awnuce360

So Nicolas Cage is my favorite actor, causing me to be slightly biased towards generally inferior B movies like this. Once you have seen Nicolas Cage hamming it up in lesser fair enough times, you learn to grade on a curve.

With that in mind, I found this film fairly tolerable for the first hour and a half. Then in the last 20 minutes, a terrible twist was revealed, ruining the whole affair for me.

This wasn't an amazing film to begin with. You never know what Nicolas Cage you're gonna get when you show up to one of his films, but his performance here was surprisingly effortful. No, he wasn't going to win an Oscar again for this particular role, but he reigned in his worse instincts and seem to be doing what suited the character. Cage can be quite convincing when he allows himself to be and he is here. Some of you will no doubt be disappointed to hear this because you prefer the crazy Nicolas Cage of the memes: sorry, he doesn't show up here.

I'm tempted to just tell you the twist to spare you if you were considering watching this and are not a massive Nicolas Cage fan (although why anyone who was not a massive Nicolas Cage fan would even consider watching this I do not know). Perhaps, it is enough to simply say that certain things that occur in this movie are not actually occurring as they appear to the audience. And subsequent viewings would no doubt make no sense if you had the patience to watch this more than once.

As to the plot, well, it's a typical get revenge on the mob affair. There's not actually a ton of action or even that much violence. The bulk of the runtime is devoted to Cage, fresh out of prison after taking the fall for a powerful mob boss, trying to reconnect with his son and having a relationship with a prostitute. At first, I thought that the latter plot line was willfully naïve, but eventually, it becomes clear that the movie actually knows what it is doing in that storyline.

The relationship between Cage and his son gets the bulk of the screen time and it's here that the film actually does a pretty good job of making you care. I'm not saying that this is the best writing you'll see this year, but some effort was made to develop this relationship and to show the damage that the fathers decisions have had on his son's psychology. Kudos to the actor playing the son for holding his own with Cage . Noah Le Gros plays the role with surprising subtlety and nuance. The only other actor of note here is Benjamin Bratt who brings a degree of gravitas to a small but crucial role.

Overall, as I said, I can't recommend this to anyone but the most devoted of Nicolas Cage fans. But, for those fans, this is far from the most painful viewing experience you will have with his films, especially if you are a completionist.

If you like watching people cook and cook and then cook some more, then this film will be a delight for you. Others need not apply.

I think Juliette Binoche is positively divine, but she's all there is to recommend this. As always, she's warm and alluring, making you want to credit the filmmakers with depth that the film simply lacks.

In its essence, the film is a love story with its two lead chefs making love to each other through their cooking. I've seen this concept executed well before. Babette's Feast and Big Night, for example, managed to be about food but also about more than just food.

The problem with Dodin Bouffant, for what my opinion is worth, is that it's actually about cooking with just a dash of romance. That's a problem.

The previous films I mentioned had cooking in them, but they weren't really about cooking any more than the best sports films are really about sports. If you want to pull your audience into a sports film and have a lasting impact, you have to only include sports to the degree that they are relevant to the real story: the character's journey. If you want to make a film about chefs, the same truth holds.

This film clocks in at two hours and twenty-five minutes, which is not too long for those accustomed to binge-watching lengthy miniseries, but is still quite a time commitment. The film opens with an extended sequence of its characters cooking for fifteen minutes! I kept waiting for the cooking to be more than it was, for Tran Anh Hung to imbue these sequences with some morsels of character or significance, but to no avail.

If you find French food tantalizing and think watching actors pretend to cook it lovingly sounds like a dream, then by all means, I encourage you to devour this film in one sitting. As for the rest of us who are seeking more from a film about cooking then just cooking, I recommend you go elsewhere.

Reminded me of Nomadland, a film that did nothing for me personally. Look, if you like films with pretty postcard cinematography and plotless slice-of-life storytelling, then this is for you.

The documentary-esque scenes interviewing random non-actors that "rising star" Lily Gladstone encounters on her journey may appeal to some, but I found them unaffecting and disingenuous. The people were so obviously acting unnaturally during the scenes where they were supposed to be interacting with the character Lily plays. You can't pretend they weren't voguing because they knew they were on camera, which means it was no longer captured reality in any sense.

The format also severely limits the negative interactions that can take place because these non-actors are obviously going to want to seem pleasant and high-energy on camera. They share their homespun wisdom which lacks real insight and offers the viewer nothing to latch onto, really. The only real humanity here is etched in the wrinkles on their faces, something standard Hollywood fare is normally reluctant to feature in its stars. Some will find seeing these non-actors on camera refreshing, but I personally couldn't get past how sugarcoated everything was.

Gladstone has a pleasing presence, but she's not asked to do much emoting. She wanders from place to place, having quotidian interactions with strangers and engaging in the most banal of conversations. The format of these unnatural interactions ensures that Gladstone comes across as a passive viewpoint character. At some juncture, I expected the film to do the requisite character development for a film, but it never did. Nothing Gladstone's character says gives us much indication of who she is or what motivates her. We have a dead grandmother. That's it.

Finally, the big question, was this film saying anything important? I'm sure many reviewers, myself included, want to give this film credit for portraying aspects of the American experience less-seen in film. However, Morrisa Maltz has absolutely nothing to say about these experiences, either visually or through character's dialogue. We listen to countless radio hosts share opinions on numerous issues as Gladstone channel surfs during her long drive. But we are given no indication of what Gladstone thinks of these opinions or visual context to iron out Maltz's understanding. The scenes with Native American characters seem designed purely to convey the humanity of these people. Is that such a novel concept in 2024 that we have to give a film credit for putting it on display?

The conversations these characters feature in are dull as dishwater and offer no insight into their feelings about anything except quotidian existence. One scene features a character telling us the names of all the children in a room and their ages. In a fictional film, this would never be tolerated because it's information we don't need to remember about characters that don't even speak. Documentary filmmakers need to adapt more effectively to the needs of narrative filmmaking if they want their movies to engage. At 1 hour and 25 minutes, this film was a drag for me personally.