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.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (2025)
I’ll always remember the first time I heard Jeff Buckley sing. I was at my friend Nick’s apartment and he put on Grace, an album I’d never heard before. As Buckley’s voice drifted out of Nick’s sound system, ethereal and achingly alive, I knew it was one that I would never forget.
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is full of people who have similar experiences encountering Buckley’s talents for the first time. His mother Mary recalls him demonstrating a gift for singing as a very young child. Other people recall him turning the bohemian cafe Sin-é into a magnet for recording executives who were eager to sign him. One interviewee even notes that his talents were so great that he inspired Radiohead to rush into the studio to record their song “Fake Plastic Trees.” One of the best things about this documentary is that it collects all of these moments, even as it is also unafraid to depict the demons which haunted Buckley.
After prioritizing the perspectives of three women (Mary and two romantic partners), this documentary follows Buckley from his childhood until his tragic death at the age of 30. It features plenty of archival material at almost every stage of his existence that ranges from home videos to audio of an hour-long answering machine message he created which chronicled the adventures of the fictional “Spinach the Cat.” There’s also thrilling concert footage and plenty of music, including his iconic cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Director Amy Berg marshals all of this footage and combines it with interviews of people who knew him and animation to paint a kaleidoscopic portrait of a singular talent.
But at the same time, Berg does not flinch from the darker experiences which shaped Buckley. His father, a cult folk musician named Tim, abandoned him and his mom at a young age and eventually died of a heroin overdose. Some interviewees also speculate that Buckley had a chemical imbalance, and there is some audio of a voicemail in which he berates his mom. But this approach feels true to Buckley’s music, which has a confessional quality that few artists achieve. It also helps this documentary to feel like a definitive portrait which does not let a single detail out of its sight.
There are many things about this documentary I like to think I’ll always remember. There’s the footage of Buckley performing, or the funny stories that his friends tell about him. But, more than anything, I think I’ll remember the final scene. In it, Buckley’s mother Mary listens to the last voicemail he ever left for her. Despite a contentious relationship, he reaffirms his love for her and appreciation of everything she did for him. Mary cries profusely. The whole scene feels like a real life parallel to Buckley’s song “Last Goodbye,” with its lyrics “This is our last goodbye/I hate to feel the love between us die/But it’s over/Just hear this and then I’ll go.” But unlike most verbal goodbyes, which fade into the air like a smoke in the sky on a cold winter’s day, this one is something she can listen to over and over again. It’s a moment preserved forever. That seems fitting because, if there is one thing that this documentary taught me, it is that everything to do with Buckley’s voice will never be forgotten.
Chris Forrester, contributor | Ugetsu (1953)
An all-too-rare phenomenon in film is the non-traditional ghost story — dramatic fantasy narratives that might live under the horror umbrella on a technicality, but leverage their supernatural components for aching emotional metaphor rather than straightforward scares. Kenji Mizoguchi’s ravishing Ugetsu exemplifies this tradition with a grace that puts nearly all other iterations to shame. It’s a wartime drama that splinters into a samurai film and a ghost story to represent the seductiveness of glory and riches, respectively, and Mizoguchi’s stellar mise-en-scene and camerawork paint its emotional brushstrokes in vivid color. Machiko Kyō plays the lonely spirit whose lonely, lavish manor attracts Genjūrō, a potter blinded by his desire for fineries, as he peddles his wares at a market. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law and business partner, Tōbei, spends a portion of the profits in hopes of becoming a samurai; both men abandon their wives, and as the film follows them down their foolhardy quests, it retains a lucid focus on the plights of the scorned women. Adapted from a pair of tales from the 1776 book Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain), the script is sharp and efficient, an elegant basis from which Mizoguchi spins a sublime masterpiece replete with sumptuous long takes and gorgeous, expressive lighting. If the story itself is notable for its stunning emotional clarity, the effect is compounded tenfold by the impact of his moody, elemental images. At a moment in cinema at large, and horror filmmaking especially, where deliberate and intentional employment of the camera feels dismayingly rare, it’s a delight to behold something so careful and precise.
Noni Ford, contributor | Nerve (2016)
Nerve, released in 2016, feels like one of those films you don’t see as much of anymore. Maybe it’s because films about social media exclusively are less prevalent now that its use is such a passive factor in any modern story. Or the premise of the film, that an online game called Nerve controlled by watchers/other mysterious forces chooses to select dares for players with cash prizes, feels just like the challenge videos or Mr. Beast content people watch and follow now. In some ways I think the only place to find a movie like this or a story like this would be on Black Mirror or a small, limited series television show. Which is to say that it’s not so much that stories like these are disappearing as much as they aren’t adapted for film that frequently.
While the beginning stage of the film is slightly cookie-cutter, with our female lead Vee being a shy high school senior with dreams of getting out of her town but with family commitments keeping her from launching, the inciting incident that leads her to play Neve energizes the film. When she joins the game, starts exploring this spark with Ian, a boy she meets through the game, and begins coming out of her shell even as the dares get more and more dangerous, we’re rooting for her. Not everything is as it seems, however, and the actions ramp up as she comes to understand how much control she’s allowed this once-harmless game to have over her life. It’s easy to write off some of her and her friends’ naivete as slightly inconceivable when it comes to the game, but looking at it through the lens of kids looking for money to change their lives it’s all too understandable why they jump into Nerve with limited hesitation — somewhat similar to the way everyone downloads applications still without looking at the tracking software or the updated privacy notices of products.
