The other day I decided that I needed a close-to-end-of-week cinematic break. So I went back over to the Quality 16, my neighborhood megaplex, thinking I’d bow to crowds and go to Edge of Tomorrow. But starting at a slightly more convenient time was Chef, a movie I hadn’t heard much about but seemed to snugly fit my preferences for independent cinema.

This was a great experience of “going in cold” (not knowing much about) to the movie. I see now that the film’s trailer gives away many of the good comedic moments and provides a broad outline of the plot, which is meant to be more surprising in the film’s narrative context. But since I had not seen the trailer – or didn’t remember it – that was not a problem for me.

The movie focuses on a turning point in the life of Carl Casper (writer – director Jon Favreau) who enjoys an OK life as head chef at a swanky, but wants to be better Los Angeles restaurant. A few sharp opening scenes clearly set up the story there, where Carl seems to want to return to a professional culinary life where he can do more of what he wants, but is stymied by a controlling boss (Dustin Hoffman in a well-played and well-placed cameo role.) Meanwhile, his assistants (John Leguizamo and Bobby Canavale) still support him, and the hostess (Scarlett Johansson) seems to have eyes for him.

And then in Carl’s non-work life, he is trying to be a good example to his son, who only sees him part-time and spends the rest of the time at his mother (Sofia Vergara)’s opulent estate-style house. Carl doesn’t seem to see that his son wants more out of the relationship, but the son cleverly gains the upper hand, as only smiling 10 year olds can do, at several instances in those early scenes.

Things come to a head for Carl when a popular regional food critic (Oliver Platt) decides that he will be reviewing the restaurant. Carl and boss and associates spar over the servings for the night in question, and there are multiple lingering effects for all involved for several days afterwards.

At this point, the film introduces its most modern and surprising element: a wholehearted acknowledgement of the social media age. Carl has not kept pace with the world of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, instant journalism and celebrity news… but everyone else around him has. He quickly learns the pros and cons of the field, and for a while I thought the movie was turning into a satire on how obsessive and compulsive these digital worlds have become, like a national obsession. The movie seems keenly aware of this option as the plot thread continues to be integrated throughout the rest of the film.

But instead, after a small helping of satire, the movie makes a left turn, and gains a warm heart. Carl’s ex points him in the direction of Miami, where all three family characters have history, and he ends up in the office of an old friend (Robert Downey Jr. in another well-placed cameo) who offers Carl the chance to take over his old food truck. With a little help from his friends and some key, warm support from his son, Carl sets off on a journey of redemption and new opportunity back to Los Angeles.

The film doesn’t end with that meeting! The story continues as Carl and friends get the truck operational and have a southern tier cross-country experience through New Orleans, Austin and points in between on their journey back to California. And there are further opportunities that appear when life in Los Angeles resumes.

The story might sound predictable in this outline, but everything is told in such a warm – hearted and also exuberant style, including an emphasis on colors in the frame, tantalizing shots of food onscreen, and the family relationships of the characters pushed to the front of the story, that this became one of the most appealing and satisfying films I have seen in some time.

Some outlets are suggesting that this film is Favreau’s own redemption or return to the indie world after a series of ups and a few downs in big – budget Hollywood filmmaking, and I could see how there might be some truth to that. But he also seems to enjoy using his increased industry cache to draw in Hoffman and Downey Jr. for winking cameos, along with an uncharacteristically dowdy Johannson willing to play a supporting role, and a luminous Vergara making the viewer feel right at home and as if they know her character.

It is clearly a familiar plot, but it’s played so well, and with insightful nods to the modern era, that the film is a breath of fresh air to the early summer movie season.

The French/British film Le Week-End has continued its Ann Arbor run at the State Theater, and so I caught it there on a matinee showing yesterday.

Billed as an elder-skewing romantic comedy to US audiences (at least) the film is in fact a darker look at longstanding relationships, as seen through the eyes of veteran actors Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan, both of whom impress in the central roles, and carry the film solely on their shoulders for nearly 2/3 of the running time as a long-married couple from the UK visiting Paris for their anniversary.

