Back to One: Foreign Language Films

26/5/21 Lymond 42

In college, I went through a huge foreign film phase – anything by Fellini, Louis Malle, Kurosawa and the like were up for discussion. I didn’t care if it was color, black and white, made sense or didn’t make sense – I would go see anything made in a different language. Over the years though, I kind of moved away from the art house film and embraced my childhood love of American blockbusters, but I recently rewatched the Norwegian film Troll Hunter. It’s a loose mix of Spinal Tap, The Blair Witch project and any moderately good Sasquatch movie.

The premise is that a student film crew making a documentary about a bear poacher stumbles across Norways only certified government endorsed Troll Hunter. They follow him around filming his exploits and troll hunting techniques – all the while trying to keep the fact that trolls exist hidden from the public. It’s kind of goofy and the CGI could have been a little better in some places but for a “mockumentary” about Norway’s folkloric bad guys – it’s surprisingly poignant. It’s definitely not high brow cinema but if you need a cool down during this weird heatwave week – I highly recommend it.

So, Deadsplinteregians, what are some good foreign language films you recommend? As always, thanks for you support and for stopping by.

The answer to last week’s poll was C) Vanessa Redgrave – usually the Brit actors are really chill and cool to work with – not this one. Not very nice. I’d heard in the past that Patrick Dempsey was unpleasant but he was great. Kevin Costner was just meh. And, Salma Hayek was quite enamored of herself, but for the most part pleasant.

Here are the results from last week:

This week’s poll :

Which of these statements is not true about Jon Bon Jovi?
15 votes · 15 answers
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42 Comments

  1. I’ve heard only good things about Jon Bon Jovi so it has to be D. 

    I’ve never seen Amelie, it’s one of those movies I keep meaning to get to. I can’t claim to know a lot about foreign language films. Most of what I’ve seen are the well known stuff by Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, Kurosawa. And of course Cinema Paradiso,  and The Bicycle Thieves. 

    I would also recommend The Tin Drum, Au Revoir les Enfants, and  Persepolis but most everyone here has probably already seen them.

     

    • Never seen Amelie? You need to come over to my house – one of the fam is an Amelie superfan – so it pops up in rotation every few months.

    • Oh definitely watch Amelie, it’s a nice one. I did also watch and like Au Revoir Les Enfants. 
       
      I took a German film class in college, so I have some recommendations from that: Goodbye Lenin, The Baader Meinhof Complex, and The Edukators. Not from the class, but a great German film with a soundtrack I have on regular rotation is Run Lola Run. 

    • I saw Amelie right when it came out (and I hate subtitles, English or foreign) and LMAO’d.

      It’s worth a view for so many reasons. I have it on my Plex I still have to get around to adding you to.

    • Thanks! Usually, when people find out I’m in the movie business – they inevitably ask me what shows I’ve worked on and what is so and so actor like- so I thought people might have an interest. I have to be careful what I say too. For the most part, actors feel like they’re in a safe space with us crew people – so I don’t want to mess that up – I like promoting nice chill ones, but I will call out some bad behavior on occasion. A lot of actors can get caught up in their own hype – mostly tv based actors, I’ve found – but most are just trying to get their work done and go home just like everyone else. 

  3. Seen Ran, City of God and Battle of Algiers.  All compelling.
    The Battle of Algiers is probably one of the best lessons in the ineffectiveness of counter insurgency of a professional military against a popular revolution from a historical perspective. 
    Winning hearts and minds doesn’t mean grab’em by the balls.
    Too bad most of the US generals and civilian leaders of the Vietnam era didn’t watch it.
    Onto the subtitled films I can remember:
    Iron Sky.
    Trois Hommes Et Le Bebe (funnier than the US remake.)
    Pour Elle (better than the shit US remake.)
    Original Godzilla
    Let The Right One In (one of the better vampire movies: scary, creepy, etc)
    My Life As A Dog

      • There were a couple of movies that made a deep impression on me as a child. They were often on the local PBS station but I can’t remember if they were dubbed or subtitled. The Japanese movie Skinny and Fatty and the much more disturbing Forbidden Games. I don’t know why the hell my parents let me watch that as a kid. 

    • +++ To My Life as a Dog (I’ll always fondly remember Ingemar reading the lingerie catalogue to his grandfather). 
      And Let the Right One In was Swedish perfection. I didn’t even need to see the American hackjob remake to know they’d fuck it up. The constant need to remake works in the English language and flatten them in the process is so irksome. Bong Joon Ho was so correct about Americans needing to get over the barrier of subtitles.

  4. Amelie is the best!
    I went through a WWII phase and watched some russian war movies, I don’t remember the names but what impressed me is they didn’t flinch from showing how scared the men were and how brutal the conditions. For a long time in Murican war films everybody was a fucking hero.

