REVIEW - Bistro L'Eiffel (Chicago)

First of all, you need to know that Bistro L'Eiffel isn't in San Francisco. It isn't even in Chicago proper. It's in Barrington, Illinois, a dull, overpriced and suffering from the housing market implosion suburb of Chicago.

That said, it's a perfect example of what most American suburbanites have to put up with when it comes to eating out, and an equally useful example of why it's better to save up your dining out experiences until you're lucky enough to be in New York, San Francisco, or even LA.

I know that's horribly biased, but what else do you expect from this reviewer?

Bistro L'Eiffel's failings were possibly minor, when taken individually, but when lumped together into one night out, were nevertheless impossible to overlook.

First, the restaurant suffered from the American suburban disease of being located in a mall. Not quite a strip-mall, but it was indisputably a mall.

Second, inside it was laid out like a mall property. A large featureless expanse divided into smaller attempts at Parisian coziness. Needless to say, fail #2.

Next came a high note. Because it was Monday evening, and the normally quiet suburb was about as busy as a wet night on Pluto, all wine was 50% off. This made our choice infinitely more interesting, and as I said, one high note for le restaurant. The ensuing Sancerre was nectar.

My dining companion was a vegetarian co-worker. I don't know whether the fact that he's a co-worker made his choice dull, but his vegetarian-ness certainly didn't contribute any pazazz to the menu selection. In my experience, ordering vegetarian food in a French restaurant is about as interesting as ordering tap water at a wine bar in Champagne.

I shouldn't be so critical, as I showed little imagination in ordering the slow-cooked lamb en croute (which was excellent, if a little buttery in the croute department), chef's salad (I'll never diss a California-sourced salad again), and the chef's platter (which consisted of a tired melee of duck breast, a miniscule quail, and rubbery, andouillete sausage).

All in all, the food could've come from a chef of any nationality in any strip mall in any suburb in most of America.

And that was what confined this escape-to-Paris-wanabe into an ordinary, mid-west business dinner. The middle-of-the-road-ness of it all.

REVIEW - Parallel 37

It's difficult to imagine that anything could be cursed by being situated inside one of San Francisco's most elegant hotels, but that's what The Ritz Carlton on Nob Hill does to Parallel 37.

The setting, the food, the service are all top class. The vibe is non-existent.

It may be that we both travel too often for business that a restaurant in a hotel reminds us too much of work, stealing whatever atmosphere might be there just like opening the hatch on a spacecraft.

Last night's Veal Tortelloni and Kampachi Sashimi appetizers, and slow-cooked Pork and baby Chicken entrees were but brief alternatives to the ... to the .. nothing. The restaurant had no life, no dynamism, no spirit.

Compare that with Bar Agricole, Salt House, or RN74 - places with a surfeit of stuff going on, as well as a knack for preparing great food.

There's little that Parallel 37 can do about it. It's doubly cursed, as not only is it just off the lobby of a hotel, but that hotel - unlike the ones that are home to Michael Mina or Prospect - is atop San Francisco's steepest hill.

Bummer.

REVIEW - Le P'tit Laurent

Not worth the schlepp out to Glen Park, especially as we have so many great French restaurants in the City (L'Ardoise, Chez Papa, Chez Spencer, Garcon et al).

P'tit Laurent doesn't impress with its food, ambience, or decor. It looks like it's been laid out by a decorator with Tourettes and a box of leftovers from a day trip to Paris. There's a mass-produced French poster (Lillets, Folies Bergeres, Tattinger, you know the derivatives) on every inch of wall, and where there isn't, it's filled with Pastis and Ricard ads.

Musically, the French have never led the field, and last night the owners didn't even try to set the scene. No Edith Piaf. No Yves Montand. No Maurice Chevalier. No, they had Country & Western! I'm no expert on any of these, but I'm pretty sure those last two have no place in an allegedly French restaurant.

The tables were jammed into what space is left by the intruding bar, and with that being full of eaters and drinkers it gave the impression we were eating in a French pub.

That would have been OK, if we were eating decent French food. 

