What foreign movie do you find inspiring or awesome or moving or very non-Hollywood - or something else that would make it worth recommending?
I know people's tastes tend to be all over the place with this (for example, I hated Amelie and everyone loves it). So make a case for what you like and if others think it sucks anyway, don't pay attention. I will do the same with one of my favorites: Iranian movie Gabbeh. When I saw it first, I thought it was the most beautiful movie I had seen. I thought it was like a poem on screen (I'm picky with poetry so it had to be a good poem).
Why this movie? It relies a lot on symbols and metaphors, imagery and myth. I don't know much about Iranian myths but this was easy to grasp: nomads who make carpets and who live by tribal laws. Death, birth, love. In whatever order. Goats. Carpets. After I saw this movie I got a few small carpets (online) that looked a bit like the ones in the movie. I just had to have them. I mean, the carpets are real but I bought them online (?!!). No, I'm not drunk, I just have Sunday night anxiety over having to wake up early tomorrow and I'm procrastinating going to bed, to put off the waking up part. Smart, eh?
So, what foreign movies do you recommend? I'll add a few more later if this thread doesn't die fast.
Princess Mononoke from Studio Ghibli. This movie has an incredible film score, plot, set of characters, and illustrations. If you haven't already seen this movie I would highly recommend it, and NOT in English. When you watch the translated version you miss out on so much emotion from the characters.
The reason this story is so powerful for me is there's no antagonist. Everyone's good deeds cause harm for someone else, which is what drives the conflict.
Old Boy by Chan-wook Park. Freakin awsome!
I would recommend Un prophete, Let The Right One In, Timecrimes, Run Lola Run and Sleep Dealer.
Those are my top 5. Un prophete is basically The Godfather meets Breaking Bad in terms of a fairly innocent human being becoming the head honcho gangster by film's end (it's very good -very non-hollywood).
Let The Right One In is a vampire movie, but Different and really about the relationship between a little boy and girl who become friends in a world against them.
Timecrimes is pretty much what it sounds like -time travel -but really well done. Clever and somehwat humorous, too.
Run Lola Run -well shit, you just have to see that one -it's from the 90's with Franka Potente from The Shield and The Bourn Identity (first 5 minutes of Bourne Supremacy, too), with music by Tom Tykwer and Pale 3.
And Sleep Dealer -it's Latin America set in the future, where the government and machines control the water supply, and also Jobs -where basically to work, you have to get holes in your body and Plug Yourself In -Think Matrix, except instead of plugging in to kick ass, they're just plugging in to work construction and it sucks. But there's more to it than that -a boy leaves home to become a man story. Good stuff.
Raelyn, I second that!! I love Miyazaki - Mononoke and Spirited Away are my favorites. This man has insane imagination. Yes, dubbing robs movies of something.
City of Sadness (1989) probably no one's heard of this one--it's very dear to my heart as it tells the story of my parents' and grandparents' generations in Taiwan. It was banned under marshall law when it was first finished and premiered.
Run Lola Run is amazing.
I've always loved Luc Besson's movies. And Ghost in the Shell.
My Iranian friends introduced me to an animated movie based on the comic book by an Iranian French artist called Persepolis (pronounced PURS-polis, not pur-SE-polis).
Nice thread Vraj. Nathan, I love all those movies Run Lola Run is an all time favorite. I agree Kate Luc Besson is the man.
So, here are a few of mine:
Maria, full of grace about a heroin mule coming to America.
The Audition horror film about a man who auditions women to become his wife.
Strayed (Les égarés) a World War ll film with Emmanuelle Béart.
City of God two boys growing up in the Rio de Janeiro slums become involved in gangs but their lives end up taking very different paths.
Amores Perros One of those six degrees of separation movies where paths cross and lives are affected.
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) A secret East German agent conducts surveillance on a couple and becomes infatuated.
I will think of more tomorrow at work and check this regularly because I love foreign film.
Old Boy because thats pretty much all I've seen.
I watch a lot of Korean movies lately. They are all very dark. The most recent was "I Saw the Devil". Before that it was "The Man from Nowhere". Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Lady Vengence are all (obviously) about revenge, as are most of these dark Korean movies.
For Korean flicks, Memories of Murder and Chaser are by far some of the best crime movies I've seen in years. Perfect.
My avatar here is taken from Costas-Gavras' L'Aveu, a really intense political thriller from the same director as Z.
13 Assassins Miike fans will already have seen this, but seriously, one of the best samurai renditions in the past 40 years. Also, check out his Crows Zero movies, oddly underrated considering how internationally known the director is.
Let the Right One In
Old Boy
Battle Royale
The Devil's Backbone
The Orphanage
Those are the best I can think of. Tried watching Let Me In the other night. If I hadn't seen the original then, yeah, I'd like it, but why do I need to?
