'The Menu': horror comedy skewers haute cuisine

 The Menu

Dir: Mark Mylod

Scr: Seth Reiss and Will Tracy

Phot: Peter Deming

Ed: Christopher Tellifsen

Premiere: Nov. 18, 2022

106 min.

If you have ever been in a food service job, you will get it. If you’ve ever been to a fancy dinner where you didn’t understand what was going on, you will get it. The Menu is a dark satire that takes on the ridiculousness of high-profile fine-dining experiences, but its tale of madness and obsession is familiar both to those who dish it out and those who take it.

Taking it is, in fact, what the diners of The Menu must do, in ways they’ve never taken it before. Several super-wealthy patrons take a boat to a private island, where they will enjoy a multicourse meal prepared by the quietly remote master chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes at his icy best). Slowick is king of his world, a master chef whose every command is obeyed by his homogenous staff.

The guests consist of a wealthy couple, a washed-up movie star and his personal assistant, some crypto bros, a critic and her editor, and an obnoxious foodie (Nicholas Hoult) and his paid escort, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy, who is in everything so why not in this as well?). Slowick’s mother quietly drinks herself to sleep in the corner.

As the meal progresses, the courses get stranger. Chef talks about his impoverished and abused childhood. The maître d, Elsa (Hong Chau), starts abusing the guests. All the while, a sprightly sommelier continues to ply everyone with the appropriate accompanying wine. A sous chef performs a staged suicide.

Then it gets weird.

The filmmakers exercised due diligence in making the film look as convincing as possible – hiring food designer Dominique Crenn and using second unit director David Gelb, who created the Chef’s Table TV docuseries, to make the tone of the film conform to that of the high-end food show. The Menu’s restaurant is all too familiar, an intimidating high-tech, uneaseful space that emphasizes the dominance of the adjoining kitchen.

 The players all maintain straight faces as the carnage begins, and the filmmakers play it straight, too, never tipping their hand or getting ahead of the audience. The airy ridiculousness of fine dining’s conceits and conceptions are skewered thoroughly here.

As the evening unfolds, a laundry list of woes peculiar to the restaurant business are recited – the ingratitude for the effort and energy put into creating nourishing entertainments, the stubborn whims of the customer, who must always be accommodated, the dependence on other peoples' money, the lack of a real life in the business. The NO SUBSTITUTIONS policy. Any cook or server who ever dealt with a recalcitrant patron will savor the various punishments meted out to the assembled customers.

In the end, it’s the pumpers versus the dumpers, and everyone collaborates in their own destruction, save for the cynical and resourceful Margot, who serves as the Ishmael of this fishy tale. An ominous joke of a film, The Menu masterfully deconstructs the curious carapace of conceptions we have constructed around the simple act of eating food.

 

 

'Cinema Speculation': Tarentino's love letter to movies

 

Cinema Speculation

Quentin Tarentino

New York: Harper

2022

Here’s what happened. I picked up this book, and read it all the way through, without stopping. That’s the highest recommendation I can give.

This excellent set of essays on film history and aesthetics is the first non-fiction work from director Quentin Tarentino. I am a fan of his work, but not a blindly unquestioning one. So it’s not just a worshipful gushing I give when I say this is the most engaging book about film I have read in a quite a while.

First and foremost, Tarentino writes in what has been called a “conversational and amusing” style. He’s not a stuffy film scholar. Neither is he an arrogant and jaded film professional. Instead, he proves here that he’s still one of us – a regular guy who happens to love movies.

His excitement is infectious. He gives us a childhood in movies watched, takes us on a guided of tour of some of his favorite genre films, and takes a look at the waves of the New American Cinema. He doesn’t like Truffaut, but I forgive him.

