Chef - Film Review

Street food's all the rage right now, making this family-friendly comedy timely and fashionable, if a little over done.

Jon Favreau writes, directs and stars in Chef, where the titular character is creatively frustrated but finds himself through his son, Twitter and a food truck. And although the recipe's a familiar one, Favreau's passion, pithy script and down-home performance instils the picture with a flavour that leaves a deliciously sweet taste in your mouth for hours after viewing.

Carl Caspar is the talented head chef of a trendy Los Angeles restaurant, whose creative drought is called out by a ruthless food critic (Oliver Platt). Some serious Twitter beef ensues after his tech-savvy son (Emjay Anthony) introduces Carl to the social network, culminating in Carl publicly berating the critic in the restaurant and consequently losing his job. Like my broken oven the sweary dialogue is hot and loud, and coupled with the bromantic comedy between Carl and his buds, keeps things snap, crackling along. But the story really comes alive when Carl gets his beaten up food truck and starts to ignite his culinary fires with foot-long Cubanos.

On the surface Chef is about a protagonist trying to reconnect with himself and revitalise his creative flair, but really it's the story of a father trying to reconnect with his son. In the first act their relationship is tense and clipped, but after some second act bonding over the cleaning and refurbishment of the food truck, Carl's defences dissolve and the two grow close, with his son acting as a line-chef and learning the ways of the kitchen.

As they travel across America, with Carl's cooking and his son publishing their progress on social media, the food truck becomes a roaring success. Carl's happy, cooking an authentic Cuban menu he developed, and more importantly doing so with his son. This emotional backbone props up the rest of the story, and although sometimes saccharine, it always resonates with heart-warming clarity. Similar to Swingers, this feels like a deeply personal project for Favreau, and the autobiographical element makes it all the more charming.

Despite Chef being as predictable as Heinz tomato soup, it's also as warm and comforting. The pithy script has a kick of spice that makes the story fizz, as does the energetic soundtrack, and there's a fantastic natural chemistry between the cast of characters, like sweet and sour, they complement each other perfectly. Although it might not leave you wanting more, Chef certainly leaves you feeling replete.

Anchorman - Plot Point Breakdown

Anchorman's (2004) one of the most quotable comedies ever, ridiculous and silly but so fun with a cast that crackle and fizz off one another effortlessly. Anchorman 2 (2013) tried to recreate the magic, and for the first 10 minutes it did, but the remaining 130 minutes failed hard. The structure aped the original to the beat and they tried to hit the same comedy high-notes but it felt flat and contrived. However, the original is something special and despite the actors riffing off-script to their heart's content, it still adheres to a pretty traditional story structure.

Inciting Incident - Ron Burgundy is San Diego's number one anchorman but when Veronica Corningstone joins the Channel 4 news team Ron's title is under threat, his position in the top perch is rocked and he's forced to reassess the misogynistic culture he's become so comfortable with. (14 minutes)

Lock In - After taking Veronica out for a night on the town, during which both share their ambition to be a network news anchor, the two hop on the good foot, do the bad thing, falling madly in love with each other. (33 minutes)

Midpoint - When Ron misses his slot reporting the news because he's stuck in a glass cage of emotion after the man punted Baxter, Veronica fills in as head anchor and reports Ron's news. This leads to her getting a promotion as co-anchor, but Ron feels betrayed and their romantic relationship falls apart. (49 minutes)

Climax - Veronica sabotages the teleprompter, from which Ron will read anything, making Ron sign off with, "Go fuck yourself, San Diego." This results in Ron being fired from the Channel 4 news team and becoming a dishevelled, wallowing milk-drunk. (64 minutes)

Resolution - When Veronica disappears in the midst of the biggest story of the year, Ron gets his chance at redemption - to report the news again. But on arriving at the zoo he sees Veronica trapped in the bear pit and chooses to save the life of the woman he loves, over reporting the news. (78 minutes)

The Lost Room & MacGuffins

In a lecture he gave at Columbia university way back when in 1939, Alfred Hitchcock defined MacGuffins as, "the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is almost always the papers." It's the thing that the main characters want, Marcellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction, unobtanium in Avatar, and the meaning of rosebud in Citizen Kane. In the first act at least, it's what drives the characters and story forward.

The Lost Room is a 2006 sci-fi series about the eponymous motel room and a bunch of everyday objects that possess unusual powers. The protagonist, detective Joe Miller, has to hunt down these objects to rescue his nitwit daughter who got lost in the lost room. It opens with some shady deal to get the Key - the Key can open any hinged door and turn it into a portal to the Lost Room - the deal goes south and the Key ends up in the hands of Joe Miller. Each episode revolves around a different object, a different MacGuffin, and the more MacGuffins we meet the more we learn about the mythology of the Lost Room, it's objects and the numerous cabals searching for the powerful objects.

It's a great hidden gem of a show, and demonstrates not only how to use MacGuffins in storytelling, but also how ultimately meaningless most MacGuffins are - they'll propel the characters and story along for the first act or two but after that, the climax and resolution really revolves around the protagonist coming to terms with their personal flaw or solving some internal conflict, which will probably have been externalized with the MacGuffin or via the characters' relationship to it. In the case of the Lost Room it was Joe's stupid daughter and his anxiety about being an inadequate father - an anxiety which was fully substantiated when he lost her in a portal to another universe. Simply, find his daughter and he's a good father.

An interesting example of MacGuffins in modern cinema are the Infinity Stones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the Avengers, and Captain America: The First Avenger, it was the Tesseract, in Guardians of the Galaxy it looks to be the mysterious orb Chris Pratt's Star Lord is trying to steal in the trailer, and in Thor: The Dark World it was the Aether. These are the Infinity Stones and it's these MacGuffins (and the heroes) that tie the plots together of each individual movie, as well as the different phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because, as will transpire in Avengers 3, the uber-villain Thanos is trying to get his big purple mitts on all six of the Infinity Stones - whoever holds all six stones in the Infinity Gauntlet gains omnipotence, omniscience and God-like power - so this Infinity Gauntlet will be the ultimate MacGuffin of not only Avengers 3 but the whole MCU and stopping Thanos will be our heroes' ultimate goal. Their first aim will be to keep the Infinity MacGuffins away from Thanos, except they'll fail, all will be seemingly lost, and there'll be an epic showdown, from which our heroes will no doubt emerge victorious. But not all of them, I bet.

Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy

This video compilation by Tony Zhou perfectly demonstrates not only the cinematic flair and comedic talents of Edgar Wright but also analyses how the English auteur uses every frame as an opportunity to tell the story visually. And it reminds me how pissed I am that he's now not directing Ant-Man. Stupid Marvel.

Tony's beef and disappointment with American comedies is well articulated, calling them out for their lazy filmmaking - "the use of picture and sound to deliver jokes is... boring." He rightly argues that when you're predominantly using close up shots of your actors delivering dialogue, you're not using the full potential of cinema. And this is what Edgar Wright does so well - visual storytelling. In Tony's words, "the frame is a playground, so play."