Posted on 12/19/2009 2:01:18 PM PST by randita
I really enjoyed the responses from last week's "What Are Your Favorite Movies Made Before 1950?" thread (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2406295/posts).
So here's another movie topic - favorite foreign language films of any era. (Hey, we need a pleasant distraction from the debacle going on in DC!)
If you know the date or even decade of the film and the language, please include it.
Thank you and enjoy!
Lumumba, Ridicule, Queen Margot, Black Book and Le Pacte de Loups.
What an ending. What a film.
Night Watch and Day Watch (Russian)
Minbo No Onna (The Anti-Extortion Woman) (Japanese)
Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run) (German)
Wòhǔ Cánglóng (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) (Chinese)
Diéxuè Shuāngxióng (The Killer) (Chinese)
I've watched a lot of subtitled Japanese television and animation, too, but I'm not counting that as "Foreign Language Films".
Alexander Nevsky (Russian)
While I was curious about the influences on John Milius' Conan movie (and there are quite a few, including the soundtrack), it was a pretty good movie.
They Live - I love that movie - guilty pleasure.
“I saw a Korean cop show once. “
I think Korean cinema is some the strangest movie-making out there, taking avant-garde to a whole other level. Very weird stuff.
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“My Wife is a Gangster” is a pretty good Korean flick.
Italy:
8 1/2
La Dolce Vita
Juliette of the Spirits
Intervista
Ginger and Fred
And the Ship Sails On
Johnny Toothpicks
Life is Beautiful
Flowers of St. Francis
The Bicycle Thieves
Hong Kong:
Legend of Drunken Master
Rumble in the Bronx
Police Story
Japan:
Tokyo Story
Seven Samurai
Yojimbo
Hidden Fortress
Kagemusha
if we’re counting anime:
Akira
Ghost in the Shell 1 & 2
Castle in the Sky
Pom Poko
Nausicaa
Porco Rosso
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Spirited Away
Howl’s Moving Castle
Castle of Cagliostro
Russia:
Andrei Rublev
Stalker
Solaris
Nostalghia
The Sacrifice
France:
Beauty and the Beast
Mon Oncle
Yes, I did. A movie can be tragic but still be enjoyed. "Life is Beautiful" was immensely sad, yet the portrayal of one man's joyful, creative, loving spirit amidst the horrendous evil that surrounded him and his son was actually uplifting. The time-old tale of sacrificing self for love of others, good triumphing over evil, always touches the soul. Plus, it was wonderfully acted and produced.
"Babette's Feast" was a deep gray disappointment. Sure, Babette was a spark of heat and light to the pastor's family, but the relationship story was dismal so "the feast" left a bad taste in my mouth. I suppose this one was depressing to me because I thought the characters were going to continue to live in that same gloomy, melancholy place after the meal was finished. Of course, I still appreciate the movie for the fine cinematography and acting.
Hey, he said foreign LANGUAGE, mister. You included a few British films there.
Isn’t British English a foreign language???
It's very opposite in screen color is Konchalkovsky's "Nest of gentry (Dvori͡anskoe gnezdo )" 2004.
Andrzej Wajda's trilogy is very good A Generation (1954), Kanal (1956) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958)," as was his recent Katyń (2007).
Grigori Kozintsev's Don Quixote (1957), Hamlet(1961), and King Lear (1971) are also worth a look and Lev Kulidzhanov's Crime and Punishment (1970) is outstanding. So is Mark Donskoy's Gorky Trilogy, but it was made in the heyday of Stalinism and has a bad smell.
Bergman and Fellini are also excellent. Bergman's the serious one, but sometimes he can be a little too heavy. Wild Strawberries (1957) was the one that stands out, but all of his stuff (especially from the 1950s through the 1970s) is worth a look. Fellini's best in my book are La Dolce Vita (1960) 8½ (1963) (soon to be the musical film Nine). But don't neglect his great small films of the 1950s (The White Sheik, I Vitelloni, The Nights of Cabiria, and La Strada).
So much for the highbrow stuff. What did I like?
Just off the top of my head: The Best Intentions (1992) which Bergman wrote and Bille August directed.
Life and Nothing But (1989) a French film about the First World War.Cinema Paradiso 1988 -- I know it's hokey, but it certainly works for me.
Ridicule (1996) -- a French film about Versailles before the Revolution.
The Four Hundred Blows(1959), Truffaut's classic.
Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire (1987) and Far Away, So Close (1993) -- more in the "admired" category than the loved, but still enjoyable.
There are also a lot of recent small French films about families that are enjoyable. I don't remember the names but Catherine Deneuve, Romain Duris, and Matthieu Amalric usually are in them.
Nearly anything by Akira Kurosawa (Japan)
A Taxing Woman and Tampopo by Juzo Itami (Japan)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China)
John Woo's Hong Kong action flicks with Chow-Yun Fat (China)
My Left Foot and several other great UK films from the '80s
Shame, Romper Stomper (Australia)
The Harmonists, also called The Comedian Harmonists, about a singing group in the interwar years, was good.
So were two films about East Germany: Go For Zucker! and Goodbye, Lenin.
Those are comedies but the best of the recent films is The Lives of Others, about the secret police and informers in the GDR.
Nowhere in Africa, about refugees during the war, was also interesting.
Fatih Akin makes movies about Turks in Germany (In July, Head On, The Edge of Heaven). He's brilliant, but the films can be disturbing.
Personally I'd stay away from Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films. They are very dark and dreary. For along time, Fassbinder defined German cinema for the rest of the world, for better or for worse (in my book, just for worse).
There are also a lot of East German films coming out on DVD that really aren't worth seeing.
And Men ... by Doris Dörrie. I didn't like it so much but it introduced a whole generation to the idea of "German comedy."
One of my all time favorites! If you liked that one, you should try "Two For The Road", not foreign language--British--but so great. Very romantic.
I was wondering how long it would take before someone mentioned him. Great Swedish director! I was introduced to foreign films by watching his.
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