Is Will Smith still doing an Old Boy remake with Spielberg? Don't answer. Not interested.
I watched The Orphanage, and I must say I was a bit dissapointed. Maybe I need to revisit it, as I watched it a few years ago.
Oh I totally forgot about The Lives of Others. That was very good. Been meaning to find a copy
I also really like old Japanese Samurai movies like The Seven Samurai
Wonderful thread. I'll push some Italian movies:
Romanzo Criminale, actually a European co/production, is about organized crime in Rome in the 1970s.
La ragazza con la pistola, one of my favourites. A typical Italian comedy with Monica Vitti, directed by the late Maestro Monicelli.
Film d'amore e d'anarchia, soundtrack by Nino Rota. A plot to kill Mussolini takes place in a brothel.
Just a starter.
Delicatessen and City of Lost Children by Jeunet and Caro
I've been really into Korean revenge films lately like OLDBOY as stated earlier, or any of of Chan Wook Park's films! (Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance)THE MAN FROM NOWHERE, THE CHASER, and I SAW THE DEVIL (my favorite but also the most violent...) are all violent films but are so well done and very powerful.
Also, they're all on Netflix Instant!
Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror, Andrie Rublev, and Solaris are some really beautiful movies
I love this fan video with clips from Rublev
Oooh this is good, my next Netflix list is shaping up.
@ Nathan: I love Let the Right One In, and Timecrimes. @ Chester, three yesses for Amores Perros! Haven't seen the others.
@ Dhanny - have you seen Stalker? My favorite Tarkovsky movie. When I was very young, I was told that's a movie that you need to be older to understand. I think I liked it even then.
Let me really recommend a Romanian movie now. Some of you may have seen it (won at Cannes a couple of years ago). Called 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. You will never look at abortion the same way again (not that I presume to know how you look at abortion). It's so well acted and so brutally real, almost as if you're there with the characters. Makes you claustrophobic too. But you may also see some glimpses of my hometown (the director grew up very close to where I did). I, however, never had a similar experience.
Anything by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, even though I've never actually seen his movies.
This is a funny thread because it's written as if the entire board is american.
Not necessarily. If you reside in Italy, then anything German, or Japanese, and so on would be foreign to you. What is foreign to Americans can be considered foreign to a multitude of other countries.
Are you saying there's anyone other than Americans? That's just crazy talk.
Pan's Labyrinth is probably my favourite non-English speaking film - huge influence on my writing too. Along with a whole host of Studio Ghibli features such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo.
@Liana, YES!!! I forgot to put down Stalker, I loved that one! I also love Children of Men
And a new favorite of mine is Buitiful with Javier Bardem
I thought The Seventh Seal was amazing. Not what I expected at all. And it's damn hysterical, too.
Wow, that's a good point missesdash - was I thinking in terms of American movies vs. the rest? Well I did think in terms of English-language-movies given that even if we are very international here, we are talking in English to each other. When I asked the question I did not really think of nationalities. In fact, how would we define an American movie with a British director and an Australian main actor? Or other combinations like that?
So, yes, movies that you'd watch with English subtitles?
Godzilla anyone? No, seriously! Even the campy ones.
@Liana
There definitely isn't an easy way to ask the question to a board full of internationals haha. Anyway I really like Gaspard Noe's films, if you don't mind nine minute rape scenes, Irreversible is kinda cool. I also love Enter the Void but that's in English I think.
Also, if you like really fucked up movies, I'd suggest Man Bites Dog, it's a French film and the humour is very dark, but it's hilarious.
Johnny Mad Dog, another French/Liberian film, is about African child soliders and it's pretty cool.
I recently saw a movie called Shahada, which is German, but the director is Afghan I think.
Living in Paris is definitely a good way to get access to the international movie scene.
Bien oui. Parce-que Les Parisiennes sont vachement internationale.
When I was a kid, they had a monster movie marathon on The Movie Channel and I reccorded 2 vhs tapes of it (labled "Bryan's Monster Movies" and "Bryan's Monster Movies 2", naturally). I can't remember most of them, but Son of Godzilla was one of my favorites. It has baby Godzilla.
And Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, which had Godzilla and Rodan being convinced by Mothra to fight off the three headed creature. It also had these tiny twins that summon Mothra. It was weird as shit.
And "It came from hollywood" was on there, too. I think.
What's Buitiful about? Can't decide if I want to see that or City of God..
I watch a lot of Korean films, too. Usually horror.
I do have a guilty pleasure though... Korean dramas. Yeah, yeah, they're cheesy, ridiculous, and somehow always about the same thing, but I love them. Sometimes you can find real gems. Netflix has a couple up, but I haven't seen any of the ones listed.