    • The only Russian movie I’ve seen in a while is Night Watch – which now that I think about it – I should’ve had it on this post. It was pretty awesome. It would make a great double feature with either Troll Hunter or Let The Right One In.
       

      • That was a pretty great movie, and I also liked the sequel Daywatch, enough that I found the U.S. translations of the books and read them (I think there are four or five total?  I enjoyed them, but got a bit much towards the end of the series, but still worth a read, IMHO, especially if you don’t hate urban fantasy)

  6. Well now, I definitely thought it would be Costner. Somehow, I don’t mind knowing that about Vanessa Redgrave. I’d sort of expect of the grand dames of acting dynasties (though Natasha Richardson was supposedly lovely). 


    8 1/2 is my top cineaste love. I love Claudia Cardinale. Also in your header image, City of God was sublime. I know there’s a sequel, but I haven’t got round to it in all these years. The Battle of Algiers is seminal and I recall rewatching it in the Aughts because it became highly relevant in relation to foreign policy and the US involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Amelie is lovely and Yann Tiersen’s score is immortal. I also like Delicatessen by the same director. Oldboy is such a classic. I recommend watching the rest of the “revenge” trilogy to which it belongs (including Sympathy for Lady Vengeance). I had to roll my eyes when I heard there would be an American remake, and that Spike Lee chose to use guns (that seriously misses the point about what is so jarring about the original). 

    • As for additional recommendations:

      Italian, Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini
      French, Les Quatre Cents Coups (and by extension all the Antoine Doinel films)
      Czech, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders 
      Spanish, Todo sobre mi madre
      German, The Lives of Others
      Chinese, In the Mood for Love; Lust, Caution; Chungking Express
      Korean, so many. Parasite; Mother; Memories of Murder; Sympathy for Lady Vengeance; JSA; Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…And Spring; Peppermint Candy; The Host; Burning; Secret Sunshine

      • …spring, summer, fall, winter…& spring…really liked that one

        …also (not korean but the above reminded me) the twilight samurai & when the last sword is drawn were excellent

      • Oh! Your categorization somehow reminded me to think of Spanish movies. I think in my brain they’re only kinda “foreign language”? And I don’t really have an excuse for that since I learned Spanish as an adult.

        Y tu mama tambien (a Mexican road/coming of age film)
        Timecrimes (a Spanish time paradox movie that will break your mind at least a little)
        Motorcycle Diaries (Argentine movie about Che traversing South America, an adaptation of his book)

        Also, your mention of The Host reminded me about two of the more disturbing movies I’ve seen in my life: Audition, and Oldboy. I don’t exactly know if I can recommend them, but goddamn they are powerful films. 

  7. …I’d second delicatessen being worth a watch…& also la cité des enfants perdus, which I think is pretty much from the same folks

    …also the revenge trilogy, which I might have mentioned in a brain drain thread sometime recently-ish…but if I start trying to think of other titles from that side of the world I might go a little overboard…there are a fair few things I’d recommend if people like kung fu movies but I feel like that might not really be in the intended spirit of the post this time around…but I will say infernal affairs is a lot better than the departed for my money?

    …once upon a time I watched a fair bit of french cinema though…& it’s not all les amants du pont-nuef & au bout de souffle…diner des cons was pretty good…& stuff like les valseuses if you can find the funny side…but les visiteurs was more straightforwardly funny?

    …& I have a soft spot for a film called tango…it’s a black comedy that’s kind of hard to explain without spoilers but I’d argue well worth the time…it’s…very french?

    …less funny but none the less excellent would be la haine…&…well, I think I might stop before I go overboard even without the kung fu thing?

    …oh…also the taxi films are great…mainly the first one but the second one is basically the first film + ninjas so I sort of love it…& then they just got sillier which is sort of impressive in & of itself…or banliue 13 if you want less cars & more parkour but pretty much an equal amount of bonkers entertainment

    …& le grand bleu was excellent but I’d recommend the long version or you miss out on some stuff…&…no, really…I’d best stop

      • I also went through a French phase but not in the same way…I lived in ville d’Anjou/St. Leonard, Quebec for 5 years and wanted to learn more Francais. I was told the best way to do that was to watch movies in French with English subtitles and watch again with French subtitles…repeat, repeat, repeat.

        I was given the movie Kick Ass, in French, with both English and French subtitles…and I watched, read, and listened the shit out of it…

        …everyone who knows me knows I deplore, wholeheartedly, superhero stuffs but I LOVE Kick Ass (and even Kickass 2).

        The other movie I was given was “Watchmen” and I loved it as well.

        So my favourite foreign films are “Watchmen” and “Kick Ass” and no one can tell me I like superhero movies because those two are FOREIGN movies.

