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IMDbPro

City of Gold

  • 2015
  • R
  • 1h 36m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
1.1K
YOUR RATING
Jonathan Gold in City of Gold (2015)
Official Trailer 2
Play trailer2:20
3 Videos
8 Photos
BiographyDocumentary

A documentary portrait that takes us into Jonathan Gold's universe to tell the improbable story of a revolution inspired by the pen, but driven by the palate.A documentary portrait that takes us into Jonathan Gold's universe to tell the improbable story of a revolution inspired by the pen, but driven by the palate.A documentary portrait that takes us into Jonathan Gold's universe to tell the improbable story of a revolution inspired by the pen, but driven by the palate.

  • Director
    • Laura Gabbert
  • Writer
    • Laura Gabbert
  • Stars
    • Genet Agonafer
    • David Chang
    • Roy Choi
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.2/10
    1.1K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Laura Gabbert
    • Writer
      • Laura Gabbert
    • Stars
      • Genet Agonafer
      • David Chang
      • Roy Choi
    • 8User reviews
    • 22Critic reviews
    • 72Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 3 nominations total

    Videos3

    City of Gold
    Trailer 2:20
    City of Gold
    City of Gold
    Trailer 1:24
    City of Gold
    City of Gold
    Trailer 1:24
    City of Gold
    City of Gold
    Trailer 2:22
    City of Gold

    Photos7

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    Top cast20

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    Genet Agonafer
    • Self
    David Chang
    David Chang
    • Self
    Roy Choi
    Roy Choi
    • Self
    Duane Earle
    Duane Earle
    • Self
    Jonathan Gold
    Jonathan Gold
    • Self
    Michelle Huneven
    • Self
    Evan Kleiman
    • Self
    Ludo Lefebvre
    Ludo Lefebvre
    • Self
    Peter Meehan
    • Self
    Laurie Ochoa
    • Self
    John Powers
    • Self
    Ruth Reichl
    Ruth Reichl
    • Self
    Allen Salkin
    Allen Salkin
    • Self
    Robert Sietsema
    • Self
    Nancy Silverton
    Nancy Silverton
    • Self
    Jervey Tervalon
    • Self
    Calvin Trillin
    Calvin Trillin
    • Self
    Garth Trinidad
    • Self
    • Director
      • Laura Gabbert
    • Writer
      • Laura Gabbert
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews8

    7.21.1K
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    Featured reviews

    5miller07436-18-462995

    Wanted to like it...

    You might approach this film in the same way that I did: with a deep respect for Gold's work and a general interest in so-called foodie culture. You might have even first encountered Gold's work in much the same way that I did--by stumbling upon a glowing review pasted near your table in some hole-in-the-wall eatery (in my case, the Chung King Restaurant in the Monterey Park location that now houses Huolala). Like me, you'll certainly find much to enjoy in this documentary such as the fascinating forays into some of his most liked restaurants (perhaps some of which you have even been to) and the bemusing insights into his personal life (as a "failed cellist"; as a man of voracious appetites for food, knowledge, culture, and so on). Unfortunately, these small vignettes amount to the entirety of the film's charm and there is little to elevate it to greater than the sum of its parts.

    City of Gold feels disjointed, fragmented, and altogether uncompleted to me. I don't necessarily feel that a documentary must ascribe some overarching meaning to its subject--a character study can often stand on its own--but even as a character study, the film fell flat. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what is included and when it is included in the film. Instead, even some of the most fascinating points simply feel shoehorned in at awkward times. The final twenty or thirty minutes, for instance, use a KCRW guest DJ appearance by Gold as a sort of refrain. It is a cheap way to investigate his persona and it fails to link up with much of anything else in the documentary.

    My biggest gripe with City of Gold is how it failed in a way that ultimately separates good documentaries from mediocre ones: much of it felt like performance rather than unadulterated insight. In some scenes, he is at the LA Times offices and in meeting with his editors and others to discuss upcoming pieces. Any notion of unfiltered access is immediately dispelled: much of the conversation seems addressed to the camera (the viewer) and it feels both stilted and pretending.

