So the Kitchen....

wow this movie Sucks Big time. wanted to walk out but my date didnt... so we stayed.. but it was a realy bad movie.

) u would dump someone just because rhey dont want to leave a movie they were enjoying?

its a 12 year long relationship i think ill be fine

i made him walk out of Fences and heard about it forever so didnt want to make the same mistake again.

hehe yes to make thinga worse - we were the only two white people in the cinema and he was upset i was making him look both unappreciative of good art AND racist

no, its very very bad trust me. And I really line Melissa and Domhal and Tiffany.

The saddest part is that it lacks sexappeal, coolness, style and rhytm, and its written and directed by a woman so it contributes to the argument that women cant make fun/sexy films. Too bad. Maybe next time. But this was a total dud.

I thought that Fences, which I viewed in the theater four times, was "very good"—one of the best films from 2016. Only some narrative flaws in the backstory keep it—barely—from achieving genuine greatness, and even that opinion is debatable. Someone that I saw the film with deemed it "great," indeed. 

i think its a great play but it wasnt working for me a s a movie.

I found The Kitchen to be rather impressive—I viewed it twice and judged it "pretty good/good," meaning a sort of qualified good move, both times.

The visual and historical milieu is compelling—the Big Apple in the late seventies, "Son of Sam" era, ethnic neighborhoods and their tribal loyalties. With one exception (which I will note later), the sense of period is meticulously cultivated. The mise en scène is richly and appropriately detailed, from the graffiti-laden outside walls and subways, to the omnipresent litter on the streets. And in contrast to the outdoor filth and chaos, you have the luxury of the Italian Mafia boss, with those rich wooden interiors and Western paintings, an ironic celebration of Americana. Then you have the photograph of John F. Kennedy in the home of the older Irish lady (Ruby's mother-in-law) and the noticeable Catholic iconography, with Jesus on the Cross. The dialogue is also fitting, from Ruby's mother-in-law's crass joke about the Virgin Mary being knocked up to the brief debate about whether the Yankees' most valuable player is Reggie Jackson or Thurman Munson. The film is engrossing, with a strong sense of urgency and intensity. And the three female leads are terrific, especially Melissa McCarthy and Elisabeth Moss, who combine vulnerability with remarkable resilience. The soundtrack, meanwhile, is blistering, both in terms of the period pop songs (most notably Fleetwood Mac's thumping, fatalistic "The Chain") and the original score, which seems to blend characteristics of The Rolling Stones and Lynard Skynard. The sense of driven darkness, moral murkiness, and rationalized ethics is palpable, and combined with the wonderfully reconstructed historical milieu, The Kitchen is sometimes reminiscent of Black Mass (2015), director Scott Cooper's terrific mobster saga with Johnny Depp as "Whitey" Bulger.

But whereas Black Mass constituted a "very good" film—one of 2015's best—The Kitchen suffers from a number of flaws, ones that limit the potential of an otherwise fascinating and impressive movie. The one visual and historical flaw occurs early, in the nighttime scene when the Irish neighborhood guys are waiting outside the liquor store, about to rob it. Deep in the left background, I immediately noticed, on my first viewing, that the cars driving distantly on the street are contemporary cars—one can tell from the dark contours and the car lights, especially when one of them takes a left turn toward the middle of the frame (again, in the background). Throughout The Kitchen, the filmmakers go to great lengths to recreate historical detail for this period piece, but in this instance, they became lazy, apparently figuring that no one in the audience will notice. Well, I noticed, and for awhile during my first viewing, this anachronism distracted me. It's kind of like in Straight Outta Compton (2015), where the film opens in 1986 with Eazy-E wearing a black Chicago White Sox hat introduced in the early 1990s, one that no one (especially in Los Angeles) would have been wearing in 1986.

"Slate" article

The anachronism and implicit disrespect to the audience is annoying, as is the scene a little later—circa 1987—where Dr. Dre is wearing a black "fashion" L.A. Dodgers hat that did not exist until 2003. What? Straight Outta Compton is a "good" film in my opinion, but these sorts of glitches, with the filmmakers assuming that audience members would never notice or care about such details, are bothersome and help limit the movie's potential. The Kitchen is not as bad in this regard, but the filmmakers still tried to cut a corner in that one instance. At a minimum, they should have blurred the background in that nighttime scene if they were going to use contemporary cars.

A greater flaw is that the movie's big plot twist features "surprise" instead of "suspense," to borrow the old lesson that Alfred Hitchcock discussed with Francois Truffaut (see Hitchcock, by Francois Truffaut, originally published in 1983). "Suspense," conversely, would have worked much better, and the filmmakers' decision to go with "surprise" instead helps explain why the twist or revelation feels "lackluster" and inspires "indifference," to quote the thread's original post. The concluding reconciliation, meanwhile, feels a tad forced and overly convenient.

The underlying problem here is that The Kitchen derives from a DC comic book. The cinematic adaption is serious, but in order for it to fully transcend its source material and comic book roots, it needs more reflection, character exploration and development, and narrative clarity. The mobster cash transactions that form the basis for the story are a bit murky, especially when viewing the film for the first time. Moreover, the women—two of them, anyway—eventually go to very violent lengths, to the point of Much like Widows from last year, the violence and criminality directly perpetrated by women is extremely implausible. In the case of certain instances with the Elizabeth Moss character, it proves understandable, but eventually her motivations become too thin. One of The Kitchen's strengths is its rough-hewn, working-class feminist theme of women from low-rent neighborhoods eventually rebelling against the dictation, neglect, condescension, and in some cases domestic abuse that they have been subjected to for years, even decades. But that rebellion eventually reaches such extremes of violence that the filmmakers needed to take more time developing the trajectories of the female characters, showing just how they could reach such a point as people. Instead, probably owing the material's comic roots, the film offers a dramatically clipped manner that fails to provide enough depth and intricacy. At 103 minutes, the movie probably should have run for two hours. It needs more room to breathe and flow on a human level, and the care generally shown for the historical details and stylistic elements (including the slightly faded colors of Maryse Alberti's cinematography) also should have been imparted to the narrative. For ultimately, The Kitchen is not Atomic Blonde (2017), an entertaining adaptation of a graphic novel that ultimately aspires to be stylish action movie and little more. The Kitchen aspires to be something greater, and in that regard, it is largely successful. But to be fully successful, character and narrative required more careful, intricate cultivation. The film is serious, but it ultimately lacks the heft needed to support such seriousness. Then again, it is not exactly flimsy, either.