MOVIE REVIEW: "Step Up To The Plate" 

Blend the peek at the creative process in "elBulli: Cooking In Progress" with the familial concerns of "Jiro Dreams Of Sushi," and you've got "Step Up To The Plate" (or the better French title, "Entre Les Bras"). It's a lovely, lyrically shot documentary that spends four seasons with renowned chef Michel Bras as he prepares to retire from his restaurant in Aveyron and pass his formidable legacy — along with three coveted Michelin stars — onto son Sébastien, a 40something family man who inherited his father's exacting talent. There are a few unnecessarily extended interludes of the two men thinking, but, fortunately, even more scenes of them bickering, which illustrate what we suspect: Michel respects Séba as a peer, and he's nowhere near ready to stop raging against the dying of the [pilot] light.