    The film, as short as it is, feels at least twenty minutes too long. At the conclusion, it fails to make up for this. There is a great documentary somewhere inside of City of Gold. Had I turned it off after the first 30 minutes, my review would likely be 8 stars but, well, it just kept going (nowhere).
    9stevenpmagstadt

    Must-See For Foodies

    If I am honest, I have never understood the appeal of the city of Los Angeles, but that is because perhaps I have never sought to understand it the way I have New York City. Jonathan Gold comments in the beginning of City of Gold that, "If you live in L.A. you're used to having people explain your city to you."

    He explains that tourists often think they have unravelled the secret of a city that - instead of developing from a central business district outward - has developed from multiple scattered, unique centers which have over time bled toward one another leaving odd bits of space in between them where almost anything could develop. Gold points out that with this many cultural influences and communities, "The fault lines between them are sometimes where you find the most beautiful thing."

    While the film is technically about Gold, who is the first food critic to receive a Pulitzer Prize for his writing, this is also a love story about the individual human threads that make up the city of Los Angeles and how the interaction of people through food helps define and preserve a sense of community.

    Gold comments at one point that in L.A., "There really is a there-ness beneath the thereness," and the film is a visually appealing blend of sweeping aerial views and gritty, carefully chosen street level cameos paired with sounds that highlight the city's worlds within worlds and keeps what otherwise might have been merely a series of commentated meals from feeling monotonous.

    Calvin Trillins, Evan Kleinman, Roy Choi, Ruth Reichl, and many others join in those meals and their carefully curated asides help explain how Gold writes, and why he doesn't operate similarly to any other food critic because as David Chang put it, "His empathy level is higher than anyone else's."

    A favorite scene in the film follows Gold and his two children through an art museum. His son was slightly shaggy and inquisitive, and his daughter was wearing all sorts of layers and colors, her eyes were wide, and her smile was like sunlight on water. It was apparent that they were fully aware they were allowed to be themselves, and this summed up a lot about the way Gold perhaps sees, eats, and writes: You take things as they come because they are what they are for a reason, and they feed us in different ways.

    I brought a friend with me to a screening of the film whose tastes in viewing do not usually tend toward documentaries, and he was irritated with me afterward. It turned out he had immensely enjoyed the film, but complained that it had made him terribly hungry. I didn't apologize. Watch City of Gold, and tip over the edge into Jonathan Gold's world of spices, scents, and beautifully chosen words until you understand what he means when he says that cooking is what makes us human. You might leave hungry, but hunger is life, and you can always go eat something unexpectedly real after the film is over.
    7paul-allaer

    Insightful documentary on today's Los Angeles (through the eyes of Jonathan Gold)

    "City of Gold" (2015 documentary; 96 min.) is a documentary about Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic for the LA Times. As the documentary opens, we see Gold sitting at his computer and looking at a blank screen. Then all of the sudden the words start to roll and the voice-over gives us Gold's 2014 review of Guerilla Tacos, a food truck, To tell you more would spoil your viewing pleasure, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

    Couple of comments: the documentary is written, produced and directed by Laura Gabbert, who previously brought us the equally delightful "No Impact Man". Here she profiles the well-known food critic (and erstwhile music critic) Jonathan Gold. I really didn't know much about this man before seeing this. Turns out he is a down-to-earth guy, driving around his Dodge pick-up truck, little ego to speak of yet obviously very smart. One thing that he is very passionate about is his love for LA (he grew up there), and the diversity of the food that is available there, due to the city being a melting pot of cultures (or as Gold coins it, "a great glittering mosaic"). It seems that he'd rather visit and review food trucks and authentic holes-in-the-walls as opposed to the fancy 5 star French restaurant. Just as Gold is using food only a pretext to write about the city, so also does Habbert only use Gold as a pretext to paint a portrait of LA. And along the way, we get the answer to questions such as "why do we need food critics when we have Yelp reviews?" If you are wondering whether you need to be a foodie yourself in order to enjoy this film, my answer is a clear "no" (I'm not a foodie either). Bottom line: this is an enjoyable and insightful documentary about a food critic and his interactions with the food scene in Los Angeles.

