Violent Night (2022) - Movie Review

 

Well, if nothing else, hopefully this film’s mere existence will be enough to finally put that boring-as-all-hell “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” debate to rest. Seriously, even as a meme, that shit got old a long time ago.

The Menu (2022) - Movie Review

I wasn’t expecting to like this. Knowing how badly my palette rejected the textures of Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, seeing him produce more satire didn’t exactly put my stomach at ease. But I am nothing if not open to new flavour combinations and experiences, so I tucked in with this one, and I have to admit, I quite like what I was served. “I wonder if constantly comparing films to food will ever get annoying to readers?”, said no critic ever, apparently.

This is as much a critique of the world of haute cuisine as it is of the ways in which the people engage with it, whether it’s through being in the restaurants themselves or experiencing them through some kind of proxy, be it a critic’s opinion of it or it being filmed for television. David Gelb, creator of the Netflix series Chef’s Table, does the second unit work here and he brings a lot of familiar techniques to the production, right down to the way each course in the titular Menu is presented, complete with ingredient list. Said courses, recreated from the Michelin star menu of Dominique Crenn’s Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, are as enticing to look at as they are ridiculously ostentatious, especially when hearing the servers and guests describe them.

Much like with Flux Gourmet, another film about turning what we digest into some form of sophisticated art, part of me feels targeted specifically by what’s being said here. I mean, I’ve made it my lot in life to wax poetic about the nature of art and the ways it can affect an audience; seeing a server describe a wine as having notes of longing and regret felt like something I might’ve written unironically at one point. But also like with Flux Gourmet, the art in question (the food) is shown in its entire context, both for its ridiculous excess and for the genuine creativity that went into its creation. A fair amount of the food is based in molecular gastronomy, which is basically where mad science is brought into cooking with all its gels and foams and intricately conceptualised construction, and the script by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy makes a point of giving it its due credit.

What is being targeted ends up being two-fold: The chef, and the customer. On the chef’s part, Fiennes plays the role with a lot of Gordon Ramsay energy, right down to actually calling a customer "donkey" at one point, but with an added dash of Hannibal Lector darkness to bring out his self-admitted monstrousness. He runs his kitchen like a charismatic cult leader, asking for and getting absolute devotion from his staff, and every evening’s worth of food is served like clockwork. Like a ritual. But in turning what he considers his art into something so routine, so mundane, there’s no joy in it for him anymore. Which kinda defeats the purpose of this whole endeavour, since high cuisine is meant to elevate the simple act of consuming food out of necessity into something of true enjoyment; an experience worth remembering beyond digestion. And where’s the joy in something that has become so soulless?

To that end, we have the customers… and it’s here where the satire gets really juicy. There’s a lot of class warfare by way of food going on here, from Reed Birney and Judith Light as a couple who eat at Hawthorne so regularly that there’s no sense of occasion to it, Arturo Castro, Rob Yang, and Mark St. Cyr as three tech bros who are connected to the cold financial side of high cuisine as a business, John Leguizamo as a washed-up actor… I mean he’s playing a washed-up actor, who is basically there as part of a bid to bullshit his way into a TV show, Janet McTeer as a food critic, and then there’s Nicholas Hoult as the resident foodie and fanboy of chef Slowik. Hoult’s Tyler is basically the worst aspects of the pretentious art critic combined with the worst aspects of the ‘consoomer’. Only caring about his own gratification, which largely comes out of fart-sniffing pontification rather than actually appreciating the food in question, while also showing rather sociopathic disregard for the how and why of its creation and the environment it comes from. It’s only about the experience, not what it took to make it a reality. Never before has it been easier to sympathise with Anya Taylor-Joy, who shows up here as Tyler’s date.

And in the midst of all that, the film takes a pretty hard stance against that sort of culinary exclusivity, where everything is designed solely for those who care more about their image than their intake, and are also so well-off that they don’t need to consider just how much they’re spending on food they don’t even care about. It links up with a lot of what I liked about Steven Knight’s Burnt and even the ending of Spencer in how it shows that, yes, making food at this tier is its own artform, but you can get even greater rewards by giving people something simple and even cheap that they will actually appreciate. It’s the same mentality behind my own approach to cinema as art, which is why I really don't like the elitist condescension that regularly gets thrown at mainstream popcorn cinema and superhero flicks especially, and it’s part of the reason why I hold people like Steven Soderbergh in such high regard: Art shouldn’t be reserved just for the super-rich and privileged.

As a darkly comedic thriller with veins of horror aesthetic in how it shows self-realisation through gruesome and subversive means, it works very nicely and benefits from strong casting and solid visuals. Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes work amazingly well together, as do Taylor-Joy and Hoult. But as a treatise on the importance of the creators and the servers in the process of exhibiting art, whatever form that art may take, a lot of what it says is quite accurate and delivered at just the right tone so that its inherent silliness is able to rest comfortably alongside the darker moments and even the emotional parts. It’s a nice reminder not to let the stiffness of routine get in the way of entertainment, whether you’re providing it or engaging with it. Remember to tip your servers.

