Posts tagged John Leguizamo
Chef “Tantalizes the Taste Buds”
Jun 5th
(“Tantalizes the Taste Buds”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
CHEF is more than just a little movie about food or about the personal redemption of a first-class chef.
As evidence of that, there is even a cookbook, THE OFFICIAL CHEF MOVIE COOKBOOK: RECIPES FROM EL JEFE, available as a free e-book or iPad app, which contains recipes from some of the food prepared in the movie, which was written, directed, and stars Jon Favreau.
Favreau plays Carl Casper, the chef at a trendy Los Angeles restaurant owned by Dustin Hoffman.
Carl also has a complicated personal life, because he is divorced from Inez, played by Sofia Vergara, and they have a son, Percy, who would love to spend more time with his father, but Carl is consumed by his occupation as a chef.
In fact, Carl says, “I get to touch people’s lives with what I do, and I love it.”
At the beginning of the movie, a famous food critic shows up at the restaurant, and whereas Carl wants to prepare something special for the critic, who has reviewed Carl before, Carl’s boss doesn’t want him to change the menu, but just stick to “playing his hits.”
Sure enough, the critic writes a bad review, so bad that it goes viral on the Internet, and after Carl gets Percy to sign him up with a Twitter account, Carl just makes matters worse, and a second chance to redeem himself makes everything so worse that Carl loses his job when things escalate to the boss level.
Then when Inez gets a temporary job in Miami, where both she and Carl are from, Carl agrees to go along and watch Percy while Inez works.
Inez also has an ex-husband there, Marvin, played by Robert Downey, Jr., to whom she was married before Carl, and through a series of circumstances, Carl ends up buying a beat-up food truck from Marvin, and he and Percy refurbish it to make it operational again, along with the help of Martin, played by John Leguizamo, who was Carl’s sous-chef and best friend back in L.A. and who shows up unexpectedly to help Carl in his new career.
Then we follow Carl, Percy, and Martin as they drive back to Los Angeles for an unexpected twist at the end.
CHEF is much more than what meets the eye or tantalizes the taste buds.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Chef – Movie Trailer
Jun 4th
Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner (Dustin Hoffman), he is left to figure out what’s next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife (Sofia Vergara), his friend (John Leguizamo) and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen — and zest for life and love.
“The Counselor ” More Novel than Movie
Nov 3rd
“More Novel Than Movie”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Counselor has so much going for it that you would think it has to be a successful movie, right?
Wrong!
First of all, it stars Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, and Rosie Perez, and of all the lineups of acclaimed stars in acclaimed movies, this is definitely one of them.
Second of all, it was directed by Ridley Scott, and of all the acclaimed directors who have won awards for their movies, he is definitely another one of them.
And third of all, it was written by Cormac McCarthy, who is an acclaimed novelist with many of his novels having been made into acclaimed movies, and of all the great screenwriters in the history of movies, he is a pretty good novelist.
This movie has three other things in it that are worthy of mention: a graphic sex scene, a graphic murder scene, and many scenes of too much talking and not enough action.
The sex scene involves a woman, a fancy car, and a man sitting in the front seat of the car watching, but it is more laughable than erotic.
The murder scene comes in an unexpected location, it involves an unusual device, but takes so long and shows such agony and pain and so much blood that it is more disgusting than effective.
And the scenes of too much talking that are also more philosophical than descriptive would be better read in a novel than heard in a movie. They sound as if they had been written by an acclaimed novelist instead of an acclaimed screenwriter.
Wait a minute! They were!
Anyway, here is the story. A successful attorney in El Paso, Texas, with a busy practice, a beautiful girlfriend, and an expensive car wants more, and so he gets involved in the illegal trafficking of drugs from Mexico into the U.S.
He meets with the necessary contacts he needs in order to arrange for a deal that involves $20 million of drugs to be shipped across the border on its way to Chicago, but as usually happens in the movies, something goes wrong.
Terribly wrong, disastrously wrong, and murderously wrong.
As a matter of fact, those are the very words that could be used to describe this movie.
The Counselor, as a movie, is a spectacular novel.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