    "City of Gold" recently had a one-week run at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. As it happened, I caught the movie on its very last day of that run. Not surprisingly, I had a private screening, as in: I literally was the only person in the theater. Hopefully this is the kind of movie that will find a wider audience once it becomes available on VOD and eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. Meanwhile, if you like documentaries or if you are a foodie, "City of Gold" is certainly worth checking out.
    9rachaelblakeegypt

    Great job on the documentary

    Laura did a great job on the documentary that Cornicles Jonathan's journey of many years that takes him though Los Angeles and surrounding suburbs. I see lots of documentaries and I think this is one of the most interesting and enjoyable ones that I have seen: and it's not that I am bias as he is my son in-law. I actually found out things that I did not know about his early life.

    If anything, City of Gold could use a dash more Jonathan Gold. Only toward the end does it reveal he grew up in South Central, where his earliest memories were tanks growling down the streets during the Watts riots. At twelve, he was a cello prodigy. At twenty he was grinding the cello in a punk band, and soon met his wife, Laurie Ochoa, at the LA Weekly when she was an intern and he a proofreader. Twenty-five years of marriage later, she's still his favorite taco truck date. And despite the last decade of accolades, he remains punk at heart, staggering at a Vietnamese joint named Pho Kim.

    One of the film's funniest scenes is of Gold's brother Mark, an environmentalist, taking him to task for supporting sushi restaurants that sell blue-fin tuna. "Jonathan is eating everything I'm trying to save," he sighs, though Mark is grateful his brother decried shark fin soup. Yet City of Gold's most resonant moment is Gold walking through an art museum with his son and daughter, passing on his father's love of culture to the next generation. When his boy asks why a figurine doesn't have eyes, Gold explains that sometimes the facts of a portrait aren't the priority — a philosophy his reviews serve up with every plate.

    Source: http://www.megashare-viooz.net/city-gold-2015.html
    JohnDeSando

    The food and doc are golden.

    "A hundred different dishes can be good in a hundred different ways." Jonathan Gold

    Although Los Angeles is many things to many people, most of us who know it more than in passing can agree its place for diverse ethnic food is about numero uno in the universe. It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow those of us who long for Korean one day and American the next, one day Thai the next Mexican, and so it goes. The true LA Gold is Jonathan Gold, the food critic who elevated mom and pop to king and queen. Who'd have thought the home of film glamour was also the home of casual, strip mall dining elevated to Oscar worthy.

    The new documentary, City of Gold, follows Jonathan Gold around the city and its ethnic enclaves where he started his culinary journey to The LA Times. Did you ever stop at a Salvadoran stand on Pico Blvd. for a pupusas? Gold makes you wish you had. Are you aware that he made us aware of the greatness of Marisco Jalisco and Jitlada? Guelaguetza's barbacoa tacos live in glory because of Gold.

    This robust raconteur can write about a taco as if it were a truffle. Not because he embellishes but because he gets to the heart of the experience of social sharing found in the food's tasty essence. Although he never fully explains why certain food is worthy of his exaltation, his Odyssey around town, punctuated by shots inside his car while he passes little restaurants and comments on their merits, or rarely the lack thereof, is more about ethnic diversity than tasty dining.

    More often than not he is praising the food until you long for a moment of real truth that exposes it for the crap it might taste like. Perhaps he has reserved his negative criticism for passing comments about the effects of the infamous Watts riots. Maybe that's the point—this sunshiny critic saves his negativity for the one non-food disaster everyone can agree on. Only in that instance can you feel he is fully objective about this checkered city.

    In the end, City of Gold is a paean to a melting-pot town of such food glamour that you forget the monumental traffic and epic social clashes. It is a rousing depiction of one critic's ability to bring a city together around one table. Robust and inclusive, Gold doesn't so much deconstruct food as he infuses it with energy:

    "Taco should be a verb." Gold

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Jonathan Gold played 'Cello while studying at UCLA.
    • Quotes

      Jonathan Gold: I very rarely take notes in a restaurant. I'm more involved in, sort of, observing the music of the meal. I mean, you could take notes when you're having sex too but you'd, sort of, be missing out on something.

    • Soundtracks
      To Mourn
      Written and Performed by Ryan Rumery

      Courtesy of Ryan Rumery

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    FAQ16

    • How long is City of Gold?Powered by Alexa

    Details

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    • Release date
      • March 11, 2016 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official site
      • Official site
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Город Голда
    • Filming locations
      • UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $640,979
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $62,959
      • Mar 13, 2016
    • Gross worldwide
      • $680,618
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 36 minutes
    • Color
      • Color

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