Encanto (2021) - Movie Review

It’s Disney time again, and it’s also time to take another look at what Lin-Manuel Miranda’s been getting up to in 2021. The music here is pretty good and keeps with what Miranda is good at, and man, is it catchy. I’m still humming The Family Madrigal as I’m writing this, and the individual character songs like Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz)’s Waiting For A Miracle, Isabela (Diane Guerrero)’s What Else Can I Do?, and even Luisa (Jessica Darrow)’s Surface Pressure are all bops. Hell, We Don’t Talk About Bruno even has some Frozen-level irony in the lyrics, which is quite the treat.

The Night Clerk (2020) - Movie Review

This is something I’m likely going to get into more detail with a review I can already see approaching early next year, but just to get it out in the open: I don’t have an inherent problem with non-autistic people playing those on the spectrum. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Asa Butterfield, and Ben Affleck aren’t on the spectrum (far as I know, at least), and yet their respective depictions in Mary & Max, X+Y, and The Accountant still resonated with me.

Being able to depict something that close to my heart in a truly empathetic way means the world to me, regardless of the status of the actor doing it, and while I get the problem with the lack of IRL autistic representation in these movies (it’s been happening for so long, it’s become the norm to the detriment of working autistic actors), that on its own isn’t the issue. It just adds salt to the wound when the film’s understanding of the condition is already as fucked as it is in films like The Night Clerk.

Playing With Fire (2019) - Movie Review

Over the last few weeks, I’ve covered some films that have gotten a pretty heavy reaction out of yours truly. Such is the nature of the year-end round-up, as catching up with I missed earlier in the year has brought to some truly fantastic films and some real shockers. Part of me is wondering if my verging-on-burnout mindset over this month is artificially heightening my initial reception, like I’ve been giving certain features either too much or too little credit. Well, thankfully we have this film, which is quite bad but it’s not the excruciating variety that I’ve been subjecting myself to of late. Oh, rest assured, it still sucks, but it’s the most inoffensive suckage I’ve reviewed in a while.

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) - Movie Review

The Ice Age series is little more than a relic of early-2000’s animation. Made by Blue Sky Studios, who would go on to secure their place as easily the weakest animation studio working today, the only real notable aspect of these films is how they have managed to keep a consistent decline since they started out, and bear in mind that the first film isn’t even that good to begin with. Computer graphics that have aged about as well as a puke-stain on what used to be your favourite shirt, annoying as all hell voice acting and only a couple of admittedly nice moments to help salvage it, something that would become far less prevalent in the sequels. As much as I wish I had covered this earlier on in the year when it first came out, that prospect meant re-watching all the films in the franchise so forgive me for holding it off for as long as humanly possible. But these things must be done, and it’s not as if this is even likely to be the worst film I’ve looked at recently, so let’s just get this over with.

Sisters (2016) - Movie Review

It seems that today’s subject is going to be the first in what I hope is a short-lived trend of older actors doing teenaged things for the year, what with Dirty Grandpa coming to screens in a little while. I’ve gone at length how much I really don’t like the school of comedy that says just being offensive or violent or awkward doesn’t automatically make a film funny; well, the same applies for mid-life crises. Probably the only time I’ve seen a piece of media make adults acting like teens funny was during an episode of Buffy; that was over fifteen years ago. As a result, despite my affinity for Tina Fey, even that appreciation wasn’t enough to make this film look good going by the trailer. Bear in mind that I was willing to give the weaksauce This Is Where I Leave You a chance because of Fey’s involvement; that’s how bad this looks from the off-set. Well, given only one way to find out if my pessimism once again pays off. This is Sisters.

Walking With Dinosaurs (2014) - Movie Review

  

While, at first glance, it’s an easy assumption to make that the director has sole creative control over a film, there’s also the matter of the producers to consider. The producers and production companies attached to a film are the money backing it, and they get a considerable amount of sway over what ends up in the final product; they can pull funding to the film if they don’t agree with what the director wants to do with it. Sure, you will occasionally get the auteurs that partially or even entirely fund their own movies themselves, but in the Hollywood system this isn’t always the case. Not to say that this is always a bad thing, mind you; just that it occasionally leads to bad decisions. To further illustrate this, let’s get started with today’s film: This is Walking With Dinosaurs.

John Wick (2014) - Movie Review

Keanu Reeves, in my opinion, gets a bad rap. Everyone just seems to gauge his performances with either Bill & Ted or The Matrix, as if the guy hasn’t made any other movies apart from them. His method of acting, which is definitely low-key but not as banal as others make him out, did him well in movies like Devil’s Advocate, My Own Private Idaho and A Scanner Darkly. Hell, I even liked him in the much-maligned Constantine, which I seriously think people were too harsh on as a whole. Then again, even I can see his duds: Much Ado About Nothing, while excellent, proved that Shakespeare isn’t Keanu’s style in any way, The Day The Earth Stood Still was phenomenally dull and 47 Ronin from earlier this year was just plan terri-bad. So, where does his latest effort John Wick stand?