Day: March 6, 2012

Love’s Kitchen

If you know a bit about reality television, you might be familiar with Hell’s Kitchen. A show where Gordon Ramsey yells at people who aren’t good cooks, and eventually someone wins a job as a line cook. It is also the longest running reality show to not have a celebrity season. It is so bad, but I can’t stop watching it. Clearly most of the issues are forced, including bringing in people who clearly wont win. I am not saying certain people are staged actors, but…

Either way, yeah, this movie is called Love’s Kitchen. Clearly a play on that. Mostly because Gordon Ramsey is in this movie as well.

Not Ramsey
But most notably, he is not at all an important part of the movie.

Instead we got Dougray Scott, a famous chef. But his wife dies. That makes him sad, and his restaurant declines in quality. A famous food critic gives him a now bad review, and he loses business. Well shit. Once your restaurant has a bad review, it is pretty hard to ever come back from that. Gotta have a new place. Thanks to an idea from Mr. Ramsey, who yes plays himself and his friend, he decides to find an old diner way far away and make that diner a new great restaurant.

With hard work, dedication, and rehiring his entire old staff, eventually the restaurant is ready to go. But when right away a food critic who just got divorced, hates me, shows up, Claire Forlani (yes, the chick from Mallrats, what what), she is about to do a negative review. But is seduced by the good food. Yes. She was going to be a bad critic and give a negative review because of it being a man.

So what is the movie about? Him getting over his wife, and falling for the critic (who hangs around still). Oh yeah, and dealing with the small town locals who don’t want increased traffic in their area for some fancy new restaurant. Yes. The biggest dilemma is upsetting the people who were there first, and kinda saying screw you to them. Eventually another, better food critic, Simon Callow, comes by and they try to impress him too. They do. The End?

No. Even though the screen freezes on the two kissing AND goes to black and white, which I actually boo’d out loud for being so cheesy, it actually continues on. Ramsey is talking to someone on his laptop, and once he is done, he closes the laptop, stares at the viewer, and tells them shows over and to get back to work.

Ramsay
Actual last scene. For serious. Why not break some 4th wall for no reason?

Besides the cheesy story, the film was not really that funny. It was an obvious story, but also a bit boring.

No one was really relatable, no real development. Nothing. Just a restaurant that bugs the locals, but is very tasty. And that is about it. Although I disliked the cheesy ending, I wasn’t mad that I watched this movie. I was just bored. I guess I just had high expectations, since Hell’s Kitchen is such high quality Fox programming.

1 out of 4.

Elephant White

I actually saw a preview for Elephant White, which finally made me want to watch it. I mean, the action and scenery looked good. The acting might have been poor, but the plot I thought would work. Or what was conveyed.

Also honestly, I missed the fact that it included Kevin Bacon. Who doesn’t love Kevin Bacon?

Bacon shirtless tied up
Oh. These guys I guess. Or they love him too much.

Kevin Bacon is not the main character, but I decided to introduce people by least complex to most complex name, so he is first. It is about to get REAL in here.

The actual main character, Curtie Church, is played by Djimon Hounsou.

He is an assassin/mercenary guy, and he is finishing a job in Thailand. Yep, that place. But when he kills the target, and sets it up to look like a rival gang has done it, his crime is witnessed by Mae, a 14 year old prostitute, played by Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul. Ahhh!

He can’t get her though and has to run. This also breaks a truce between the gangs, despite how suspicious the bomb used was. Eventually he finds Bacon, who is a weapons dealer, and gets a sniper rifle. He shows up from time to time. But eventually Mae shows up and he captures her. And uhh, gang war. Trying to protect her and himself, yet not let her escape also, to let people know he is at fault. They find out anyways. He has a lot of explaining to do.

And then eventually the movie ends, but in a dumb way.

Other two
There they are. Her name has porn in the title.

Why does it end dumb? I am going to spoil it for you. Don’t read if you don’t want it to be spoiled. OKAY HERE I GO. She may just be a ghost the whole time, and thus causing all these problems for the mercenary to fix (and overall help the area and under age prostitution)…but for someone that isn’t there. What? Throwing some spirituality into an already bad action movie?

The title is there because there is also a ‘white’ elephant is involved. Or at least light grey.

But yeah. A lot of subtitles. A lot of confusing plot involving the gang (and being unsure of why the guy keeps hanging around these people risking his life after his initial job is done) and for little reward. An thus, it made me mad.

0 out of 4.