Double Feature Review: Chef and Transformers: Age of Extinction

I may start reviewing DVD's a little more on this blog. I recently watched, Chef and Transformers: Age of Extinction on DVD, so I'm sharing a short review of each movie today.

Chef

Chef Carl Casper's career implodes in the space of a week thanks to a poor review from a prestigious food critic, his own misunderstanding of the nature and lightening speed of social media, and a boss more concerned with the bottom line than with serving cutting edge cuisine. Left jobless and without any future prospects for employment, Casper travels to Miami with his son and ex-wife. But Casper's misfortunes are blessing in disguise because they allow him to return to developing and cooking new recipes rather than remain stagnant in a stifling job. In Miami Casper buys a food truck, and he's finally happy again--he's serving food that he believes in, he's working with his best friend, Martin, and he's re-connecting and bonding with his son, Percy. Once Casper gets the food truck up and running, works out the menu and builds a stellar reputation in Miami, it's time to hit the road. With Martin riding shotgun, and Percy harnessing social media to build anticipation and herald their arrival in each new city cross country, Casper embarks on the journey back to L.A.

The scenes at the beginning of movie that depict Casper's career spiraling out are painful to watch. Once the action moves to Miami, the movie gets better. One question I have that bothered me through the entire road trip part of the movie: how did Casper get so quickly the proper permitting to operate in each city he drives into? This wouldn't have occurred to me had they not made a point of showing that he had a permit in Miami. This is a heartwarming, humorous movie with a helping of appreciation of good food and good family.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

This is the fourth Transformers movie, and while they've gotten a whole new cast, this is a sequel that follows up on the aftermath of the events that destroyed Chicago at the end of the preceding installment. Age of Extinction inhabits a world in which all transformers, even the autobots, are outlawed, any contact between human and alien is illegal, and a shadowy black ops arm of the government hunts down, captures, and neutralizes all transformers at all costs. Unfortunately, for reasons that are never fully explored, the CIA man in charge of the black ops team and his minions have become corrupted zealots in the battle against transformers. They don't care who they have to kill or what unsavory alliances must be made to rid earth of the aliens so long as their mission is accomplished and the means by which they accomplish this mission remain secret.

Cade Yeager's bull headed insistence that his daughter not date becomes old and insufferable pretty quickly. However, any sympathy that Yeager's daughter's secret boyfriend, Shane, garners is just as quickly squandered when Shane whips out a copy of Texas' Romeo and Juliet law that he just so happens to carry around in his wallet. The movie run time is about 30 or 40 minutes too long and Shane's Irish accent sometimes sounds Australian. The bottom line is this: if you're a fan of Michael Bay's Transformers movie franchise, you will like this movie too. Everyone else should probably steer clear.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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