Frank Chambers (Jack Nicholson), a drifter, stops at a rural California diner for a meal, and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a young, beautiful woman, Cora Smith (Jessica Lange), and her much older husband, Nick Papadakis (John Colicos), who is an immigrant from Greece. Frank and Cora start to have an affair soon after they meet. Cora is tired of her situation, married to a man she does not love, and working at a diner that she wishes to own and improve. She and Frank scheme to murder Nick in order to start a new life together without her losing the diner. Their first attempt at the murder is a failure, but they eventually succeed.
On the New Jersey Shore in the 1950s, two Italian immigrant brothers from Abruzzo own and operate a restaurant called "Paradise." One brother, Primo (Tony Shalhoub), is a brilliant, perfectionist chef who chafes under their few customers' expectations of "Americanized" Italian food. Their uncle's offer for them to return to Rome to help with his restaurant is growing in appeal to Primo. The younger brother, Secondo (Tucci), is the restaurant manager, a man enamored of the possibilities presented by their new endeavor and life in America. Despite Secondo's efforts and Primo's magnificent food, their restaurant is failing.
Angélique is a young French woman who suffers from social anxiety disorder and is afraid of just about everything. She regularly attends a support group for other people like her. Jean-René, who owns a small manufacturer of chocolate called the Chocolate Mill, also suffers from social anxiety, and is afraid of many things, particularly intimacy. The Chocolate Mill is failing because it makes a plain, old-fashioned kind of chocolate that no longer sells well.
Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot), a renowned chef from Périgord, is astonished when the President of the Republic (Jean d'Ormesson) appoints her his personal cook, responsible for creating all his meals at the Élysée Palace. Despite jealous resentment from the other kitchen staff, Hortense quickly establishes herself, thanks to her indomitable spirit. The authenticity of her cooking soon seduces the President, but the corridors of power are littered with traps...
Pierre a stuffy, self-righteous volunteer at a telephone helpline for depressed people and his well-meaning but naïve co-worker Thérèse, are stuck with the Christmas Eve shift in the Paris office, much to their displeasure.
All her life, Isabella has suffered from motion sickness. Because of her illness she couldn't play much with other children. She stayed at home and learned how to cook, becoming a renowned chef as an adult. She fell in love with Toninho and they opened a restaurant together, with Isabella stuck in the kitchen and Toninho out front taking the credit.
André Polonski est un pianiste virtuose, de renommée internationale. D'abord marié avec Mika, directrice d'une grande entreprise de chocolat suisse, il l'a quittée pour Lisbeth, avec qui il a eu un fils, Guillaume. Lorsque Lisbeth est morte dans un accident de voiture, c'est presque naturellement qu'il s'est remarié avec Mika.
English gangster Albert Spica has taken over the high-class Le Hollandais Restaurant, run by French chef Richard Boarst. Spica makes nightly appearances at the restaurant with his retinue of thugs. His oafish behavior causes frequent confrontations with the staff and his own customers, whose patronage he loses, but whose money he seems not to miss.
The setting is 1990s contemporary Taipei, Taiwan. Mr. Chu (C: 老朱, P: Lǎo Zhū "Old Chu"; Sihung Lung), a widower who is a master Chinese chef, has three unmarried daughters, each of whom challenges any narrow definition of traditional Chinese culture:
In 1830, the sinister Crouteux Inn is set in wild and disturbing mountains ariegeois country. The establishment is run by Martin and Rose, a couple of innkeepers who regularly murdered by Violet - their deaf-mute adopted son - solo travelers to rob. One stormy night, a stagecoach in difficulty refuge in the inn. Among the travelers, the good father has been responsible Carnus a novice it must lead to a monastery lost in the mountains. Martin innkeeper learns that the route of a new road will divert travelers from its establishment. Fearing to be ruined, he decided to remove and jettison all travelers, despite opposition from his wife to the murder of the priest.
A NASA spacecraft has landed on an unknown planet and begins to take rock and soil samples. Four aliens discover it and are sucked up through its vacuum, after which it makes its way back to Earth. The aliens are able to escape from a military base by using their powers (with which they can destroy or heal anything they touch). During the escape, the youngest one hides in a passing van, occupied by a wheelchair-bound boy named Eric Cruise, his older brother, Michael, and their single mother, Janet, who are moving to California from Illinois.
