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Chef is Jon Favreau returning to a smaller, intimate movie. It is the story of a highly celebrated chef caught in a bind serving a menu he doesn’t believe in because he’s trapped in a restaurant that is not his. Favreau plays the chef who has a meltdown, gets fired, and has to pick up his pieces thanks to his ex-wife. He finds the menu he finally believes in in Cuban sandwiches served from a food truck which he drives from Miami to LA. This drive redeems him as a person and a cook. It also redeems him with his son who accompanies him. They reconnect over cooking and the food.

This movie seems to be Favreau addressing his role as a filmmaker. He was a hotshot as a writer with Swingers then moved onto the big stage by directing Iron Man 1 and 2. Did that move cost him his auteur status? Did the knocks against Iron Man 2 make him freak out? Perhaps, but to address it Favreau returned to a smaller movie which he wrote and directed.

When I watched this movie, I had already had dinner. With scenes of cooking, it made me want to have another meal. Don’t watch this if you hadn’t eaten yet. Don’t watch it if you have. It’ll make you hungry.

3 of 5 stars.

Heaven Is For Real. For real? For real, real!

Some kid in the heartland of America saw it. It’s with angels and everyone you ever loved is there. It’s straight out of the Bible.

Amazingly, the kid’s father, a preacher, couldn’t fathom it. He didn’t want to believe his son. He thought he was crazy. He had to reach deep into his faith to finally accept it.

Heaven is for real. For real, real!

I’m not in the target audience of religious movies, so I found it fascinating that the preacher had a crisis of faith. He couldn’t believe something so unexplainable. He only accepted it eventually when he thought about it deeply. But did he really? He just concluded that he was going to believe what his son believes.

Science can explain somethings. It can’t explain everything. Yet.

Faith doesn’t explain anything. It just add hope to life. And sometimes that’s just enough to get by.

As I said, I’m not who this movie was for. It was for more religious people. They’ll find this a more satisfying movie.

3 of 5 stars.

I was expecting Project X when I caught an afternoon matinee of Neighbors. I wanted party-party-party. I wanted mayhem. I wanted a joke, escalating into pranks, finishing with someone getting hurt. All I got though was a call to grow up.

Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne are a couple with a new born child. They don’t think they’re old. They’re not, by the way, but they’re older than Zac Efron and Dave Franco, the frat boys who move in next door. Rogan and Byrne don’t want to appear old to their neighbors, so they mosey over and try to be cool old folks to the young dudes. They bring a peace offering of a joint and then they spend the rest of the night partying Project X style. Mayhem! That’s what I am talking about. Except that would be the best of it.

Eventually, the neighbors call the cops on the frat boys which sour their relationship. It becomes one of escalating pranks against the old couple. The pranks! You saw the airbag joke in the trailer — that’s about it. The neighbors retaliate to get the frat kicked off campus.

The movie had the thread that everyone has to accept growing up. The neighbors needed to act their age and not join in the partying. The frat boys needed to become adults. Even Dave Franco knew.

There were weird threads in this movie that seemed to come from older drafts. The neighbors separated friends were half-in and half-out of the movie. They showed up to flesh out some funky plot points — like the broken leg (LOL!), but they didn’t make any sense to the battle of the neighbors. Also, they didn’t use McLovin very well. He was just background character. Finally, the bro-mance between Efron and Franco that was some weird stuff their especially the hint late in the movie about more than just bros. Weird and out of left field.

Neighbors was a serviceable movie, but not the epic comedy I wanted. I laughed at points and I wanted to smoke a joint afterwards, but I just wanted an epic party. Sadly denied.

3 of 5 stars.

There is no zettai ryouiki in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There is knee high socks and knee high boots, but sadly, no zettai ryouiki. Still, the movie is okay. Nothing special, another comic book movie, except it kept reminding me of the superior, Spider-Man 2. If it had more zettai ryouiki, perhaps it would’ve been the greatest Spider-Man movie of all!

The second installment finds Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy graduating from high school. Peter is busy punching out the Rhino. Gwen is the valedictorian. She parlays her internship at Oscorp into move to Oxford. Peter parlays his photography into being the one guy who can get Spider-Man. Taking pictures should not equate to having a serious relationship with the guy, and yet it is a convenient trope for writers to get the both together.

The big bad is Jamie Foxx as Electro — a geek who fell into a vat of electric eels, died, and became an electricity conductor. He’s similar to Cane Marko, the Sandman from Spider-Man 3. Jaime Foxx acted all weird as a geek, but then acted all funny as Electro. He reminded me of the creatures in I Am Legend.

The big bad for the next movie will be the Green Goblin’s son, the Hobgoblin. He’s played by a Leonardo DiCaprio look-alike. He also scares me like DiCaprio does.

The writers went down a path I didn’t think they would ever do. The did this. I never expected them to do it. It was a plot line I wanted since the first Spider-Man trilogy. I got it. I had never been so sad. It was devastating. No more zettai ryouiki in the third installment.

Andrew Garfield is a different geek than Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker. I can get behind Maguire’s riffing and geekdom. Garfield doesn’t make me like his geekdom. His Peter is just an ass. I can’t believe he squeals like that.

I wish it was a better movie that the Gwen Stacy plot line deserved.

3 of 5 stars.