The Grand Budapest Hotel

The film's food is Mendl's, and Mendl's is the courtesan au chocolat. Wes Anderson concentrates the movie's entire culinary life into one perfect pastry and its pale-pink box. There isn't a distinct savory set-piece to reproduce — the pâtisserie is the cuisine of this world — so the kitchen here is a single, glorious dessert.

The pastry is a plot device. A boxful of courtesans au chocolat smuggles the tools for a prison break past the guards, who cannot bring themselves to damage anything so lovely. In Anderson's universe, beauty is functional.

Everything is composed. The symmetry, the pastels, the frilled tiers — the courtesan au chocolat is the film in miniature: fussy, exact, nostalgic, and secretly holding everything together. Recreating one badly is its own kind of tribute.