We shared (correction: I ordered, and Pavey stole) the Foie Gras pate, which was OK but was accompanied by some cold, dark onions that belonged in a 2 day-old burger. For our entrees, Pavey had the halibut (again "OK" but was joined by a dollop of "too-buttery" mashed potato) and I had the Casoullet (duck, pork, and Toulouse sausage, with beans), and while it too was OK, it didn't come within a yard of the last Casoullet I had, at Bistro Jeanty in Napa.

It sounds like it deserves a RANT, but that would be putting it down too much, and ignoring the fact that I was there with my other, better, beautiful half. 

It was her choice, so I have to give it a bit of stick.

REVIEW - Hunger Games

I was all prepared to pummel this with my lacerating wit and put it down like a, like a, like something that is really down deep. But in the end it was an OK film, albeit targeted fair and square at the 12 to 18 year old demographic that will lap up this sort of adventure-lite.

The story may be a little different than most of the tripe targeted at this group: To memorialize a crushed rebellion 70 odd years earlier, this society has devised a game where each of the 12 provinces pick one girl and one one boy between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight to the death in The Hunger Games.

Just why that was deemed an appropriate memorial was not explained, nor explainable perhaps.

It was way better than I expected, but still somehow lacking. There was nothing that tested the intellect, and it was too obviously set up for the sequels that represent each of the books in the series.

All in all, about as much as the little beggars deserve.

RAVE - The Waterfront

Once in a while I guess we need to shrug it up and dine at one of the touristy spots in San Francisco, even though that could admit us to some tacky places.

Using this inevitable piece of logic, brought on by the burning need to sit out in the glorious sunshine today, we dined at The Waterfront on the - duh - waterfront.

The outside patio has a glass wall around it, which - on a day like today - makes it warm as toast inside.

Our brunch was somewhat exotic, including oysters, shrimp, lobster sandwich, seafood Cobb salad, crab cakes, and steak hash with poached eggs. 

It was a bit over the top, with wait staff dressed like they were on the Titanic, but aside from that the place was a treat.

REVIEW - Chronicle

A hard film to categorize.

Three friends discover a powerful force with which they can do strange things - like fly, and move cars, or people. As they get more used to exercising those powers, they start to turn from playful teenagers into dangerous super-layabouts. I won't call them super-heroes, because they do nothing heroic. They just fool about, just like teenagers, but with super-powers.

There's no explanation of what was the source of the powerful force, nor why they came by it. 

Aside from missing those, very important facts, it wasn't too bad.

Just not a classic.

REVIEW - Delfina

I'm feeling particularly picky at the moment, and have therefore decided to give Delfina less than a RAVE review.

We've just had lunch at Foreign Cinema, which has excellent food, great ambiance, good service, and valet parking. How different from Thursday night's dinner at Delfina.

While that had wonderful food, it suffers from being too popular, making it hard to get a table (unless you book a couple weeks in advance), hard to get into even when you do have a booking (we waited for 20 minutes for our table), hard to park (to be fair, it was easier than usual this time, but normally it's a nightmare) and the place is plain noisy (thanks to the er, busy nature of the restaurant).

What can you do about it? The food almost makes up for the inconveniences caused by all you other eaters!

RANT - Facebook's "Like"

I've long hated the Like button in Facebook - along with a lot of other features of FB.

At best, it's a lazy way to express one's like of something one sees on Facebook: a friend's posting, or news.

At worst, it's a slippery slope into receiving incessant and interfering posts from organizations trying to sell crap.

Here's what George Orwell predicted in his book 1984, written in 1949:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten ... Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness a little smaller".

Prophetic, eh?

REVIEW - Beginners

Ewan McGregor's mother dies of cancer, leaving her 75 year old widower Christopher Plummer to explore his long-kept secret homosexuality.

After some years his Father also dies, and McGregor continues his life and loves, regularly reminiscing about his Father.

The title "Beginners" shows how Father and Son both began their lives all over again; Father learning to live as a gay man, and Son learning what it was like to fall in love again.

Little else happens in what turns out to be a pretty dull movie, and it therefore squanders an interesting idea.

I guess I shouldn't dismiss it so, seeing as it deals with how an understanding Son allows his Father to experience the feelings he's hidden for so long.

Maybe they should have set it pagan Rome, or the Wild West.

