Julie & Julia

A Manhattan office worker named Julie Powell (Amy Adams) conceives an ambitious spare-time project: to spend a year cooking her way through all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and writing about it on her blog. Writer-director Nora Ephron’s movie has a lot going for it: a clever concept interweaving Powell’s book with Child’s memoir My Life in France; Adams herself (of course); Chris Messina as Powell’s supportive yet put-upon spouse; Stanley Tucci as Child’s adoring husband; and Ephron’s own light touch and lively pace. Most of all, there’s Meryl Streep’s deliriously comic turn as the master chef; Julia Child never had it so good. Streep is surely headed for yet another Oscar nomination; those who (churlishly) say she’s so perfect she’s boring are just too easily bored.