While the ending does seem to be injected with more wholesomeness then I’d say the average evil technology film of today has, I did appreciate that it had heart to it. I also appreciated the movie for its classic hacker enclave scenes that always seem to look like a cross between a tech startup and an underground bar. As opposed to simple text boxes filling our screen when the characters use their phones, we actually see an overlay of their screens on their faces or over scenes, better melding the technology to the frame throughout the story. It’s great editing decision by Jeff McEvoy and Madeleine Gavin to make all of the text and calls slightly more stimulating than floating bubbles.
I’m always going to be sucked into a fairly relatable underdog story, and as a casual enjoyer of an action-adventure, I feel this film will suffice for audiences of both.
Alex Brannan, contributor | The Decline of Western Civilization trilogy (1981-1998)
Penelope Spheeris — who would go on to direct studio comedies like Wayne’s World and The Little Rascals — got her break embedding herself within the lively punk-rock scene in late-1970s Los Angeles. The 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization was ahead of the curve of music journalism when it came to punk, illuminating through an anthropological distance and a guerrilla filmmaking style the complexities of an anti-establishment sonic movement.
The film is incisive without being interventionist, affording the musicians the space to be as performative about their punk-ness as they please. In doing so, and by maintaining a critical distance, Spheeris presents with warts and all the punk space, highlighting its enigma and the draw of its devil-may-care anger, as well as its sociopolitical and sociocultural shortcomings. The film is also deftly shot, providing footage of performing bands that rivals any concert film out there.
Spheeris’ sequel to Decline — coming in 1988, after she notched a few narrative films into her belt (and turned down an offer to direct This is Spinal Tap) — focused on “the metal years” of 1980s rock ‘n’ roll. It is the least cutting film in the trilogy, only glancing against issues within the “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” lifestyle. Still, there are moments of introspection and interrogation among some of the rockers’ platitudes (K.I.S.S.’s Paul Stanley stands out as a particularly superficial study). An interview in which the guitarist for W.A.S.P., Chris Holmes, gets increasingly intoxicated on a pool float while his mother looks on is a noteworthy encapsulation of the more insidious side of the live-hard rock ethos.
The third film in Spheeris’ Decline trilogy strikes a more somber tone. The “decline” of the title no longer refers to barbs thrown at the counterculture sonic movements by those who view it from the outside and don’t understand it. The punk scene is simply less popular in the 1990s; the lyrics are just as angry as they were in the ‘70s, but it feels as though these musicians are screaming into a void. And the listeners are, if the interviewees here are any representative sample, in more dire straits. All but one of the punk fans interviewed are homeless; most are addicts; almost all speak towards a general aimlessness, some to an explicit hopelessness.
The anthropological distance is shortened here, as Spheeris more directly engages on-screen with the interlocutors. This “gutter punk” generation is addressed by Spheeris with questions that would be condescending or alienating (When was the last time you took a shower? Where are your parents?) were it not for the desperate empathy with which she presents the case study of these teens. The film cries out for change, just as the furious and politically potent lyrics of Naked Aggression do throughout the film, but who is listening? This third entry played Sundance, where it was lauded, but it didn’t receive distribution until it was packaged with the previous two films on home video in 2015. All three films are currently available through the Criterion Channel.
Michaela Owens, Editor | The January Man (1989)
For reasons I won’t get into, this August has been one of the most soul-crushing months I think I’ve ever experienced, which meant for a few weeks there, the only movies I wanted to consume were the comfort films that never fail me, specifically nostalgic ’90s and ’00s cinema like You’ve Got Mail, Freaky Friday, Charlie’s Angels, and The Devil Wears Prada. When I finally decided to watch something new to me, I didn’t want to step too outside of this zone, and so I picked a film I had recently heard about on a podcast that was discussing writer/director John Patrick Shanley: The January Man.
When a series of women are strangled, terrorizing the city of New York, police commissioner Harvey Keitel is ordered by mayor Rod Steiger to reinstate his brother Kevin Kline, a brilliant detective who two years ago had been falsely accused of corruption. The men share a lot of bad blood, partly because Keitel married his brother’s ex (Susan Sarandon), but Kline agrees to take on the case and is soon driving his superiors crazy with eccentricities like hiring his artist neighbor (a delightful, low-key Alan Rickman) to be his assistant and taking all of the furniture out of his office to make it more relaxing. He also strikes up a relationship with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, the mayor’s daughter who was a close friend of the latest victim.
Like many (all?) John Patrick Shanley films, The January Man has a tone that is hard to define. Although the story concerns a disturbed serial killer, I’d argue the first half of the movie is more interested in hanging out with Kline — which I’m not mad about! He’s a fascinating character and watching him interact with the rest of the cast is a treat. There’s a slight screwball energy to him and the film that keep you guessing just where things are going to go, but there’s a grounded feeling to them, too, that makes their world real and Kline’s diligence in solving the case admirable.
Although it may take you a minute to find Shanley’s groove, The January Man is exactly the kind of film you want to put on during a lazy, rainy afternoon.