Grape Jam - Moby Grape

Of grapes and gripes

Advantages: Exceptionally delicious
Disadvantages: Hard to find in Britain, and impossible to find in British supermarkets

One of the pleasures of visiting France is that there one can walk into any supermarket and buy fruit that is both tasty and ripe. This is in marked contrast to shopping in Britain, where the main retail chains seem to make it a point of principle to stock only the varieties with the least flavour and to sell them so under-ripe that any potential for flavour will have no chance to reach fruition. Anyone who has only ever eaten fruit bought from British supermarkets can have no notion of how good it can actually taste. Indeed, they will probably have grown up under the illusion that fruit is essentially tasteless. Of no fruit is this truer than the grape. I am just back from a short visit to France where I have been enjoying grapes of the muscat variety, which are universally on sale there at this time of year. Admittedly ...

torr 28.10.2009 (29.10.2009) · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: exceptional
Review of Muscat grapes

What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Advantages: Characters, Story.
Disadvantages: A little slow to begin with.

It's quite easy to dismiss What's Eating Gilbert Grape as being another clichéd love story if you choose to judge the film purely for its tagline "a film about the love you find... in the last place you look." If you choose to venture deeper, beyond the fairytale publicity, you will find that this film is actually a lot more realistic than the headlines attempt to make out. What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a family story with plenty of surprises, based on the novel by Peter Hedges. Gilbert (Johnny Depp) is in charge of caring for his mentally handicapped brother, Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio), while his sisters cook and clean for their 500-pound Mother (Darlene Cates). After the death of their Father a number of years ago, Gilbert has (reluctantly) been promoted to the male head of the Grape family. He also has to work at a local food store ...

andycarrington 02.07.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (DVD)

The Bitter Sweet Tale of Gilbert Grape

Advantages: A Beautiful Moving Film
Disadvantages: None

What's Eating Gilbert Grape, is a story of the title character who looks after his mother, brother and two sisters in the home that their father built just before he was 'hung out to dry' 17 years earlier in Endora, Iowa, 'where nothing ever much happens and nothing will.' Mama (Darlene Cates) used to be the 'prettiest gal in these parts' but is now a 600lb mountain of a woman and who hasn't stepped out of the front door for at least seven years and whose oversized proportions play havoc with the infrastructure of the house they still live in. Gilbert's (Johnny Depp) younger brother Arnie (Leonardo Di Caprio) is mentally handicapped and was never expected to survive much beyond childhood, and may not much longer. In fact, it could be any day now. As Gilbert sums it up in one line, 'Sometimes you want him to live. And sometimes you ...

Praski 21.01.2009 (22.01.2009) · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (DVD)