Tag: IFC Films

Ants on a Shrimp: Noma Tokyo, The Creation of Fourteen Dishes – DVD Review

Ants on a Shrimp? What the heck does that mean? That and many other culinary questions will be answered in the documentary film, Ants on a Shrimp: Noma Tokyo, The Creation of Fourteen Dishes. Chef Rene Redzepi and his team from the world-renowned Copenhagen restaurant, Noma, travel to Tokyo, Japan on a mission. That mission? To fuse Noma’s menu with the delicacies and tastes of Japan in fourteen unique dishes over the course of a five week timeframe.

What results is a challenge that energizes, a culinary quest to bring two cultures together through the power of food. It’s very interesting to watch as Redzepi and his team search marketplaces for new flavors to infuse into dishes that would not normally be available in his native Copenhagen, Denmark.

Will Redzepi and his team overcome the obstacles put in their way? Will they be able to create fourteen unique and tasty dishes that the locals will enjoy? Is there really a dish called “Ants on a Shrimp” and if so what does it taste like? These questions and more are reveled in this food-centric documentary.

Ants on a Shrimp: Noma Tokyo, The Creation of Fourteen Dishes is available now on DVD.

What’s your favorite film about food? Leave a comment and let us know!

The Land – DVD Review

theland

Every human being on the planet has some level of drive, desire, and ambition. To be the best at something and do what they can to achieve that goal. Even if they fall on their face in defeat, sometimes trying and failing is truly better than never attempting at all. When we meet our four heroes in The Land, they, too, have dreams and aspirations. True, theirs may not be groundbreaking feats of power or prestige, but in their world of skateboarding, what they desire to do makes them legends in their own time.

Cleveland, Ohio. A city of many stories, and four of those belong to friends Cisco, Junior, Patty Cake, and Boobie, four friends with a passion and desire to skateboard their way through summer. Well…they also enjoy carjacking people with the help of their skateboards, which is all well and good until the one day they steal the car of the wrong dude.

While plundering his trunk, the foursome come across bags of pills – MDMA to be exact – that their de factor leader, Cisco, decides is their ticket to skateboarding Nirvana. But when the drug tycoon who owns the pills finds out that the pills have been taken, what happens takes the four friends on a dangerous adventure they won’t soon forget.

With a solid soundtrack and gritty visuals, The Land is a gripping drama about four young men whose fates change forever over the course of a summer of mishaps, missteps, and misadventures.

The DVD includes a short featurette about the making of the film and the film’s trailer.

I highly recommend The Land!

The Land is available now on DVD.

What’s your favorite film or TV series based in Cleveland, Ohio? Leave a comment and let us know!

Sky – DVD Review

SKY

Road trip movies have been a part of film since the beginning. From Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in their Road to… films, to Thelma & Louise, Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, Due Date, Road Trip, Euro Trip, and more, the road trip movie can be filled with conflict, wacky adventures, and self-discovery. Comedy road movies tend to shove opposites together for maximum comedic conflict, while dramas veer toward a more introspective, change-centered tone.

Sky presents the latter style of road movie, with our hero Romy (Diane Kruger) taking a rather rocky journey toward her own pathway toward renewal and personal evolution. She’s a French woman who finds herself alone in the United States, a woman doing what she can to live life to the fullest even when things seem bleakest. For the bulk of the story, Romy is on the road by herself and for herself.

Romy’s newfound freedom is a catalyst for the change she has so desperately needed in her life after years in a lifeless marriage. It is through her travels, the people she meets, and her uniquely American experiences that she begins to realize who she truly is as a human being and as a woman.

Along the way, she meets an array of characters that invite this wandering stranger into their lives and even into their hearts. Will Romy find the kind of life and love she has been yearning for?

With a solid supporting cast that includes Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead), Lou Diamond Phillips (Longmire), Lena Dunham (Girls), and Joshua Jackson (Dawson’s Creek), Sky delivers a powerful message that it’s never too late to start your life anew no matter they circumstances you find yourself in.

Sky is available now on DVD.

What’s your favorite road trip movie? Leave a comment and let us know!