The feel-good movie of the year so far and one that completely flew under the radar (despite its 88% fresh rating and $31 million box office gross) without question is Chef, a movie written, directed, and starring Jon Favreau. Yes, that Jon Favreau. The same guy you’ve seen in character roles in films like Swingers, The Wolf of Wall Street, John Carter, Elf, and the Iron Man franchises for the last 20 years. Unbeknownst to me until a couple of days ago is that he is an accomplished director. He’s directed Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and Elf, among others. All three were satisfying movies that earned well over $150 million at the box office. I enjoyed all three of these movies. And while I would still rank the first Iron Man as his best film, Chef is an absolute gem. It is heartwarming, funny, poignant, and original. It does for 2014 what The Way, Way Back did for 2013. Both movies were lesser known. Each earned about the same amount of money at the box office. And each had about the same rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While I was a big fan of The Way, Way Back, there was something about Chef that has reserved a permanent place in my 2014 Top Ten list.
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Category Archives: Robert Downey Jr.
Iron Man 3 (2013)
So continues other comic book franchise on the big screen. The norm these days is if a movie can make $150 million domestically, sequel after sequel will continue to be made. I understand that. It makes sense. However, it doesn’t mean I have to continue supporting the franchise even if I consider the first movie in the series awesome. I usually give the series the benefit of the doubt if I like the first one. While I loved Iron Man, Iron Man 2 could have been better. There wasn’t the same kind of wow factor. It was still an ok superhero movie, but I never felt like what I watched was anything special. Such is the case with Iron Man 3. It is a very entertaining movie, but as will be the case with the almost certain Iron Man 4, Iron Man 5, etc., that unique originality feature that comes with every first movie in a series will be eliminated. So while I appreciate that attempts to make Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, etc., entertaining movies, I won’t have much feeling other than been there/done that. I expect I will like each new film in the series a little less than the preview. That has certainly been the case thus far.
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