Netflix And Chill: Burnt (2015)

Do you remember when Chef was released back in 2014? It was a delightful little film about someone rediscovering their passion for the thing they do best, and it seemed to have been made by someone rediscovering their passion for the thing they do best. There were moments of fiery anger, and moments of frustration, but it delighted many viewers because it was, at heart, a very sweet and optimistic tale about reconnecting with loved ones, and the world at large, via a passion for food.

Burnt came out a year later. Whatever the intention, and I may be a bit kinder towards it now that I know Steven Knight is one of two people who helped to co-write the screenplay, it feels like a cynical and soulless attempt to rework Chef. If that film was the comforting plate of Cubanos, this is a more expensive plate throwing various ingredients together in a way that simply doesn't make you salivate. There's probably some infused foam on the side.

Bradley Cooper plays Adam Jones, a chef who once had the world at his feet. He disappeared though, after burning many bridges with his addiction issues and his bad behaviour. Now he's back. That doesn't mean that everyone will forgive him, and he still has some debts to pay, but he wants to put a team together good enough to help him get a third Michelin star. Looked at favourably, this is a film about someone figuring out how his behaviour affects others, and how everyone needs to help one another on a journey for perfection. But it's really just about a chef who spectacularly ruined his reputation and career now believing that he deserves to be crowned as one of the very best of the best.

Knight and Michael Kalesniko get a lot of the kitchen chatter right, and they mix in enough mildly interesting characters to help the 101-minute runtime pass by quickly enough. They falter when it comes to the passion though. One or two moments try to remind us of why great chefs love to cook, but they don't work. It's much more believable to simply view Cooper's character as a bloody-minded and hyper-focused narcissist who is ready to throw a tantrum any time things don't go perfectly for him.

It's notable, although perhaps entirely coincidental, that this is the last feature film directed by John Wells, who has spent most of the last decade helming episodes of some fantastic TV shows (including the highly-praised The Pitt). Maybe he also wanted some time enjoying meals made with love instead of meals made to boost someone's ego. Again, it may just be entirely coincidental.

Cooper is fine in the role of Jones, I guess, but is unable to soften him enough to make him a central character that you really care about. Things will either go well or not. Either way, it never feels as if he is the one with the most to lose. Sienna Miller plays a very capable chef, Helene, who suffers throughout the movie by becoming more and more like our lead. Other chefs are played by Omar Sy (who is pretty great), Sam Keeley (who doesn't get enough to do), and Matthew Rhys (playing a discontented rival). Daniel Brühl is good in the role of Tony, the man who ends up bank-rolling the latest restaurant and team of staff, but he allows himself to be far too easily used by someone he should have said good riddance to a long time ago. Uma Thurman is sorely underused, as is Emma Thompson, Alicia Vikander, and Lily James, and, perhaps worst of all, none of the featured dishes ever look like stars in their own right. 

The famous saying goes that "if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen", but Burnt proves that you may want to stay out of that area if you also can't stand anything lukewarm and lacking any real flavour. The supporting cast all try hard enough to save this from being a complete waste of your time, but they can't overcome the problem of such an uninteresting core premise and central character. Chef made me hungry for both the food and the passion on display throughout. Burnt made me want to avoid over-priced and over-complicated menus made by narcissistic technicians who often forget simple pleasures in their pursuit of what they perceive to be greatness. 

4/10

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Netflix And Chill: 21 Bridges (2019)

I'm slightly annoyed that it took me this long to finally watch 21 Bridges, mainly because it finally showed me a performance from the late Chadwick Boseman that really showed him delivering fantastic work. I enjoyed his Marvel turn, pretty much everyone knows that he played Black Panther in a number of movies (including, of course, Black Panther), but I didn't really see anything else from him that made me take notice of his acting chops. 21 Bridges, as mired in predictability and cliché as it is, is lifted by Boseman's performance, especially in a couple of scenes that have him sparring with the equally great J. K. Simmons.

