Burnt Cert: 15 / 101 mins / Dir. John Wells / Trailer
Oh. Do they not have to wear hair-nets in posh kitchens, then? Is that what you're paying top-dollar for? Two-star Michelin hair, prepared by an aggressive narcissist with an open wound on his face? A wound which magically wipes itself clean and dry in the time it takes for a dish to be sent out to a table and instantly returned? A wound which, two scenes later, has completely disappeared? For a film which purports to be all about the detail of high-end restauranting, it's an approach which director John Wells seems to have instilled in his cast, but not his crew*1.
Cooper's chef, Adam, is the archetypal Troubled Soul™, whose affectation is that after coming off the gear, he writes everything in pencil, yet is never seen to be carrying a pencil-sharpener (no, he wouldn't use his chef-knives, even I know that). If only Bradley Cooper The Actor was as snobby about the scripts he chooses as his screen-persona is about food preparation. His pensive narration underscores the film's opening sequence as a washed-up, burned out Adam labours in a job he knows is beneath him. "I sentenced myself to hard labour, shelling oysters…" rumbles the soon-to-be-abandoned voice-over. In the next shot he knifes an aforementioned ill-fated mollusc out of its shell, says "…one million" and walks out of the dingy un-named restaurant headed for pastures new. It's a melodramatically self-indulgent appetiser which sets the tone of the meal to come…
Smaller bugbears? Burnt features not one, not two, but three 'getting stuff done' montages, each set to a light orchestral accompaniment. As with the film surrounding them, not quite Burnt, but definitely over-done. Among the many 'explaining restaurant terminology to a civilian audience' moments, the first-act Star Wars analogy is inexcusably laboured; if only because people who know so little about Star Wars don't make Star Wars analogies. The Michelin-reviewer subplot is embarrassingly over-worked, too; while Daniel Brühl's restaurant-owner Tony patiently states to people who already work in the industry that no-one knows who the inspectors are or what they look like, he then reams off a list of twenty-or-so indicating factors, all of which the reviewers (when they finally arrive) dutifully conform to*2. Oh, and the bizarre line-up of celebrity cameos which feels like a succession of favours being repaid to someone. Bizarre.
But the real problem is that the film expects its audience to automatically be on-side with an ex-druggy, egotistical bully from act one, if only because it does nothing to redeem his character apart from having him bake a last-minute birthday cake for the daughter of the woman he refused to let have the day off work. There is absolutely no progression here, least of all for the central character; all of the things which happen in Adam's favour (Helene's recruitment to the kitchen, the saving-grace of the false-alarm Michelin visit, the pay-off of Adam's drug-debts) happen by chance or through the actions of others, not through Adam's own volition or, y'know, character development. If you want a schmaltzy, feel-good culinary flick, you're better off with last year's The Hundred-Foot Journey or even Chef, both of which had major problems but at least remembered they were meant to be telling a story, rather than just relaying a chain of events.
The fact that I watched this culinary drama whilst working my way through a pick'n'mix bag of assorted jelly sweets and a litre of Diet Coke*3 perhaps suggests that the film wasn't really for me in the first place; although director Wells and writers Steven Knight and Michael Kalesniko seem to employ no more culinary craft than throwing a bunch of standard ingredients into a 100-minute oven and expecting a masterpiece to emerge by the time the clock pings.
It doesn't work like that, as a film like Burnt should damn-well know more than most…
All that said, it's reassuring to know that Adam Jones' restaurant serves its food on actual plates, not chopping boards or bits of slate. Small mercies, eh?
This is a sunday evening movie with a bottle of wine, but rent or wait for the telly version, because it's not really worth paying to keep on your shelf.
In no way, shape or form.
Not by a long shot.
Not particularly, somehow.
There isn't.
Burnt stars Mr Bradley Cooper, who voiced Rocket Raccoon in Guardians Of The Galaxy, a film which starred Peter 'the voice of Darth Maul' Serafinowicz.
[All roads lead to Maul, today.]
*1 That said, the passage (or indeed existence) of time in this film seems to be another irritation which has been abandoned early in the shooting process. When Sienna Miller's Helene returns to the kitchen she walked out of, the clock on the wall says 7:00, and there's no-one there except for Cooper's Adam. It's daylight outside, but it's not 7am since she saw her daughter off to school two scenes earlier. What-the-living-fuck kind of restaurant has an empty kitchen at 7pm? Even if your earliest table reservations are for 8 (still ridiculous), you'd have staff there prepping the evening's food. Add to this that Adam later walks out of a party when it's still day/evening-light, and Miller finds him sitting on a pallet in Billingsgate Fish Market at 5am; 1) even accounting for the late-dusk of June, has she really been walking around London for seven hours looking for him, and 2) he's not going to get the smell out of that suit. That's ruined.
