Roger Sherman & Michael Solomonov take us on a thoughtful, visually splendid gastronomic tour IN SEARCH OF ISRAELI CUISINE

Unlike some of the modern food-porn documentaries that gush over certain chefs or restaurants, together with their fabulous "presentations," the new documentary, IN SEARCH OF ISRAELI CUISINE, directed by Roger Sherman and featuring Michael Solomonov (along with a number of other fine chefs), seems much less pretentious and a veritable model of intelligent, entertaining filmmaking about food and its delights -- to be found in this case via the little country of Israel. Or perhaps I should identify it as Israel/Palestine.

Mr. Sherman (pictured at left) and Mr. Solomonov's doc never overtly brings up any two-state solution. As one chef reminds us along the way, "Food is not political." Yet, here we see and hear enough chefs with Palestinian and/or Muslim Middle-Eastern roots to quickly realize that Israeli cuisine owes as much to those roots as it does to the Jewish Ashkenazi or Sephardic cultures. All three come into play during the movie and seem to complement each other surprisingly well. Visually, the doc offers some of the most enticing shots of food preparation that TrustMovies has seen.

Solomonov (shown above, left) acts as our guide, leading us around the country of Israel, discovering restaurants and chefs aplenty. That's Mike, above, with Meir Adoni at Mizlala, sampling the chef's Kubbaneh, a Temenite Sabbath bread and below, with Palestinian chef Husam Abbas and his famous Kebab El Babour, for which his restaurant in Umm Al-Fahm is named.

We discover a cheesemaker, below, and learn some interesting tricks of his trade, as well as meeting journalists who've covered the Israeli cuisine scene for some time. We spend a Shabbat evening with a cook and her family, and learn (if we didn't already know this) that most of the citizens of Israel are more secular than religious. Yet the Orthodox sect still exerts huge control over the country, forcing a city such as Jerusalem to close all its shops on the Sabbath.

We learn some history of Mr. Solomonov and his family -- including a brother killed in service of his country shortly before his military term would have ended -- and some history of Israel and its immigrants pertaining to food and culture and why Israeli cuisine was for so many years considered inferior. Explaining how and why this changed is part of the film's mission.

Changed it has, and the many different dishes and meals we see prepared and sampled should make a convert out of you, as it did me. Everything from street food to the selections in some of the famed restaurants look as enticing as food can get. Yet it's all hands-on, no-nonsense cuisine, made with mostly, usually only, local produce.

We learn of the tension between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic sects and how the old-time Ashkenazi cooking -- "cold, boring and guilt-ridden," as one woman puts it, is becoming more vibrant and inclusive.

The movie is also a kind of travelogue, taking us to city after city in all parts of this tiny country. (That's Michael, above, with a seafood maven known as Uri Buri.) From tiny villages to Tel Aviv, we see it all.

We learn how, below, irrigating using salt water makes cherry tomatoes even sweeter (sometimes too sweet), and we discover the Nabatian culture, including its dormant-for-centuries wine industry, and how wine production is flourishing once again. (Our guide explains to us that he is not a drinker, and the reason he gives becomes the documentary's funniest line.)

Full of interesting ideas, scrumptious visuals and a lovely multiculturalism, In Search of Israeli Cuisine should prove a simultaneous treat for foodies, history buffs, and travel lovers. The movie, from Menemsha Films and running 94 minutes, opens this Friday, March 24, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. The following Friday, March 31, it hits Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center) and a few other cities. Here in South Florida the film will open on Friday, May 5, in Miami Beach at the O Cinema, in Tamarac at The Last Picture Show, and in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters. Elsewhere? Yes, so click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Discover the perfect marriage (a couple of 'em) in Laura Gabbert's doc, CITY OF GOLD

OK: the first of these marriages -- of the Los Angeles-based food critic Jonathan Gold to his wife Laurie Ochoa, his former editor -- seems to work wonderfully well both personally and professionally. But it's the second one -- Mr. Gold as a superlative food critic to his hometown and still favorite city, Los Angeles -- that is the proverbial marriage-made-in-heaven. Thanks to the work of filmmaker Laura Gabbert, shown below, we learn a lot about both of these couplings, while enjoying the experience immensely.

Ms Gabbert has the good sense to keep her documentary, CITY OF GOLD, focused heavily on her subject, and Mr Gold (shown above and below, in two of his haunts) proves an intelligent, thoughtful, warm and gracious host -- in the process almost convincing TrustMovies, a former born-and-raised Angeleno who used to hate this would-be city, that it might be pretty damned wonderful, after all. It certainly offers the most amazing array of tasty and varied restaurants that anyone could ask for -- even if you have to drive for hours to get to many of them. Lengthy drives, usually in heavy traffic, have become -- ever since the destruction of the city's fabulous public transportation system during the late 1940s and early 50s -- indigenous to Los Angeles.

Ms Gabbert gives us only snippets of Gold's writing, but these are enough to make us want to go to the source and read more. She weaves history, tradition, diversity and all kinds of food and restaurants -- all of which are filtered through Mr Gold's lovely sensibility -- into the tale of a "critic" who ups the standard for criticism via... well, you'll see. And hear. His thoughts about just about everything seem well worth knowing. He calls one little place a "miracle of entry-level Capitalism" and he and his director have a good time making fun of the "anonymous restaurant critic" (below) -- an idea which he thoroughly pooh-poohs.

We come to understand how and why this critic chooses the restaurants he does -- often family run and what some of us might call a tad "low-end." The reason is because the owners and chefs are cooking for their community, rather than for critics or tourists or "haute cuisine-ists." It turns out that Gold never reviews a restaurant until he has frequented it several times (I believes he mentions that his record is 17 times prior to review). Clearly this is no rush-to-judgment kind of guy. He also, toward the end of this really excellent documentary, explains something that is epidemic to criticism and that he attempts to derail: the idea of "contempt prior to investigation." Gold appears to lack the former but works hard to accomplish the latter.

That last explains a lot about this man and his mission, I think. (He's as likely to cover someone's "taco trailer," above, as go to a sit-down restaurant.) So sit back and enjoy the many interviews with restaurants owners, chefs, and other critics (Ruth Reichl makes an appearance here, too), along with Gold's family and friends. Together all this becomes a genuinely new and revealing look at a place we often take for granted, its enormously diverse people, and the food they cook, eat and share.

City of Gold,  from Sundance Selects/IFC Films and running 96 minutes, after opening in New York and Los Angeles hits South Florida tomorrow in the Miami area at the O Cinema- Wynwood.

Naomi Kawase's SWEET BEAN: nature, nurture, connection and food preparation

Do you maybe need to get away from all this election-year idiocy the media is forever forcing down our collective throat? You won't find a better antidote than the new Japanese film opening this week: SWEET BEAN (An), from filmmaker Naomi Kawase. If you're a foreign film aficionado who enjoys a change of culture and attitudes -- not to mention the joys of cooking, eating and Japanese cherry blossoms -- I don't see how you can go wrong with this lovely, endearing movie.

Ms Kawase, shown at left, blends with a fine intelligence and visual flair the beauty and importance of nature with a moving portrait of humanity struggling to find its place in this world of ours. Her movie offers a near-pantheistic love and acceptance of the natural world as something as close to god as we are likely to get.  Less feel-good than it is feel-connected, Sweet Bean will entice you first of all with its great beauty and sensuousness, and then will bring you into the emotional life of its three main characters gracefully and deeply.

Its story is that of a loneliness felt by the film's major characters -- a high school student (Wakana, above), an old woman (Tokue, below) and the man (Sentaro, two photos below) who manages a small dorayaki shop (that's Japanese fast food: pancakes stuffed with bean sauce), who, once they meet, have much to offer each other.

How they slowly accept each other's help proves the basis and plot of a film that fills its 113 minutes with something as tasty and exquisite as Tokue's amazing bean sauce recipe. We've seen a lot of good movies about cooking over the years -- from Like Water for Chocolate to Chef and Haute Cuisine -- but none, I  think, create anything as magical as the moments in which Tokue prepares that special sauce.

