Tasty perfectionism in big, bold colors is on the menu in Paul Lacoste’s “Step Up To The Plate” (Entre les Bras), another worthy process documentary on the making of food and flavor, but it’s also about the bond between father and son. Influential French chef Michel Bras (about whom Lacoste made an episode in a television series three decades ago) is about to turn over his restaurant, a three-Michelin-star establishment in the south of France, to his son Sébastien, who has worked with him for fifteen years, and Lacoste spends a year watching and implicitly goading the ultimate handover. “Step Up To The Plate” is a decent contribution to the burgeoning art-house foodie nonfiction genre, and akin to a couple of impressive recent doc-bites, including Gereon Wetzel’s chilly portrait of chef Ferran Adrià in “El Bulli: Cooking in Progress” and David Gelb’s toothsome “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” The secret ingredient in these three courses: the food, the flavors, come from the subjects. Food, on its own, requires a driven clinician like Nikolaus Geyrhalter (“Our Daily Bread”) to make the processes sing. 89m. HD. (Ray Pride)
“Step Up To The Plate” starts service Friday at Siskel. A trailer is below.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
Seeing The Elephant: A Review Of Babylon The boisterous, brawling yet melancholy "Babylon," is a variation on film history, but more drawing for drama. It's gaudy and mean, celebratory and sorrowful.
Heart: A Review of Soul The real world is soulful, too, in Pixar's bountiful life of the mind.
Spawn Sacrifice: A Review Of The Creator "The Creator" is richly detailed, punchy, pulpy, punkish entertainment that still has highly serious subjects in mind, without growing didactic and with substantial heart.
Heart of Darkness: A Review of The Batman The three-hour film noir unfolds briskly, an intensive study in the pervasive interplay of power, money and corruption in what seems like perpetual rainy night.
A Drag Getting Old: A Review Of Indiana Jones 5 In the protracted opening couple of reels, a very young, computer-crafted Harrison Ford plays a younger cultural marauder who first encounters the dull MacGuffin of the title.
