Tag: Dustin Hoffman

The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected) is not a movie I was jumping in my car to see. I mean, just look at the title. You don’t have to know anything about it to realize how much of an indie movie it must be, and how many hipsters must have died to make the production.

But it is a new one coming to Netflix, so those are usually surprising to me in quality. I have seen a lot of stuff on there that I have hated and quickly loved while watching.

The other factor is the director, Noah Baumbach, king of the Hipsters himself. He has about a 50% success rate from my point of view, so I was ready to be wow’d or annoyed.

The way they sit reminds me of an Olympic medal podium.

Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman) is a slightly eccentric retired sculptor. He never really got famous from his work, but he feels famous in his heart. He worked as a professor at a college in NYC to pay the bills and get a decent living that way. He has had several wives and spawned three kids, but he does not love them equally, especially due to the fact that they never really seemed to inherit his artistic talent.

Or at least that is what Danny (Adam Sandler) thinks, his eldest. He has a daughter of his own (Grace Van Patten), about to go to college, and he is recently divorced and about to be homeless. He was a stay at home dad, he played the piano, but he again was never really famous. There is a sister too, Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) who is sarcastic and tries to not hang out with her parents too much.

And their youngest brother is Matthew (Ben Stiller), born of a different mother, and clearly the favorite kid. He was encouraged the most and constantly looked after unlike his older siblings, but he still didn’t become an artist. He went and got a real job, making real money, but a job that doesn’t really have much a soul behind it. He also moved far away to California.

Basically, this film is about the children dealing with their lives from their emotionally abusive father, always feeling like let downs in their eye, as he himself is getting older and thus about to leave this world.

Also starring Emma Thompson, Judd Hirsch, Rebecca Miller, and Adam Driver.

The movie increases the facial hair game of several of the actors.

Like a lot of Baumbach films, the acting is definitely top notch. I have rarely seen Sandler better. Marvel carried her own wait with a very unlikely character for her, and Hoffman is kicking a lot of ass in his old age. Stiller is one of the few roles that doesn’t feel like a lot of acting, and mostly just Stiller feeling like Stiller. If anything, this film is worth the watch for the acting.

The plot isn’t as good as the characters in the story. We have some nice dialogue, and a lot of backstory, but we don’t get to see a whole lot happen on the screen.

But really the reason it is just left in okayland is due to the ending. It just began to drag, going further and further into the aftermath portions of the film and it took awhile to just stop. That is how I will describe the end. It just stopped. It was not worth the wait of what felt like multiple good stopping points to get to the actual ending.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) has an elitist title about a few people who most would consider to be in the elite class. It just fails to live up to the characters it created.

Animated films can take a long time to make. It takes years to get all of the CGI right, and pretty. It does not take a lot of time to record dialogue, or figure out the plot (Unless you are The Good Dinosaur). But all the technical work making sure every frame is wonderful and all the characters are as you had hoped. Years and hundreds of people at work.

Technically it only takes years if you care about the final product. That is why we had Planes and Planes: Fire & Rescue less than a year apart. The animators didn’t care.

There was a five year gap between Kung Fu Panda 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3. And you know that is not because the voice actors were too busy for lines. Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011 was the prettiest film of all the CGI movies. Prettier than Rango and Puss In Boots. If they wanted to not just recipricate the second movie but surpass it, you can bet your ass it would take them years of work.

I am rambling. All I am trying to say is I expect this film to shit rainbows and make my eyes bleed in wonder. A sweet villain would also be delightful.

Creepy and promising! Me likey.

As we know from the end of 2, there is a secret panda village somewhere and Po (Jack Black) doesn’t know about it. He won’t care about it until a mysterious panda, Li (Bryan Cranston) shows up to the valley. He is looking for his lost son. Could it be?! Yes, yes it could be.

Great news! Now Po can show his dad all the cool dragon warrior stuff, and make his Foster Dad, Mr. Ping (James Hong) feel incredibly sad and jealous. Also Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) plans on retiring so he can focus on himself and find his Chi to do even better Kung Fu, leaving Po in charge of training the five (Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Jackie Chan). But he can’t teach.