The three performers here do much with relatively little. Elderly actress Kirin Kiki (Still Walking and Returner) is a marvel of tiny tics, big smarts and quiet strength, as real as she is odd and moving. Masatoshi Nagase (The Hidden Blade, Suicide Club, Mystery Train) has the fine ability to make the inner outer, while maintaining a tamped-down machismo. Kyara Uchida (from I Wish, and who is the granddaughter of Ms Kiki) plays the quiet student with a properly burgeoning sense of self-discovery and joy.

The filmmaker provides oodles of tiny, realistic detail that help keep Sweet Bean buoyed and rolling along. TrustMovies does not want to oversell this one because it is a small film -- even if its theme is, finally, quite a big one. I'll just say that my reaction after viewing it was one of gratitude.

From Kino Lorber, the film opens this Friday, March 18, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and is currently scheduled to play in nine other cities across the country, including here in South Florida at the Coral Gables Art Cinema on June 10. Click here then scroll down to see all playdates, cities and theaters.

Now on DVD & Blu-ray and better than you've heard: John Wells' food-porn dramedy, BURNT

Do you really think you want to pass up the chance to view a movie starring Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Emma Thompson, Daniel Brühl, Uma Thurman, Omar Sy, Matthew Rhys and (for you Italian film lovers) Riccardo Scarmarcio. There are even more good actors involved, but I don't have time to connect all the links). The movie is BURNT, and if you listened to most of the critics, you'd run the other way. Granted, this is no great shakes, but it is a perfectly OK piece of mainstream entertainment, aimed smack dab at audiences who love food porn and chic, pricey restaurants.

As decently directed by John Wells (at left, and who has yet to have a hit film but has given us a couple of perfectly enjoyable and very well-acted mainstream/ arthouse movies: The Company Men and August Osage County) with a screenplay by Stephen Knight (of the marvelous and underseen Locke), Burnt turns out to be a tale of cooking, chef-ing, success, failure, betrayal and, yes, regeneration. But so tasty are all the performances, (of course the cinematog-raphy of the food and its preparation is succulent enough for salivation) that it is easy to sit back on your sofa and enjoy.

Mr. Cooper's character (above and below) is pretty much an asshole, and the actor does not slight us in portraying this. How he treats his staff in the film is said to have turned off mainstream audiences, but more likely, since they can get plenty of food porn and bad-behaving chefs via TV and cable, they took their business elsewhere. Arthouse audiences, more swayed by the critical factor, also stayed away.

Now both can get their fill via home video, and they will most likely be surprised at how enjoyable this movie actually is.  The performances, to a man and a woman, are every bit as succulent as the food. And while the writing and direction is perfectly fine, I do wish that the movie had ended at the point (very near the end) where the word "Service!" is uttered. It is clear that this is indeed the moment to end, and I suspect that the producer's hand came down heavily on the artists involved, forcing them to feed us a feel-good finale. This is particularly stupid because the movie seems to exist in order to tell us that, after all, winning isn't everything.

Well, Ms Miller (above) humanizes things quite a bit, as does the rest of cast, with Mr. Rhys a standout among the supporting roles (that's Herr Brühl, below, left, with Sarah Greene).

From Anchor Bay Entertainment (the original theatrical release came via TWC) and running 101 minutes, Burnt was released last week on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download -- available for both purchase and rental.

The "feel-good" film as a kind of pornography: exploring CHEF and MY STRAIGHT SON

One recent evening immediately after we finished watching CHEF -- probably the most popular would-be "independent" film of the current year and a movie that everyone I know who goes to movies seemed to enjoy -- my spouse declared, "Feel-good movies are like pornography." "What do you mean?" I immediately asked him. He shrugged and answered, "I just feel that way about them." I mulled over his statement -- which all of a sudden seemed to make very good sense. "Are you saying," I enquired, "that watching pornography gives you inflated -- and mostly wrong -- notions about sex and how it should be, in the same way as feel-good movies give you inflated -- and mostly wrong -- notions about life and how it should be?"

