Tampopo

Tampopo (タンポポ, 1985) — watch online a one-of-a-kind Japanese comedy on iFILM, directed by Juzo Itami. He called it the first "noodle Western," and the label fits: two truck drivers in cowboy hats roll up to a struggling roadside ramen shop, and the widowed owner Tampopo persuades them to help her cook something worth the drive.

What follows is part training montage, part food pilgrimage. The drivers take Tampopo through the city's best ramen kitchens, studying broth technique and noodle texture the way a martial arts student studies form. Scattered through the main story are short unrelated vignettes — a dying woman cooks one last meal for her family, a food-obsessed gangster turns eating into performance art — that shift from funny to genuinely strange. Koji Yakusho and a young Ken Watanabe appear here years before their international careers.

Tampopo is the rare film that makes you hungry and philosophical at the same time. Stream it online on iFILM.