Foreign Films

[themostepotente]

A few weeks ago, charlotteschaos and I were discussing our love of foreign films. Here are mine in no particular order.

1.) Raise the Red Lantern (Chinese) Directed by Zhang Yimou

My love for Gong Li knows no limits.

2.) Fairwell My Concubine (Chinese) Directed by Kaige Chen

3.) Seven Samurai (Japanese) Directed by Akira Kurosawa

4.) La Femme Nikita (French) Directed by Luc Besson

5.) A Better Tomorrow (Chinese) Directed by John Woo

Before JW got all shitty and Hollywood :P

6.) Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish) Directed by Guillermo del Toro

7.) Ichi the Killer (Japanese) Directed by Takashi Miike

All kinds of fucked up.

8.) Au Revoir, Les Enfants (French) Directed by Louis Malles

9.) Le Pacte des Loups (French) Directed by Christophe Gans

10.) Delicatessan (French) Directed by Marc Caro

Ponds, this movie is right up your twisted alley. *G*

Okay, so I know I'm missing A LOT. Ang Lee's stuff is definitely good. And there's House of Flying Daggers and CTHD and yeah... *sighs*

So what foreign movies does everyone else love? Feel free to suggest movies and bash my tastes. What the hell, y'know? *G*

--P

Comments

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

I barely see any movies anymore. I have some favorites from back in high school and college, when I was a movie fiend. i finally got my own copy of the film Diva, which I totally loved when it came out in 1981. I also remember loving Fanny and Alexander, the one "happy" Bergman film, also came out in the 1980s.

There was a period when we were trying to watch all of the Kristof Kieslowski films, especially the Three Colors series. Those are amazing, really mysterious and beautiful. That whole insider/outsider thing that I love in HP underpins those movies. We also watched some of his Decalogue series, which are set in Poland instead of in Paris.

I don't believe in bashing other people's taste in films. i am of the "more is more" aesthetic school. i don't like it when the point of taste is to omit things--I think the point of taste is to include things.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

(Unless of course we are talking about something really, really bad and then all bets are off.)

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

i am of the "more is more" aesthetic school.

I'm with you here. If something has value to someone, it deserves to be considered. We don't ALL have to love it, but deciding what's "in" and what's "out" seems pointless to me. Film and book reviews have been grating on my nerves more and more lately. Probably sounds hypocritical since I supported the whole fic review thing...but the reviews I liked always tried to find something positive even in fics they didn't like, and made it clear when it was largely a question of taste.

I wish mainstream media reviews did that. Roger Ebert is usually pretty good about judging films on their own terms instead of only giving good reviews to the arty stuff, and he's been skewing positive more and more in his old age. But that isn't a bad thing - better to like something mediocre than to trash something potentially valuable to someone.

I guess I'm more interested in investigating WHY we find value in something and not something else, or why others are finding value where we are not, rather than just compiling a list of what we like versus what we hate.

Um, Penny, this is NOT in any way a criticism of your question! It occurred to me this comment might come across that way.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Although I do enjoy lists of what other people hate because they are often witty and grumpy. Sometimes I even like lists of what other people hate that include things I like!

What I don't like is when someone is nice and open to other opinions and people are mean about it.

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

Agreed to both. In the first case, you aren't being told what to like. In the second, you are. And that sucks. :)

[themostepotente.livejournal.com]

Fanny and Alexander's another good one I missed!