JERSEY BOYS ***
CHEF ****
Dir: Clint Eastwood (15, 120 mins)
Clint Eastwood wields the microphone in this adaptation of the Broadway
musical, charting the rise of Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons and the trials
and tribulations that beset them. Using the original Broadway cast, Eastwood
invokes the period expertly as John Lloyd Young’s falsetto perfectly captures Valli.
Following the four New Jersey friends, brought up on the wrong side of the tracks,
and their evolution into an iconic 60s band. Knitted together by their friendship, they
battle amongst themselves and unite against outside forces. Gambling debts, Mafia
threats (courtesy here of the ever excellent Christopher Walken) and family tragedies
all shaped the band and turned them into the crooners of Sherry Baby, Big Girls
Don’t Cry, Walk Like A Man and many more. The cast of film unknowns are superb,
despite the occasional clunky device of talking to camera, but Eastwood marshals
events with the aplomb you’d expect. Reeking of high end production values and with
a built in audience of musical lovers, Jersey Boys is a classy musical bio-pic that
Four Seasons fans will lap up and with its New Jersey milieu and Scorsese-esque
overtones, there’s more here than just showtunes. Opens June 20
Dir: Jon Favreau (15, 115 mins)
Writer/director Jon Favreau ditches the big budgets of Iron Man and Cowboy
And Aliens for a heartfelt comedy about a chef who re-discovers what makes
him cook. Favreau also stars as Carl Casper, a chef at a trendy restaurant forced
to cook a menu he doesn’t believe in for snooty owner Dustin Hoffman. When
restaurant critic Oliver Platt slates the food and gets personal about the chef,
Favreau’s furious social media response goes viral and soon he’s out of a job and
unemployable. Lost and unsure of his next move, he decides he has to go back
to what