RAVE - The Big Year

This turned out to be an enjoyable, while not gripping account of three birders - Owen Wilson, Steve Martin, and Jack Black - who each embark on a year of trying to track down the most kinds of bird.

I thought about my close friend Bill throughout the movie, which made it even more enjoyable. He's an erstwhile ornithologist, an expert, and the consummate bird fanatic, but I'm not sure I'd classify him as a birder. Certainly not like the kind of person that has the time and money to travel the country or the world following rumors of rare bird calls. 

The film reveals the lengths some of these strange men and women will go to in order to hear and see a rare bird, or as our main characters were doing, to rack up the most sightings in a given year.

Ignoring the expense, and the effort, it was a gentle film, not really a comedy. 

Strange there should be this degree of interest in birds, but no equivalent in other kinds of animal. There are allegedly 70 million birders in North America, which makes it over 1 in 4 persons who is interested in the subject.

RAVE - Spruce

This is almost a clone of my much-loved Quince, except for its smaller dimensions.

Similar to Quince in its "better get there mid-afternoon" counsel regarding the bar, but once you're settled at your table the service starts to slip into croooz.

Call me a creature of habit, but I had the foie gras and Bavette steak with duck-fat potatoes, foraged mushrooms, and bordelaise sauce. I'm getting my foie gras fix on, as I hear it'll soon be banned in San Francisco!

Pavey and Simi shared scallops and something (misspelled, I'm certain) like Moraccan Chicken, while Amo had the Dorade.

The few times I've been here we've fortunately been seated at the front of the main dining room, where it's breathable. I don't know if I'd like to be sat in the compressed interior, and definitely not by the bar.

So there it is. Another year, another of the wife's birthdays.

REVIEW - Luna Park

How do you judge a spot where the food is good, but the ambiance belongs somewhere else?

Such is Luna Park, an alluring little place on Valencia and 18th. "Alluring" that is, until you step inside to be met by a crowd 3 deep at the bar, and beyond that a restaurant where everyone seems packed into little sardine cans.

This was an idea festering in my wife's mind: let's go to a few places for dinner! Let's have appetizers at Farina, then move on to another place for our entree, and then a third for dessert or more drinks! 

We duly started at the delightful Farina, sitting at one of the bars watching a chef prepare cheese and truffle pastries and having Pansotti di Recco con pesto di noci - handmade Genovese pansotti filled with ricotta cheese, spinach and borage, and walnut pesto, and Seppie del mediterraneo con ceci alla Xenexe - pan seared Mediterranean wild calamari, in Pigato white wine served with fresh garbanzo beans. Just as I was thinking of ordering another cocktail, it was time to uproot and start looking for main courses.

We only had to walk 50 yards to Luna Park, which as I said, looked "alluring". So we went in, to Grilled Salmon and a Pork cutlet served at another bar. This one was very different though. The bar staff were working full tilt preparing drinks for the packed restaurant, and we were helping by interrupting any splashes from the cocktail shakers going off into the crowd.

The trouble is, if you're planning a night out, Luna Park is not somewhere you'd plan for a meal. There are too many "proper" restaurants in the Mission to trouble yourself about Luna Park. However, if you don't plan ahead and make a reservation, you'll be like us, consigned to waiting for a couple of places to appear at the bar, and then getting splashed by the bar staff while you eat your meal.

RAVE - Keith Sweat, at Yoshi's

Alright, ignore the genre, the subject matter, and the fellow clientele, and you've got my ideal night out.

But the old man done good, albeit with a rather motley crew on stage with him.

The personification of that fictional character Smoove B. Love, Keith Sweat oozes class and soul with equal measure, and proved last night that he can still captivate an audience, and can do so without the "help" of whatever clown he had as a lame MC / aerobics dancer.

His band were competent rather than exciting, while his backing singers - particularly the female singer - were sharp.

Seeing as the main aim was to delight the wife, the evening was a real success. Just don't expect me to start singing.

REVIEW - The Woman in Black

It's a ghost story. A very old-fashioned ghost story. Edwardian English countryside. Lots of black. Ravens. Haunting music and creepy sets.

Harry Potter plays Arthur Kipps, a widowed attorney sent to the country to process papers left by a deceased woman.

For some inexplicable reason, Kipps' job involves spending a night at the old woman's haunted house overnight. During that night, he seems to open every single door, and every single cupboard with a creak and a scream.

Not a barrel of laughs. In fact, not a barrel of anything.

Strange that Daniel Radcliffe would pick such a dull old creeper after several years of dull new creepy stuff to cut his teeth on.

In the end, not a shred of newness about it. A tired old flop that all would have done well to leave alone.

REVIEW - Brake

The idea of a thriller that takes place entirely in a box in the trunk of a car is stretching the patience, a lot.

