Movies
If you love food and movies, you must have some all-time favourites. This is my list, which I am adding to regularly. If you have some favourites, please suggest them as a comment below.
(Scroll down to read the movie summaries.)
- Julie & Julia – (Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci)
- Ratatouille
- No Reservations – (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin)
- Tortilla Soup – (Hector Elizondo, Raquel Welch)
- Waitress (Keri Russel, Nathan Fillion)
- Because I said so (Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Piper Perabo, Lauren Graham)
- Chocolat (Juliet Binoche, Johnny Depp)
Julie & Julia (Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci)
Julia Child and Julie Powell – both of whom wrote memoirs – find their lives intertwined. Though separated by time and space, both women are at loose ends… until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible. In 1949, Julia Child is in Paris, the wife of a diplomat, wondering how to spend her days. She tries hat making, bridge, and then cooking lessons at Cordon Bleu. There she discovers her passion. In 2002, Julie Powell, about to turn 30 and underemployed with an unpublished novel, decides to cook her way through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in a year and to blog about it. We go back and forth between these stories of two women learning to cook and finding success. Sympathetic, loving husbands support them both, and friendships, too, add zest.
Ratatouille
Remy, a provincial rat with a wonderful sense of smell, hates garbage and risks death to enter a human kitchen where he discovers real food and the cooking of five-star chef, Anton Gusteau, author of “Anyone Can Cook.” On the day Remy learns his hero has died, he is evicted and ends up alone in Paris. By luck, he discovers Gasteau’s restaurant, down to three stars and run by a frozen-food-hawking chef. As Remy enters, so does Linguini, a clumsy youth hired as a garbage boy. To save the soup that Linguini accidentally fouls, Remy throws in some ingredients; the soup is a success and Linguini’s career as a chef is born. Can Remy find a way to maintain the fiction and use his gift?
No Reservations – (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin)
A master chef, Kate, lives her life like she runs the kitchen at upscale 22 Bleecker Restaurant in Manhattan–with a no-nonsense intensity that both captivates and intimidates everyone around her. With breathtaking precision, she powers through each hectic shift, coordinating hundreds of meals, preparing delicate sauces, seasoning and simmering each dish to absolute perfection. Kate is a terrific chef at a Manhattan restaurant, sent to therapy by the restaurant owner because she is cold, unyielding, rule-bound, and a pain in the neck. Kate’s world is flipped over when her only sister dies and her ten-year-old niece, Zoe, comes to live with her. As Kate struggles to be a parent to a grief-stricken child, the one world she used to control – the restaurant kitchen – is changed utterly by the restaurant’s hiring a second chef, the loose, operatic, Italian-trained Nick, who claims it’s an honor to work in Kate’s kitchen but who she suspects wants to replace her. Can the music of Puccini and the taste of good pasta soften Kate’s heart?
Waitress (Keri Russel, Nathan Fillion)
Jenna is a small-town waitress at Joe’s Diner, who has a great knack at making delicious pies there. However, Jenna is in an unhappy marriage to her controlling and immature husband, Earl, who always takes the money she works hard for, but Jenna keeps some of it hidden from him. Jenna suddenly finds her life has taken an unexpected turn when she discovers she’s pregnant with Earl’s baby. But the unhappy pregnancy changes Jenna’s life as she becomes determined to win the $25,000 pie contest prize money and begins an affair with her handsome, married gynecologist that gives her confidence and an attempt at happiness.
Tortilla Soup – (Hector Elizondo, Raquel Welch)
Retired Mexican-American chef Martin Naranjo shares an L.A. home with his three gorgeous, butsingle, adult daughters. Though he long ago lost his ability to taste, Martin still lives to cook incredibly lavish dinners for his loved ones and to serve them in a family-style ritual at traditional sit-down meals. Although the women humor their father’s old-fashioned ways, each of them is searching for fulfillment outside the family circle. College student Maribel is growing increasingly frustrated with the singles scene and wants a steady man; gorgeous career woman Carmen is fed up with her boyfriend and his wandering eye; meanwhile, eldest daughter Letitia, who has suppressed her own romantic longings, senses something missing in her life. Things take a turn for the romantic when Dad, a widower, meets a vivacious divorcee on the lookout for a mate and each of his daughters, in turn, finds someone. But they’ll all discover that the recipe for happiness may call for some unexpected ingredients.
Because I said so (Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Piper Perabo, Lauren Graham)
Daphne Wilder is a mother whose love knows no bounds or boundaries. She is the proud mom of three daughters: stable psychologist Maggie, sexy and irreverent Mae and insecure, adorable Milly – who, when it comes to men, is like psychotic flypaper. In order to prevent her youngest from making the same mistakes she did, Daphne decides to set Milly up with the perfect man. Little does Milly know, however, that her mom placed an ad in the on-line personals to find him. Comic mayhem unfolds as Daphne continues to do the wrong thing for the right reasons…all in the name of love. In a battle of strong wills, the mother-daughter dynamic is tested in all its fierce, wacky complexity. The girls help Daphne finally discover the truths and impossibilities of motherly love, all while trying to answer the questions: where does it begin and where should it end?
Chocolat (Juliet Binoche, Johnny Depp)
When a single mother and her six-year-old daughter move to rural France and open a chocolate shop – with Sunday hours – across the street from the local church, they are met with some skepticism. But as soon as they coax the townspeople into enjoying their delicious products, they are warmly welcomed.