It’s Valentine’s Day. Some folks love it, others hate it. In years past, Film Threat has offered up choices of films to watch to get you laid, films to watch in defiance of V-Day and even short films that perfectly sum up the best and worsts of love. Today? Today I want to look at the broader chunks of the “holiday” itself.
Traditionally, chocolates, flowers and little teddy bears are given as Valentine’s Day gifts, and whereas I’d love to focus on Sean Connery or Nic Cage in cinematic bear suits, picking the top ten films involving or about chocolate for today’s “holiday” proved a much more fulfilling task. So, without further adieu, in no particular order, the Top Ten Chocolate Films:
10. “Chocolat”
It’s a movie about cooking! No? It’s a movie about moving! No? It’s a movie about gypsies! No? It’s a movie about a dysfunctional family of gypsies that move around whenever the wind changes direction and have a penchant for making kick-a*s sweets that broaden peoples’ minds and expand emotional boundaries… eh? Yes? And I thank you…
9. “Caddyshack”
While not about chocolate, you would be hard-pressed to argue that the scene with the chocolate candy bar and the pool is not one of the seminal scenes in the film, if not comedy cinema period. When Bill Murray takes that bite…
8. “Better Than Chocolate”
Should’ve been subtitled “The Tale of Two Lesbians,” this flick has got more sexy and naughty going on then “Bound” could ever think of, plus there’s lots of body painting. And lesbian sex… with body painting…
7. “Blood and Chocolate”
And werewolves, oh my. Not at all based on the Elvis Costello album, “Blood and Chocolate” is an adaptation of a young adult novel about a pack of werewolves living amongst society. The film doesn’t quite live up to the book (which doesn’t quite live up to the Elvis Costello album) but, eh, it DOES have chocolate in the title. Eh? Yeah…
6. “The Chocolate War”
Sell those chocolates, dammit! In my day, chocolate-selling drives in school would get you a bike or a trip to the amusement park, they weren’t a matter of life or death or a point of rebellious contention. Okay, maybe the latter (honestly, who wants to sell chocolates, magazines or anything else they try to get you to shill)…
5. “Forrest Gump”
For better or worse, the one quote everyone can remember from the damn film, and the thing that gets Gumpy chattering away about his life, is all about a box of freaking chocolates. We never get to see if the child-like Gump had poisoned them, and whether those he told his tale to ever actually survived his “kindness.”
4. “Gwar: Suprising Burst Of Chocolate Fudge”
Okay, so this isn’t a film so much as it is a Gwar video, but still, it’s hardly as offensive as “Forrest Gump” and at least it has “chocolate” in the title so… maybe picking ten films was harder than I initially thought…
3. “Bill Cosby: Himself”
I can’t help it, whenever I think of chocolate in films, I think of the sequence in “Bill Cosby: Himself” where Cosby goes on about giving his children chocolate cake for breakfast, and the horrifying consequences of such an act of love and devotion when his wife finds out. To this day I still have nightmares about pissing a woman off so severely that her face splits in half, showing only a skeleton shooting fire from the eye sockets…
2. “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory / Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”
While they are hardly the same movie, they are the same basic story so… we’ll just lump them together. Personally, I prefer Gene Wilder to Johnny Depp (You lose! Good day, sir!), but a chocolate river is a chocolate river…
1. “Like Water for Chocolate”
This movie is all over the place. There’s romance, good cooking, violent deaths, ghostly hauntings, sex… sure it can be hard to follow, but watching this film not only gives you something romantic to do on Valentine’s Day, it also counts towards college credit in Spanish. Yup, ask around.
There you go, the top ten films involving or about chocolate. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below and, as an added bonus for reading all the way through, here’s a special Valentine’s Day Happy Tree Friends video:
