In 2003, Marvel wasn’t a Universe and movie special effects weren’t scarily surreal. Those are two reasons “Daredevil” misses the mark, but they’re more like excuses. Nobody had to make the writing so ham-fisted and nobody had to make Ben Affleck a ridiculously computer-aided cross between Batman and Spiderman. Jennifer Garner’s Elektra is reduced to sugarless eye candy and Colin Farrell’s Bullseye comes off as some kind of crazy Irish Andre Agassi. And the courtroom scenes (Affleck’s a lawyer by day) are as preposterous as the special effects. Hopefully, he didn’t represent himself when he divorced Garner in real life.
Archives for posts with tag: Jon Favreau
“Chef” (2014) is a good movie for people like me, who enjoy cooking, awkwardly embrace social media and savor hard-to-categorize, witty little movies. Jon Favreau is the chef, a well-meaning sort-of dickhead going through a midlife crisis (exactly how I imagine Favreau is in real life). It has a lot of people in it: Dustin Hoffman, Oliver Platt, that dude from the Woody Allen movie, John Leguizamo, Robert Downey Jr., etc. I loved the cooking scenes, especially the grilled cheese sandwich. Sofia Vergara haters will totally understand how two of the main characters are her ex-husbands. She’s an acquired taste.
I get the fact that Martin Scorsese needs to move on from the Mafia to a new generation of criminals, which explains “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). I’m just not sure what I was supposed to get out of this movie. It’s voyeuristic fun watching the decadent rise and unsurprising fall of pump-and-dump stock millionaire Jordan Belfort, as played by Leonardo DiCaprio. At several points, however, we’re fed the notion that Belfort was somehow helping everyone else while he was helping himself. That’s just typical self-serving sales bullshit, but not surprising. A salesman’s first priority is to sell himself.
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