Movies: October

Julie & Julia (October 16)
Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a keen cook. She’s also a failed novelist, now working as a bureaucratic cog in an office cubicle. She’d like to try blogging but her mundane life offers little to blog about – so she commits to cooking her way, in 365 days, through all 524 recipes in the seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. Even if you’re unfamiliar with Child, who popularised French cookery in the US in the 1960s, you’ll enjoy Meryl Streep’s portrayal of her: smart, eccentric, enthusiastic and disarmingly natural. Nora Ephron’s funny and engaging film offers two autobiographies in one, interleaving Powell’s year-long journey to fame with Child’s decade-long battle with French chauvinists and American publishers. Delicious and not at all fattening. 8/10Jonathan Empson

Chéri (October 30)
Léa (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates) are rich Parisian courtesans at the end of their “careers” in 1906. Léa takes on the task of making a man of Peloux’s son Chéri, but they inconveniently fall in love. Too cool to admit it, they pretend not to care when Peloux finds a bride for Chéri. From Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) and Stephen Frears (The Queen), this should be better, but the stars struggle with their (English) accents and sound more wooden than witty. Like the characters, it’s pretty but uninvolving. 6/10 J.E

Moon (October 23)
Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the sole human operator of a mining base on the moon, but when he wakes up in the infirmary after an accident, he finds he’s no longer alone. This low-budget psychological mystery owes a little too much to sci-fi classics like Silent Running and 2001, but is a nice change from effects-driven blockbusters. 6/10 J.E.