RANT - Sand Sharks

The plot beggars belief.

The acting and un-special effects similarly suck.

I don't know where to begin. The premise that an undersea earthquake opens a rift that releases a prehistoric predator, whose offspring appear as sharks that swim through the sand attacking locals and holidaymakers alike is too stupid to even think about, let alone make a film about.

How do you categorize something that's worse than straight to video?

How do you get together a group of people that have so little self esteem, and so much spare time, that they participate in stuff like this?

This was a download too many.

RAVE - Dog Sledding

This is the first time I've been to a ski resort in ski season, and not skied.

We're here in Squaw Valley, the snow's excellent, and I'm fit. Or at least, I'm not prevented from skiing by injury, ill health or bone idleness. It's just that the ladies are more interested in swanning around shopping, tubing, sightseeing or just wallowing away at the spa. 

I'm here with Mrs. Page and her sister, both fairweather sports followers of the fairest hue, and her sister's husband, who is at the ski school. I'm no longer the die-hard piste-basher who will go up the mountain on his own. I'm more of a social skier, and with no-one to ski with, it's hardly social.

So what do I do? Get up there with the dogs. This is our first time dog-sledding, and while I don't see us schlepping our way up to Tahoe every weekend just to spend an hour in the cold looking at 12 dog's asses, it was great fun.

Once you realize the dogs love running while hauling a heavy sled carrying a driver and two passengers (I'd use the proper word for a dog-sled driver if I knew what it was, but I don't), you can relax and let them yap and slather their way up and across the mountain.

Despite looking and acting like 12 bloodthirsty killers, the Alaskan Huskies were very friendly, if not actually cuddly. I was under no illusions that if the sled got turned over it wouldn't be too long before the dogs worked out we were a potential source of protein, so there was always that to keep us upright and breathing.

Woof, woof.

RAVE - Plumpjack Cafe, Squaw Valley

There's not a whole lot of logic in posting a review of a restaurant at Squaw Valley ski resort, near Lake Tahoe, and once you're here you'll realize why.

There are only 3 or 4 places to eat a real meal here (scratch the Starbucks, obviously, because they don't serve much you'd actually want to consume). So if you're here for a long weekend, like we are, eventually you'll end up eating here. And it's well worth it.

The restaurant is classy for a resort, with a great menu. I'm generally not a huge fan of things that swim - alright, I know that cows, and pigs can probably swim, but you know what I mean. Doubly so in a restaurant that's the best part of a day's drive from the (fresh) ocean. As proof of that, the only one of us who had anything swimmy was Pavey, with her usual scallops, and she didn't like them. They were small, and didn't taste full and meaty. "Her fault" I hear you say.

The rest of us luxuriated in our Kurubota Pork Sopes (savory port pieces in a sauce, on top of heaven knows what animal, mineral or vegetable base, all tasting gooooood), Broken Arrow Ranch Wild Boar Chop, Fulton Valley Free Range Chicken Breast, and some other ranch's Short Rib. 

The fact that Squaw Valley is right next to Donner Pass, site of the notorious Donner Party of American pioneers, is worthy of note, if not an ironic comedy moment.

* The Donner Party was a group of 87 American pioneers from Missouri who set out in a wagon train in 1846 headed west for California, only to find themselves trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada. The subsequent casualties were extremely high, and many of the survivors cannibalized members of the party who had already died.

RAVE - Salmon Fishing in The Yemen

A foolhardy plan on the part of mega-rich Yemeni Skeikh Muhammed to put his soon-to-be operative DAM together with 100,000 salmon imported from the UK and to start salmon fishing in his native Yemen is the basic story, with the requisite and all-too-obvious romance between fish expert Ewan McGregor and the Sheikh's project representative Emily Blunt.

Embellish that basic idea with some genuinely funny moments, a great cast, and a heartwarming story and you have a film that is genuinely charming.

"Charming" is a word I'd rarely use to describe a movie, particularly in a positive way. It would normally be used ironically, as in "that romantic comedy with Justin Bieber playing the action-centric lead was just charming". But this Salmon Fishing lark was genuinely charming, in a warm, positive way. No ironic subtext here. Honest.

Right, I'm off to see me some Disney films!

