The Wooden Spoons

I recently saw two movies that prompted me to add a new category to the site called "Tasty Titles" in addition to my "Movies That Cook" category. The Tasty Titles movies aren't cooking movies, but the titles are food related. One of them co-starred Madhur Jaffrey and that alone earns it a place in my "Tasty Titles" hall of fame.

To make it a little fun I decided to add a rating system based completely on the unprofessional and unsoliceted opinions of what I thought about the movies. I've replaced the "star" rating system with my own "wooden spoon" rating system (how original of me) and will give movies anywhere from 1-4 wooden spoons depending on how much I enjoyed them.

Chutney Popcorn by Nisha Ganatra (click her name to go to her weblog)

Chutney Popcorn (2000) Synopsis: Reena, a young Indian-American woman, is attempting to strike a balance between her lesbian identity and the traditional customs of her disapproving, yet closely knit family. When her married sister realizes that she cannot have a baby, Reena volunteers to be artificially inseminated, much to her girlfriend's chagrin. Just as she discovers that she is pregnant, her sister backs out of the agreement. Reena decides to have the baby and raise it on her own if she has to, despite everyone's objections. ~source: Hollywood.com

I really enjoyed this movie and was pleasantly surprised by it. It took some serious subject matters and approached them in a way that didn't drag down and depress me but rather made me try to see both sides of the issues in a sort of lighthearted but serious way. I thought Nisha Ganatra's preformance as Reena was excellent and so was Sakina Jaffrey's portrayal of Sarita. Madhur Jaffrey plays their mother and while I was often annoyed by her character, she was a convincing nagging mother. I thought she preformed her part well.

This is an independant film, made with a small budget and no real "big time" stars. The movie is a nice change from the sometimes slick overly produced Hollywood stuff that we are constantly bombarded with and I think it's worth renting.

~~~~~

The Scent of Green Papaya (1993)

I found an excellent and informative review of this movie which is better than anything I could have written so if you have time and are interested please do read it. The Roger Ebert review.

I have to admit I wasn't crazy about this movie. I didn't "get" what it was trying to say since there was really no linear story to follow. I think Roger Ebert gave it a lot more credit than I'm going to, as a matter of fact, if it wasn't for his review, I might still not be sure of a few things that were going on in the movie.

I preferred the actress who played the younger Mui much more than that of the girl who played the older Mui. The older Mui was quite beautiful, but by the end of the movie I was looking around for a rope to hang myself with because I couldn't watch her acting any longer. I thought the cinematography was gorgeous and now that I know that the film was made entirely in France and not in Vietnam, I'm amazed by the attention to detail that was paid to the sets, I really thought it was shot in Vietnam.

I'm probably part of a small minority of people who wasn't as enamored with this film as the critics were and I don't think I'd take the time to watch it again. I'm glad I did get a chance to see it, the cinematography alone was worth the time but otherwise it didn't grab me. I would normally give this 3 wooden spoons because the cinematography was so nice, but I liked Chutney Popcorn better than this movie so I'm going to have to give it 2 wooden spoons.

Written by Deb on December 12, 2003 12:01 AM