Patsy, who has a strong penchant for alcohol, especially for a famous brand of champagne, and Eddie, obsessed with her curves and perpetually electrified by cocaine it soothes by countless different sleeping pills, have once been set May 68 but already on the barricades they were at a place that was not really theirs. Today, both reached fifty, rabid feminists continue to say no to anything, they say, degrades the weaker sex: cooking, living alongside a man raising a child. But feminism May 68 and the "seventies" is no longer for them a vague nostalgia that is lost in their nebulous mind. Eddie ended up getting married and became the mother of a beautiful girl Bachelor ... then divorced but still lives off her ex-husband under the same roof, the only client of his last living "public relations," being a perpetually Chantal Goya tour ass. Patsy, she preferred to remain single and independent but spent his life living muse to countless men hook succeeding one after the other over the years, and both, real "fashion victims", today totally dissolute life completely "crazy" resolutely eccentric, to the discouragement of the family of Eddie. The life of Eddie and Patsy is only champagne at any time of day or night, invaded atmosphere of tobacco smoke joints, cocaine, luxury toilets ... and parasitism by attending fashion stars and the show. Eddie would lead Safrane, his daughter, in the tornado of his "values" in light years of work and family life. But this is still a virgin at 17 and prepares the Polytechnic entrance exam. The husband, played by Yves Renier, no longer supports permanent pranks, alcoholism, grotesque and pathological irresponsibility of his ex-wife who also literally invades the house.
Le film s’inspire de l’essai Fast Food Nation d’Eric Schlosser. Il traite de la production de nourriture à grande échelle aux États-Unis et conclut que la viande et les légumes produits par ce type d’industrie sont mauvais pour la santé et pour l’environnement malgré les messages et l'imagerie présents sur les emballages des aliments. Pour cela l'enquête s'attache sur l'élevage industriel de bovins et d'ovins en interrogeant des éleveurs enchaînés à leurs emprunts dans le but de suivre le cahier des charges des grandes firmes agroalimentaires comme Cargill ou Smithfield Foods ainsi que sur le rôle prépondérant du maïs la plupart du temps maïs génétiquement modifié dans la composition de la quasi-totalité des produits vendus en supermarché aux Etats-Unis et ailleurs dans le monde. Le témoignage d'une mère devenue défenseuse des droits des consommateurs à la suite du décès accidentel de son fils, Kevin Kowalcyk, empoisonné par la bactérie Escherichia coli après avoir mangé un hamburger apporte un argument supplémentaire. Cette famille a obtenu gain de cause avec l'adoption de la Kevin's Law.
Semi-retired Mexican-American chef Martin Naranjo (Héctor Elizondo) shares a suburban Los Angeles home with his three adult daughters. Although he has lost the senses of smell and taste since his wife's death, he still cooks elaborate, multi-course meals for his family and friends. The women humor their father's old-fashioned ways, but each is searching for fulfillment outside the family circle.
Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) inherits her late mother's restaurant, but lacks her mother's ability to cook. The restaurant is failing when Amanda meets a mysterious and possibly magical man at the local market. He introduces himself as Gene O'Reilly and claims to be an old friend of her mother's. He sells her crabs, one of which escapes cooking to become her personal mascot. This special crab is magical and it casts spells, with a wave of its claw. Amanda meets her love interest at the market, Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery), a department store manager at Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue, who is opening an ambitious new restaurant inside his store. It is never explicitly explained why, but this eventful day transforms Amanda into a miraculous food magician; people who now eat her impressive new dishes start feeling exactly what she was feeling when she was making the dish. These are inspired by her emotions and created with the help of her magic crab. Amanda saves her restaurant overnight, and her relationship with Tom blossoms just as fast. However, Tom, being a career-minded control freak, panics when he realizes that not only could she be a witch who could be casting spells on him, but that his own emotions are getting the best of him, and he promptly dumps her. When Amanda goes to confront Tom one last time at his office, she witnesses the violent tantrum and resignation of a celebrity French chef hired for the opening of Tom's new restaurant. When it is discovered that Amanda is in fact the hot new chef in town everyone is talking about, she is hired on the spot, despite Tom's protests. Once Amanda overcomes her self-doubts and insecurities, she reaches her full potential as a chef, and the opening is a complete success. Though Tom refuses to taste Amanda's food during the opening, he eventually admits to himself he was wrong to reject Amanda because she made him feel emotional. He finally decides to embrace his feelings for her and goes after her. At the last minute, he reaches her with his own personal magic (a paper airplane), and the two reconcile on the dance floor.