In Which We Struggle To Leave A Voicemail

Hand-Squeezed

by JULIA CLARKE

Chef
dir. Jon Favreau
114 minutes

The last film I saw alone was American Hustle, and I'm still recovering from that requisite tsunami of depression. I saw Chef because I doubted it would have the same effect, and also Swingers has forever given me a soft spot for Jon Favreau. A friend once described him as "the moldy inside of a ripe English muffin," but that friend doesn't understand how a lady feels when a man wearing a tank top struggles to leave a voicemail. I maintain he's adorbs. 

Contrary to what the trailers suggest, Chef is less a "the higher they rise, the harder they fall" story so much as a tale about someone who makes hand-squeezed, chili-infused artisan lemonade out of lemons, with the  coaxing of his ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara). That coaxing was relentless and weirdly good-hearted, considering their divorce.

Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) is head chef at an upscale Los Angeles restaurant where randomly Scarlett Johanasson is the hostess. She plays a hipster named Molly who sort of has a thing for him, although after sharing a joint they say "we told each other we wouldn't do this," and just like that, their relationship is drier than the cornstarch Carl and his son pour on their male parts on a particularly humid evening.

Once an inventive, passionate craftsman, Carl is now a cook forced by restaurant owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman) to put out what the regular crowd expects: some sort of caviar thing in an eggshell, a blah Italian entree, and a chocolate lava cake. 

On the day of a big critique from renowned critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), Carl struts into the kitchen with heirloom tomatoes, an enormous pig carcass, and purple carrots. But Riva demands that he "play the hits" and stick to the usual menu, which, of course, makes Ramsey Michel roll his eyes and write a heinous review. He pans Carl's boring cooking, but perhaps more cuttingly, he says that Carl's weight gain is decidedly due to obligatory eating of what guests send back to the kitchen. 

Carl is outraged and has an in-restaurant meltdown captured by another patron's iPhone and quickly posted to YouTube. Even though there is no such thing as bad press, Carl's services are no longer needed, and after a brief battle with pride, he does what his ex-wife suggests: opens a food truck in Miami.

With nothing else to lose (people don't want to hire him after his YouTube performance), he follows her advice, and brings along his cute son Percy (Emjay Anthony), who proves amazingly adept at social media outreach. A former coworker Martin (John Leguizamo) joins in at the last second, and the three of them drive from Florida to LA, stopping in cool cities like Austin and NOLA to serve up Cuban sandwiches and whatever other variations on that theme Carl feels like because now he's finally cooking what he loves.

The film has, given its food-centric nature, the expected shots of melty grilled cheese, pureed peppers, simmering green onions, tender pork. In one scene, Carl makes ScarJo some pasta instead of hooking up with her because they told each other they wouldn't. The camera closes in on some onions and spices sauteeing in a wok, and then Carl transfers the most glistening pasta in the world – did he use a gallon of oil? it's so shiny I think he can see his face reflected in it! – into the wok concoction. He twists it together artistically before plating it and handing it to her. When she takes her first bite, her eyes roll back in a way that reminded me of Paula Deen's expression when she bites into a stick of butter. 

In a scene in Texas, Carl, Martin and Percy stop at a hole-in-the wall BBQ place and cut into a piece of meat that has been slowly cooking overnight. It looks almost charred, but when the knife slices through it, the inside is visibly perfect, even to my vegetarian eyes. Someone in the theater audibly groaned in what can only be described as a sexual way. 

As a kale lover, most of the featured food did nothing for me. Most strange, though, was that the food Carl made wasn't nearly as innovative as the film implied he is. Carl's reputation before becoming head chef at the restaurant is that he's against the grain, menu-wise. As someone who has watched at least four episodes of Top Chef, a Cuban sandwich isn't wildly unique. Where you might expect some sort of foamy lecithin concoction atop seared scallops with a sprig of, I don't know, arugula, Carl presents basic Cuban sandwiches and fried plantains. That was actually what was to some heartfelt and others cheesy about it - he begins cooking not only what he wants to cook, but what reminds him of his romance with Inez, and in the process, he rebuilds his relationship with his son. "I get to touch people's lives with what I do," he says meaningfully to Percy. "And I love it. And I want to share this with you."