REVIEW - Wo Hing General Store

Here you have a Chinese restaurant that's the exact opposite of Mission Chinese Food, which in my opinion is a good thing, as the latter sucks.

That doesn't make everything that Wo Hing serves up to be first rate. It's not.

We had the Pork Won Tons and another appetizer I can't remember (there's no menu on the minimalist web site to help with recall). They were hot but uninspiring. Entrees were better: a rich, flavorful dish of noodles, greens, pork and lots of other interesting bits, then a simple but delicious chicken in garlic and my favorite, a pork and eggs jumbled-up mess that tasted fresh and very very eggy.

I loved my cocktails, and the general demeanor of the place with its giant travel posters from Syria and some unrecognizable destinations made it a very un-Chinese restaurant experience.

The staff weren't wired up, but we weren't expecting much, so there it was.

Much better than some places in town, but maybe not up to the standard set by the Phan family's other places like Slanted Door, The Moss Room and - to a lesser degree - Out The Door, Heaven's Dog, and The Academy Cafe.

RAVE - Farallon

One of San Francisco's best-known, and long-standing restaurants, Farallon clearly appeals to tourists. They were on display throughout the place last night. Our server even said "we love to see locals here" when she found out we actually lived here.

Despite that, and the frenetic activity on the part of all of the staff going to and from the open kitchen, the experience was a blast.

I'm no fish fan, yet I picked Farallon for my birthday dinner to the surprise of my wife and host. "Surprise" because it's a seafood-lover's destination, with decor to match.

Pavey had the caviar, lobster salad, and Black Bass. I had the Ahi Tuna, Foie Gras, and roasted Alaskan Cod. Every dish was fabulous, enhanced by a couple of Martinis, champagne, and a bottle of Chassagne Montrachet.

This was only the second time we've eaten there in over 14 years living here, so we'll have to redress that situation over the next 14.

REVIEW - Machine Gun Preacher

"True" story of Sam Childers, who is a former drug-dealer and general layabout who got religion, and became a crusader for Sudanese children forced to become soldiers.

It stars Gerard Butler, someone I rate very low in my league table of actors mainly because of his habit of playing stupid romantic comedies and/or generally superficial roles.

The film doesn't show how this murderer and rabble-rouser got Jesus. He just goes to Church, gets baptized, becomes a construction worker, sells his motorbike and hey presto, one convert.

In fact, the film is light on many of the details about what motivated Childers. All of a sudden we find him moved by a minister's account of how their "brothers" in Somalia need their help and he's upped and gone over there to rebuild homes. Then, he takes a visit to the war-torn north of the country and sees first-hand the true cost of civil war.

There's little to nothing said of how he funds the work he does in Sudan, the building of an orphanage, the constant travel back and forth between the USA and Sudan, how he manages to keep his home and family fed in America while he's away all the time.

In fact, it gets to the point where he needs money to continue funding the orphanage and he sells everything he's got at home, leaving his wife and daughter to live off whatever money she can collect from the church.

Eventually, the film portrays him as an unbalanced man, who still lives his life fighting with a gun, in Somalia.

The latest viral Kony graphic on the interwebs draws attention to the mass murderer Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army that Amnesty International estimates has killed 400,000 people in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan.

RANT - Insight

A woman is rushed to hospital suffering from multiple stab wounds.

During the failed attempt to keep her alive, a nurse is electrocuted by the defibrillator. When she comes around, she starts to experience the victim's memories.

You can guess the rest - the nurse teams up with the detective investigating the murder, using her unique insights to help him.

But this film eventually became predictable, annoying, and dull.

It was an interesting premise that as it played out and the outcome became obvious, turned into a run-of-the-mill thought transference through electric shock movie. 

It seems like there have been hundreds. Or maybe this version just made it seem like it.

RANT - Carnage

A creeping Polanski indulgence.

Two couples meet to resolve a fight between their sons at school - one has thwacked the other with a stick.

They're incredibly annoying people: Christoph Waltz is a lawyer, constantly taking calls on his cellphone, Kate Winslet is his wife, a broker always going for the throat. John C. Reilly is a home supplies salesman, and Jodie Foster a right-on writer. I'd have come to blows with this lot if they'd been at my house.