Boseman plays a New York detective named Andre Davis. Following in the footsteps of his father (who died when he was a child), Davis strives to be a good cop. Even while being investigated for a shooting, he stands firm on his record. He has had to shoot people when there was no other choice, but he insists that every one was justified, a "good" shooting. When a big theft goes wrong, two drug thieves kill a number of cops, and Davis is put on the case. He wants to bring the two to justice, but there are others, including Captain McKenna (Simmons) who would much prefer the two to be shot on sight, sparing the relatives of the dead cops a long and painful trial. Davis doesn't work that way though, and he's even less inclined to shoot first and ask questions later as details of the case start to add up to more than just a robbery gone awry. The routes in and out of Manhattan are blocked, and the clock is counting down fast for the robbers, who won't know that Davis is their best chance at making it through the night alive.

Written by Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael (brother of Joe) Carnahan, this is a very enjoyable, standard, thriller. The pacing is perfect, with the robbery and some subsequent gun battles punctuating the ongoing detective work being carried out by Davis, and there are plenty of opportunities throughout the film for the viewer to get one step ahead of the main characters. This is arguably a big weakness within the script, but it still delivers a bit of tension, albeit in a different way. Anyone watching this is just wondering how long it will take certain characters to realise certain truths, and what confrontations will stem from those realisations.

Director Brian Kirk doesn't really elevate the material, relying on his cast to deliver some of the better lines from the script. He also doesn't mess things up, however, and that can be just as important when helming something as entrenched in crime movie tropes as this is. Kirk has faith in his cast, but it's a shame that he didn't get some better people to fill out some of the smaller supporting roles. Seeing some more faces like Keith David (who plays a Deputy Chief) would have helped enormously, even if they were just in for one small scene.

The leads more than make up for any weaker elements though. Boseman is believable, matching the tough attitude of his character with an intelligence and diplomacy that makes Andre Davis the one cop you would want alongside you if things were going from bad to worse at great speed. Sienna Miller plays Frankie Burns, partnered alongside Davis for the night, and she is very good in her role, playing someone who is looking to both crack the case and help get the suspects an immediate death sentence. Simmons has given many great performances in his career. This may not be up there with his very best, but it's much better than you might expect for the type of character he's portraying, arguably more effective in the more placatory moments that he has in between shouting at people. Stephan James and Taylor Kitsch play the two thieves, with James by far the better of the two, possibly as much to do with the script as it is to do with his performance, and there are a few other players who do decent work while they get caught in the crossfire (including Alexander Siddig, Louis Cancelmi, and Gary Carr).

Distinctly average in terms of the plotting, 21 Bridges is treated like so much more than that by everyone else involved, both behind and in front of the camera, and Boseman and co. turn it into a surprisingly riveting viewing experience.

7/10

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High-Rise (2015)

Based on yet another "unfilmable" novel by J. G. Ballard, High-Rise has been a film that many people have been trying to bring to the screen for decades. The man who finally succeeded where others failed is director Ben Wheatley, helped along by a screenplay by Amy Jump.

The plot sees a man named Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moving into a modern apartment block (aka a fancy block of flats) in 1970s England. The block is full of amenities and luxuries, but only those higher up in the building get to access more of the good stuff, turning the whole building into an obvious microcosm of society. And when people start to upset the order of how things should be, it's not long until the whole environment devolves into an anarchic mix of violence, debauchery, and death.

The thing that threw me about this film is how quickly viewers are thrown into some outright strangeness. Even the earlier scenes, which are supposed to be showing normal life in the apartment block, are just plain odd. And then things go from 0-100 very quickly, with oddness turning into the bizarre and then the absolutely insane. I kept wondering what I had missed, or what scenes had been excised in the editing process and never put back where they should have been. Then I stopped wondering about it. I just started to enjoy the atmosphere of the film, immersing myself in the environment, which is when I started to appreciate everything that this had going for it.