Even worse? Well, Kai (J.K. Simmons) has escaped from the Spirit Realm! Who? He used to be a friend of Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) 500 years ago, even saved his life! But he got jealous of Oogway when he was taught to harness Chi from the mystical Panda village and wanted the power for his own, so he had to be put down in a jealous fury. Well, he eventually figured out how to steal Chi in the spirit realm, defeating all former masters and now he is back to the real world to defeat any and all would be challengers.

Jeez. Now Po has to learn Chi to defeat Kai. But it took Oogway 30 years! And Shifu can’t! Time for Po to go to his homeland. To determine how he can be the most Panda he can be, to learn what he has been missing all his life. To really become the Dragon Warrior.

Also featuring Kate Hudson as a ribbon dancing Panda.

And of course this rhino panda bird metal hybrid warrior! Don’t forget about him!

This part of the review is actually really hard to write. How many times can I say how beautiful this movie is? I don’t want to look in a thesaurus but I believe everything I say about the CGI and art style will just sound repetitive. Gorgeous, detailed, beautiful, wonderful and wunderbar, eye orgasmic. The best part that this Kung Fu movie is animated is they can show amazing fight scenes and nothing gets lost to blur or shaky camera. We can see every punch and kick. Every fantastic movement. And it is awe inspiring. Just like the previous films, the entire thing isn’t just CGI, they have other art styles to show within back stories which give it more traditional feels.

Fuck its so pretty.

Okay. Sorry. I will stop.

Kung Fu Panda 3 is sadly not perfect. A lot of the early film is wasted. Part of the charm of sequels for action films like this is that we don’t have to waste our time with origin stories. But this film has us sit through Po being bad at teaching, then he is has to do the long Panda training. The Panda training in particular, discovering his family and friends, just takes so much time and makes me lose interest in Po. The twists that show up during the village are also quite obvious, so we don’t even get the benefit of a nice shock.

The villain is awesome, although we don’t get to see enough of him doing bad things. The spirit realm was awesome and allowed the film to add more magical components to the franchise. Making “Chi” the big new thing feels a bit strange. I think KFP2 added that he needed Inner Peace and the Chi concept just feels like the same thing again. I don’t want each film to be Po learning something bigger to defeat a new threat. That isn’t original. Although I don’t know if there will be any more films after this one, given the ending.

Oh well. Pretty franchise. Pretty good. Not perfect.

When I grow up, I want to be a cobbler. I don’t think anyone has said that in at least 150 years.

But at least it is a funny word.

Times are strange when you find Adam Sandler in a VOD movie with very limited theater release. His movies have practically printed money the last few years with the minimum amount of effort. Sure he sold out, but he can’t hear the complaints due to the hundred dollar bills falling out of his ears. And plus all of his friends get parts in his movies, and he uses the same crew. He is at least a good guy in that regard.

The Cobbler is about magic though. Or something. I dunno. Bring it on.

“‘Bring it on’ Adam said, as he slowly slid the red heels on for the first time.”

Max Simkin (Sandler) lives in modern day New York. He lives a boring life in down town, running the shop that his father (Dustin Hoffman) abandoned. He doesn’t really enjoy it, but he needs money. He also has to take care of his mother (Lynn Cohen), whom he lives with. There are protests lead by Carmen Herrara (Melonie Diaz), trying to protect the residents and store owners from higher rents, driving them from the area and forcing to sell their livelihoods for cash.

You know what. That sounds nice to Max.

But first he has to deal with some rude customers. Like this guy Leon (Method Man) who needs some shoes repaired that day to pick up that night. Well, Max’s main machine breaks. Shit. He finds a manual one hiding in a back and makes it from that. And wouldn’t you know it, eventually he finds out that machine is magical. SPARKLES AND EVERYTHING. Well, no sparkles. But in boredom, Max puts on the guy’s shoes waiting for him, and he transforms into that guy. Aw shit, shape changing powers. After all, Max is the owner of their soles.

How will he use this power? For good? For evil? For sex? To be a super HERO? No. Not the last one. Kind of all in between.

Also featuring Steve Buscemi as the neighbor barber, and a whole lot of other people, like Dan Stevens, Ellen Barkin, and Elena Kampouris.

