By Colin Covert
FILM: Million Dollar Arm
CAST: Jon Hamm, Lake Bell, Alan Arkin, Aasif Mandvi
DIRECTION: Craig Gillespie
Million Dollar Arm is a baseball movie that pulls off a smooth triple play. It’s a character-based comedy drama that’s also a smart film about the business of sports.
As if it weren’t difficult enough to work that double angle, there’s also an exotic international focus. The story focuses on immigrant players struggling with social disorientation and homesickness, an underreported aspect of the game that has caused many a gifted recruit to fail. And by the way, it’s all based on a true story.
There are a lot of ideas in motion here, but the thoughtful script by Tom McCarthy (of Pixar’s Up) juggles them nimbly. McCarthy writes incisively about character and populates the story with people we like. He portrays the world of high-salary sports management as intensively competitive, even cutthroat.
We meet the film’s sort-of hero, playboy sports agent J B Bernstein (Jon Hamm) at a point when his small firm is barely treading water. Bernstein is no idealist but neither is he a cynical jackal. Hamm makes him a complex figure, a man with a conscience but also bills to pay. And models to date. He can do wonders with the curve of a smile or an embarrassed silence.
Unable to offer clients the million-dollar signing bonuses that big rival firms can deliver, he scrambles for a new idea. With Alan Arkin on hand as a nap-prone retired MLB scout, he travels to India on a talent hunt. It’s an eye-opener for a man with a careerist’s tunnel vision. He can’t fathom the game of cricket, marvelling, “It looks like an insane asylum opened up and all the inmates were allowed to play.”
Eventually he harvests two stellar pitchers — one cricket bowler, the other a javelin star — and imports them to his Los Angeles home. He operates like an absentee father, leaving them to their own devices at home while pushing them on the field. They don’t thrive. Gradually he sees that his influence is not entirely healthy.
Lake Bell plays the medical student who rents Bernstein’s pool house and offers touchy-feely advice to the perplexed agent. Bill Paxton plays a sports psychologist who teaches the self-centred Bernstein to see his relationship with his young players as more than a simple business deal. The film unfolds as a coming-of-age story for a man who never quite grew up.
The film has its flaws. It dawdles to its foregone conclusion, leaving viewers in need of a seventh-inning stretch. And it could devote more attention to the young Indian hopefuls. Madhur Mittal and Suraj Sharma are engaging but play almost interchangeable roles.
Aasif Mandvi, as Bernstein’s confident, amusing Indian-American business partner, gets much more to chew on in his comparable screen time. Even so, the finished product is clever and sweetly entertaining.— Star Tribune/MCT
An enjoyable fare
By Troy Ribeiro
FILM: Chef
CAST: Jon Favreau, Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Oliver Platt
DIRECTION: Jon Favreau
Writer-director Jon Favreau’s Chef is a light-hearted film that revolves around the life of a person who is passionate about his culinary art. The narration interlaces the chef’s personal relationships and educates viewers about the impact of the social media marketing in the current scenario.
Carl Casper (Jon Favreau), the celebrity chef of a prestigious LA restaurant owned by Riva (Dustin Hoffman), is all excited and goes out of his way to prepare an exciting menu for a prominent reviewer and critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), who is coming to the restaurant for dinner.
But unfortunately for him, Riva forbids him from altering the restaurant’s popular menu and Ramsey in his on-line review trashes Carl in his writing.
After a series of Twitter rants, Carl invites Ramsey to the restaurant, again for an experiential meal. But unfortunately for him, Riva stands by his decision and Casper leaves in a huff.
Later that night, an annoyed Carl barges into the restaurant and has a face-off where he lashes out at the critic. This is captured on video that goes viral and Carl is soon a laughing stock.
Jobless and low on funds, with a view to bonding with his neglected pre-teen son Percy (Emjay Anthony), he takes on the offer made by his wealthy ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara) of being a “Nanny in Miami”.
Once in Miami with a little financial help from Inez’s even more well to do ex-husband Marvin (Robert Downey Jr) Casper musters his courage to follow his heart and to do his own thing. He refurbishes a food truck and serves Cuban sandwiches as a way of reconnecting with his son, jumpstarting his creativity and providing a good excuse for a road-movie journey while driving the vehicle back to LA Chef Carl Casper is happy at last!
With the behind-the-kitchen scenes, the film beautifully portrays how heartbreaking and tough the restaurant business is. It reveals how real cooks use cooking as an artistic and creative outlet.
It is not a “slacker’s job”, as is commonly perceived.
Like a true artist, the chef too wants appreciation when he creates something that he has put his heart and soul into. And the real dampener is when he is constantly told to play it safe or when food critics criticise merely for the sake of finding faults.
Favreau’s script is written from the bottom of his heart and he candidly portrays Casper through his writing and performance.
Sofia Vergara with her husky seductive voice is appealing; she plays the concerned mother and encouraging partner with ease. — IANS
A witty bore
By Roger Moore
FILM: Words and Pictures
CAST: Clive Owen, Juliette Binoche, Amy Brenneman, Bruce Davison
DIRECTION: Fred Schepisi
Words and Pictures is the cloying title of a cloying little comedy made by talented people who, not that long ago, deserved better than this, and knew it. It’s a nearly two-hour long “meet cute” academic romance from Fred Schepisi, the director of A Cry in the Dark, Roxanne and Barbarosa (rent them if you haven’t seen them).
Words would be English teacher Jack Marcus, a once-promising poet who has gone to seed at an exclusive private school where the kids adore “Mr Marc” (Clive Owen) even if the administration doesn’t.
Pictures is Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche), the new art “honours” teacher, a semi-famous painter suffering a debilitating illness, forced to take teaching work because the brush no longer does what she wants it to do. Mr Marc, drunk and late for class, challenges his kids — “Who ARE you droids?” He assigns them to “write one sentence that elevates the human mind”.
Delsanto is cranky, exacting and just as challenging. “I’m NOT the kind of teacher you’re going to come back to visit.” Her outgoing voice mail message echoes that.
To Delsanto, “words are lies”, especially for an artist. Marcus reads his students a snatch of The Declaration of Independence. “WORDS did that, not pictures.”
And since she’s cute, with or without crutches, and a challenge, it is on. SO on. The teachers will feud and flirt, the kids will rise to the occasion, painting or purple prosing to great heights as we head toward a school assembly showdown which will decide if a “picture is worth a thousand words”, or vice versa.
Marcus is outside Owen’s usual simmering comfort zone. Binoche can play brittle, and their banter works, sometimes. But it’s all pre-digested, a happy ending straining to find obstacles to get in its way. Schepisi dawdles when he should sprint and adds on when he should have subtracted. The students, collectively, make no impression. Bullying is introduced and tossed aside; Jack’s former lover (Amy Brenneman) somehow has a say in whether he’ll keep his job; there’s a son he keeps letting down — all ideas brought up and left to wither. — MCT
DVDs courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha
