It’s a satire. Of what filmmakers would want to film, ie: a serial killer killing people. Then the camera crew actually start to help him. Plus their sound guys keep getting killed. It lives in a world of serial killers and the moment when they meet another serial killer and his camera crew is absolutely priceless. Yes, it’s brutal (and I still remember some of the more horrible scenes even to this day 20 years later), but it really is much much more than that.
L’Atalante (1934) dir: Jean Vigo.
Haunting images.
No. I didn’t read Hamlet in the original Klingon, either. My loss.
I was just curious if the Afrikaans version had made it overseas.
Forgot to mention Allegro Non Troppo, an Italian parody of Fantasia. It runs a little long but it is exceedingly clever, with sections ranging from slapstick to pathos with a heavy dollop of social satire mixed in as well.
I will admit to really enjoying Intouchables - I know there was a rather tepid American remake, but the French version keeps all the rough edges in that elevate the film from well-worn cliche to heartwarming story.
Some of my favorites:
A Separation - Complex interfamily drama set in Iran
The Lives of Others - Conscience against the state in cold war East Germany
Shoplifters - A group of poor people living in Japan who resort to shoplifting to scrape by. The story raises interesting questions about what it means to be a family.
City of God - Drug wars in a Brazilian slum.
The Story of Qiu Ju - Pride and stubbornness leads to the escalation of a personal conflict.
Raise the Red Lantern - A young woman becomes the fourth wife in a Chinese lord’s household, which causes conflict as she runs up against unwritten rules.
Let the Right One In - A troubled and bullied boy makes friends with a girl who turns out to be a vampire.
Persepolis - An Iranian girl growing up during the war with Iraq. Her family sends her to France to get her away from the dangers of war and the Revolutionary Guard.
I didn’t see (but may have missed) my favorite, Carmen, a flamenco version of Bizet’s opera of the same name.
The Raid: Redemption
An excellent film. The cinematography is amazing… there’s a long shot in the film that made my jaw hit the floor and left me wondering “how the hell did they do that?”
I enjoyed this much more than the American remake. I especially liked telling people that I thought one of the best films of the year was a teenage and vampire love story, just to see their expressions (the Twilight series had just started).
I was in Germany years ago, and started watching a movie on television. It was in French with German subtitles, and I don’t know either of those languages; but it was a prison-break movie so I could follow the action even if I couldn’t understand the dialog. When it ended, I wrote down the names of some of the actors so I could look it up on IMDb. It’s called Le Trou. When Netflix came around, I put this movie in my queue and finally got to see it with English subtitles.
If Rififi is the first heist movie, Le Trou may be the first prison-break movie, or at least it influenced a lot of movies that followed.
Another vote for The Fast Runner.
Also: Les Triplettes de Belleville. Animated french story about um … bicycle racing, I guess.
I get lots of movies from “differently legitimate” sources, and I’ve never found anything other than the English dub.
I wouldn’t call this “best” movies but a trilogy of low (low) budget Japanese movies from the 1960s recently got a re-release as a Blu-Ray box set. (I already had the old DVD set.)
The old versions of the movies are on archive.org:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=Yokai%20monsters&and[]=mediatype%3A"movies"
Have you read the source novel by Jerzy Kosiński?
Four Japanese movies I’d recommend
Kamikaze Taxi - set in contemporary times (mid nineties), an ex-pat who grew up in South America comes back to Japan and gets involved with a young yakusa member on the outs with his gang
Hidden Blade and The Twilight Samurai - both set towards the end of the samurai period in Japan and dealing with the changes imposed on the country by Western influences
After Life - the recently deceased arrive at a decrepit facility where they are given a week to choose their happiest memory to enable them to move on (where to is never made clear)
No love for Love and Honor?
I browsed thru the thread; lots of great films mentioned. I’ll try and add to the list:
Pusher is excellent. Grim. Gritty. Unforgiving. Realistic. This is Nicolas Winding Refn’s first film, and it’s a doozy. Intended as a stand-alone film, he later made two sequels (he needed the money) which are also good, but this one stands a bit above the others, IMO. There are also Hindi and UK remakes of Pusher.
Returner is a lot of fun. Time travel, aliens, fight scenes, chases, stunts, stylish costumes… just a big, fun movie.
Two from Luc:
Le Femme Nikita is good, if a bit rough around the edges. Many people may have seen the Hollywood remake, Point of No Return; fewer will have watched the Hong Kong remake, Black Cat. And most have prolly heard of or watched one of the popular TV series based on the film.
District 13 is a movie that exists so that there is a reason to watch people do insane parkour stunts for 90 minutes in case watching people do insane parkour stunts isn’t enough fun all by itself. It totally fucking rocks.
Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior an impressive martial arts film with Tony Jaa.
Throne of Blood Kurosawa’s take on Macbeth, dark and brooding.
Blind Swordsman Zatoichi (2003) Beat Takeshi’s version is bloody, funny and ends with a Bollywood style dance number.
The Bear told from the perspective of a bear cub whose mother dies in a rockslide. Looks like a nature documentary.
The Vanishing atmospheric suspense thriller without the remake’s Hollywood ending.
Is Netflix different in the USA? I can’t find any of the films mentioned here in my Netflix, is there a trick I am missing?
Anyway, I wanted to mention Elevator to the Gallows (French: Ascenseur pour l’échafaud ), also known as Frantic in the U.S. and Lift to the Scaffold in the UK, is a 1958 French crimethriller film directed by Louis Malle, starring Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as illicit lovers whose murder plot starts to unravel after one of them becomes trapped in an elevator. Fantastic music by Miles Davies!