Tom Jones with Albert Finney. Best Food as Sex scene EVER!
And it makes them very happy. 
Just wanted to second the recommendation for Tampopo; it’s such a neat movie, and it fits in with all of your themes: Food as Art, Food in Cultures, Food as Transformation, and Food as Sex. It’s one of my favorite movies, and it not only makes me hungry for ramen, but it’s funny and just confidence-building.
It shouldn’t be difficult at all to edit out the naughty bits. Whenever you see the man in the white suit and his girlfriend in a hotel room, just skip the scene. Within those scenes, she appears topless and he eats raw oysters from between her breasts (or her stomach? It’s been a while since I’ve seen it). There’s nothing “adult” in the rest of the movie, if I remember correctly. If you’re watching on DVD, that’s even aligned to the chapter skips.
tiltypig: We’re using bits of Fisher, but most of her stuff and Reichl is frankly over my student’s heads. The bulk of my students got Cs in High School, and the prose needs to be pretty straightforward. I’ll look into Slater – they love Anthony Bourdain.
Sol: I’ve seen the film; basically the only thing that needs to be cut is the sex scene in the middle. I might try stopping it there and the fastforwarding whle they take a bathroom break.
A little late, but how about Pleasantville](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120789/)? The enormous breakfast that the mom cooks and how she’s always ready with a cookie or something for the children could be useful. There’s also the use of the local diner as a gathering place and then later as a fortress/shelter/headquarters of sorts. And that apple scene, where the girl picks the apple and it blooms into color. A bit of a cliche, using an apple to symbolize knowledge, but beautifully presented.
There’s also Simply Irresistible. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character discovers she has magical powers when she realizes her cooking has phenomenal effects. It’s a bit of a silly romantic comedy, but might be interesting if someone could bring themselves to do a serious reading of it.
There are a bunch of fairy tales that include a phrase along the lines of “like meat loves salt.” They
Ugh, stupid laptop.
Anyway, I was about to post a link to this this, which lists a bunch of things that reference meat and salt. Here’s a link to the text of a bunch of those stories. The contents page allows you to see fairy tales grouped by topic. There’s no food topic, but there is one on, um, breaking wind. And on cannibalism and some others that might be useful. This is the best site on the internet for a lead on fairy tale references and types.
Who doesn’t love Anthony Bourdain? He’s fabulous, a really fun writer.
What about Food as a Weapon? I’m reminded of Flowers in the Attic because of
the cookies with powdered sugar that’s really arsenic.
Or perhaps that would go under Food as Power? Off the top of my head I can’t think of another movie or book where food was used as a weapon, but that’s what came to mind.
First thing I thought of with the thread title!
Another not yet mentioned may not have had all that much direct food content, but I know that as soon as we finished seeing it we had to go get some Italian – lots of Italian: that would be Moonstruck.
Try out Cuisine américaine, starring Jason Lee (of Jay and Silent Bob fame) in a well-acted dramatic role. Lee plays an American cooking student from a hard-knocks culinary background (galley chef in the Navy) trying to make a name for himself on the Parisian restaurant scene. Many of your students will identify with his character.
The movie is French, but the dialogue is predominately English.
Sounds terrific. Thanks.
Any idea where I can get it?
Strange Brew? Isn’t beer food? :dubious:
More seriously, the British TV series Chef! is very funny, and IMDB has a review from an experienced Chef-Patissiere who says it’s more or less realistic.
I understand it is difficult to get ahold of – I’m not clear on whether or not there’s ever been a VHS or DVD release. It was shown on the Women’s Entertainment channel (WE) a few times in 2001-2002 … maybe they’ll show it again sometime?
Well, I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough – there is a videotape version (PAL, though) and a European DVD version.
A Private Function, starring Michael Palin, Maggie Smith. A comedy of class struggle and food rationing in post-WW2 Britain. A fair amount of barnyard humor–maybe this one could fit in the “poop movies” thread.
Serial Mom had a great scene where someone was murdered with a leg of lamb, IIRC. There are actually, now that I think of it, some fabulous food scenes in that movie.