5. About Time (2013)

I just didn't want it to end. There was something so beautiful looking at this single man’s life as he experienced and witnessed love, death, and birth. As boring as that may sound, life does become very interesting when this particular man can travel back in time and fix all his blunders or help others’ mistakes.

The film mainly revolves around Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) – a self-proclaimed awkward lawyer who just wants a girlfriend. And he is determined to use his special power to get a girlfriend. But just when he thinks he has found Mary (Rachel McAdams) – the girl of his dreams – he decides to travel back in time to help a struggling playwright save his play from being ripped apart by critics. Due to this, suddenly Mary becomes someone he has never met, and Tim begins to realize what consequences these powers might give him. As he sees his loved ones struggle in pain, he slowly realizes that perhaps time travelling can’t solve everything.

Yes, the movie ultimately ends with a montage of scenes and a carefully crafted “life lesson” quote that is explicitly read out before the credits start rolling. But don’t let this seemingly cliché quality turn you away. The movie does a flawless job bringing the audience alongside Tim as he struggles with his ability that the ending scene just seems repetitive.

Too often have movies cared about making the film realistic that they end up sacrificing plot development. About Time thankfully dodges this trap. There was barely any screentime used in explaining the origins of time-traveling power. The way it worked was hilariously simple (“go to a dark place, clench your fists, and think back to a time”). And Bill Nighy, who plays “Dad,” was the perfect choice for someone who can explain this ridiculous concept so effortlessly and convincingly with a twinkle in his eye. It was this simplification that enabled the movie to gracefully immersed the audience into the drama and set aside the technological absurdity.

Still, About Time was riddled with plot holes that may have annoyed some and brought them back to reality. One caveat behind the time-traveling ability is that no one can trael back before someone’s birth without altering the future completely. We see Tim learn this the hard way when his baby literally changes gender after a particular blast to the past. Later on the movie, Tim and his dad share a very tear-jerking moment as they walk along the beach. This scene is technically before the birth of many people in their lives, but they return with no consequences. Scenes like this may break the flow, but the audience may be more forgiving as these inconsistencies highlight the drama.

About Time is definitely a movie I will watch again. And there are definitely phrases and parts that will only be recognized on a repeat viewing (the movie starts out by describing his father as “eternally available for a leisurely chat”). Perhaps this film might just seem boring to some because it just deals with plain old life, but it is undeniable that Richard Curtis has done a fantastic job in portraying life’s good and bad and introducing a philosophy to live by for the audience.

4. Chef (2014)

Perhaps it was the fact that I had the entire theater to myself, but Chef was one of the best movies I had watched in a movie theater. And it is definitely, what I like to call, a “theater movie.”

You know your eyes and ears are both in for a treat in the very opening scene: Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) is chopping away at a lot of vegetables, fruits, and meats. And there are plenty of crisp sounds of slicing contrasted with dull thuds of the knife hitting the cutting board. Everything is getting sliced in the most even shapes at such quick speeds too. It’s just refreshing seeing all this. And this is just one of the many scenes in Chef (2013) where you can just feel the passion and love come out the screen.

The story is straightforward. Carl is getting ready for the “big night” when a prominent food critic is paying a visit to the restaurant he works at and tries to change the menu to add in some more of his creative juices. The restaurant owner is blinded by profits and forces Carl to stick with the safe, but unoriginal menu. Meanwhile, Carl needs to deal with a divorced marriage and trying to be a father to his son, Percy (Emjay Anthony). Carl always blames his busy work life on not spending time with Percy. On top of all this, the critic expectedly leaves a terrible review that angers Carl and eventually leads to his quitting the restaurant. His family and co-workers suggest that he should really cook what he wants to cook – perhaps by starting his own food truck.

And so he does. Along with his son, he goes around selling sandwiches. As the food truck business starts to boom, ironically, he begins to seem more and more as a genuine father to his son.

The movie tries to touch on a lot of themes – family, passion, love, and loyalty. While most of these themes are (expectedly) rushed near the end, passion – specifically the passion Carl shows for his food – is definitely present well throughout the movie. All the accentuated chopping, sizzling, frying, wrapping sounds and copious amounts of screentime just devoted to just seeing food being made (even if it’s a simple grilled cheese sandwich) make you really feel the passion that this chef is channeling into his food.

Most movies seem to have trouble incorporating more modern aspects of society. Most of the time, they over-explain and then over-highlight these aspects ruining the effect of introducing them in the first place. Unfortunately, Chef is no exception to this. As an old father who only knows and loves to cook is taught how to “tweet” by his son, the mention of Twitter is, at first, endearing. But, the tweets and other modern technology references (ranging from “selfies” to Vines) continue and start to consume Percy’s identity. At some point, the references start to sound forced as if they were ill-planned product placements.

Jon Favreau is more known for his directing work with the Ironman series, and so it comes to no surprise that Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson play minor roles. And yet they’re no simple cameos, they’re used very effectively in roles that you think they would play. Having seen this, I look forward to more Favreau films that aren’t necessarily action packed superhero movies.

Chef can sometimes be like that dad who tries to be cool. Favreau, who ironically plays the Chef, may have sprinkled a bit too much of Internet-jargon and references, but still the underlying theme of passion comes out beautifully through generous scenes devoted to the food itself and the growing relationship between father and son.

3. Who

Perhaps to add some perspective on the reviews, I should share a little about myself.

With college friends at a formal

I'm a student at Yale studying "economics-y" things and really interested in behavioral economics and game theory. But I'm also interested in fashion, Hemingway and Picasso, indie-pop/jazz-pop/acid-pop/pop-pop (ok, I made the last one up), minimalism, traveling, and rock-climbing.

I also used to attend hackathons, which are like mini app-building competitions, where I helped build everything from an app that would intelligently help you come up with new cocktails to make using "machine learning" (the machines now know what's best to get drunk off of) to an app that would help find other college students going to the airport so they could share taxis.

Some of my favorite movies are:

Lost in Translation
Take This Waltz
Blue Jasmine
Before Sunrise
Great Gatsby

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2. Another Fresh Start

So, admittedly, this is not my first attempt at a movie blog.

PROOF

I used to have a blog over at Wordpress that was supposed to cover economics, life, creative writing, movies, philosophy, culture, and all that good stuff. 

I realize in hindsight that trying to focus on all of those was probably why it felt daunting to write any post. For some reason, I felt like every post needed to have a healthy mix of all those categories.

And so I stopped.

But this time I thought I'd focus on just one: MOVIES. I wrote two reviews in my previous blog (on Skyfall and Reservoir Dogs) which I might import over here at some point.

I even had a fan!

I love movies. In fact, I watch too many films to not write about them -- during breaks, I watch one or two a day. During the school year, it hovers around two to three a week. Don't feel like doing my reading - let me watch a movie. Can't fall asleep - ohhh, I'll see that movie my friend mentioned during lunch today.

And so I put on my headphones, turn off the lights, pop open a Coke, and for the next two hours,

I just follow the camera.

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1. Intro

Over dinner:

"See the problem is that I think I’ll never end up publishing anything because I won’t think it’s ready yet…"

"Well, if you don’t have a blog, you won’t publish anything, and if you start a blog, you won’t publish anything. So, why not just have a blog?"

And so here I am.