*2 Besides, Tony actually refers to them as "The Michelin Men" when saying he doesn't know what they look like. Well I'm not an expert, but I'd probably be looking for someone made of fucking tyres, mate. And no, I'm not sorry for that joke.
*3Although I defy anyone to eat more 'healthily' in a cinema, frankly. And no, you can't sneak your own food in. Show a bit of respect…
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
You know when you read a human-interest type story or article, and somewhere near the bottom there'll be a line saying "negotiations have opened over the film-rights to the story", and you mentally picture an over-excited lawyer on the phone to his mum with one or both of them saying "Ooh! Perhaps you'll/I'll be played by Ryan Reynolds in the movie!" and you instantly dismiss that thought, not because the conversation wouldn't happen but because that's just not a feasible casting choice for a gentle, Sunday afternoon drama..?
Well, Woman In Gold stars Ryan Reynolds as fresh-face lawyer, in the true story of Maria Altman, a Jewish refugee who managed to flee Austria during the Second World War, and their legal campaign to reclaim Gustav Klimt's iconic Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, when documentation is unearthed revealing that the Austrian State Gallery acquired the painting in terms which voided the original intent of the owner's will.
If you think that sounds more like an earnest courtroom drama than a film about art, then you'd be partially correct. The film spends around two thirds of its running-time in the early twenty-first century, following Maria (Helen Mirren)'s legal proceedings with her lawyer, Randol Schoenberg*1, complete with research-montages full of brow-rubbing and photocopiers with green scanner-lights. The other third of the film is an ongoing flashback-thread, showing Maria's home-life in Vienna as a little girl with her aunt (Adele from the painting) and during the war as a young woman, up to and including her escape to the USA as a refugee.
I think it's fair to say that the period-pieces are far more engaging than the modern ones, and the story of the painting is far more interesting than the one of the legal battle surrounding it, even though the strands rely on each other fully. The cast in the earlier timeline were largely unknown to me (and the ones I did recognise, I recognised as 'character' actors) so it was easier to believe in that part of the story. Because as credible as they both are in this, you never forget that you're watching Helen Mirren and Ryan Reyolds. They're both 'good', but the film should really be about the painting, not the performers, and I think a slightly less starry level of casting would have helped this (although obviously the names help put bums on seats, which is the other important thing).
Woman In Gold has some stretches of absolute, undiluted brilliance (in both of its timelines); moments which make you glad you've gone to watch the film in a cinema; moments in which the massive screen concentrates and amplifies the emotion of the story and the history of the artwork. But these are punctuated by some of the most cliched and perfunctory scenes you've witnessed outside of a Channel5 made-for-TV movie. The film doggedly hangs on to its 'will the underdog succeed in winning the battle?' methodology, which - even if the viewer is unfamiliar with the story of the painting - is redundant to the point of insulting the audience. SPOILER: Yes, they win. It's a true story. People don't make films of this sort of thing unless they win. Although to be fair, people don't make films of fictional cases like this unless they win, either.
But the great moments outweigh the bad ones and make Woman In Gold well worth watching. It's certainly changed the way I'll look at the painting, and that's the important thing, i think.
With the best will in the world, probably not.
It's a sort of "£5 on DVD" type film. You might watch it more than once, but you won't watch it repeatedly.
Sadly not.
Despite battling with its own screenplay, it does.
Nope.
There isn't. Surprisingly.
Helen Mirren voiced Deep Thought in 2005's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy film, a film which also starred Warwick 'Wicket' Davis.
*1 I wanted to say 'her lawyer and nephew' there, but I'm fairly certain he's not her nephew. They're definitely related, but in such a convoluted way that the film doesn't actually put a name on the connection. Anyway, my bad for not paying attention to that part of the exposition at the start of the film.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Another mixed bag of style and substance from the pen of Le Carré, A Most Wanted Man has plenty of individually great moments, but left me struggling to say I'd enjoyed the film. Much like the last outing from the stable, the film doesn't waste a line of needless exposition where a shot of a central character sighing and staring at a wall for forty five seconds will do instead.
