The Menu (2022)

What a great idea to pit artist - those that serve up their creations - against art lovers - those that take this creativity, eat it up and either appreciate it or spit it out -- and how clever to do that in a kitchen where the artist, the chef, exerts tight artistic control (and so is particularly vulnerable to criticism) and where so much hyperbolic reality tv is set and where the discussion of food art has reached such a fever pitch that it simply begs to be lampooned, but the concept sags like a failed souffle at about the third course where a rush of ideas - the need to be not just clever about art but also woke about metoo and world finance - turns a sharp satirical observation about art into an uncentred all-out food fight.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

No Reservations (2007)

If you stir through this watery soup, you can occasionally glimpse the ingredients director Scott Hicks was playing with in the kitchen and see what his dish was supposed to be (an emotionally-stunted chef discovers love when she takes in an orphaned niece and meets a man) but the movie is served up in such a limp fashion and with so little energy, it takes on the flavour of a reprimand levelled at a successful career woman who, even though she is able to run the kitchen of a popular New York restaurant and takes in an orphaned niece without hestitation and is polite, calm and friendly with neighbours and colleagues, is nonetheless treated like a mental case, called a loon, and ushered off to therapy sessions with a psychologist because she isn't devastated at not having an Aaron Eckard with Point Break tresses in her life.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS