Food is a way to bring people together, or as Julia Child put it, “Food is love because it gets everyone together.” Many people find their passion in cooking, inspiring creativity, like the characters and subjects in this selection of films. Capturing food on film is an art form, and these six films master the art of cinematic cuisine and display the joy of cooking – or in some cases, the loss of the joy of cooking. These culinary films cover themes that include second chances, finding inspiration in an unlikely new friend, creating peace in a community through chocolate, celebrating a cultural culinary icon, skewering the rich and privileged, and lavish family dinners.
Chef
Jon Favreau’s Chef encapsulates so much from the passion of cooking, to staying true to the artistry of cuisine, to second chances and finding your fire again. Chef Carl Casper (Favreau) flames out after going head-to-head with owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman) of the posh Los Angeles restaurant Gauloises over cooking the classics that sell versus new innovative dishes that may be more risky. This leads to Carl melting down after a bad review and getting fired. During a trip to Miami with his ex-wife Inez (Sofía Vergara) and tech savvy 10-year-old son Percy (Emjay Anthony), Casper finds his passion again eating authentic Cuban food and decides to start a food truck.
The heart of the story in Chef is Casper’s relationship with his son Percy, and not only finding his passion in cooking food again, but becoming a better father. Casper’s loyal sous-chef Martin (John Leguizamo) joins their cross-country trip in Carl’s new food truck El Jefe. From Miami to New Orleans to Austin, Percy shows his skills marketing their adventure on social media, creating lines wherever they go. And in the end, Casper finds that sometimes perceived enemies can become one’s biggest supporter. Favreau wrote, produced, directed and starred in his passion project in between directing big budget films like Iron Man 1 & 2 and later The Jungle Book, taking him back to his roots of independent cinema that he starred in, like Swingers, and directed, like his first film Made. By doing that, Favreau made an infinitely rewatchable crowd-pleaser that can also be used for screenings to inspire passion in work, the love of food and cooking, and never being afraid to follow one’s dream.
▶ Click here to read our full review of Chef.
▶ Click here to get your copy of Chef on Blu-ray & DVD.
Ratatouille
No list with films about food and the joy of cooking are complete without mentioning my favorite Pixar film, Brad Bird’s Ratatouille. Ratatouille follows aspiring chef Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) who dreams of cooking at high-end restaurant Gusteau’s in Paris, but there’s only one glaring problem… he’s a rat, and diners usually don’t take kindly to rats in restaurants! So Remy teams with Gusteau’s garbage boy Alfredo Linguini (voiced by Lou Romano), helping him work his way up to head chef by controlling Alfredo under his chef’s hat to make delicious dishes.
Ratatouille really worked its way into the zeitgeist with memorable scenes like the food mixing fireworks scene, and harsh food critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) biting into the ratatouille and having flashbacks of his childhood. Not only did Ratatouille win the Best Animation Feature Academy Award but Best Picture Academy Award-winner Everything Everywhere All at Once brilliantly spoofs Ratatouille in the “Raccacoonie” segment, hilariously renamed due to Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) misremembering a raccoon instead of a rat. Ratatouille is enjoyable for all ages, including adults, and is perfect for family screenings to inspire a passion for food in young cooks.
▶ Click here to read our full review of Ratatouille.
▶ Click here to get your copy of Ratatouille on 4K, Blu-ray & DVD.
Peace by Chocolate
Based on the extraordinary true story, Jonathan Keijser’s Peace by Chocolate shows how chocolates can bring a community together. When aspiring doctor Tareq Hadhad (Ayham Abou Ammar) and his parents immigrate to the small town of Antigonish in Canada, Tareq’s father Issam (Hatem Ali) finds his passion in making chocolates again, after losing his chocolate factory in a war-torn Syria. After Issam’s chocolates are a hit at the local church, he begins to expand his new business, with the help of locals, like Frank (Mark Camacho), who’s family took in the refugees. But as the business grows too big for Issam, Tareq is torn between helping his father and pursuing his dream of becoming a doctor.
Peace by Chocolate not only encapsulates the immigrant experience, but also how helping one’s neighbors can be prosperous for everyone, in both new friendships and business for the town. There are comical moments like when Issam’s wife Shahnaz (Yara Sabi) says, “No one’s going to like your chocolates here,” and in the next scene, Frank and his wife Heather (Cary Lawrence) are eating and praising Issam’s chocolates. At its heart, Peace by Chocolate is a father-son story, where both have to come around to respecting each other’s dreams.
I had the honor to recommend Peace by Chocolate when I programmed with Tribeca Festival where it premiered, and I also programmed it as the Closing Day film at Cordillera International Film Festival (Reno, Nevada) where it won Best Director. Peace won numerous other awards including the Jury Prize for Best Editor at FIN Atlantic International Film Festival (Canada), the Audience Choice Award at the Heartland International Film Festival (Indiana), the Jury Award at the Lavazza Drive-In Film Festival (Canada), Best Actor (Hatem Ali) at the Scottsdale International Film Festival (Arizona), Best Feature Drama at the Sedona International Film Festival (Arizona), and the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Woods Hole Film Festival (Cape Cod, Massachusetts).
Topics for discussions can include how food can bring a community together, supporting immigrants and the Syrian immigrant experience, supporting family, and following one’s dreams and how that may change. Keijser’s dramedy is perfect for community screenings, sure to please audiences, and leave them with a hankering for chocolate, which they can order at the Hadhad family company’s website Peace by Chocolate – or programmers could even arrange to have some on hand at the screening venue for the first number of people who show up, or give some chocolate away as prizes in a raffle or for answering questions pre-screening.
