June 21, 2015

The Top 5 Food Moments in Film 2014

June 21, 2015/ Nathan

For food lover cinephiles, 2014 was an undeniably good year. We got our hands floury with Agatha in The Grand Budapest Hotel and watched the activists in Selma find nourishment with an old-fashioned, stick-to-your-ribs Southern meal. We also saw mealtime interrupted by an avalanche (literally and figuratively) and become a catalyst for a marital reckoning in Force Majeure.

Great Food Moments in Film: 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence'

August 27, 2014/ Nathan

I remember little fanfare when A.I. Artificial Intelligence hit theaters in June of 2001. It didn't quite enter the radar of my rural community, and received somewhat mixed reviews from critics and audiences.

I'm not even sure when or how I got around to seeing it, but I do remember what I felt during my first viewing, and every viewing since. The heartbreak of unrequited love, the pain of abandonment, the confusion of being alive in the world. Kubrick's vision, Spielberg's direction, Haley Joel Osment's subtle yet stirring performance... It all worked, and I now consider it one of the most underrated movies of the past two decades. (Where is it on the AFI nominations list? Nowhere.)

It's also a movie full of great food moments.

Great Food Moments in Film: 'Flirting with Disaster'

January 26, 2014/ Nathan

In this, the inaugural installment of Great Food Moments in Film, in which CineMunch dissects and digests the scenes that legitimize our efforts to force food and film together into something coherent, we bring you the great cheese attack of Flirting with Disaster.

Sure, Flirting with Disaster may be most noted for its writer/director David O. Russell, whose recent films Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle have swept two awards seasons and swept up Jennifer Lawrence in Hollywood's starmaking machine. And sure, the plot focuses on Ben Stiller's character and his quest to track down his birth parents.

But dig deeper and you'll find the real star of this show is Mary Tyler Moore, who, as neurotic-New-Yorker-slash-adoptive-mother Pearl Coplin, turns violent in her first scene. There's nothing like a marital scuffle to incite a game of "Where's the Closest Weapon?" and in this case the answer is a wheel of Brie.