Snap Judgement Reviews

TV

TOP CHEF ALL STARS

(Bravo TV)

Season 8 of Bravo’s award-winning reality cooking competition is welcoming back previous contestants from its past seven seasons to vie for the honorable title of Top Chef that eluded them in the past.  With a chance for redemption, a total of 18 chefs, all of whom nearly won the competition during their season, will once again compete in “Quick Fire” and “Elimination” challenges to determine who has the culinary skills and creativity to step ahead of the rest of the pack and come out victorious the second time around.  Host Padma Lakshmi, and returning judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons, will be looking for the chefs to create culinary masterpieces with one-of-a-kind creativity and exceptional technique.  The returning contestants must also impress a new judge this season, best-selling author and chef, Anthony Bourdain, who will no doubt expect nothing less than extraordinary dishes from the competing chefs.  Special guest judges are slated to participate in challenges this season, including southern-comfort food chef Paula Dean, the sweets-loving Sesame Street gang and teen heart-throb Joe Jonas, adding more audience appeal to the competitive drama of cooking.  The gourmet masters will be faced with many similar challenges seen in past seasons, including the ever-stressful, yet viewer-favorite “Restaurant Wars.”  Viewers won’t be disappointed with this season’s exciting new challenges, some of which require the chefs to “capture” their own fresh ingredients.  Several challenges will involve partners and teams, but ultimately, only one culinary artist can be named Top Chef.  Each contestant will be pushed to the limit, and this season is one not to be missed.  Given a second opportunity at winning a title they came so close to before, every chef will surely be coming with their A-game, and chaos and rivalry are certain to sprout in the kitchen this season.  A

Stephanie Skangos

FILM

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

(Focus Features)

The perception of a “normal” family as being one made up of a father, mother and their children, is evolving, and today’s families come in all forms and sizes.  Lisa Cholodenko’s latest film delves into this notion of a modern-day family, exploring the structure of a family headed by two moms.  Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as a middle-aged lesbian couple, raising two teenagers, both of whom were conceived with the help of a sperm donor.  Before the eldest child, played by the up-and-coming young Australian actress Mia Wasikowska, who recently starred as the title role in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, leaves for college, she fulfills her promise to her younger brother to find the man responsible for their conception. When Bening and Moore find out that their children have invited their sperm donor into their lives, played with warm sensitivity and eagerness by Mark Ruffalo, any “normalcy” that this family had managed to achieve begins to crumble.  Tensions start to arise between Bening, the strong, practical and in-charge half of the partnership, and Moore, the down-to-earth open soul, when Moore begins to accept Ruffalo into their children’s lives, as well as hers, leaving Bening as the only one hard-pressed to keep Ruffalo at bay.  Cholodenko’s focus on the disruption of a family when an important person, albeit a stranger, enters the scene, speaks to any type of family circle, not just one with same-sex parents.  And although finding their father is overwhelming and exciting for the children, they soon realize that perhaps the strong father-figure they felt was lacking in their lives wasn’t missing at all.  Ultimately, Cholodenko highlights the struggles of change felt by Bening and Moore’s characters and their perseverance to remain all right.  B+

Stephanie Skangos