Kathmandu:

Adrienne Shelly who was murdered in New York after completing Waitress in which she was director, co-star and writer is a loss to bemoan because here is a movie about love, hate, food and babies that is fantastic and brings to mind another great movie about a restaurant, Fried Green Tomatoes.

Even the normally bitchy Glenn Kenny says that under Shelly’s direction, a waitress called Jenna played by Keri Russell, “with a terrific blend of sweet charm and indefatigable cussedness, doesn’t just serve pies at the local diner, she concocts them, and the many elaborately-named, innovatively flavour-mixing creations she bakes throughout the picture form a mouth-watering leitmotif. Pie is just the right food with which to describe this sweet film — ‘soufflé’ has too much of a connotation of airiness, and while this picture’s unabashedly a comic one, it’s also got some substance to it.”

Adds critic Brian Marder, “For waitress Jenna (Keri Russell), life is a pie—but that’s strictly in culinary terms, not metaphorical. In fact, life is anything but easy or exciting for her: She spends every day working for a boss (Lew Temple) she hates before going home to a husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto), she hates even more. The lone highlight of Jenna’s day — besides seeing her only two friends, Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Adrienne Shelly), at work — comes when assembling, naming and baking her town-renowned daily pie; today it’s the self-explanatory “I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby” pie. To her, having a baby would put on hold her dreams of winning an upcoming $25,000 pie contest, which would enable her to leave Earl. Alas, she finds out she is pregnant with Earl’s baby, but something good comes out of her trip to the OB/GYN—her new, young doc from Connecticut, Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). He’s different and his attitude is alien to this Southern town, but he makes

Jenna feel like she matters and it’s not long before she reciprocates. As her due date nears and their secretive affair progresses, her confusion only grows, but she finds clarity from the most unexpected source.”

Film writer Jenny Peters feels that Michael Douglas might get an Oscar nomination for King Of California, a movie about a dysfunctional family who build a relationship.

Says Jenny Peters, “Charlie (Michael Douglas) has been a mess for quite a while. A jazz musician, who has battled schizophrenia and manic depression for years, has spent the last couple living in a mental hospital. His 16-year-old daughter Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood) has been living on her own in the family home (mom is long gone), having quit school and gone to work at McDonald’s to make ends meet. When Charlie is released he’s developed an obsession with a legendary cache of Spanish gold doubloons, reportedly buried near their dusty California home. When Charlie begins to convince Miranda that he really isn’t crazy — at least when it comes to the treasure — together they begin a Don Quixote-like journey that cements their fractured relationship back together.

These days Douglas, now 62, has said he needs a really good reason to leave his family, so this role, where he can play a scraggly bearded, wild-eyed, edge-of-nuts guy, is just the ticket. Meanwhile, 20-year-old Evan Rachel Wood proves that she really is an acting force to be reckoned with, giving a gently nuanced performance as a girl who has had to grow up way too soon, yet still completely loves the father who has struggled to care for her as he struggles with his personal demons.