In honor of Frederick Wiseman’s delectable four-hour documentary "Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros" and the sumptuous period romance "The Taste of Things," here are some other movies to whet your appetite.
In the 25 years since Stanley Tucci’s “Big Night” was released in 1996, there has been, in America, a great upsurge of movies and television shows revolving around the world of restaurants, chefs, and fine dining. Tucci’s film, which he co-wrote with Joseph Tropiano and co-directed with Campbell Scott (who also appears in the film as a somewhat odd car salesman), about the final days of a struggling Italian restaurant in 1950s New Jersey, run by two immigrant brothers businessman Secondo (Tucci) and brilliant chef Primo (Tony Shalhoub) was certainly not the first such film. Outside of America, there had already been, just in the decade or so before, Juzo Itami’s “Tampopo,” Alfonso Arau’s “Like Water for Chocolate,” and Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” (and depending on whether or not you wished to count such a thing, Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and & Her Lover”) but it certainly seems to have opened the floodgates. Since then, ther
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Clockwise from top left: The Faculty (Screenshot); Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade; Mission: Impossible (Screenshot); The Ring (Screenshot); Clue (Screenshot); Trainspotting (Screenshot); Boomerang (Screenshot
Streaming libraries expand and contract. Algorithms are imperfect. Those damn thumbnail images are always changing. But you know what you can always rely on? The expert opinions and knowledgeable commentary of
The A.V. Club. That’s why we’re scouring both the menus of the most popular services and our own archives to bring you these guides to the best viewing options, broken down by streamer, medium, and genre. Want to know why we’re so keen on a particular film? Click the author’s nameat the end of each slide for some in-depth coverage from