Broadbent offers a character that could be seen as a parallel universe sequel to his work in Another Year a couple of years ago. In the earlier film, he was happily married and ensconced in London life, but this time, he’s not so happily married (though still officially so) and reeling from some unexpected developments in his university job. I find that Broadbent has become known for an affable, twee presence in some of his more recent roles, and here, he darkens the shadings nicely, recalling some of his earlier work such as Moulin Rouge! although not as extravagantly so. Duncan captivates in her role, showing a believable mix of tenderness and abruptness, combined with questioning how much of her own feelings to let on or instinct to follow.

It’s a pity that the actors are let down by the construction of the film, which starts and ends very awkwardly and can’t decide it it wants the characters to be quirky or realistic. I think this is some combination of writer/director challenges – IMDB tells me that both of them (Hanif Kureishi and Roger Michell) have collaborated frequently, but they seem to have lost their stride with this effort. Just as an example, the film should have started about 10 minutes past when it did start, and the ending is a total “let’s throw in the towel” crapshoot.

The film does add more subtext for its last third, when the couple attends a dinner party given by a friend of Broadbent’s, played by Jeff Goldblum in a charismatic performance, and are faced with the awkward (yet familiar in a social setting) choices of putting on a show or letting their current strife show to people they barely know. The technical composition of the film is also at its most intriguing here, with moody evening shots of the Parisian skyline seeping through into the apartment and several long shots of a metal stairway emphasizing shadows and construction.

I definitely wanted to see this film do a better job of telling its story – but I’m not sure how it would have done that. Nonetheless it is refreshing to see a film carried by “older” actors and not afraid to be downbeat and take chances in how its story is unveiled.

I also found that the UK and US advertising seemed to convey a slightly different interpretation of the plot as seen in pictures. Both examples are below.

(UK on left, US on right)

I returned to the Michigan Theatre this evening to catch Annette Bening (who defines selectivity in her screen roles) and Ed Harris (who is a hard working actor and manages to project commitment into every part) in a new film called The Face of Love. It was great to see those two pros working together (had they appeared onscreen together before?) but the film had its pros and cons, and was somewhat overwhelmed by a larger gloss of an ultra contemporary Los Angeles/Southern Pacific Coast setting.

Bening stars as Nikki, an LA-based “house dresser” (or something like that – we only get one scene to see what she does for work…) who has lost her husband of many years (Harris) in an ocean accident during an anniversary trip to Mexico. The film flashes forward several years, and, by chance, Nikki encounters a new man, Tom (also Harris) who, naturally, looks exactly like her late husband. Nikki puts on her sleuthing hat to find more about him, ultimately tracking him down as an art instructor at Occidental College, and the two develop a connection initially as teacher-student that quickly turns to a more romantic vein. However, Nikki choses to conceal the similarity between Tom and her deceased husband, also leading her to conceal the new man’s identity from an inquisitive neighbor (Robin Williams, of all people…) and her 20-something daughter who is in and out of the house and LA area.

I really appreciated this film’s premise, and found that there were flashes of insight both from a psychological standpoint (how long does it take a widow or survivor to move on from loss? do they ever move on?) and a more character-based standpoint (will she tell him the truth? what are these characters doing in their self-contained Los Angeles worlds?)

But then the film missed several opportunities to take the story in a deeper or surprising direction; several reviews note that Tom looks up Nikki on the internet, but somehow fails to come across an obituary for her husband. And she actually drops a hint of the details she is leaving out in an early scene in their budding relationship — but both characters forget to follow up on it, leading to an inevitable confrontation sequence later in the film.

In fact, that sequence near the end of the film takes the characters back to the “scene of the crime/incident” in Mexico (kind of a spoiler but whatever) and at that point the film toyed with becoming a female-led version of Vertigo, with Bening doing her best impression of a more amicable and feminine Jimmy Stewart. I wish that the script had gone one step further (again) with a coda in that sequence, which presented an opportunity to make it all much more fantastical, similar to something like… Vanilla Sky or anything by Pedro Almodovar… but it went for the conventional, and then skipped ahead for an affecting though too rushed resolution to the story.