Performances were mediocre at best and racist at worst (isn't Sofia Vergara Colombian? Why was she parading as Cuban?), although Carl's son Percy was earnest in a believable and childlike way. Tweets appeared on the screen in the same way texts do in House of Cards, rendering social media a character in itself. It was also possibly too long, but maybe that's because there are only so many extreme close-ups of meat slabs I can stomach.

There were also some unanswered questions. I don't know why Inez needed a publicist, for instance, or why her house was so enormous, and she also had another ex-husband (Robert Downey Jr.!?) whose personality – erratic, enigmatic, eccentric – held little appeal. It seemed that her relationship with him was only a ploy for romcom friction between Carl and Inez, the two you're supposed to want to re-couple. I found myself wanting to hate watch a movie about how Robert Downey Jr. and Sofia Vergara's relationship got going and perhaps more interestingly, how it dissolved.

But all of that is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of it. What matters is that a man realizes simplicity and staying true to himself and his ideals will feed millions and bring broken families back together.

Julia Clarke is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Manhattan. She last wrote in these pages about a type.

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In Which You're So Money And You're Overly Aware Of It

A Real Man Doesn't Like Quiche

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Iron Man 2

dir. Jon Favreau

124 minutes

My least favorite part of Swingers has always been the ending. The perennially pathetic Mike (Jon Favreau) stumbles through a pseudo-documentary about Los Angeles that does the disservice of reminding us that Vince Vaughn was once under three hundred pounds, and he ends up with Heather Graham before she turned into Jessica from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

At the time, it was thought unbelievable that the squash-shaped Favreau could nab such a creature. Now he's the director of a $200 million dollar motion picture event and Graham is doing theatrical reenactments of the best part of Boogie Nights and her scene from The Hangover at a bar in Missoula, Montana.

It was obvious from Swingers that Favreau prized a happy ending over all else; his numerous clichéd homages to his favorite films - Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs - were desperate attempts to be loved, to satisfy the audience in the same way those films satisfied him. In Iron Man 2, Favreau delivers his ultimate crowd-pleasing movie, a collection of lively big-budget action sequences and meta-jokes that reminds me of so many things, it reminds me of nothing in particular.

It was also clear from Swingers that Favreau loves pastiche and collage even more than Francis Bacon. If he didn't, he wouldn't have had to fill Swingers with ad-libs, references, and catchphrases galore. The unloved are always seeking it, and Favreau's desperate "character" left so many messages on that young lady's answering machine, one had to get returned.

Iron Man 2 is an even more winsome plea for crowd-pleasing love; the movie winks at its audience so often it develops a twitch. There has never been a film with less of a story that was so incredibly captivating for no real reason outside of the expense spared to put it together. Yet the film wouldn't work at all without the only two talented actors cast in Iron Man 2: those being Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, and Mickey Rourke as the devilish Whiplash.

in a mix-up, he asked Favreau what it was like to have intercourse with Rachel WeiszIt's not really surprising that Rourke reportedly had no idea what the movie was about, because he probably wouldn't have tried half as hard if he did know. Like the vast majority of actors cast today, he is there mostly because of reasons other than that he was good for the role. Rourke makes the best of it by stealing every scene he's in, including a jaw-dropping sequence on a Monaco racetrack. His Russian accent is almost unintelligible, and he gets more laughs out of a toothpick and a cockatoo than Sam Rockwell does from the entire character of Stark's other rival, weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer.

hey sam, I hear the census is looking for pplSam Rockwell was almost cast by Favreau as Iron Man the first time around, and thank god Downey Jr. got sufficiently sober for the part. It is high time Sam Rockwell fell from grace, since his "acting" consists of two modes, neither of which is particularly entertaining after you've experienced it for more than thirty seconds. There is the Sam Rockwell who ruined Moon by overacting so badly that Nicolas Cage claimed a copyright violation. Then there is the Zaphod Beeblebrox-Sam Rockwell who is super-hyped up all the time and clearly internalized too much of Tom Cruise's performance in Magnolia.

