Chef

Chef (2014) is about a cook who loses his job and starts again with a van. Carl runs the kitchen at a Los Angeles restaurant where the owner makes him cook the same menu forever. When a critic writes badly of him he picks a fight on social media, it goes viral, and he is out. He buys an old van in Miami, starts selling Cuban sandwiches, and drives across the country with his son. The background is Favreau's own situation. After the Iron Man films he wanted deliberately to make something small, and this film is about that decision. The food is real. Favreau worked with the chef Roy Choi and got to the point of being able to do everything you see in the kitchen; there is no hand double in the cooking scenes. Social media is an actual character here; the counts, the shares and the son putting his father online drive the story. Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson appear in small parts, both carried over from earlier work with Favreau. The music follows a line from Cuba through New Orleans to Texas. The conflict is low; the film refuses to manufacture a villain, and that is a choice. It runs 114 minutes. Good for: food films, father and son stories, and road films. Less good for: there is no tension, everything goes too well, and the ending comes easily.