Now on DVD & Blu-ray and better than you've heard: John Wells' food-porn dramedy, BURNT

Do you really think you want to pass up the chance to view a movie starring Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Emma Thompson, Daniel Brühl, Uma Thurman, Omar Sy, Matthew Rhys and (for you Italian film lovers) Riccardo Scarmarcio. There are even more good actors involved, but I don't have time to connect all the links). The movie is BURNT, and if you listened to most of the critics, you'd run the other way. Granted, this is no great shakes, but it is a perfectly OK piece of mainstream entertainment, aimed smack dab at audiences who love food porn and chic, pricey restaurants.

As decently directed by John Wells (at left, and who has yet to have a hit film but has given us a couple of perfectly enjoyable and very well-acted mainstream/ arthouse movies: The Company Men and August Osage County) with a screenplay by Stephen Knight (of the marvelous and underseen Locke), Burnt turns out to be a tale of cooking, chef-ing, success, failure, betrayal and, yes, regeneration. But so tasty are all the performances, (of course the cinematog-raphy of the food and its preparation is succulent enough for salivation) that it is easy to sit back on your sofa and enjoy.

Mr. Cooper's character (above and below) is pretty much an asshole, and the actor does not slight us in portraying this. How he treats his staff in the film is said to have turned off mainstream audiences, but more likely, since they can get plenty of food porn and bad-behaving chefs via TV and cable, they took their business elsewhere. Arthouse audiences, more swayed by the critical factor, also stayed away.

Now both can get their fill via home video, and they will most likely be surprised at how enjoyable this movie actually is.  The performances, to a man and a woman, are every bit as succulent as the food. And while the writing and direction is perfectly fine, I do wish that the movie had ended at the point (very near the end) where the word "Service!" is uttered. It is clear that this is indeed the moment to end, and I suspect that the producer's hand came down heavily on the artists involved, forcing them to feed us a feel-good finale. This is particularly stupid because the movie seems to exist in order to tell us that, after all, winning isn't everything.

Well, Ms Miller (above) humanizes things quite a bit, as does the rest of cast, with Mr. Rhys a standout among the supporting roles (that's Herr Brühl, below, left, with Sarah Greene).

From Anchor Bay Entertainment (the original theatrical release came via TWC) and running 101 minutes, Burnt was released last week on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download -- available for both purchase and rental.

Catch-up time: John Wells' under-seen THE COMPANY MEN proves one of year's best

Like far too many other Americans, TrustMovies didn't catch THE COMPANY MEN when the film opened theatrically at the beginning of this year. (It actually opened last year, briefly, in an "Oscar"-qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles but was shut out entirely at awards time.) The economic downturn was -- still is -- going strong, and supposedly, America did not want to be further reminded of this when it went off to the movies for its feel-good fix. Oddly enough, while the film does deal with the huge spike in unemployment that arrived with and after the Wall Street/bank/real estate debacle, The Company Men proves to be a feel-good movie, after all -- but one strewn with job loss, depression, anger, even death.

Writer/director John Wells, at left,who comes by way of producing, mostly for television, does a number of smart things in his film, and the smartest is leaving out the villain role. Craig Nelson, below, as the head of the company, comes closest, by virtue of being the wealthiest and making the decision to downsize enormously. Yet even he is shown to be a hostage to Wall Street and his shareholders. The rest of the stellar and well-used cast are all heroes, of a sort. They take their falls, continuing to strive until they no longer can, and they bounce back -- or not. They're angry, short-tempered, self-pitying and very, very human.

Chief among them, and probably hardest to like, is Bob Walker (Ben Affleck, at right), the smart, smug sun in the sales-and-marketing galaxy. He doesn't take easily to his new role as the unemployed and so makes life hell for those around him, whether at home or on a job interview. Affleck is excellent, as he has been of late, never playing for easy charm or tears. Consequently his slow education is also ours. As his wife, the wonderful Rosemarie DeWitt (at far right, from Rachel Getting Married and Afterschool) is equally effective as the spouse who has to keep applying the brakes, spending-wise. Frugal wives of spendthrift husbands (who use the excuse of "keeping up appearances" ) will identify heavily with this film, I suspect.

Kevin Costner (at left), who has also been very good of late, even in films that were not, plays Bob Walker's construction-worker brother-in-law, who ends up his boss for a time. The filmmaker and his actors capture well the breach between white and blue collar, as well as the ways in which families can, with some extra effort, broach that breach.

Best of all is Tommy Lee Jones, below, as the "good guy" of the company's top management who, even so, can't help staunch the bloodflow. As Gene McClary, Jones brings his ocean-deep reservoir of strength and decency to the proceedings by showing us a man who's been trying to do the right thing, even as that possibility continues to edge away from him.

The most interesting role, however goes to Maria Bello, as Sally Wilcox, the company's human resources person, who also happens to be having a long-time affair with Jones. Here's a character who serves her company, even as she serves herself, and Bello makes the most of the difficult contradictions.

The saddest role? Chris Cooper's by a long shot. Playing a 60-year-old, suddenly-unemployed man with a kid in college and too many bills to pay, Cooper (center right, above) makes us feel every gray hair, wrinkle and unintentional slight that age must endure from callow, so-sure-of-itself youth.

Filmmaker Wells does make some missteps: Who is this daughter of the Walkers who is talked about and appears once, I think, but is rarely seen?  Is she from a former, un-discussed marriage? Her brother (Bob Walker's son) gets plenty of screen time, but not his sister. Well, he will of course grow up to become one of those company men, whereas she will merely be a wife of one of them. Still, Mr.Wells has given us an even better movie about our current unemployment crisis that was 2009's Up in the Air. This is film for progressives to see and cherish, and I hope they will. Making its DVD debut last month, via Anchor Bay Films and The Weinstein Company, the movie is available now for rental or sale.