First of all, even by his own standards, this is impressively ambitious directing from Wheatley, managing to make the central building seem both like an entire city and also like a horribly claustrophobic cocoon, depending on just how well things are going. He also keeps all the character shots and cinematography in the strange retro-futuristic style of the apartment block.

The script by Jump may be a muddled mess at times, and that's hard to deny, but it's also full of cutting lines, great individual moments, and a smoke-filled, languid, atmosphere that becomes hazier and hazier as the minds of the central characters start to fray and break.

Then you have the cast. Hiddleston is great in his role, barely holding on to his precarious position in the building from the very beginning, and there are also fantastic performances from Elisabeth Moss, Luke Evans, Peter Ferdinando, and Jeremy Irons, the latter as the architect of the building and the top resident (of course). Sienna Miller, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, and Reece Shearsmith also lend solid support, each one playing a memorable resident who may be for or against Hiddleston's place in the heirarchy of the structure.

This isn't a film to watch if you want an easy ride, and it's not even one to watch if you need something that makes sense throughout. It's a dazzling, dizzying, strange experience. Almost like leaning over the top balcony of a tower block and looking down through a kaleidoscope. While other people throw protesting victims over to meet their gravity-hastened demise. And of course I mean that as a compliment.

8/10

Get the disc here.
American friends can pick it up here.

American Sniper (2014)

American Sniper is a tough movie to review. I'm going to start here by making things easier on myself. I'm NOT going to delve into the politics of the movie. That's an entirely different conversation, and one that will no doubt come up between friends or loved ones who go along together to see the film in cinemas. I'm also not going to try to pin down the REAL character of Chris Kyle, the man portrayed here by Bradley Cooper. The movie plays out in the style of "print the legend" so let's just leave it at that.

Cooper is the man who turns out to be a bloody good shot, leading to him heading off on multiple tours of Iraq. He has a lovely wife (Sienna Miller) waiting for him at home, but civilian life is hard to adjust to when his natural state has seen him poised with a rifle for so many hours. He shoots lots of bad people, of course, and becomes a bit famous, but not in a good way. No, the baddies put a price on his head because he's causing them so many problems. And . . . . . . . well, that's it.

Written by Jason Hall, who was adapting the tale as told in the book written by Kyle, Scott McEwen and Jim Defelice, this is surprisingly shallow stuff. It's also riveting at times. That's the nature of this material. One man with his finger on a trigger, waiting to make the right call every time he sees a potential threat. It's just a shame that nothing else is added to the content. We see Kyle as a sniper. We see him as a husband. Each scene, whether he's in the former role or latter, seems to be little more than a repeat of the previous one, with the exception of the opening flashbacks that show how he got to his current position.

Director Clint Eastwood should have been able to lift this up, to look at the central subject from all angles and create a number of more interesting moments, but he doesn't. Whether he was playing it safe to ensure no disrespect to his central subject or whether he just didn't put in enough effort, either reason doesn't make up for this being such a disappointment.

Cooper is great in the lead role, bulked up and happiest while looking down the barrel of his gun. It's a good job too, because only Sienna Miller makes an impression alongside him. Everyone else is either a fellow soldier or an enemy fighter, with scarcely enough detailing to differentiate any individuals on either side of the battle.

So, as it turns out, American Sniper is, when everything else is set aside, not such a tough movie to review. It's just a shame that everything I've set aside here was also set aside by Hall and Eastwood, effectively neutering what could have been a great character study.

6/10

http://www.amazon.com/American-Sniper-Blu-ray-Digital-UltraViolet/dp/B00RGZ915C/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1421342459&sr=1-2&keywords=american+sniper

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G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra (2009)

If you go into this movie and don't realise what you're going to get then you deserve everything coming to you, even if that's a real downer for you. This is a movie based on a series of toys (G.I. Joe being the original, American version of our very own Action Man action figures here in the UK) and directed by a man (Stephen Sommers) well-known for providing spectacle over substance.