Love Exposure
@Nathan, In Biutiful, Bardem plays a spiritual medium, single father who's just found out that he has terminal prostate cancer. It's a very beautifully depressing movie to say the least.
I also recommend Der Himmel uber Berlin or Wings of Desire as it's known in English. One of my favorite movies.
Lot of great films mentioned. I'll throw out a couple faves that I didn't see listed:
- Dogtooth- fucked up Greek movie about a couple that never let's their children outside the walls of their home, but will still bring in a woman to have sex with their son.
- The White Ribbon- great Michael Haneke film about a series of strange accidents in a pre-WWI German town that may have been perpetrated by the suppressed children who live there.
- Hausu- wacky Japanese horror flick from the late 70's that is like an episode of The Monkees on acid.
- Bullhead- a great Belgian crime/coming of age film I saw at Fantastic Fest this year about cattle farming, illegal hormones, and steroid use.
- The Clone Returns Home- another from Japan. Deliberately paced sci-fi film in the vein of Tarkovsky or Kubrick. Hard to find, but really good.
- Four Lions- Even though this one is in English, it is a British production, so technically- still foreign (for us Americans.) Hysterical movie about a group of bumbling Islamic terrorists plotting a jihad that is surprisingly apolitical.
- In The Loop- Same goes for this film. Based on a British TV show called The Thick Of It, Loop is like a very smart version of Spinal Tap set in the world of politics that features copious amounts of creative foul language.
- Sheitan- My favorite horror movie of the aughts. Bizarre French flick starring Vincent Cassel in a truly wacked out performance as a hillbilly mountain man who may have made a Faustian deal with the devil.
Those should keep you busy. And for the record, loved both Timecrimes and Let The Right One In (the remake sucked!)
Josh, I'd recommend any Haneke movie! Well maybe not all are equal but he is one of the most interesting director out there today. Oh, if anyone wants to watch Funny Games, watch the original not the American remake.
It's weird, because the remake was also directed by Haneke, and is virtually the same film, shot for shot, only in English with different actors, yet I still prefer the original. The remake was just... unnecessary.
Nice list Josh. Yeah, Dogtooth is really good. The part with the cats. That is twisted shit.
Adding some of those others to my queue.
Yeah, that remake was a mistake. Why? I do really like Haneke though. And I like Cassel too. Well and his wife. I want to sleep with his wife.
More:
- Caché: Carrying on the Haneke discussion, I really liked this film. Binoche is yummy. A family discovers portions of their lives are being captured and recorded by hidden cameras. Their lives begin to disintegrate beneath the torment as they try to discover who the culprit is.
- Ip Man: Biopic about martial artist who would later become the trainer for Bruce Lee. Although the martial arts action scenes will amaze, there is also a socio-political aspect to the film about Chinese-Japanese tensions which continue today.
- Animal Kingdom: This Australian film wrenches the gut. Crime family as real as it gets.
- L'Amant (The Lover): Great sex, well it's fucking French, so what do you expect. They know how to fuck. Anyway this 15-year-old gets sent to Saigon to attend boarding school and this rich fucker fucks her. They fall in love too.
- Lucia y el sexo (Sex and Lucia): Now that got me thinking about sex and sex got me thinking about Paz Vega. This film is more than a decade old already and Paz looks young in it. She is naked a lot. The ultimate loneliness that sex can't compensate for doesn't take away too much from some of the steam.
- Carmen: Paz Vega at her best. More sex and Vega-nudity. Basically Carmen is evil and fucks this guy over. Its hurtpleasure.
If I lived in France, would Transformers 3 be considered a "foreign film" and would I seem interesting for liking it?
If Australian movies count, watch Chopper with Eric Bana as the infamous Chopper Read. He gets his dong out, if that seals the deal for you.
@ Kirk: Yes, if you were French it would be considered foreign and you 'might' be considered interesting for liking it, but more likely you'd just be considered a paysan. But since you are not French (I assume blindly) and if you did live in France, you would be considered interesting because you are a foreigner. Now, we all know you are hyper-interesting without even having to be a foreigner. However, and I'm sure everyone here will agree, if you were a transformer (there's a rumor that's been circulating around the lit-cooler that you are and you and Litbot are having an office affair) then you'd be really, really interesting. Especially if you were a transformer who knows his foie gras and Bordelais wine.
@Rennie: Basically, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think we have arrived at the conclusion that because LitReactor is essentially an International community that foreign really means something other than the over marketed run-of-the-mill box-office Hollywood tripe that strives to achieve something more than just financial gold-mining.
I love Australian cinema.
Here's another French one though:
Jeux d'enfant (Love me if you dare): Two childhood friends play a game of game of 'truth or dare' without the truth facet, challenging each other to life-altering feats that might spell doom for the love they guard from each other.
