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 

I Give It a Year

Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall) get married after a 7-month romance and a short time later realize that they are not really made for each other. Determined to make it through their first year (at least), they work on their marriage with the help of what is possible the most ill-equipped marriage counselor ever.

Anyway, Josh is really still into his former girlfriend Chloe (an unfortunate looking Anna Farris) and Nat falls for Guy (Simon Baker), who she flirts with, mostly to get his account for her company. (If you know Simon Baker's Patrick Jane, he appears weirdly under dressed in just regular suits...I'm used to seeing him in three-piece ones.)

It doesn't help that Nat and Josh are surrounded by less-than-helpful friends and family, like Nat's sister Naomi (Minnie Driver), who is predicting that they will never last and is constantly annoyed by her own husband, or Josh's best friend Danny (Stephen Merchant), who is one of those people that says the most improper thing at the worst possible moment.

Through all this amusingly weird things are happening in the background and slightly out of frame.

Love, Actually... this is not, but still amusing.

5/10