Merrick Morton/Open Road Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Chef (2014)
The film “Chef” heralds the glorious return to the big screen of food porn, a term once ascribed to “Babette’s Feast,” “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “Big Night” but now mostly relegated to the Cooking Channel. At a Tribeca Film Festival screening, the audience collectively let out an audible gasp at the sight of Aaron Franklin’s fresh-from-the-pit Texas barbecue oozing meat juices when sliced with a carving knife.
MOVIE REVIEW
Ginger & Rosa (2012)
Nicola Dove/56th BFI London Film Festival
Sally Potter has always been famous for making movies considered unmakable. “Ginger & Rosa” is her determined attempt to enter the mainstream by telling a straightforward story in a straightforward — albeit minimalist — way. Her instincts as a filmmaker for style, sound and faces are as sharp as ever, but she seems to have forgotten that sometimes the most direct way of making a point is by going in a roundabout way.
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MOVIE REVIEW
X-Men: First Class (2011)
Murray Close/20th Century Fox
“X-Men: First Class” is the crowning achievement of the mutant-superhero franchise thus far, a rejuvenated enterprise with a new director and cast and a story worth telling. Matthew Vaughn (“Layer Cake,” “Kick-Ass”) takes over and makes a film all his own, an efficient and emotionally affecting character-driven spectacle that is enhanced but not overwhelmed by its elaborate action scenes.
MOVIE REVIEW
Year One (2009)
Suzanne Hanover/Columbia Pictures
“Year One” is precisely the sort of clunky high-concept comedy that’s become the norm for Harold Ramis. It’s a collection of throwaway gags in search of a narrative and some characters, made more in the tradition of “Bedazzled” than “Groundhog Day.” Lots of talented people slum their way through halfhearted comic situations that usually devolve into fart jokes, gay jokes or biblical puns.
MOVIE REVIEW
Frost/Nixon (2008)
Ralph Nelson/Universal Studios
Anticipation levels weren’t particularly high for the Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival’s opening film, perhaps because the latest effort from Ron Howard isn’t the kind of prospect to set a festival crowd’s pulses racing. Mr. Howard may also have seemed like a desperately uncool choice of director to adapt Peter Morgan’s hip play, but he in fact does a very good job with a script that leaves no room for his trademark mawkishness. He also delivers a film that’s much more cinematic than Stephen Frears’s direction of Mr. Morgan’s screenplay of “The Queen.”