Big Night

Brothers Primo and Secondo came to America to make it in the restaurant business, but there little Italian place is failing while the restaurant across the street - run by Pascal - is thriving.

Primo is a very gifted chef but unwilling to compromise his art because a 'philistine' customer wants a side order of spaghetti with meatballs to her risotto (starch with starch!). His younger brother is trying to keep their business running but knows they need money fast to keep the place open.

Secondo comes to Pascal for financial help but Pascal offers him a way to make some business. He will call up an 'old friend', a famous jazz musician to come and eat at their place to get some publicity.

Now the brothers start working towards the big night feverishly. And if that alone didn't keep them busy, they also both have trouble with the women in their lives - Secondo is cheating on Phyllis with (of all people) Pascal's girlfriend Gabriella. And Primo has his sights set on the flower lady Ann, but is to shy to even ask her out.

Then the big night comes and all their friends and neighbors have been invited, but the guest of honor takes his time. When it gets later and later - and the guests get drunk and start dancing around the room - Secondo decides it is time to eat - big shot jazz musician or no. Everyone agrees that the food is divine. As the night progresses, Secondo gets more and more nervous about the coveted guest and the publicity and word-of-mouth he should have brought the restaurant. In the end, he never shows. And he was never going to because Pascal neglected to call him in the first place in a rouse to drive the last nail into the restaurant's coffin and convince the brothers to word for him.

An absolute joy to watch.

from Roger Ebert's review:Big Night is one of the great food movies, and yet it is so much more. It is about food not as a subject but as a language - the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection.

9/10 

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes

Of the many film versions of the Tarzan story, this is probably the one honoring the original tale thought up by Edgar Rise Burroughs, whose Tarzan was a much more intelligent creature than often portrayed.

The first part of the film is almost entirely without (human) dialogue and depicts young Jean/John/Tarzan as an infant growing up around and with apes, always protected by his caring mother. The film goes through four ages played by boys before settling on young Christopher Lambert. He loses his 'mother' to a party of explorers and in a tumult that follows (explorers, natives, apes) Philippe D'Arnot (Ian Holm) gets injured and left behind. John nurses him back to health and D'Arnot in return teaches him in language and the ways of the world.

They eventually return to John's grandfather's estate in England, who is overjoyed to welcome back a part of his family, having lost his son (John's father) after his ship wrecked, leaving him and his young wife stranded in the jungle, where both eventually died, leaving their infant son to be raised by chimpanzees.

At the estate he meets Jane, a relative staying with his grandfather. He appears to be settling in rather well but falls apart again after his grandfather also dies. When he, now Lord Greystoke, finds his ape 'father' caged in town, he breaks him out, but the ape gets shot during the escape. Losing yet another member of his family, John returns to what he believes to be his real home, becoming Lord of the jungle.

An ok version of the classic material.

5/10