For a guy who fixes shoes for a living, there are quite a lot of shots of him being shocked at having shoes.

Despite the movies flaws, I don’t think that they are the fault of Mr. Sandler. I know, that may sound crazy, but it is true. The problems must all lie instead with the directing, script, and whoever made decisions behind the scenes. Because honestly, Sandler was fine in this role. Disgruntled Jewish middle aged worker, poor and bored with life. He fit the bill really well. His character also made sense for his new powers. He isn’t a great guy. He uses his power for as many shenanigans as he can figure out, until his shenanigans run away with him.

But despite the decent enough pun/premise, the movie just fell completely flat.

The movie didn’t know what it wanted to be. A comedy, a drama, a dark comedy. Its indecisiveness rested on the main characters indecisiveness. Shit, it feels like a family movie for the most part, outside of some partial nudity, attempted sex, and murder scenes. Basically everything outside of that is extremely family friendly outside of a few moments. Kind of super awkward.

The movie also dragged. It only took 20 or so minutes before we got to both the power and realization of how to get said power, but everything else was extremely slow. Not to mention not really funny. At all.

Damn it! This movie could have gone to so many good places. And everything is just so damn drab and boring about it.

I had the unfortunate bad luck to miss Chef when it first hit theaters in May this year. I was living in a place that didn’t get too many limited releases, and once I moved to a place with them, it had already left most theaters, or was still an hour away. So it took a lot longer than I would have liked, but at least I beat the DVD release. Aka, getting to see it when it was hitting the cheater theater cycle.

The reason I really wanted to see it is that in a summer with so many giant block busters, the trailer made this one seem a lot more realistic and honest. It also helps that it secretly had a lot of actors I enjoyed, many of which who had starred in big block busters.

Not to mention I heard it was a movie about cooking, where they actually featured a lot of cooking. Not calling out any names or anything.

Hey! A kid too! This would appeal to the Disney crowd! That and the heavy cursing!

This is a movie about Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) who has been cooking food longer than some people have been alive. Hell, I have been writing reviews longer than some people have been alive. If anyone is younger than this website and reading it, congrats, you are very advanced for your age. He has been working at the same restaurant for awhile too, under the owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman). They have butt heads a lot recently, Carl wanting to constantly change the menu and experiment and Riva thinking that people come in expecting a certain taste. Carl wants to change the menu because famed LA food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) is coming in to give them a new rating.

Well, when everything starts to not go as planned and Carl seems to get angry at everyone he needs a change of pace and stat. His ex wife (Sofia Vergara) keeps telling him he should start a food truck so he can be his own boss. He just has to borrow money from her ex husband before him (Robert Downey Jr.). Jeez. But hey, if he goes somewhere new, his old line cook Martin (John Leguizamo) promised to join him. And if the food truck can bring him closer to his son (Emjay Anthony), as the two have drifted over the years, then it is even better.

He just has to first figure out how to use the dang internet and that twitter thing, and figure out why everyone is so interested in his truck in the first place. Also a wild Scarlett Johansson and Bobby Cannavale appear, so they should be noted too.
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“What the fuck is the internet?“

Despite knowing a little bit about the movie, I still found this movie to be full of surprises. Some big names have pretty small roles in the movie and some of the character choices were surprising, even by the ending. But in the end, really, it is a movie about following your dreams, family, and food.

It actually took me a little bit to recognize Sofia Vergara in that her voice wasn’t completely exaggerated like it must be in Modern Family. Jon Favreau when he was wearing the bandanna looked like The Amazing Johnathan which was just weird. John Leguizamo I had to assume was actually Michael Pena because Leguizamo hasn’t been in anything great since…well, almost forever.

Speaking of food. This movie features a lot of food, a bit more varied early on pre-food truck, but darn it, they show a lot of food prep and more importantly people eating it. Which is important in this genre.

It was all decently funny and cute at the same time. There weren’t any hugely dramatic or crazy moments happening throughout, just an appropriate sequence events after the critic bundle early on. That was refreshing. A lot more comedies rely on outrageous antics to carry the plot, but this one keeps it relatively simple.

Overall, Chef is clearly the best cooking related movie of this year so far.