In fact, there are a number of players, all victims of a terrorist plot, all in boxes in the trunks of cars.

That doesn't make things any more interesting though.

There's only so much you can do within the confines of a box, or several boxes, and it doesn't add up to enough to make this a film worth recommending.

REVIEW - The Double

It's a bit of an indictment when a Richard Gere and Martin Sheen film gets ignored. Or so I thought.

The story starts when a group of illegals walks over the border from Mexico, only to be met by the police who separate and drive off with a couple of them.

Advance a few months to the murder of a US senator by one of those illegals, who turns out to be a Russian assassin. 

The good guys dig out retired CIA operative Gere, and he gets on the case, along with a young FBI agent.

Despite giving away a major clue early on in the movie, or maybe because of that, there's a big lull halfway through, and its only picked up again towards the end of the story.

In the end, this is an old-fashioned cold-war movie, with Gere now an old-fashioned kind of actor.

It happens to the best of them, Dickie.

RANT - Bag of Bones

While Stephen King novels have never done well being transferred to film, this one makes the rest look like Alfred Hithcock masterpieces.

I don't know what happens when one of this books, great or otherwise, is mangled by a director, actors, and a crew.

Right after his wife dies in a traffic accident, Pierce Brosnan starts having nightmares. The way those nightmares are portrayed, and the shabby way the subsequent events in Brosnan's life are depicted, shows the director just doesn't get Stephen King.

I persevered with this to no avail, having seen early on the (lack of) direction taken by the 'director'. What starts out bad, ends up worse, with the story ending up like it went straight to DVD without troubling any of the usual film outlets.

Maybe there's just too much in the average Stephen King book to be made into a film.

RAVE - Flowers of War

Nanjing was one of the earliest established cities in what is now China. In 1927, under Chiang Kai-shek, it was re-established as the capital of the Republic of China.

In 1937, Japan invaded China, beginning the second Sino-Japanese War.  

Lord knows if this representation of the Rape of Nanking is true. Having read about this chapter in the second World War, when the Japanese over-ran the city of Nanking and murdered around 300,000 of its inhabitants, it's hard to comprehend that a massacre of this scale could have happened.

Christian Bale, a self-centered mortician, arrives at a Catholic church to supervise the burial of a priest, who has long departed. Bale finds himself in a situation where he's the only adult trying to protect a group of convent girls and prostitutes from a city brothel.

It's a necessarily bleak portrait of a terrible time in China's history.

RAVE - Safe House

Like all the best fighting bits from the Bourne stories, this is a terrific, high-velocity adventure from the first frame to the last.

The action takes place in South Africa. Denzel Washington is a rogue agent forced to turn himself in at the American consulate in order to dodge a personal attack. The consulate team take Denzel to a safe house in Johannesburg. The safe house-keeper is rookie agent Ryan Reynolds, eager to prove he can take on the role of case manager.

When the safe house is attacked, Reynolds and Washington escape, heading for another supposedly safe house.

It's certainly no strain on the intelligence, but nevertheless it makes up for that with its intensity and action.

REVIEW - War Horse

Pile that schmaltz up. Back up a truck full of sugar and tip it over this gooey mess.

I don't know which was worse. To have this drippy load of nonsense play out, or to listen to Pavey next to me ooohing and aaaaahing every time the horse in question stubbed his toe.

And then to have her mutter to the cat, "He doesn't have a heart, does he?".

Trust Spielberg to load every cliche, every piece of hard earned pity on this horse, just to get the audience tugged even deeper.

Bah, humbug!

REVIEW - We Bought a Zoo

I suppose Matt Damon is allowed the odd bore-fest, in among his knife-edge stuff. This is that one.

His wife has died, and he's left bringing up the brats. Two of them. They're looking to buy a home,  he's looking for a new love. The elements for a romantic comedy are there.

So they buy a zoo. That completes all the required factors. Boil them up with a dose of schmaltz, and lashings of sentiment. Mix. And voila. A romantic comedy.

There are two kids needing a father.

There's the love interest, Scarlett Johansen.

There's the tough zoo inspector, itching for them to fail. 

There are the quirky, goofy staff.

There are the animals.

Lovely stuff.

Who said it was a great film? Certainly not me.

Bring on the Waltons re-make, starring Matt Damon as John-Boy. It'll have you sobbing.

REVIEW - Real Steel

A bit of a lazy (for me) kid pleaser, albeit a few weeks late.

Hugh Jackman plays a struggling robot boxing promoter, accompanied for the summer by his estranged kid who's so annoyingly-named Dakota Goyo he needs 3 rounds in the ring with one of his dad's fighters.

They tour the fight circuit getting the rivets knocked out of their robot until the kid teaches dad enough lessons in life to turn his luck around and fight like a good 'un.

It's as hackneyed a story as has ever been told, but the element of fun makes it watchable. Just.

