even more disconcerting that the book is a best-seller (“Fourteen printings and Margot Kidder did the audio book.”)

Meanwhile, his efforts to get his parents to be civil to one another has had some very disturbing repercussions. And Carter’s sympathetic and supportive girlfriend of four years (the magnificent Mary Elizabeth Winstead) may not put any pressure on him, but she does point out that it would be nice to have a key to his apartment.

The storyline may be weak in spots, but the spectacular cast (Scott’s “Parks and Recreations” co-star Amy Poehler plays Hugh’s third wife) makes the most of the sharp dialogue and depictions of world-class boundary issues. A credit-sequence coda with the movie’s real-life crew discussing their own A.C.O.D. issues is, like the film itself, sobering but still a reminder that ultimately, no matter how dysfunctional our origins, we get to decide who we want to be.

Parents should know that this film includes explicit sexual references and brief situations, rear nudity, very strong language, drinking, smoking, and drug references.

Family discussion: Why was Carter unhappy about the way he was portrayed in the book? How did he try to be different from his parents?

If you like this, try: “It’s Complicated” and “The Baxter”

First Kiss: “The Spectacular Now”

Posted on July 26, 2013 at 8:49 am

Here’s a lovely scene from one of this year’s best independent films, “The Spectacular Now,” starring Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller (who will also both appear in the upcoming “Divergent”).

Director James Ponsoldt says:

This is one of my favorite scenes in the entire movie. I always knew I wanted to film in it one long, continuous, unedited take, walking and talking with Aimee and Sutter, feeling like we — the audience — are part of a natural conversation that ebbs and flows from goofy and awkward to serious to emotional to flirtatious and nervous to…a first kiss. I wanted the scene to feel as natural as life. Of course, it meant that the burden was on Shailene and Miles to nail the scene (in a long take, everything has to come together perfectly — or else the shot is useless) — and our camera operator had to back-pedal for 5 minutes on a muddy, slippery path.

What Shailene and Miles ultimately did in this scene is so casual and unguarded and spontaneous that some people think the scene was improvised. It wasn’t. Shailene and Miles are just that great as actors — so present, so connected to their roles, and so willing to embrace whatever happens in the moment (bumping into a tree branch or swatting a pesky mosquito, hearing rumbling storm clouds, etc.).

To put it simply, here’s why this scene is one of my favorites: it actually feels like two people falling for each other.

I’ve seen this scene over a thousand times and I still get chills when Miles and Shailene kiss. I’m so, so inspired by their beautiful work.

The Kings of Summer

Posted on June 6, 2013 at 6:00 pm

When Mark Twain had Huck Finn leave the kind-hearted widow who hoped to “civilize” him to “light out for the territories,” he tapped into the dream of all teenagers and the teenagers inside all of us to escape from all rules and restrictions and create our lives from scratch. Peter Pan and the Lost Boys had Neverland. Baby boomers sang along with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young about “trying to get ourselves back to the garden.” Every generation wishes for the simplicity and purity of the natural world. In the wise, touching, and often wildly funny “The Kings of Summer,” three 15-year-olds follow their own call of the wild to run away from home and build a house in the woods. Their parents may see them as boys, but they want a place where they can define what it means to be men.

Nick Robinson, who perfected a look of exquisite pain at the humiliating behavior of his father in a brilliant series of Cox cable commercials, plays Joe Toy. He lives with his widowed father, Frank (“Parks and Recreation’s” Nick Offerman in a witty and heartfelt performance). Of course at that age, a parent does not have to do anything to be excruciatingly embarrassing. It is bad enough that Frank actually exists, but he also has the nerve to tell Joe what to do. Worse, he is dating someone, and worst of all he expects Joe to play a board game with her. The horror!

Joe’s best friend Patrick (Gabriel Basso), is smoldering with his own adolescent fury. His parents say things like, “Rope in the attitude, mister” and just because his ankle is in a cast, they want him to be careful. How dare they! “I’m happy to be where my parents are not,” he says.

Another kid named simply Biaggio (the wonderfully oddball Moises Arias) wants to join them. He does not have any special problem with his family. He just “didn’t want to do nothing.”

Joe, Patrick, and Biaggio build their house in the woods. They breathe the air of free men and rejoice in their liberation from all rules and conventions. They vow “to boil our own water, kill our own food, build our own shelter, be our own men.” If foraging for food in the woods means a stop by the Boston Market across the highway from the forest, well, no one can argue with how good it tastes.

Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and writer Chris Galletta bring a fresh and sympathetic eye to the story, evoking the pleasure of what feel — for a little while — like endless possibilities. The film perfectly captures that liminal moment when teenagers live in the space between childhood and becoming an adult. And they’re old enough to carry it off, at first. They are young enough to be certain their parents are wrong about pretty much everything — and to be confident that they can do everything better. The house is like something the Lost Boys might build for Peter Pan, with a stolen door from a port-a-potty for the entrance and essentials like a mailbox, a slide, a basketball hoop, and an air hockey table.As is often the case with boys of 15, they look like they are from three different planets. Patrick is muscular and physically much more mature than the others and Biaggio could be 12. Joe is somewhere in the middle. Biaggio’s random and inscrutable pronouncements are amusingly accepted by the other two as if they made as much sense as anything else, or as if making sense did not matter. And of course the most unexpected complication is when a girl comes through the port-a-potty door.

Like that other icon of the dream of escaping the oppression of civilization, Henry David Thoreau, the boys learn that there is a time to go to the woods, and a time to come home.

Parents should know that this movie has very strong and crude language and teen drinking and smoking.

Family discussion: What was the most important thing Joe learned? What about Frank? What would you bring to a house in the woods?

If you like this, try: “Stand By Me”

Related Tags:

Comedy Drama Independent

Interview: Jordan Vogt-Roberts of The Kings of Summer

Posted on June 4, 2013 at 7:17 am

Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s first feature film is “The Kings of Summer,” the story of three teenage boys who run away and build a house in the woods. It’s one of my favorite movies of the year, so I was very glad to get a chance to talk to him about it.

How did you get involved with this project?

I made a short a few years ago called “Successful Alcoholics.” It balanced tone in a similarly tricky way, starting out funny and then getting more serious. And the company that did “Little Miss Sunshine” had this script. They were looking for a director and I was looking for a movie. I got into this business because I want to make movies. I’d been doing TV and commercials and that’s great to work your way up. But then I read this script and I fell in love with it. I knew it was exactly the movie that I needed to make. Not that I could or wanted to — I needed to tell this story. So I just pitched my ass off, and spent the next couple of months trying to get the job. I didn’t want to say that someone else beat me on merit. It had a jumping off point I wanted for my first feature, a lot of different things at once, magic and beautiful and hilarious — there was so much fun that I could have with it.

You were working with young kids, which is a challenge.

The movie lives and dies with the kids. I have an incredible adult cast — stand-ups and improvisers and brilliant comics like Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, and Megan Mullally. But the movie rests completely on the kids. All of them had to be good. When you watch “Stand By Me” or “The Goonies,” all of those kids are great. I couldn’t cast 25-year-olds. I had to cast kids who as much as they could go through what the characters were going through, who could be as real and awkward as the characters they played. And Gabe and Nick and Moises really took over the roles at a certain point. I forgot what the characters were as scripted and it started becoming them. We did improv training, not so they’d be super-quick and witty and punchy but just so they’d be comfortable enough in their own skin so that if I didn’t yell cut or changed something on the fly, they could adapt to it. My favorite stuff in the movie, a really important part of the movie, is those moments, just glances or mannerisms, that’s what it was to be that age. A movie like this is made up of small, little moments, where watch it and you say, “I love that.” I just wanted to give those kids the trust and faith so they could elevate it themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYQvwJ0G7qQ

The moments that I love are the three jump kids of him exiting the house in different ways, that’s how a kid would pass time. That came from him and me just playing around about the best way to do it. There are so many weird little moments that stem from them cracking me up. I made a weird decision on set where I didn’t want them to think of me as the boss or watch themselves around me. So they would punch me in the arm and treat me as though I was a kid. We created a fun environment. The stuff where they were banging on the pipe, finding out that Gabe played the violin and adding that to the movie. That adds authenticity because it is so particular. The unscripted things are what make me laugh.

In another movie, some of the things Joe’s father said could be disturbing, but you made it feel safe.

A lot of it is that it is from the perspective of the kids, so we know that it is heightened. They can feel a little bit more overbearing or harsher because that is how the kids were perceiving it. And we ran the spectrum of emotions without turning them into caricatures. We did some ridiculously funny things but to ideally always have it be informing the character and the story and the moment.

Related Tags:

Directors Independent Interview