There follows over an hour of bickering, arguing, point-scoring, and general heated conversation, about which the viewer cares almost nothing.

Give this a wide berth.

REVIEW - ATM

What starts out at a Christmas party in a city office develops into three work friends stopping at an ATM machine at 1am. This is not just any ATM machine, it's two machines enclosed in a separate building, a room large enough to hold 20 people protected from the winter weather outside.

No sooner have they got their money out, than they're beset by someone trying to rob them, or do something to them.

Then the film drops into head-rolling boredom, as the trio tussle with the protagonist.

The reason for all these shenanigans is revealed in the credits, if only I could make out what it was.

RAVE - Albert Nobbs

Fastidious Albert Nobbs is living the life of a butler in the best hotel in 19th century Dublin. It's a depressing life, made all the more so by the fact that Nobbs is a woman.

I'm not saying that being a woman is depressing, but that life in Dublin as a servant must've driven the transvestites to distraction.

I say "transvestites" because there are at least two. Albert meets another who comes to work at her hotel, and learns a lot from her.

This is a fabulous film, with details every bit as gorgeous as Downton Abbey, albeit brought downmarket to Dublin levels.

But it's also a tragic film. Every second you're expecting Nobbs' secret to come out, or her to lose the money she's so carefully saving for her own tobacconist shop.

REVIEW - Absentia

Two sisters, Tricia (whose husband walked out on her 7 years ago, and hasn't been seen since), and Callie (druggie, has also been on walkabout for a few years, but is back with Callie now) start to see things in and around their house, which happens to be near a tunnel under a road.

Callie has just declared her husband 'dead in absentia', and is starting to make plans to see the detective that has been doing the paperwork in her husband's departure.

There's little explanation of how Tricia's having a baby when her husband's been gone for 7 years.

Lots of creepy goings on, strange noises, tension and foreboding. All good stuff, but maybe not what you're looking for in a horror movie.  

If not, nothing much happens that'll make a fan of you, so don't bother.

As for me, I liked it.

RAVE - Act of Valor

This could have been the best action movie I've ever seen.

Could've been, but wasn't.

Sporting what has been advertised as a cast "made up of active service men and women", it felt like it. Because no-one could act. Not only could they not act, they couldn't talk properly. Not that real actors playing soldiers speak properly. Actors would talk gruffly, indistinctly, desperate to sound soldier-like. Real soldiers apparently, talk gruffly, but very distinctly, and from a soldier's hand-book.

Forgetting the cast, the action was non-stop. Absent were the blowhard commanders, organizing operations from their bunkers. Interestingly, at the same time that I was marveling at the equipment on display when running down a drug lord off the coast of Mexico - the multi-million dollar armored boats chasing a multi-million dollar power boat bearing the aforementioned baddie - Pavey was saying to herself that she thought the Navy Seals would be more tricked out with spy-type gadgetry.

So why wasn't it the best action movie I've ever seen? Well, in pursuing "reality", they forgot the story structure, and the logic required to round out that story. I don't have to be explicit about those details. Watch it and you can make your own mind up.

RANT - In Time

One of those variations on a theme of life being a ticking clock, or more strictly, of time being money. In this movie everyone by default stops aging at age 25, then only lives one more year. Money is one way to buy extra time, so the rich can live forever.

Justin Timberlake is from the working class, living a life that's driven by the time it takes to earn the credits, hours and minutes of life.

This felt antiseptic, like Gattaca from the same director, but not as good. It feels like real life that's stripped clean of much of what makes it satisfying. 

Add to that the annoying plot lapses: In a film that has everyone relying on the seconds they accrue or spend, how stupid to have a scene where someone says "Come on, I only have 11 hours remaining on my clock", then spend ten minutes in a scene after which they're asked how long they've got left, only to answer "nine hours fifteen minutes". Pointless.

All in all, a waste of precious time.

REVIEW - Inkubus

The film starts out with a mother giving birth to a monster.

That monster makes an appearance a couple of scenes later as a murderer, and another couple of scenes later in the police station, turning in a severed head as evidence.

So, I guess he's the Inkubus.

Strangely, for all the weird stuff that surrounds this character - both in real life, superstition, and this movie, the movie itself is flat. 

