Checked out a really good flick on iTunes called East-Side Sushi, a movie about Mexican-American chef who gets a job at a Japanese restaurant. It’s about the mostly gentle culture-clash but more about the actual conflict over whether she can become a sushi chef in a very traditional Japanese restaurant. Not only is she a woman (“women’s hands are too hot and will hurt the raw fish and their perfume will change the taste”) but she’s not-asian.

This movie works because it’s one of those smart indie flicks about a person pulling herself up by her boot-straps and proving she can do it. It’s gentle, fun, sweet, and powerful. She has to not only convince the restaurant she should be out of the kitchen and doing the sushi thing in front of the customers, but she also has to convince her skeptical papa and little girl that this raw fish with weird sticky rice is good.

Score: 88