This is an ideal transition, because the only person with less respect for women than Favreau is Justin Theroux, screenwriter of Iron Man 2. Gifted with the legendary Marvel character of the Black Widow, these two geniuses cast Scarlett Johansson, whose idea of acting is narrowing her eyes, pouting and delivering everything in a husky monotone. After every single thing she does in the film, Scarlett spins, poses and stares straight into the lens. Also, the only move she really has involves her simply wrapping her legs around her opponent's head and spinning them to the ground in a hurancanrana, which is only a valid offensive move in lucha libre. Considering every other act of violence in the film is an energy weapon, it's amazing she survives until the end.

I was never much of an actor, although I did once play the only Russian character in a vaguely anti-Semitic high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. Yet even I know that it's bad policy to stare at the camera like it's a piece of bacon in every scene, as Scarlett does here. We can only assume that Favreau was so entranced by the dailies that his note to Scarlett was "more pouty, more widow." Despite this, Scarlett mainly gets a pass because she is so overshadowed by the meta-disaster that is the presence of Gwyneth Paltrow as Tony's assistant Pepper Potts. Haven't you read my review of Two Lovers? Are you aware that it's tongue-in-cheek?

let's hope this image doesn't inspire a reboot of the fantastic four because I don't think I can handle that right meowNow that Gwyneth has survived Chris Martin cheating on her and writing songs for his ex with all the dignity you would expect given that she hasn't blogged about it, her weirdly boisterous romance with Tony Stark takes center stage here. She has two kids under the age of 6 (named Apple and Moses, just like in the Bible) and a husband who's completely unaware of how little talent he has, I feel nothing but compassion for Gwyneth. I feel even worse that the most likely Black Widow storyline for the next sequel involves her capping Pepper Potts in the face, albeit after wrapping her legs around Pepper's blonde head in what is sure to become a YouTube sensation.

pepper, that's incredibly unhygienic dear The film's two African-American characters are similarly caught up in the hex of their previous performances. I didn't realize Nick Fury was Vincent Vega's partner until the moment he started using the exact same vocal mannerisms as a gag. Then again, I never really got the point of Nick Fury; did Captain America really need an invalid ordering him around?

Don Cheadle replaces Terrence Howard as War Machine, and he's apparently the dumbest living member of the American military, a crack organization that gets regularly thrown under the bus here. In just under two hours it is victimized by weapons manufacturers, career criminals, and its own personnel, not to mention both Larry Sanders and Roger Sterling. Cheadle doesn't get a punchline in the whole movie, so he must have told Justin Theroux that he didn't understand a single second of Mulholland Drive.

before we bang tongue, what was the deal with the opera scene? It's distracting that we even have to think about all these things that really have nothing to do with Iron Man 2, but the whole movie is pretty much a joke on the comic (which let's face it was no great shakes to begin with) and on the people Favreau casts to play these not-particularly-deep characters. When I go back and look at Swingers now, it's home video of two people who went onto drastically different careers. The only common element is the size of their underwear. Watching the director of Iron Man 2 playing golf with the guy who dumped Carrie Bradshaw via post-it note ("I'm sorry, I can't, don't hate me") lends a whole new meaning to the original proceedings, one that was never really intended.

In Iron Man 2, the references are all intentional. There's even jabs at Scarlett and Gwyneth for fighting on set. It's all in there, each part of the process, in the film's sixty-seven subplots. Even now, Favreau's still the guy on the answering machine who includes every detail, anything that might be relevant. Like Swingers, Iron Man 2 is propelled by the steam of its star, who carries off Stark's sweet narcissism better than Vince Vaughn ever did. He's a chatterbox who can't control anything he says, and since he's a billionaire, he lets it all fly no matter the effect on the people around him. Favreau is out to prove that if you keep talking, or in this case, if you keep blowing something up, eventually something you say will have to be entertaining.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here. He last wrote in these pages on the letters of Anne Sexton.

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