The best food movies and movie scenes

We’re doing a two-part food and movie blog this weekend in honor of the Oscars. Today we’re looking at two compilations – from Serious Eats  of  their favorite food movies  and Boston.com‘s collection of chefs’s favorite movie scenes.

In 12 of Our Favorite Food Movies, Serious Eats lists movies that are either about food or have great food scenes. Here’s the list (with a few of our editorial comments):

• Big Night
• Babette’s Feast (Definitely – this movie personifies M.F.K. Fisher’s approach to food)
• The Breakfast Club (not so sure about this choice, the teen angst sticks longer than the food scenes)
• Chocolat (wow – Johnny Depp – wow)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (despite the above comment, we like the Gene Wilder version better)
• Jir0 Dreams of Sushi
• Fried Green Tomatoes (we ordered these for the first time just because of this movie) 
• Tampopo
• Eat Drink Man Woman
• Ratatouille (defines “for all ages”)
• When Harry Met Sally (solely for the deli scene, which you can view here at  You Tube if you haven’t seen it)
• Julie and Julia (you’ll never love Meryl Streep more)

And turning to Boston.com’s Chefs pick scenes for best screen cuisine, we find a very eclectic mix – check out the article for the explanations behind the choices:

• The Goodfellas scene that shows Paulie slicing garlic with a razor (Fabio Viviani)
• The scene in Hook where the grown-up Peter Pan figure (Robin Williams) joins the Lost Boys in a banquet of nonexistent ‘Neverfood.’ (Colman Andrews)
• The scene from The Jerk, in which a gauche Steve Martin, after first ordering some ”fresh” wine, ”no more of this old stuff,” is horrified to find that his date’s plate is covered with snails (Steven Barber)
• The dialogue between Jules and Vincent as they have breakfast at a diner in Pulp Fiction (Michael Mina)

Feel free to contribute your own selections and opinions. And stay tuned for tomorrow when we look at the best movie food fights and a tribute to 50 years of James Bond.