Yep Chester, I also recommend L'Amant - well the characters are interesting, if I remember...
I just have to mention this Dutch movie Moonlight. Might be one of the strangest romance/drug movies ever. Wounded Afghan boy used as a drug mule is found by a rich girl in the woods on her parents' property. She makes him her new toy as she tries to help him heal, so of course they run away together. It feels as if in just a couple of days they live a lifetime. Extraordinarily played by the girl (I always admire very talented child actors) - I think she won some major best actress award. Come to think of it, I'll go buy it right now if I find it on Amazon!
@Chester:
IP Man was pretty kick ass. Watched a few Donnie Yen flicks recently. He's a badass. I recommend Legend of the Fist.
Agreed. Donnie Yen is fantastic. Iron Monkey is one of my favorite movies.
I still have Legend of the Fist here unwatched. The trailer alone was freaking spectacular.
I second/third Ip Man! It was great. Although I'm excited to see what Wong Kar Wai does with his version. I'll add him to the list of "foreign" geniuses.
I actually hate Jeux d'enfants, but it's because I have an unnatural hate for Marion Cotillard. And I probably only hate her because she's loved by Francophiles and I really loathe Francophiles.
The end.
Yay for Donnie Yen.
@ Liana. Very weird, your mindplucking abilities. Yesterday I recalled Moonlight but couldn't recall the name. You psychic mindblank filler-inner you.
@misses: Really? About the Francophiliacs I mean? You might get along well with George W. then. Well to be honest, I would too if he was still drinking and doing blow. Hate is a pretty vitriolic word. I would be curious to know what fuels this hatred of people of love all things French. I mean personally I would rather hang with Francophiles any day than some ignorant Americans who wear red, white and blue blinders and think the sky's stars were created just for their In God We Trust eyes. But I won't hold it against you.
Ok, back to Cinema:
- Hable con Ella (Talk to her): Pedro Almodóvar! I'm sure you're all familiar with this genius. One of my favorites, this film is core Almodóvar. Bizarre love triangle. Real bizarre, and immensely touching. And that amazing Almodóvar lens. Some lovely shots and juxtapositions. Heart-breaking and truimphant.
- La Veuve de St. Pierre (The Widow of St. Pierre): Binoche and Auteuil. 1849 insular community. A prisoner awaiting execution. A guillotine that's slow to arrive. The wife (Binoche) of an officer (Auteuil) who begins to rehabilitate the prisoner (Emir Kusturica) to the lurid displeasure of the other Islanders.
- Sexy Beast: Ben Kingsley has done some amazing acting during his illustrious career, but I think this might be his most convincing role. Thriller. The kind that's laced with valium and brilliantly sharp dialogue. British is foreign to me unless I'm there in which case anything un-Welsh is foreign.
- Desu nôto (Death Note): From Shusuke Kaneko's magical-surrealistic mind. A student named Light discovers a deathly magical book. Write someone's name in it, they die. Simple. Time for Light to start playing God. But not if "L" has anything to say about it.
@Chester it doesn't have anything to do with disliking France. It's more that American Francophiles tend to be super obnoxious. They usually perpetuate a very romanticized and somewhat antiquated idea of French culture. The ones I meet in Paris are pretty bad, but the ones I meet in the US are the worst. They all ask me if I've seen "The Dreamers."
But that really goes for anyone who exotifies a foreign culture. I know this is thread derailing, but I didn't want to sound xenophobic.
It's weird, because the remake was also directed by Haneke, and is virtually the same film, shot for shot, only in English with different actors, yet I still prefer the original. The remake was just... unnecessary.
It seems like it was made for people who are illiterate, which may be the case for most Americans who watch movies.
@Bradley: Aint that the truth.
@Miss: I suppose I hear what you're saying--but only to a degree. That sounds more like a personality trait than an attribute to slap such a broad-spanning stereotype label on.
I would much rather see someone, obnoxious or not, who has a genuine interest in another culture so much so that they are willing to learn the country's language as well as anything else they can about it. This as opposed to some shithead tourist who shows up on the Champs asking for directions in English expecting to be served like royalty despite the fact that they're obese, daft and are only in Paris to be American and flaunt it, their flabby asses rumbling around. I find that obnoxious. I have a really hard time finding Francophiles or any 'philes' obnoxious simply because passionate people tend to be a hell of a lot more open-minded and educated than most, pedophiles aside.
I just found it a bit ironic that an American living in Paris would be so annoyed by other people who appreciated the same culture as she seems to. However I have encountered a few people like the ones you speak of who grind the nerves. Thanks for the clarification.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
@ Chester, no way, really? It took me a while to remember the title too, but it's such a beautiful movie. My thoughts to your thoughts...