It helps immensely that he is of my generation, born three years earlier than me. The films he references watching as he grew up burst immediately to bloom in the minds of any contemporaneous readers. (I spent much unsupervised time at the cinema growing up.) Hey, he hates and fears Bambi, too! And FINALLY, thanks to him I understand the difference between the Dead End Kids, the East Side Kids, the Little Tough Guys, and the Bowery Boys! Who knew?

Tarentino starts by giving us a look at his childhood, one spent most impressionably in movie theaters, watching films not really for children (Dirty Harry? The Outfit? Black Gunn?). His penchant for creating dramas of vengeance undoubtedly stems from early exposure to grindhouse fare. Cinema Speculation is precisely that – an expansive and entertaining discussion of the glories of movies (that’s movies, not cinema).

Best of all, in a tribute to second-string L.A. Times film critic Kevin Thomas, Tarentino praises his optimistic, open-minded approach to writing on movies, and even cites his opinions as being influential in practical choices Tarentino made in making his own films. This affirmation of the critical role in the movie process is tremendously heartening.

Like the film writing he admires, Tarentino’s essays are straightforward, unaffected, and compelling. Whether you appreciate his insights or not, his book is a good time.

'Glass Onion': Another entertaining mystery

 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Dir: Rian Johnson

Scr: Rian Johnson

Phot: Steve Yedlin

Ed: Bob Ducsay

Premiere: Nov. 23, 2022

139 min.

Who can explain the sudden popularity of the murder mystery? Perhaps it was the pandemic, which led some to binge on the pleasures of Christie, Sayers, and James. Perhaps everyone is in the mood to solve puzzles, preferably in each other’s company, thanks to the long period of isolation. At any rate, what was thought to be the province of advanced-years cottagers turns out to be something fun and stimulating, something everyone would like to take a crack at.

Netflix released Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery to theaters for only a week, in preparation for its release online on Dec. 23. This unique strategy means that all of us who love a good murder mystery were forced to go out in the cold, risking our health and sanity by actually travelling to a movie theater to catch it before it left the theaters. What was a casual event has become a fraught expedition.

The devilish trick to reviewing a murder mystery is to not give anything away. Its success relies on the revelation of information, the unwinding of motives, and the identification and punishment of the murderer. Since analyzing how this film covers these important genre specifications would be to reveal the ending, it’s necessary to step back and refer to some of its other, non-spoiler elements.

Director and screenwriter Rian Johnson created a franchise when he released Knives Out (2019), the first adventure of the world’s greatest detective, Benoit Blanc, played with southern-fried acerbity by Daniel Craig. Now the sleuth finds himself summoned to a Greek island, where an Elon Musk-like billionaire, Miles Bron (Edward Norton) has summoned his oldest friends, who are also slavishly dependent on his favors.

Of course, all these guests are also potential suspects. They include the singer Birdie Jay (a hilariously dim Kate Hudson), scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.), politician Claire DeBella (Kathryn Hahn), blogger Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), and Bron’s former business partner Andi Brand (Janelle Monae). Their characters are sketched out with satiric wit, and inhabited with hammy glee by the participants. Glass Onion is not subtle.

Bron proposes a murder mystery game to be staged at his palatial mansion. What happens next is up to the viewer to discover, but let it be said that Johnson plays the game fairly, sprinkling clues here and there, surprising us with twists, and leading us patiently to the denouement.

Blanc is a memorable character, and Craig plays him with obvious pleasure. (Blanc is evidently living in a domestic situation with a character played by Hugh Grant, and other celebrities pop in unexpectedly as well.) The filming is spare, straightforward, and functional, bereft of directorial flourishes that might confuse the story.

Is it as good as the first movie? Not quite. You must take this film’s premises with a grain of salt, and there is some wiggle room when it comes to clues that might lead you in the wrong direction. Still, Glass Onion’s conclusion is logical. That it serves up its mystery with a soup-con of humor makes it all the more welcome, especially during the holiday season. We can discuss spoilers after December 23., 

Come for the mystery; stay for the satire of late-stage capitalism. And, you will love Derol.