Favorite foreign film? Why?

Daedalus

I foresee Seven Samurai, City of God, Amelie, Oldboy, and Pan's Labyrinth being chosen a lot. Also, subtitles doesn't mean it's a foreign film; case in point Letters from Iwo Jima.

I'm having an incredibly hard time picking one, there are so many great movies to choose from. If I absolutely had to choose, I would select Yojimbo (Rashomon is a very close second ;/). Being particularly disposed to Asian cinema, I can't think of a premise that surpasses a western with samurai. Toshiro Mifune is great as the anti-hero, a rugged, mercenary samurai with questionable scruples. The film is a comedy, though it's far from overt, which I would further describe if not for the fact I want to avoid spoilers. Additionally, the movie has some well-documented influence, with it being remade as A Fistful of Dollars and again in the 90's with Last Man Standing. The Sergio Leone remake actually caused Akira Kurosawa to file suit. Whether he prevailed, I'm unable to say!
 
Definetly Amores Perros. I loved how it has multiple stories that intersect eachother at some point and how it all made sense in the end.
 
Amelie, definitely.

But remember that for me every american movie is actually foreign.
 
Erik the Viking. Hands down one of my favorite movies ever.

Close second would be Tale of Two Sisters.
 
Daedalus said:
I'm having an incredibly hard time picking one, there are so many great movies to choose from. If I absolutely had to choose, I would select Yojimbo (Rashomon is a very close second ;/). Being particularly disposed to Asian cinema, I can't think of a premise that surpasses a western with samurai. Toshiro Mifune is great as the anti-hero, a rugged, mercenary samurai with questionable scruples. The film is a comedy, though it's far from overt, which I would further describe if not for the fact I want to avoid spoilers. Additionally, the movie has some well-documented influence, with it being remade as A Fistful of Dollars and again in the 90's with Last Man Standing. The Sergio Leone remake actually caused Akira Kurosawa to file suit. Whether he prevailed, I'm unable to say!
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He did prevail. I was watching a documentary on PBS about Kurosawa(a sure sign of a loser) and he noted, before he died, that more money was made through the lawsuit than from Yojimbo itself. Still, Sergio Leone eventually turned out to be a great director so perhaps it was worthwhile in the end.

To TC: If you're interested in Asian cinema then you should probably try and see everything by Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu. Kurosawa often overshadows them but they are probably better directors on a whole.

As far as best foreign film: At the risk of sounding pedantic, films like Persona, The Battle of Algiers and 8 1/2 stand out in my mind. That said, I love Leone's westerns that hate westerns(Once Upon a Time in the West for instance).
 
Chaos_Wielder said:
To TC: If you're interested in Asian cinema then you should probably try and see everything by Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu. Kurosawa often overshadows them but they are probably better directors on a whole.
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I would like to add to that list of directors Masaki Kobayashi. His resume isn't as impressive as the three you mentioned, but he made some worthwhile stuff, most notably Seppuku (Harakiri is the name of it in the US) and The Human Condition trilogy. On the subject of Ozu, have you found that his pacing is too slow for the small attention spans of today? Not enough action for all of my friends, so I'm unable to watch gems like Tokyo Story with anyone. Mizoguchi is a godsend; Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff make my top ten easily. Which do you like more out of those two?

8 1/2 is awesome, too. Just a few films come close to the level of imagination that one possesses!

DoomMullet said:
Erik the Viking. Hands down one of my favorite movies ever.

Close second would be Tale of Two Sisters.
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Check out Oldboy. It's a great flick with a lot of memorable scenes. I only saw it recently myself, but had been aware of it for almost nine months, haha. Sometimes I'm a bit slow when it comes to the acquisition of a movie.
 
Daedalus said:
Check out Oldboy. It's a great flick with a lot of memorable scenes. I only saw it recently myself, but had been aware of it for almost nine months, haha. Sometimes I'm a bit slow when it comes to the acquisition of a movie.
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Yeah, I've seen it, it's pretty awesome. There have been a rash of great movies coming from Asia in the last 10 years, in my opinion they're blowing all the overdone Hollywood garbage out of the water.
 
