Monday, June 23, 2014

Million Dollar Arm

Million Dollar Arm tells the true story of a US sport agent struggling to find an clients in their new company managing sports talent.

J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm) needs a big hit in order to keep the company alive. An asian businessman is willing to invents in asian players, after that conversation Bernstein realize that is hard to get good asian players, but none ever explore the possibility of getting indian players. This happen after watching a cricket game on TV noticing how fast these players pitch.

Bernstein embarks on a trip to find "A million dollar" a contest to bring cricket players across india to try the next big baseball player. Bernstein discover two great potential players Rinku played by Suraj Sharma ( Life of Pi) and Dinesh played by Madhur Mittal (Slumdog Millionaire) this kids comes from rural towns in India and they never seen America before. In the blink of an eye Bernstein bring Rinku and Disneh to Los Angeles to train as a baseball players, but been away from family and home will conflict with his talents. Bernstein is so focusing so much into business that he forgot what are the human aspects all about.

Million Dollar arm is a sort of a mix of Slummdog Millionaire and Jerry Maguire.
This is fun and emotional film about sports.

Locke

Locke is the story of Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) a contraction foreman who is responsible of a massive concrete pour in Birmingham UK, departs from his work place for the night. His ride on the freeway is a revelation for the audience. He have a great family with two kids and a important job. But Locke have a secret. The story takes place inside Locke's car. Thru phone calls the story unfolds between Locke, his family, a co worker, his boss and a girl.

The GPS and the screens which shows the callers is the window for Ivan Lock to express his feelings, what's he going trough and where he is going. He wants to make things right this time, but a chain of problems and consequences haunt him. He wants to manage his life like he was dealing with concrete in a construction.

Locke is a powerful film, beautiful shot and edited with a powerful performance by Tom Hardy.

Chef

Food is a great source of inspiration for several artist, painters, musicians, sculptures and filmmakers,
Specially movies about food, explore the success of the demise of a human being: Chefs and wannabe chefs discover thru food, love, passion, money and reconnection with love ones.

In the film Chef Jon Favreau (f Iron Man and Iron Man 2, but also the writer of the cult classic Swingers) explore most of the human aspects mentioned previously. The story of the film Chef is about a chef Carl Casper who is one of the best in Los Angeles, frustrated of the owner of the restaurant Riva (Dustin Hoffman) he decide to quit his job and do some soul searching with the help of his ex wife Inez (Sofia Vergara)

Carl Casper have a a few problems in his life, he is disconnected with his son, he wants to cook food that he loves and he feels empty without a partner. In the brink of all this situations Chef Casper become the social media sensation after been bad reviewed by a blogger, and later rant about this blogger on twitter and in a video of Chef Casper going viral. Ex wife Inez helped to focus on the wonders of traditional cuban food, exploring the possibility to own a food truck.

Favreau attract the audience with a light comedy, beautiful food footage, nice road trip across the US and great actors appearance from Robert Downey Jr, Scarlet Johanson, Oliver Platt.