Clearly this film struck a chord with my thoughts and analysis, probably tied in with my psychology background. And despite the unevenness of the material, Bening and Harris offer committed performances (Bening more so) throughout the film. It sure was weird seeing Robin Williams in a dramatic supporting role (I can’t remember the last time I did) and his character appeared underused, as if he had more scenes but they might have been cut down. The film makes excellent use of a variety of Los Angeles locations but they veer on the edge of a modern design catalog and sometimes distract from the story.

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I didn’t write about last week’s viewing of Captain America: The Winter Soldier back at the Quality 16. This film has started the summer movie season (hence my “popcorn season” post title) earlier than ever before, and has been well covered in other outlets as it continues the ongoing saga of the Marvel Universe.

So instead of offering a full review I’ll just note that I especially enjoyed the interplay between Chris Evans as the eponymous captain and Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow. The two of them should clearly set off on their own series of movies rife with international intrigue, hot sexual tension and fearless crime fighting. I’m sure a lot of fans would line right up.

Attempting to round up two recent films in this entry with a certain combination of brevity and detail.

As a lifelong Muppets fan I was eager to catch their latest romp Muppets Most Wanted. While the central casting (Ricky Gervais et al) seemed to hint that it might be a lesser entry in the series, the gang has an undeniably enduring charm. And their camaraderie shined in this escapade. It borrowed liberally from The Great Muppet Caper, and seemed to veer between homage and copying plot elements of previous Muppet films, but it’s hard to fault the lovable characters for that — and they are clearly enjoying their “comeback” in popular culture.

I did feel that the writers made the central plot conceit (the rest of the gang does not recognize Kermit after he is kidnapped/swapped out for an evil frog lookalike) slightly disingenuous to the history of the series and emphasis on teamwork/working with your friends … surely those that have known Kermit so long would know other ways to recognize him? As well, the task of recognition oddly fell to the “new” character, Walter, who I feel continued to get too much screen time at the expense of some of the other more established characters… but I know those are adult-minded criticisms for a film designed for a younger audience.

It seems that the film also lacked the transcending/moving/timeless elements of the Muppets, such as the iconic Rainbow Connection, countless scenes from the Great Muppet Caper (my personal favorite of the films) and the arc of the gang conquering Broadway in The Muppets Take Manhattan, not to forget the numerous guests and gags that came fast and furious during The Muppet Show days. While I ultimately enjoyed the film (and it was a great payoff for an exceedingly stressful Wednesday), I’m having a hard time remembering key standout moments as I write this commentary 10 days later.

I decided that today would bring a visit to The Grand Budapest Hotel, the current art house film of choice from inimitable (and well on his way to becoming – if not there already) iconic filmmaker Wes Anderson. While this film is showing (on both screens!) at Ann Arbor’s downtown State Theater, I changed it up and incorporated it into a visit to western Oakland County and Novi’s Emagine complex, since it was an appealing early spring day and it was good to get out of the Ann Arbor fishbowl. I’d also heard good things about the Emagine chain, but somehow had not been there yet. They definitely are the large scale complex that needs to exist in 2014, with a spacious but not cavernous interior complete with beer and wine offerings (!), well thought out design of the complex, and a reasonable $6 matinee admission price.

Ralph Fiennes refreshingly loosens up in the central role of Gustave H., the head concierge of the massive Grand Budapest Hotel somewhere in Europe. He’s joined by a typical for Anderson large group of supporting players, including — in no particular order — Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Jude Law, F. Murray Abraham, an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum (who seems to have been off screens for some time) and many others.

While the title emphasis on the hotel suggests that the movie is going to be a situation comedy set there, the hotel itself is really the central character and launching point for the rest of the plot. I enjoyed how the film often took an unexpected old-school James Bond style air of intrigue as a mystery plot is hatched involving Fiennes and other characters. As often happens with other Anderson films (IMO), the premise may not live up to the payoff, plot-wise, but the journey getting there is so appealing (design, framing of shots, performances, overall production values, and so on and so forth) that it makes the experience worth the effort along the way.