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Favorite Foreign Language Films

Starbreaker

Starbreaker

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Admiral
What are your favorite foreign language films?


  1. Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish)
  2. The Orphanage (Spanish)
  3. Amelie (French)
  4. City of God (Portuguese)
  5. A Very Long Engagement (French)
  6. Night Watch (Russian)
  7. The Lives of Others (German)
  8. Mongol (Mongolian)
  9. Paris Je T'aime (French)
  10. Solaris (Russian)
Others I've Seen:

  • The Brotherhood of the Wolf (French)
  • The City of Lost Children (French)
  • Day Watch (Russian)
  • High Tension (French)
 
Cinema Paradiso
Pan's Labyrinth
Babbette's Feast
My Life as Dog
Life is Beautiful
Fanny and Alexander
Wings of Desire
The Orphanage
I'm Not Scared
 
Foreign films I like might be my only way of doing this. And I'm not even going to attempt to order them.

1902 - Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (French)
1922 - Nosferatu (German)
1946 - La belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast) (French)
1993 - Les visiteurs (The Visitors) (French)
2006 - El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) (Spanish)
2008 - Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) (Swedish)

Of those not included in ones I really liked, I have seen (though I'm not a fan of a few of them):

La fête de Babette (Babette's Feast--all I remember is "tak" is Danish for "thank you" and "des Cailles en sarcophage" is one of the things on the menu with my French teacher telling us that "Quails in a sarcophagus" is a traditional French dish), Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown--Antonio Banderas was nice to look at, at least--crazy woman on a motorcycle, not so much), Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon--hated the wire work and martial arts), Amélie (partially saw--I couldn't watch the rest), ...some Mongolian film I can't remember and Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate--I looked it up and I'm pretty sure it's this one--I remember it having a lot of food-making and the American doctor character).

I've also seen significant parts of Turkey's hysterically bad productions of Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves the World a.k.a. Turkish Star Wars), Badi (Turkish E.T.) and Ayşecik ve Sihirli Cüceler Rüyalar Ülkesinde (Little Ayşe and the Magic Dwarfs in the Land of Dreams a.k.a. Turkish Wizard of Oz) on YouTube. I won't even get into what I think of the Bollywood films I've seen chunks of.

I took a lot of languages in school (French, Spanish, German and Italian), which explains some of the foreign films I've seen.
 
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5 Centimeters Per Second, Rebuild of Evangelion, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, The Girl Who Leaped Through Time
 
My all time favorite movie is foreign, Ikiru.

Others that immediately come to mind would be La Dolce Vita, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, High and Low, The Dinner Game, Downfall, Wages of Fear and The Seventh Seal.
 
  1. Hero[s] (Mandarin)
  2. Together (Mandarin)
  3. Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham (Hindi)
  4. Life Is Beautiful (Italian)
  5. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (Hindi)
 
2046, Lust Caution, Infernal Affairs, also want to see the two movies about the warring states period, and the newer one about Nanjing, and Spider Lilies.

So yeah any Chinese movie :-p
 
La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful) is probably my favorite all time foreign film

For the purposes of this, I'm not going to list anime films, since it seems people watch them for different reasons than other foreign films (although Spirited Away is one I'd recommend).

Some others in no particular order:
Johnny Stecchino (Italian)
Cinema Paradiso (Italian)
Le Pacte des Loup (Brotherhood of the Wolf) - French
A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) - French
Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) - German
Roshomon - Japanese
Yojimbo - Japanese (The original A Fist Full of Dollars)

Other movies I've seen and might recommend, but aren't as good:
8 1/2 (Italian) which is a bit confusing at times. Gomorra (Italian) which is an interesting mob movie, but suffers from having too many different storylines that don't really connect. La Finestra di Fronte (Facing Windows), a pretty cool Italian movie that gets boosted from being generic because of some interesting flashbacks to Italy from a more historical time.

Avoid La Famiglia (The Family), which is a really terrible Italian movie, imho.
 
Foreign language films are the biggest gap in my film viewing, so there are many I haven't seen yet, but of those I have seen to date, the greatest are Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White, and Red).
 
Shichinin no samurai
Der Untergang
Le dîner de cons
Letters from Iwo Jima (does this count?, it is American made but filmed in Japanese)

and one just released that is worth hunting for (I saw it in Honduras) :
Sin Nombre - it is a very dark tale of a Honduran girl's quest to get to America and the relationship she forges with a El Salvadoran gang member who is also trying to escape. Sounds simplistic but it is extremely well done.
 
In no particular order:

Jean de Florette
Manon des Sources
Ju Dou
Raise the Red Lantern
The Wages of Fear
Red Sorghum
Farewell My Concubine
Kolya
To Live
 
Prodigal Son
Once Upon A Time In China
Mr Vampire
Iron Monkey (1990s)
House Of Flying Daggers
The Killer
Hard Boiled
God Of Gamblers
The Bride Wore Black
Das Boot
Taxi
Bhoot
Main Hoon Na
Ab Tak Chappan
Night Watch
Solaris (original)
Godzilla
Yojimbo
Sanjuro
Seven Samurai
Ran
My Wife Is A Gangster
Brotherhood

And lots of others...
 
In no particular order:

1) Europa Europa
2) Y Tu Mama Tambien
3) La Cage Aux Folles
4) The Dreamers
5) Les Miserables


J.
 
The Seven Samurai
The Hidden Fortress
The 400 Blows
La Jetée
The Seventh Seal
Das Boot
M
 
In The Mood For Love and Infernal Affairs are among my most favourite movies ever, foreign or not.
 
Mr. B said:
Alidar Jarok said:
...8 1/2 (Italian) which is a bit confusing at times...
Click to expand...
I need to get around to watching that one again. The first time I saw it I knew I was watching a "great" film but I barely understood what was going on.
Click to expand...

I understand that Fellini wanted to avoid the cliché of looking into the distance and matte fades in order to have a flashback, but I had trouble figuring out what was a flashback, what was a dream, and what was the next scene. It was just a generally confusing movie for me.
 
Alidar Jarok said:
Mr. B said:
Alidar Jarok said:
...8 1/2 (Italian) which is a bit confusing at times...
Click to expand...
I need to get around to watching that one again. The first time I saw it I knew I was watching a "great" film but I barely understood what was going on.
Click to expand...

I understand that Fellini wanted to avoid the cliché of looking into the distance and matte fades in order to have a flashback, but I had trouble figuring out what was a flashback, what was a dream, and what was the next scene. It was just a generally confusing movie for me.
Click to expand...

Sort of the point, I thought. It's a hard movie to watch in parts, but when I'm in the mood for it, I'd definitely count it as one of my favorite foreign language films.

I'm also a big fan of the entire Infernal Affairs trilogy, and I quite enjoy it's predecessor of sorts, Hard Boiled. Smiles of a Summer Night was pretty good, as I remember. And Persona was outstanding. I need to see more Bergman.

I'll have to think more on this question...
 
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