Every month, Establishing Shot brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.
Noni Ford, contributor | Tampopo (1985)
What begins as a rest stop for two truck drivers who get in a scuffle when the locals harass the shop owner quickly becomes so much more when said shop owner, Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto), asks them to train her to become the best ramen shop in town. Through perseverance, research, and testing the unlikely pairing of this single mother and Gun (Ken Watanabe), the truck driver with culinary skills, balloons out to a whole host of characters who join in for one reason or another on the adventure. As we see Tampopo learn and grow through practice in her kitchen and picking up tricks of the service trade, we see her growing confidence in the ability to produce the most visited ramen shop in town.
Interspersed with this main story, the film also shares different shorter tales and practices of food culture in Japan amongst a diverse assortment of casts, from women at a manners seminar to a sexually charged food tryst in a hotel room. There’s nothing directly tying this web of characters together other than their reliance on food as an expression of relief, happiness, and understanding. Despite the Jûzô Itami film never explicitly being a romance, there is a certain spark between Gun and his prodigy, particularly once she begins turning the shop around. We’re not waiting for an old Hollywood kiss, though; that almost seems like too simplistic of an ending for the two. Instead, we get to see the slow burn as they throw themselves into the ramen shop and their reverence and appreciation develops as they see the care and attention the other puts into this endeavor. Food isn’t itself love, but the process of creating it and consuming it is a vessel for the emotions of every single person we see onscreen.
At a time where food culture is so prevalent on the small screen (The Bear, No Taste Like Home, etc.) and luxury food sales are so popular amongst consumers, this film felt very relevant today. Good food takes work to produce and Itami’s depiction of food enjoyment and love primed me for the food tour I’m about to embark on this summer.
Michaela Owens, Editor | The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)
Without question, the best film I encountered this month was the new adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo. Lush production design, stunning cinematography, great characters, and a plot filled with twists and turns that had me gasping in surprise and delight make this French blockbuster both ridiculously fun and heartbreakingly poignant as its tale of revenge unfolds across three hours (which honestly only felt like two).
Given its action-packed opening sequence as our title character rescues a woman from a shipwreck, setting in motion a life-changing chain of events he never saw coming, I’ll admit I expected more of a swashbuckling tone, having also never read the book. However, the filmmaking here is so good that the lack of Errol Flynn-style swordplay never became a disappointment, with dramatic moments heightened by slow motion (a choice that feels right every time, which is a magic trick in and of itself), an impressive orchestral score, smart editing, and emotional stakes that invest you in the story every step of the way. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a modern blockbuster like this, making me even more grateful I caught it on the big screen when we showed it at IU Cinema. Whether you’re a fan of the original novel or not — I definitely know what I’ll be reading this summer! — do yourself a favor and seek out this film.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | Companion (2025)
Companion is one of the best contemporary films I have seen in a movie theater in a while. It is an excellent science-fiction thriller with perfect pacing and great twists courtesy of its writer-director Drew Hancock. But what really blew me away were the outstanding central performances given by Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid.
This movie takes place in the near future. Iris (Thatcher) is a young woman who is passionately in love with Josh (Quaid). But Iris discovers that she is an advanced “companion robot” purchased by Josh after a weekend getaway turns violent. Now Iris will have to deal with the repercussions of this revelation as an increasingly belligerent Josh chases after her.
I didn’t read the screenplay for Companion, but I wish I had. Hancock expertly tells his story with a wonderful amount of momentum that made me want to know what would happen next as well as twists which were delightful. It makes me want to read Hancock’s next script as well as everything else he will direct.
But while this movie is fantastic on a narrative level (as well as a technical one thanks in part to cinematographer Eli Born and editors Brett W. Bachman and Josh Ethier), it really shines thanks to its lead actors. Thatcher does everything from cry on command, portray Iris at different levels of intelligence, and perform a scene in German as if she were a native speaker. Watching her in this movie is like watching someone hit multiple home runs in a row. Quaid is a delight, especially because he is cast against type. I was more familiar with him through comedic or heroic roles, like in Lucky Logan (2017) or My Adventures with Superman (2023-present). But Quaid blew me away as the villainous Josh. It’s been months since I have seen Companion, but I still think about moments of his performance, like how he mispronounced the word “Telugu” or his complex facial expressions after he forces Iris to compliment him near the film’s end. It’s an exhilarating performance that proves that Quaid has a wide and remarkable range as an actor.
Companion is definitely one of my favorite films of the year. It is an exciting debut which proves that Hancock is an exciting writer-director and solidifies Thatcher and Quaid’s statuses as interesting actors. I’m looking forward to introducing this film to friends, especially if they have no idea what they are about to watch.
Chris Forrester, contributor | Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (1972)
Were the 41 films directed by the German dramatist, actor, and filmmaker R.W. Fassbinder between his debut short Der Stadtstreicher in 1966 and his tragically premature death in 1982 not achievement enough for sheer volume or consistent quality alone, he also directed three miniseries for West German public television: Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (1972), World on a Wire (1973), and Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). Having been already a fan of the filmmaker’s more theatrically inclined works (Querelle, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) and one of his television works (the proto-Matrix mind-bender World on a Wire), I turned next to Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day to enrich my understanding of Fassbinder, the social critic (of whom the All That Heaven Allows rework Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is likely the most notable example), and found it a surprisingly warm social realist soap opera of an almost nurturing sweetness and political clarity. Set in and around a factory in Cologne, where young toolmaker Jochen and his fellow laborers face adversity and exploitation from their superiors, and romances blossom and wither in the broader social constellations of family and acquaintances around them, Fassbinder’s five-part miniseries — conceived initially as eight parts but truncated by production limitations to a fortuitous eight hours total — locates the essential kindness that undergirds leftist ideology and expands it outward into the comforting tone of a modestly scaled epic that maintains a remarkable lucidity about the ravages of late capitalist society without capitulating to either the paralyzing hopelessness or lazy optimism that so often steamroll leftist media into useless nothing.
Some of this is, of course, a happy accident; by all accounts, Fassbinder’s initial plan for the series was for the final three episodes to take a darker turn for the reality of labor exploitation and class immobility, but the ending forced upon him by circumstance finds his characters on the precipice of political action that may prove too gratifying or futile, and the result is one of rich ambiguity — the strength of his ending is not in the stark reality one imagines he might have turned for in subsequent chapters, but rather of the great urgency and possibility afforded us by solidarity and collective action. And through the five chapters he did complete — which, it’s worth adding, play as so nearly a cohesive and satisfyingly shaped arc you’d be unlikely to ever guess something was missing if it wasn’t revealed to you externally — courses a real streak of excellence, even compared to his typical standards for performance and composition, with a visual warmth and simple, workmanly elegance to match the piece’s overarching tone. If ever there were a healthy balm for our moment of darkening uncertainty…