Cooking at the Movies

My love of cooking and feeding people lead me to looking for cooking scenes in the movies. Once you start looking for things they seem to crop up everywhere especially if you are looking on NetFlix or Amazon! My comments are italic and NetFlix are in quotation marks.


Girl With The Pearl Earring
"Sometimes, inspiration is found in the most surprising places ... or people. In this cinematic adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name, Scarlett Johansson stars as Griet, the young housemaid with a hidden appreciation for art who becomes the muse of Dutch master painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth), famous for capturing the luminosity and grace of women in their domestic setting."

Great scenes of cooking cooking and food prep.


Gosford Park
"When Sir William (Michael Gambon) is found dead soon after his guests arrive at his English estate, Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), Constance (Maggie Smith), Ivor (Jeremy Notham) and his other guests try to make sense of it. Meanwhile, gossip flies among the household help, including Mrs. Wilson (Helen Mirren), Henry (Ryan Philippe) and Parks (Clive Owen). Director Robert Altman's witty murder mystery won an Oscar for its screenplay."

A huge English estate preparing for a banquet.


Chocolat
"An iconoclastic single mother (Oscar-nominee Juliette Binoche) and her young daughter move to a village in France and open a chocolate shop -- that's open Sundays -- across the street from a church. At first, Binoche's rich, sensuous desserts scandalize the town, but soon the villagers welcome the newcomers with open arms. Judi Dench, Lena Olin and Johnny Depp co-star in this 2000 Best Picture nominee."

The ultimate Food is Love story!


Like Water For Chocolate
"A feast for the senses, this magical romance from director Alfonso Arau was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and a Golden Globe. The passionate Tita (Lumi Cavazos) is in love with Pedro (Marco Leonardi), but her controlling mother (Regina Torne) forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro instead marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking -- and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares."

… or maybe this is the ultimate Food is Love story!


Eat Drink Man Woman
"Widower Tao Chu, Taiwan's most famous chef, struggles with accepting his three daughters' newfound appetite for boys, an interest that begins to break the family apart with hilarious and often touching results."

Amazing cooking skills displayed.


Mostly Martha & No Reservations
"German director Sandra Nettelbeck whips up this tragicomic tale about an uptight professional chef who finds her world turned upside down when she takes in her newly orphaned niece, Lina (Maxime Foerste). Martina Gedeck stars as Martha, whose obsession with precision gourmet cooking extends to discussing recipes with her bewildered therapist (August Zirner) and verbally attacking anyone at the restaurant who attempts to send her food back."

The same story, one filmed in Germany and the other in the US. Nice happy ending story with coking scenes and looking into what it means to cook for people. You decide which is the better version.


Waitress
"Written by director and co-star Adrienne Shelly (who was murdered shortly before the film's selection for the Sundance Film Festival), Waitress is a frank and funny examination of the fears brought on by impending motherhood. Keri Russell plays Jenna, a waitress whose fabulous pies are about the only sweet ingredient in an otherwise dreary existence. An unwanted pregnancy, however, brings unexpected romance in this film co-starring Cheryl Hines."


The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
"Tired of his boorish lifestyle and increasingly difficult attitude, the wife of a barbaric crime boss engages in a secret romance with a bookish patron between meals at her husband's restaurant, sneaking into the kitchen for liaisons while he and his thugs dine. Food, color-coding, sex, murder, torture and cannibalism are the exotic fare in this beautifully filmed but brutally uncompromising modern fable."

Very dark … does not enhance the appetite!