No Reservations for Mostly Martha

Last weekend on a Friday night we sat down to watch an old favorite Movie - No reservations. Its a Foodie's movie.

It had Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart. It was a slick American movie and just the perfect light entertainment for a Friday night after a long week at work. A glass of wine on the couch and an entertaining movie makes for the perfect Friday night.

In between last Friday and this Friday, I found "Mostly Martha", a remake, NO, actually the original German movie.

Since travelling, we seek out French and Italian movies and find that the Americans often do remakes (even of their own old movies). No Reservations was made in 2007 where Mostly Martha came out in 2001.

I found that Mostly Martha was more real, and a little gritty compared to No Reservations. Maybe the difference was the harshness of the German setting of the docks and winter. The two main characters are not overly attractive in the movie star sense.

No Reservations did follow the original storyline quite well however I found Mostly Martha more realistic and a tinge more sad.

I wouldn't say one was better than the other - just different. It's interesting to see how cinema is treated in different countries.
Take humour for instance - compare British humour to American humour and as for Australian humour!!!! 
Here in Australia, we are offered both British and American humour but very little European humour - so I buy from the small "World" section of DVDs. Our Euro collection is growing as is our sense of international humour.

Added to the collection recently are "My Best Friend" with Daniel Auteuil and Dany Boon. "The Closet", again with Auteuil was funny. Depardieu whom we saw in the US film "Green card" was also in this movie.
Maybe some of you out there can suggest other Euro movies that we might try.