The appeal of the food movie is perhaps best summed up by YouTube user Zenophobius: “Watching people feasting is like watching them ****ing - you can’t help but watch them indulging their primal pleasures. So yes, I guess I love porn and I love a good foodie movie.” Who doesn’t? So, in honor of America’s annual salute to gluttony Thanksgiving, here are our picks for five of the most delicious (yes, we said it) food films of all time.
Big Night
Stanley Tucci co-wrote and co-directed this 1996 film that features one of the most sumptuous meals ever prepared on camera. If your salivary glands aren’t going into overdrive by the time they start taking the cover off of the timpano, then you have no soul. And no stomach. This is by far Stanley Tucci’s finest film, and if you want any performance from him that comes close to touching it, you’ll have to rent the audiobook version of The Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Tucci does a terrific job of reading that. Oh, and who could forget his wonderful acting in The Impostors?
Estômago: A Gastronomic Story
Probably one of the most decadent eating experiences I ever had was watching this movie at Fantastic Fest earlier this year while they served as a dramatic, multi-course meal at the Alamo Drafthouse. I needed my stomach pumped afterwards. It was truly delicious. They followed that up with Purokogi, the Yakiniku Bolgogi Movie a night or two later, featuring more food. Clearly, they want you fat in Austin.
The movie is about a poor drifter who wanders through a town and doesn’t have enough to pay off his food tab at a fast food joint. The owner puts him to work making “chicken snacks”, and he turns out to be a natural. Soon after he’s hired away by a better restaurant, where he learns the ins and outs of fancy cooking. You soon find out that these are flashbacks, and that he’s actually remembering all of this from prison. Even in the hole he cooks fancy dishes like fried ants, and you soon find out why he’s in jail in the first place: all because he loved the wrong woman.
Como Agua Para Chocolate or Like Water For Chocolate
Imagine if Cinderella never got to go to the ball at all. Instead, she was locked up by her wicked stepmother and forced to cook all the time. And in place of her magic fairy godmothers, she had a magic hand at concocting dishes and mixing spices. Sound interesting? Actually, maybe that sounds a bit boring. However, what if I told you that she could cook something that would make your entire body burn with a sexual longing so powerful that you’d have to strip nude and run outside under a shower to cool off? Although that doesn’t work, and you end up burning the showerhouse down with your hormones. But that’s beside the point.
Como Agua Para Chocolate, was based on the bestselling novel by Laura Esquivel, was one of the most popular Mexican movies of all time, sweeping all of the Ariel awards. It also has some of the sexiest cooking scenes ever put on film. In fact, I’m willing to bet that sales of the novel took off when people found out Esquivel opened each chapter with a new recipe. You can’t help but get hungry for delicious food every time you watch this movie. If you’re hungry for other things, that’s a completely different list for another time.
Babette’s Feast
Can you imagine spending a small fortune on a meal, toiling over it for days, putting your best intentions and efforts into it, only to have people not say a word about the food? That’s what happens in Babette’s Feast, which features one of the most amazing feasts ever prepared. I mean, her shopping list includes a live sea turtle, that’s hard to beat. And probably something you won’t find down at the corner deli.
Babette’s Feast is Danish, delicious, and holds up surprisingly well given that it’s 21 years old. It isn’t all just serious people slurping down food, though. There’s a lot of humor in this movie, a lot of hope, and yes, a lot of cooking. This is actually a perfect post-gorgefest movie, and it’ll definitely make you seek out your chef and tell them “Thank you” for whatever it was you just ate.
Waitress
Is any holiday more associated with pie than Thanksgiving? Likewise, Waitress is the movie more associated with pie than any other. You’ll never see a more varied selection of this perfect after-dinner delectable. Watching Keri Russell’s character Jenna concoct specific pies for specific times, places, and even events like “Earl Murders Me Because I’m Having An Affair Pie” is a pure delight. Obviously, this movie is best shown during dessert.
Runners Up
Five courses feels like a proper amount of gluttony, but there are plenty of other films about cooking, or with terrific food scenes. Just rest assured we haven’t forgotten about movies like: Ratatouille, Goodfellas (that razorblade garlic scene), The Godfather (that scene with the peppers), The Mistress of Spices, Tampopo, Eat A Bowl of Tea, Chocolat, Eat Drink Man Woman, and even that scene in Hook where the kids imagine all of their food. Unfortunately it would have been a bit macabre to include one of my favorite movies, Delicatessen, on this list. In that film, people make the best food. But hey, it worked for Soylent Greene.
Top image courtesy of Flickr user jamesyu.
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