▶ Click here to get your copy of Peace by Chocolate on DVD.
Julia
“Food is love because it gets everyone together,” Julie Child says in RBG directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s wonderfully delicious documentary Julia. After tackling Ruth Bader Ginsberg in their Academy Award-nominated documentary RBG, and non-binary Black lawyer, activist and poet Pauli Murray who influenced Ginsburg in My Name is Pauli Murray, Cohen and West take on another feminist icon, Julia Child. Throughout her life, Julia Child broke down barriers in the culinary world, first by being the first woman at the renowned Le Cordon Bleu school in Paris, then the first to translate French cooking for American audiences into her magnum opus Mastering the Art of French Cooking¸ which ultimately took her 12 years to write with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, and then by being the first major nationally recognized chef on public television with her show The French Chef.
Julia was very scientific by cooking every recipe and making revisions where necessary, being very detailed in her explanations, so much so, that the first publisher interested in her cookbook turned it down for being too wordy. When TV dinners were on the rise for a matter of convenience in the 1960s, Julia’s cooking show The French Chef captured audiences and changed that, inspiring many to cook again because she made it look fun and unpretentious – if she could do it, so could you. Julia also covers how Dan Aykroyd’s famous Saturday Night Live skit was based on Julia really cutting her finger before filming a cooking segment with Jacques Pépin on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, and still going on with a bandaged finger to cook.
Raised by a conservative father, Julia became a Democrat after marrying the love of her life, Paul, who was a government diplomat. While at first her father’s conservative views may have influenced her views toward the gay community, she later becomes an advocate during the AIDS crisis. Even in her 80s, Julia didn’t back down and was still redefining age by hosting the 22-part TV series with Pépin, Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home.
While of course there is the more popular film, Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia, where Meryl Streep plays Julia, Cohen and West’s documentary Julia provides a more in depth look at Child’s contributions and trailblazing as a whole, which is why it can work as a better film for community or academic screenings. An event idea could be a post-screening cooking class by a local chef to make a dish from one of Julia’s cookbooks.
▶ Click here to read our full review of Julie & Julia.
▶ Click here to buy or rent a digital copy of Julia.
The Menu
No menu of films about food would be complete without Mark Mylod’s delicious dark comedy The Menu that skewers the rich and privileged – figuratively and almost literally. When a slew of food connoisseurs are invited to an expensive exclusive restaurant by master chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) on a remote island, they get more than they bargained for with a multi-course meal that reveals their deep dark hidden secrets.
Fiennes is devious as Chef Slowik, as he outwits chef wannabe Tyler Ledford (Nicholas Hoult), food critic Lilian Bloom (Janet McTeer), actor George Diaz (John Leguizamo) and other guests, before being taken aback by the uninvited working-class Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy). As each plot twist fires up, the guests keep asking, is this theater or part of the menu? Witty lines prevail throughout, like Tyler saying, “Chefs play with the raw materials of life.” A screening of The Menu could entail post-screening discussions around staying true to one’s craft and what that means in the food world and other arts, like acting, as well as posing as an artist, and fidelity.
▶ Click here to get your copy of The Menu on Blu-ray & DVD.
Eat Drink Man Woman
Award-winning director Ang Lee’s third film Eat Drink Man Woman follows semi-retired master chef Chu (Lung Sihung) and his three daughters – Jia-Jen (Yang Kuei-mei), Jia-Chien (Wu Chien-lien), and Jia-Ning (Wang Yu-wen) – as they navigate love, relationships, work, leaving the nest, and of course, cooking. Still living at home, they get together every Sunday where Chu prepares a luscious feast. But age may be weighing on him, as Jia-Chien points out during a Sunday dinner, “the ham is overcooked” – is Chu losing his ability to taste? Lee captures Taiwanese culture throughout Eat Drink Man Woman, and the importance of food. When Chu prepares a lavish lunch for his neighbor’s young daughter Shan-Shan (Yu-Chien Tang), all the kids at school are impressed and want some.
Eat Drink Man Woman is Ang Lee’s only film set and filmed in Taiwan, where he was born and raised by Chinese parents. The film is known as part of his “Father Knows Best” trilogy – that also includes his first two films, Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet – as each film features a father (all played by Lung) navigating the complicated relationships of his children. After Eat Drink, Lee went onto make his American debut with Sense and Sensibility, and later Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became the first foreign-language film to surpass $100 million at the box office and remains one of the highest grossing foreign language films in North America.
▶ Click here to read our full review of Eat Drink Man Woman.
▶ Click here to get your copy of Eat Drink Man Woman on DVD.
Plan your cinematic meal of films with this menu of six culinary treasures that could fit perfectly into a series of community screenings called “Cinematic Cuisine and the Joy of Cooking,” or “Mastering the Art of Cinematic Cuisine.” There are so many food and cooking topics for discussion to engage audiences from these films including: finding second chances in life through a passion for cooking in Chef, Chef Gusteau’s motto “anyone can cook” and Anton Ego’s reinterpretation, “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere” from Ratatouille, helping immigrants and the power of chocolate to bring a community together in Peace by Chocolate, setting trends and never letting gender or age get in the way of following your passion in Julia, staying true to your artistry and how that applies to cuisine in The Menu, and how food and dinners can bring a family together in Eat Drink Man Woman.
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