Despite starring Robert "Freddie Kreuger" Englund as the Inkubus, the movie is flat.

All of this is mostly down to its penny-pinching budget and the consequential setting of this in a few dimly- or starkly-lit rooms in a police station. It seems that all of the money set aside for the writing, the effects, and the scenery was blown on the necessarily light hearted crew's closing party.

Anyhow, if you want to know what the after-life in Walmarts is like, get a ticket.

RAVE - Contraband

Mark Wahlberg continues his Bourne-lite career, this time as a smuggler drawn back into a dangerous world of crime that he had sworn off.

Quite how he so easily plugs himself back into that world is perhaps a little far-fetched, but it seems  that within hours of reluctantly agreeing to a bit of thievery to help settle his brother-in-law's debt he's up to his neck in international skull-duggery.

Anyway, it's all enjoyable stuff from this crime fan's perspective, and well worth viewing.

It deserves a better review than the one I'm giving it now, but blame that on doing it now, six weeks after seeing it, rather than on coming out of the theatre.

Standards are slipping.

REVIEW - Hugo

In 1930s Paris, Hugo Cabret lives in the secret spaces of a railway station, and wonders about an automaton that his father had created, that requires a heart-shaped key to start.

From that very kid-centric premise flows a movie that, despite employing fabulous scenes and wonderful effects, is still a kids' movie.

Martin Scorsese delivers a good-looking, high-quality children's movie, that for some reason has won a host of awards.

It's strange how Hollywood's penchant for bringing out three or four movies at a time, all bearing the same message, has resulted in this case in films like Hugo and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Both works of art, both apparently complex, yet both making the same point: that finding their father is at the heart of every young boy.

As long as you accept this as a children's movie, you won't be disappointed.

RANT - Elevator

Not to be confused with Devil ("A group of people are trapped in an elevator and the Devil is mysteriously amongst them"), this is one tired movie.

The two movies share so much - a plot, an elevator that's glacier slow, and a cast devoid of star material. I can just see them lining up to play someone stuck in an elevator for ninety minutes.

What the audience knows, but the elevator riders are blissfully unaware of, is that there's a bomb onboard. One of the riders is carrying a bomb intended for the party they're all going to on the top floor of the hotel.

Which makes the glitch in the elevator that's holding them on the 47th floor really inconvenient.

I suppose they did the best they could with the limited script and the narrow possibilities in an elevator, but in the end it was just too much, or too little.

REVIEW - Deviation

A prisoner escapes from Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of London, kidnapping a young mother.

The film mostly takes place in and around the victim's car.

The role of Frank Norton, the tortured madman, is played with the appropriate degree of mayhem, but the overall pace is a bit slow.

It's an interesting turn, but in the end dogged by the need to show Norton as a mixed-up, rather than a plain old murderous beast.

REVIEW - Like Crazy

Two LA students - one an American guy,  the other a British girl - fall in love. When they graduate, she visits home in the UK, but then is prevented from returning to the US by her visa.

The couple then spends the next several months contending with US immigration laws, trying to get things set straight so they can be together.

Before I knew it I was wrapped up in a dreaded romantic story.

One reviewer has said they "recommend this film to people who have experienced a long distant relationship ....", but as someone who has spent time in this exact situation I can say it was horrible being reminded of that time.

But enough of being romantic.

As a love story it was moving, if - for the reasons I mentioned - a little painful. But as anything else, it was non-event. And talk about an unresolved ending!

REVIEW - Demons Never Die

I don't know why this needs a warning like this - after all, it wouldn't be an important factor in a TV drama - but this movie boasts a tiny budget.

After a student dies in what looks like a suicide, 8 of her friends decide to follow her. But no sooner than their death pact is made, they start dying at the hands of character or characters unknown.

Unfortunately, the film spends too much time listening to the 8 bang on about how allegedly troubled their lives are, while we wait for something to happen.

I know it sound crass of me to say that, but the film doesn't pretend to do anything else. It doesn't try to examine the root causes of the group's problems, instead it just records the results.

Like most British films, or at least a high percentage of them, it has a great soundtrack.

Oh, and a confusing ending.

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.