REVIEW - Entitled

It makes you think.

How much would it take before you would break the law and kidnap someone. Three People?

For Paul Dynan, it took his mother's house foreclosing, the final straw in their family's demise. 

He and two friends kidnap 3 rich kids, holding them to ransom for their fathers to come through with a million dollars each.

The trouble is, his two friends never intended the kidnap should end up with the kidnapped being returned to their parents. 

So things start going wrong. 

The twists make it interesting, although they're not so twisted that it turns the whole thing around, to the point of being a RAVE.

RANT - Hunted by Night

A film about a group of amateur hunters who give hunting a bad name, intercept several bags of coke dropped in Florida by some crooks and then try to retrieve and make off with them.

Every dilemma is over-argued, and too much time is spent pointlessly debating their options when each time they're faced with opposition. 

I can't find anything good to say about the rest of this mess. About as much fun as actually being hunting.

RAVE - Tyrannosaur

A movie it's hard to recommend, because it all depends on what you think is entertaining as to whether you'll find this watchable or not.

First of all, it has nothing to do with dinosaurs. Tyrannosaur is the nick-name Peter Mullan has for his ex-wife, but that has hardly anything to do with the main thread, the fact that Peter is a hard man to like.

The story is of 3 violent individuals, Mullan the lone hardcase, Olivia Colman the charity shop worker and Eddie Marsan her husband and rapist.

Because it's primarily about Peter's redemption as an apparently irredeemable thug, the interaction with Olivia and her husband is just bearable. But you have to grit your teeth and bare it as the relationship develops, and this takes a lot of that.

Just the sort of thing you need to see around Valentine's Day, to put a shot of realism into your outlook.

RAVE - Locavore

I'm giving this a RAVE with an asterisk - a bit like Barry Bonds' big hit record. His asterisk was to denote that his record was steroid-assisted. Locavore's RAVE has an asterisk to record that it was despite some shortcomings.

First, our request for an ice bucket must've thrown the otherwise very good waitress, who seemed flustered by the strange request for something to keep our Alborino icy cold. 

Second, for most of the meal, my enjoyment was interrupted by the far too regular whiff of disinfectant, which turned out to be coming from a bucket of er, disinfectant the staff had conveniently placed for their use between our table and the cash register.

Apart from those two things, the rest of the the dinner was very good.

You wouldn't have guessed it from our choices - Pavey's nut 'n cheese appetizer, and the halibut, my duck pate and the burger - that Locavore is a Spanish restaurant, but it was.

A hearty meal on a cold night. What more can a man want?

REVIEW - Oola

This was one of our many spur-of-the-moment choices for dinner, which would've been perfectly met with a place at the counter in Chez Maman's, but as seems to be the way with many of our equivalent choices, Maman's was choc full at 8pm on a Thursday night.

So, to Oola it was. The choice along that part of Folsom Street made it easy to pick Oola - Lulu's is too family-friendly, Zero Zero is mostly pizza, so Oola's is was. 

And that summed up the experience. It isn't a destination restaurant - the food isn't worthy of that, and the atmosphere is hard to get your head around - it tries to give out this cool vibe which it's location, staff, and clientele can't match. It has too high a business-worker looking to hook-up vibe for that.

Pavey's Steak Tartar with Truffle Caviar Chantarelle Vinaigrette and Brioche went down so fast it seemed the evening was a success. My appetizer of Foie Gras Ravioli Spinach, roasted Chicken Broth and Truffle Oil was excellent, but when Pavey had hers as an entree it's full-on flavor was a bit much for her. Similarly, my Chicken Breast and Mushroom Risotto was rich and creamy, but by then I was done with rich and creamy.

The trouble was, last night felt like a Steak night, or even a Burger supper. That would have been fine. Oola didn't lift me, and maybe I wasn't in a being lifted frame of mind.

I'll know better next time.

RAVE - Frank Turner, at Parkside

I don't want to give Rhys, my nephew, full credit for this.

Admittedly, he's also given the thumbs up to a few of my other, favorite current musical turns, Skrillex, and The Black Keys being among them, but you can't let it go to his head. Next thing you know, he'll be trying to fake deep love for some Bieber-liscious character to trick me.

Anyhow, for now he's on the right track musically, as last night's show proved.

Thee Parkside is a rickety old place, precariously placed on a corner of 17th Street in Potrero Hill. I say "precariously", because at any moment some delivery truck is going to pile into it and send it to that graveyard for rickety old places in the sky.

Until then it serves as a venue for those acts that mostly cannot get a gig at Bottom of The Hill, just a short lurch along 17th Street.

Of course, that cannot be said of the modern-day and friendlier Billy Bragg. Frank Turner, along with his band The Sleeping Souls are witty, and write great English songs. Now, there's a challenge for you Rhys.