I agree completely. In a given year, I like maybe two or three movies that I rent or see at the theatre. For 2006, the ones that come to mind are Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, and Children of Men (will buy this soon!). How much Kurosawa have you seen? I'm a borderline fanboy of his, and own around nine movies by him, all Criterion releases, which, while expensive, I bought at a significant discount thanks to coupons. I'd personally say his best five movies are Yojimbo, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Ikiru (a lot like Citizen Kane technically in the latter half), and Red Beard. Red Beard isn't as well-received as everything else among the legions of Kurosawa fans, because it lacks the samurai and action that a majority of his films have. The opposite is true of Japan, apparently; there it's considered one of his finest works.
 
I enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth a lot... mostly because I was excited that I could understand without the subtitles. It really was quite well done though... strange but lleno de simbolismo.
 
Daedalus said:
I agree completely. In a given year, I like maybe two or three movies that I rent or see at the theatre. For 2006, the ones that come to mind are Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, and Children of Men (will buy this soon!). How much Kurosawa have you seen? I'm a borderline fanboy of his, and own around nine movies by him, all Criterion releases, which, while expensive, I bought at a significant discount thanks to coupons. I'd personally say his best five movies are Yojimbo, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Ikiru (a lot like Citizen Kane technically in the latter half), and Red Beard. Red Beard isn't as well-received as everything else among the legions of Kurosawa fans, because it lacks the samurai and action that a majority of his films have. The opposite is true of Japan, apparently; there it's considered one of his finest works.
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I honestly just got into foreign film recently, and since I just got this new job I haven't gone on any DVD buying sprees, but I plan to do one soon. I've heard nothing but good things about Kurosawa, I'd probably buy one or two of those titles.
 
Awesome. If you end up buying just one, I recommend Seven Samurai; it's his most accoladed film, and probably the most accessible, too. If you like that, let me know and I will be happy to send another recommendation your way!
 
Pan's Labyrinth was fucking amazing.

As far as other films go, the French do make some good films. Amelié, 8 Women, Delicatessen, The closet (?) and most notably, Jean de Florette/Manon de Source are all excellent films.
 
Battle Royale was one of those movies that was adversely affected because of the fact I had read and loved the book before ever watching it. The film had its moments, but it was nowhere close to being as gripping as the novel.
 
Daedalus said:
Awesome. If you end up buying just one, I recommend Seven Samurai; it's his most accoladed film, and probably the most accessible, too. If you like that, let me know and I will be happy to send another recommendation your way!
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Yeah, that's the one in the top 10 on imdb, right? That would definitely be my first choice.
 
Correct! He has a lot of films in the top 250, but that's the only one in the top 10. I think Ran or Rashomon next appears on the list, but neither is in the top 50. Ran is a very good movie, yet I didn't find it to have the same immersiveness as his black and white movies. I don't know if he had abstained from that genre of film for too long or his old age had diminished his abilities or what, but I finished it feeling slightly disappointed.
 
Kopps from Sweden, never released in the US. Its so absurd and the characters are great, such a great comedy.
 
The Triplets of Belleville, French, nice to see a completely original style of cartooning that isn't anime or American doodle-style. It's mostly a music-based movie with little dialogue and plot, but the music is so well timed, the original songs for the movie are actually really progressive (a couple songs using house hold supplies like vacuum, fridge, bicycle wheel), the whole melding of audial to visual is very powerful.
 
Cidade de Deus definitely. I liked The Devil's Backbone too, mostly because I really liked Jacinto's character and because the story was set in Andalusia. It's kind of a shame more people don't understand Spanish because the acting in those del Toro movies is usually pretty superb and having to read subtitles kind of takes away from that in the more contemplative, conversational parts.

But my favorite...has ANYONE seen Fitzcarraldo? That movie is insane, and not in the normal, psychedelic random way. The idea behind it is insane, the execution is insane, and both the lead actor and the director were both clinically insane. (As in pulling a gun on the lead actor to make him finish the scene insane.) But it's sooooo good.
 
DEAR GOD.

Amores Perros was the most beautiful film i've ever seen; let alone a foreign one.

Also, has anyone seen 'The Lives of Others'? that was good as well.
 
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