"Yes," spouse replied. "That's it." Now, we both had enjoyed Chef, which is very cleverly written, acted and directed. But because everything -- and I mean every single thing in the movie -- works out as needed to leave everyone getting exactly what they want and as happy as clams, the aura of feel-good hangs over this film so heavily that it ought to make it difficult for a thinking person to embrace the movie fully. Interestingly, the fact that it is so very well-made (it's written and directed by Jon Favreau, pictured above) is an irony that actually adds to its burden. If it weren't so damn clever and enjoyble, you could see through it more quickly and keenly.

AZUL Y NO TAN ROSA (Blue and Not Quite Pink, in the English translation), which is being released to DVD with the simpler but not nearly as smart title, My Straight Son, is much less glossy and expertly finished yet is by far the stronger film. More melodramatic than it needs to be, and biting off such a huge chunk of "life" that you just know it won't be able to digest it all, the movie (written and directed by Miguel Ferrari, shown at right) turns out to offer us nothing less than the coming-of-age of an entire country, Venezuela -- from individuals and family to police, priests and the media. The subject, around which the movie circles and about which the populace is educated, concerns the rights of  "the other," with particular emphaiss on the GLBT population.

While Chef busies itself with the plight of the entitled to keep doing what it wants and what will bring it greater fortune and fame, Azul-Rosa/Straight Son cuts a swath through Venezuelan society that takes in various classes and cultures. Both films are quite entertaining, but what makes Chef so pornographically feel-good -- its characters getting everything they want without real life once intruding -- is what does not occur, and thus saves the Venezuelan film from that morally smarmy and skeevey overlay.

The protagonists here are the gay dad, fashion photographer Diego (Guillermo García, above, right), and his straight teenage son, Armondo (Ignacio Montes, above, left). The two have not seen each other for some years, and now Armondo, who lives in Spain with his mom, has come for an enforced and extended visit with a dad at whom he is very angry, and who is about to start a new life with his lover, a successful and kindly gynecologist named Fabrizio (Sócrates Serrano, below).

For his part Armondo becomes involved with a young girl on the Internet, and romance -- via the tango -- begins to stir. In the course of the story, which takes a few unexpected turns, the major characters must come to terms with death and rejection -- hardly staples of the feel-good genre -- while the supporting players, particularly the transgendered entertainer, Delirio (Hilda Abrahamz, below, left), and Perla Marina, Diego's assistant at work (Carolina Torres), are faced with their own issues of finding one's place in the world and spousal abuse.

By the end of this rich and rewarding movie, progress has made made on all fronts. But it's progress, not massive achievement, which again sets the film apart from its feel-good companions. How the son's relationship with his tango-loving girlfriend, below, comes to its conclusion provides yet another road that the feel-good film would never travel.

Especially fine is the manner in which the movie handles a popular Venezuelan TV show and its anything-for-ratings hostess (Beatriz Valdés, below). This is absolutely plum, and the short speech given by Delirio at movie's end, which in other circumstances might be heavy-handed, here seems just about perfect.

This TV show is watched by, it would seem, the entire Venezuelan populace, including Diego's parents (shown below), and his father's reactions to the the hostess, to his son's homosexuality, and to the priest who appear on the show to speak against gays and gay marriage, are interestingly contradictory and seem absolutely real.

For all its minor faults and occasional melodrama, on balance Blue and Not Quite Pink achieves a state of grace by virtue of its ability to confront its country's prejudices and hatreds and then help lift both its characters and the country out of the swamp of stupid consumerist culture into something approaching a little wisdom.

Both films have recently made their DVD debuts and interestingly enough have the same running time of 114 minutes. While Chef -- from Univeral Pictures -- has probably been viewed by one hundred times the audience that will see My Straight Son, I urge you to check out the latter, from TLA Releasing, and available now for both sale and rental.