Luckily, the plot - following a German black-ops anti-terrorist organisation monitoring the recruitment and funding of extremist Islamist terror cells - is fairly linear this time (and despite my gripe in the previous paragraph, it's nowhere near as infuriatingly self-indulgent as TTSS), but while the story is pleasingly interwoven, some of the performances - as excellent as they are - seem over-egged, somehow. I can't decide whether it's Corbijn's direction or Andrew Bovell's screenplay, but something was holding me back from feeling any real connection to the characters.
A relatively straightforward spy-tale, handled as if it's more baffling than it actually is, A Most Wanted Man seems like it would benefit from being a TV series, rather than the two hours of furtive looks and scowling we get here. Luckily, Philip Seymour Hoffman's interpretation of German spymaster, Günther Bachmann, seems to have him hailing from Swansea; so that never gets dull.
It's along those lines, yeah.
For the most part, I think I did.
Probably, but that's not my call to make.
Home or cinema; either should work.
I won't.
At some point.
Didn't hear one.
How come when Annabel is cycling through the park, all the leaves are green and on the trees, but the shot that's intercut features Günther standing in a different area (not in that park, admittedly) among brown leaves all over the path? Visual symbolism or a sloppy shooting schedule?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Bill Condon's latest is a real mixed bag. Simultaneously fascinating and apathetic in equal measure, it's careful not to sensationalise the Wikileaks affair too much, but it also stylises events above and beyond your usual docu-drama fayre. It's nice to be able to sit back and watch from a non-judgemental point of view, but there's very little in here that hasn't been all over the news for the past couple of years. It's difficult to reveal the untold truth about the story when that's exactly what Wikileaks have been doing. There are references to the central characters' private lives, but they end up as window-dressing, serving little purpose other than fleshing out the players which the director doesn't want us to get too attached to anyway.
The main problem seems to be, how do you really tell a story which isn't finished yet? Concerns in the press about the lionisation of Julian Assange with this film seem unfounded to me; he's portrayed as neither a hero or villain here, just a flawed, contradicted man whose reach is bordering on exceeding his grasp. Similarly with Assange's protégé/partner, Daniel, while he certainly seems to have a clearer moral compass than Julian, he's essentially just the eyes of the audience, and most of the film is told from his frustratingly-neutral point of view. Benedict Cumberbatch is comfortably eccentric as usual, and Daniel Brühl is quietly fantastic, keeping everything dialled down to everyman-level like a bearded Peter Parker.
The Fifth Estate is an engaging watch, even if it doesn't remain consistently accessible, sort of like a GuardianistaZero Dark Thirty. It's definitely worth a go, but definitely a DVD. The final scene manages to both bolster and patronise the audience; telling them to keep up the good fight for The Truth™, whilst also reminding them that what they've just watched is probably quite far from that exact thing. In many ways it's the perfect analogy for the 21st century.
Well, I suppose.
Yeah, I guess.
I don't actually know.
DVD, tops.
No.
I don't feel the need at the moment.
There isn't.
This will still be miles better than the 'blockbuster thriller' version that will inevitably come out though, won't it?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Rush (second-pass)
Cert: 15 / 123 mins / Dir. Ron Howard
There 's not really much to add from last time, I'm afraid. Re-watching a film gives me the chance to take my foot off the plot-pedal*1 and have a look around at the scenery, but I'm not an F1 buff, so I couldn't geek out on all the race detail, and while I was alive in the timeframe of the movie, I was a little too young to fully appreciate the nostalgia it offers.
So instead, all I could do was marvel*2 at how solidly the story is told; to the point where I was still gripped for the entire movie, even knowing how it ends. This really is quite a remarkable film, about remarkable people. It doesn't make want to start watching F1, but I'm not convinced it's meant to. If you only go to the cinema once this year, go for this.
Oh, and thanks to the two gentlemen some seats away over to my left who thought it was acceptable to start having a conversation in the middle of the film. Not whispering, actually talking. Not kids, distracted or bored with what they were seeing, actual adult males in their fifties, talking about the film. During the film. I didn't go over and punch them, but only because they'd then have started making even more noise. Unbelievable.
It is.
I did.
It does.
Go to the cinema to see this at the earliest opportunity.
I probably will, yes.
I will.
There isn't.
*1 No driving-based pun intended, I assure you.
*2 And that's not an oblique Thor pun, either.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
