Life Is Beautiful (Italian) - 1997
Cinema Paradiso (Italian) - 1988
Amelie (French) - 2001
Rosenstrasse (German) - 2003
The Last Days of Sophie Scholl (German) - 2005
Most romantic: Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman)
Funniest: Le dîner de cons (The Dinner Game)
Best serious film: Coup de foudre (a.k.a., Entre nous)
The Dinner Game is the funniest movie I know in any language. You can watch it with subtitles and completely forget that you are reading subtitles. French films mentioned by others about which I have a particularly high opinion: Jules and Jim, of course, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, The Return of Martin Guerre, La femme Nikita; other unmentioned favorites: Indochine, Day for Night or anything by Truffaut (a big, artsy name who made down-to-earth, enjoyable films), Place Vendôme, La cage aux folles.
Love all of those. The last 10 minutes of Sophie Scholl stayed with me a long time.
I’d have to go with Downfall or Passion. I need to see some of the others listed here.
I’d have to go with Downfall or Passion. I need to see some of the others listed here.
Sorry, I mashed the title for Egon Monks film, “Die Geschwister Oppermann,” The Oppermans. The film’s theme is instructive. I copy a comment from IMBD: “Anyone who wonders how such a country as cultured as the German Weimar Republic could evolve into a Nazi dictatorship can see the relevant events take place in almost documentary-like detail. And those who believed that the signs of Hitler’s danger to the world in general and the Jews in particular were years away will observe for themselves just how wrong they were.”
Babette’s Feast
Lumumba, Ridicule, Queen Margot, Black Book and Le Pacte de Loups.
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.
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
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)