I can happily admit to enjoying many Stephen Sommers movies (even the majorly drubbed Van Helsing) so I already had an idea that I was going to like the G.I. Joe film. As things began, and it hits the ground running, I was proved very much correct.

The story is pretty much summed up in the title, but I'll give the very briefest recap here. Channing Tatum and Marlon Wayans play two soldiers who are tasked with carrying some dangerous warheads from A to B. When their convoy is attacked, they meet a team from the G.I. Joe program. One thing leads to another and the two men decide that they want a piece of that action. People fight each other, backstories are dripfed throughout the movie in flashbacks, and there's a chase sequence through Paris that's up there with the very best of modern popcorn entertainment.

The cast all do their jobs. Dennis Quaid is great as a tough-talking, caring leader, Christopher Eccleston is good enough in his role (he created the warheads) and the others all do just fine at portraying . . . . action figures on screen. Tatum continues to be likable while scowling and looking tough, Wayans is a lot less annoying here than he usually is in any other movie and Arnold Vosloo does a very passable Arnold Vosloo impression (see pretty much every other Arnold Vosloo role ever . . . . . and don't think I'm demeaning him, I love his work). There are more tough men onscreen, portrayed by the likes of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ray Park and Lee Byung-hun, and then some tough female characters portrayed by Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jonathan Pryce and some other famous faces (Brendan Fraser has a fun cameo) pop up to flesh out the cast, and everyone is good enough to almost make you forget it's going to be brainless, loud fun.

Then we get to the amazing, razzle dazzle, fireworks experience, and boy does it deliver in that department. Things are a little bit slow and generic in the first half of the movie (quick character sketches, training montage, the mission briefing, etc. all present and correct) but from the start of that aforementioned sequence in Paris things step up to another level. It's fast and furious, it's loud and proud, it's delirious fun for those who don't mind seeing some obvious computerised images amongst some great, adrenaline-pumping action moments.

Mixing the essence of the action figures (keep an eye out for all of the little details that crop up throughout) with a number of elements that wouldn't look out of place in any James Bond movie, this is one of my favourite American action movies from the past few years.

8/10

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Layer Cake (2004)

Layer Cake is an important movie for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's the film that saw the hugely talented Matthew Vaughn step out from the shadow of Guy Ritchie (he'd previously been producer on Ritchie's movies). Secondly, it showed Daniel Craig's leading man potential and even, yes, gives him a Bond moment. Third, it showed that British crime movies could still be fresh and entertaining without coming across as some pale Lock, Stock-wannabe. Fourth . . . . okay, I'm not sure if there are any more reasons so I'll stop there. But Layer Cake is certainly more, thanks to what it achieved, than just another UK gangster movie.

The story revolves all around Daniel Craig's smart drug dealer, a man who wants to make his million and get out of the business. Of course, anyone who makes the big shots a lot of money will always struggle to extricate themselves from the criminal lifestyle and that's exactly the case here. Avoiding the police, trying to stay alive and setting up a deal involving a million stolen pills, Craig really has his work cut out for him.

Mixing a smart script with great performances (Craig is superb but he's more than capably supported by the likes of Kenneth Cranham, Colm Meaney, Michael Gambon and everyone else who appears alongside him), cool visuals and an ideal soundtrack this film may not cover any new ground but it gives everything a fresh coat of paint with it's easygoing, effortless air of . . . . cool. This film has style in abundance. That's not to say that it glorifies the lifestyles shown or any of the violence we see, hell no. There are people here we'd never want to meet in real life and when things erupt into violence they do so with absolute brutality, impacting on the lives of those involved. There are no consequence-free, thoughtless actions here. Everything is weighed up and accounted for, even if it's after the fact.

It's an absolute corker of a film that has grown on me with each subsequent viewing. I'm sure that many others will still simply cast it aside as "yet another British gangster flick" but that's not the case and I hope that others give it a chance and end up enjoying it as much as I do.

9/10

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Layer-Cake-DVD-Daniel-Craig/dp/B0006HIPOK/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1371682047&sr=8-5&keywords=layer+cake