Pressure Cooker- yummy

[AfroPixFlix]

A “feel good” film about Philly inner-city high schoolers trying to overcome the odds and meet with success in with an unconventional twist. They’re into culinary arts. At the center of this is their martinet teacher, Wilma Stephenson. She has all the grace of an army staff sergeant, cussing, commanding and ceaselessly yapping her strident opinions about every possible subject into the ears of these kids. The documentary follows her students throughout a school year as they prepare for an all-city cook-off that may land them hundreds of thousands of scholarships to schools and cooking institutes. There’s a brilliantly-paced denouement at the very end of the film, with the tension-building award ceremony rivaling the angst of perhaps the best documentary on cooking competitions, The Kings of Pastry. Two big shortcomings of the Philly Pressure Cooker film are: (a)  the barely discernible mumblings of the students and; (b) a failure to clearly explain what the early in-school cooking and serving practice runs were about. Further, although we were given in-depth information about the four featured students’ personal lives, there was hardly any mention of Wilma Stephenson’s home life, other than her own pronouncements early in the film about her struggle from poverty. Sated, AfroPixFlix puts down his perfect Potato Tournée and threads four fondue forks into this one. All ages.Presshuh-Cookah