Supported last night by Sharks, a UK punk band, with a song-writer who claims Charles Bukowski's poetry is a big influence on his writing. Must be Bukowski's drunk-as-a-skunk period.

RAVE - Wake Wood

A simple premise - "I can bring your daughter back from the dead, for three days, so that you can say a proper goodbye to her".

Based in Ireland, Aidan Gillen and Eva Birthistle hold a spooky ritual with village elder, Timothy Spall, who promises to bring back their daughter Louise, who died from a savage dog attack a little under a year earlier.

It's a toned down horror movie, but because it was made in Europe, it works.

Not as bloody as some more popular movies, not as loud, no explosions. Nevertheless, it was spooky, schlocky, and weird. And worth seeing.

REVIEW - Man on a Ledge

It seems like everyone has an opinion about this movie. How its like this, or reminds of them of that.

Our main character escapes from prison, and goes up on a ledge 14 floors up. He makes out he's about to jump, and draws a crowd. The trouble is, he's got something else planned. His main aim, according to him, is to clear his name.

It's a clever-ish caper, with plenty going on - a jumper, and a robbery, with complicit police involved in every step. 

In the end though, it falls short of being a great caper.

RAVE - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Tom Hanks is a father who builds a compelling story about a key, for his son.

His son knew that if the sun were to explode, it would be 8 minutes before we knew about it on earth. Using this fact, he wanted to find the lock that would take the key his father had left him, deciding that if he found the lock before the memory died, he could make his father last forever.

Hanks died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, so the quest becomes a driving force in the son's life, and the center point to a very sad film.

The trouble with the film is that when you strip away that sadness, you've got virtually nothing left.

RAVE - The Plant

It may have been, at some time, even in San Francisco, that a restaurant that announced that it "sources its produce and goods from local Bay area farms and artisans", and "we work with a large number of small organic farms to take advantage of the great variety of seasonal produce Northern California has to offer", would have been very rare.

Now, of course, every man and his dog sources their goods from local farms, and takes care to serve only organic produce.

Strange then that The Plant sees fit to try and differentiate itself that way. A bit like me attempting to differentiate myself by saying that I'm someone who uses my personal opinions to put a unique spin when commenting on what's going on in the world. Big deal. Who doesn't?

Anyhow, my personal opinion is that despite employing a much abused marketing platitude, The Plant still manages to serve up delicious food that does not require buying processed food that comes from half-way around the world.

This meant that the six of us managed to have a selection of burgers, salads, pizzas, beer and sangria without offending the gods of local food, and still ate heartily, and healthily,

Whoop-de-do.

REVIEW - Firefly

This was a tough one to call.

On the plus side, a heaving mass of people having a good time, and a menu full of local favorites.

On the negative side, a heaving mass of people, and the heat that heaving mass causes. And a menu full of favorites that only a local would love.

There was something homespun about the restaurant. The decor was a bit thrown together, just like an aunt's house. The clientele was similarly of the kind you'd find around at your aunt's house, with more than the average number of those who can't have walked up one of the steep hills to the place.

The menu was a bit hit and miss, with dishes that could have been made at home. 

For example, I had the robust sounding Yummy Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan and Truffle Oil, and the Grilled Rib Chop with Black Eyed Peas, Escarole and Current Mustard. Both dishes tasted as if they had been produced by someone's mum, and lacked the delicate touch of artistry that's usually associated with a top restaurant.

Not that any of that mattered one bit, because it was all about our guests, Cecile and George, and Cheryl and Blake. At least they all got to eat at our parent's house.

RAVE - The Grey

I reckon you can usually tell a good film within the first few minutes. You might have to see all of it before you can judge it a classic, but at least the first few minutes will tell you if it's solid - well made.

That was certainly true with The Grey. You could tell from the way the scene was set, with Liam Neeson and his fellow oil workers' aircraft crashing in wolf-infested Alaska. They struggle against the elements, searching for food and shelter. They also contend against the local Wolves, whose territory they have invaded.

Neeson is employed as the oil company's wolf hunter, so he's better equipped than the others for the task at hand.

The film is intense, the constant trailing of them by the pack of growling and snarling wolves is pretty compelling stuff. 

REVIEW - Red Tails

Action 3 out of 5, Plot 0 out of 5. Total 3 out of 10. Seems a bit harsh but that, unfortunately, is the way it is.

Red Tails tells the story of a crew of black American pilots in the now-famous Tuskegee training program, and how they were used in Italy in 1944. They were mostly kept away from front line action, consigned more to protecting supply dumps.

However, our group persuades its commander to persuade his commander to give them a role flying with bombers on strikes against Berlin.

So far so good. But the dialog is all gung-ho and false. The action is much better, with great aerial footage, real aircraft (although the close work is all CGI).

In fact, the action is just good enough to help you block out the lame work done on the script.