Babette's Feast (aka Babettes gæstebud)

Release date: 18 September 1987 (Toronto International Film Festival)

Gabriel Axel directed one of film’s greatest ‘foodie’ movies, Babette’s Feast. In the late 1800s, Babette (Stéphane Audran), a Catholic and French woman fleeing persecution in Paris, arrives in a very small, very remote Dutch village to become the maid/servant/cook for two spinster sisters – Filippa (Bodil Kjer) and Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) – who’s father is the village’s Protestant minister. She has in hand a letter of introduction from a General in the Swedish army who once courted one of the sisters and begins her daily routine. The years pass and Babette prepares bland porridges and pours endless glasses of water for the sisters and their small congregation. Then, one day, a letter arrives announcing she has won the French lottery. Babette asks the sisters’ permission to prepare a celebratory dinner and they reluctantly agree worried what the foreigner may serve. On the day of the meal, the guests arrive determined not to be swayed by the beautiful meal but remain stanch in their belief that dining is but a means to an end, not an end in itself. But as the courses proceed in their glorious gluttony, the guests forget their determination and the joy and jolly of good food and wine takes hold. The General who originally sent Babette to the house all those years ago is in attendance and it is he who then relates the story of a famed Parisian chef who ran the Café Anglais – a chef who is in fact, Babette.

Babette’s Feast won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1987. It is a stunningly quiet film in the vein of the great Ingmar Bergman that brilliantly juxtaposes the realities of two faiths when they collide in the passion that is dining.

My rating 9 out of 10.

Wall-E

Release date: 23 June 2008 (Los Angeles, USA)

Andrew Stanton’s wondrous little film, Wall-E, manages to provide a sly social commentary on our current love of all things computer-related to the detriment of both our environment and health. Wall-E is the lone robot left on an abandoned earth who continues his task of collecting and compacting trash until the day Eve, a probe robot searching for life on the planet, arrives. Wall-E falls in love with Eve and ends up following her into space and on to her mother ship. There, decedents from Earth live, fed a constant stream of video-messaging, on sofa chairs that convey them about the spacecraft. Seems we are destined to become Weebles in our future and that truth is the film’s most brilliant moment. When the renegade main computer on the mother ship goes H-A-L, Wall-E steps in and saves the day and the love of his life. Wall-E is a film for the ages whose beauty rests in its gorgeous Pixar animation and its ability to tell such a profound story with so few words.

My rating 9 out of 10

Presto

Release date: 24 June 2008 (USA)

Doug Sweetland directs this quaint Pixar film about the relationship between the great magician, Presto, and his hungry and neglected rabbit, Alec. With the gorgeous and lush CGI animation Pixar is known for and its romp-roaring game of cat and mouse – courtesy Presto’s top hat – this short animation is pure magic.

My rating 9 out of 10.

This Way Up

Release date: 2008 (United Kingdom)

This Way Up refers to the way we ought to carry a coffin in this short animation from the United Kingdom that follows two undertakers in their journey to lay a woman to rest. Directed with nods to Dante’s Inferno by Adam Foulks and Allan Smith, and done in a stunning and strange Edward Gorey-esque style, the story follows the two undertakers through this world and the next as they succumb to the vagrancies of Fate. Strange and macabre yet still funny, it is unlike anything you’ve seen.

My rating 9 out of 10.

Lavatory Lovestory (aka Ubornaya istoriya - lyubovnaya istoriya)

Release date: 2008

This Russian-made short animation, directed by Konstantin Bronzit, gives us a love story set in the quietude of a men’s washroom. Done in a simple black-line style – in a nod to the good olde days of animation - it has a female washroom attendant searching for her mystery lover amid the toilet stalls and urinals after flowers start appearing at her counter. Odd, granted. While it is not a wow-wow short, it is wonderfully watchable as a mystery buoyed by our desire to see if the lady gets her man.

My rating 6 out of 10.

Oktapodi

Release date: 2008

Directed by Frenchmen Julien Bocabeille and Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Oktapodi is a delightful caper set in a Greek island village when one octopus begins to chase after his mate when he’s plucked from the aquarium by a Greek chef bent on dinner. A classic short, at just 21/2 minutes, it is all action from the get-go and proof some great CGI can be done by others than Pixar.

My rating 7 out of 10.