         

    • Le Dîner de Cons is wonderful (also another one that got an American dumb-down). I’m also reminded of Kieślowski’s Trois couleurs trilogy (mostly for Bleu). Caché/Hidden made an impression. And, it’s a bit cheesy, but I remember watching Tanguy is Cinema Club at school–it’s definitely memorable and not typical French cinema.

  9. Out of curiosity, did you work with JBJ on Moonlight and Valentino?  That’s the only film I can think of with him in it, although I’m guessing he’s done others.

    Subtitles make me crazy because I’m not a “do two things at once” kind of person.  The only environment where I will abide subtitles is when I’m at the opera.  La Boheme fucking wrecked me.

    There was one Italian film that I watched only because I was with a bunch of co-workers at the time.  I don’t remember the name of it, but the story line was basically a giant flashback scene about a filmmaker who was told of…I think a theater owner’s death, and then he remembered all the movies that he would watch at that theater.  The owner of the theater was a super prude and would cut out all of the kissing scenes in the films.  At one point there was a montage that the main character put together of all the kissing scenes that had been cut out.  It was a good film, but it was tough to focus on what was happening on the screen because I was reading the goddamned subtitles.

    • @butcherbakertoiletrymaker – No, the movie I worked on with JBJ wasn’t that high brow. It was a god awful National Lampoon super low budget film called Pucked. It was so cheap the producers tried to staff the whole film with college kids so they didn’t have to pay them. One week into filming – the whole cast revolted demanding real film people who knew what they were doing – so they brought a few of us in to at least run the departments. It’s a terrible movie and I don’t know why Jon did it – but we ended up having fun.

  11. I enjoyed Troll Hunter – and I’ve so far enjoyed most of what I’ve seen put out by Magnet (Magnet Films?)  I think they were only active for a few years or so in the mid-late aughts, or at least that’s what I remember from watching trailers and such.  Maybe later became part of Magnolia?  i dunno…
    I think they were also associated with Time Crimes (also mentioned in other comments), Let the Right One In (also mentioned, and also one of my favorites), maybe The Host (also mentioned), Big Man Japan (only watched part of, kinda lost interest, mockumentary about a kaiju-fighter?), Rubber (rather liked, about a telekinetic tire?), The Black Death (also really liked), Monsters (I also really liked), Hobo With a Shotgun (intentional B-movie?), Mutant Chronicles (not very good…), Europa Report (which I rather liked), and probably countless others I’m either forgetting or just not aware of.  For a while it was one of those labels where I would be willing to watch a movie if it was associated with them, simply because I liked so much other stuff I had seen associated with them.
    I kinda almost feel that way about A24
     
    Anyways…  I haven’t seen as much foreign films lately, I wonder if it’s partially because Netflix/Amazon/Hulu are providing a niche for something other than typical Hollywood formulaic stuff, that used to be solely the domain of independent and foreign movies?
    More recent stuff I’ve seen that I’ve liked; Raw, a French horror film about cannibalism, Here Comes The Devil, Spanish language, Mexican? horror about a family with two kids who go missing, and “come back wrong”, Your Name, a Japinese Anime involving two teenagers body-swapping and falling love, it was pretty amusing and well-done.  Recently watched the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, and although it was pretty heavy on the sexual violence, I otherwise enjoyed it.
    Older stuff, I haven’t seen much recent, but I liked Tom Tykwer’s stuff (mostly German?), Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior, Winter Sleepers… Perfume? 
    Also liked some of Luc Besson’s stuff, La Femme Nikita, The Professional… um, ok, it looks like most of his stuff is English language… La Femme Nikita was pretty awesome though…
    It’s really niche, but I also really liked Avalon (2001). directed by Mamoru Oshii, probably best known for directing the original anime version of Ghost in the Shell.
    Also watched Ichi the Killer, and that was… quite a bit more than enough.  I’ve heard good things about his other works, but haven’t been brave enough to give them a try so far…
    Almodovar is another name I remember liking, although I don’t think I’ve seen more than a couple of his stuff?  Volver? Bad Education? I’m sure I’ve seen more than that, but can’t remember which ones…
    Oh, and Some of Guillero Del Toro’s Spanish stuff – Pan’s Labyrinth was amazing.
     
    I’m sure I’m forgetting all kinds of stuff I really liked but is slipping my mind at the moment…

  12. I have seen so many Asian films that I can no longer recall. Old boy, Ong Bak, The Raid, Parasite are the most memorable. I loved attending FantAsia Fest. Back in the day, tickets were easy to come by and affordable. There’s probably a list out there of all the features they’ve shown over the years and it would be worth combing through. NB that they aren’t always Asian films. This year might be streamed online again? A big part of the fun was the audience. Most of us were very enthusiastic geeks and nerds.
    https://fantasiafestival.com/en/
     

    • Forgot to mention why I brought it all up… I saw Troll Hunter at Fantasia Film Fest and it was glorious. The roaring jovial atmosphere may have contributed extra points to the film itself.

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