aside from English Speaking films, what other films do you like to watch? I personally like to watch SPanish and English films. I have a friend who is majoring in Spanish and she always ask me what movies or shows to watch. I introduced her to Cantinflas and she fell in love with his movies. They made great movies in Mexico throughout the 50s,60s, early 70s.. but then their movies declined and just started to make cheasy flicks. Their comedies were still great, but thier dramas and suspense were very bad. I guess with special effects and stuff like that, screen writers forgot to include a good plot and just depended on bubble gum type actors to draw crowds, But the last 10 years or so Mexican films have been very good and the acting has been first class. The last 4 that come to mind are Sexo, Pudor, Y lagrimas; Amorres perros, Y Tu Mama tambien, & El Crimen del Padre Amarro. recently, I have been trying to find a Cantinflas box set on DVD. I have sen them on VHS, but just cant find them on DVD. The few German flims I have seen I have liked but I dont know where to rent them (here in Houston) nor do i know which ones are good? ANy advice on which ones are good? doesnt matter if they are old or new. Which German films are considered epic in German film history? What I mean by that is every country has a list of great/epic movies (ie Godfathers, Citizen Kane, etc).
tie me up, tie me down was good so was man bite dog "I went to foreign film the other day and i tell you I couldn't understand a thing. I sat next to a deslexic kid and we were bumping heads the whole time." dennis miller
I also liked that one. I also enjoyed Jamon Jamon. i spotted Penelop Cruz on that movie 10 years ago before she mad it in the US. I rented all the movie titles with her on it,
http://www.filmlinc.com/archive/fcm/7-8-97/poll.htm http://www.library.american.edu/subject/media/aufderheide/aufderhe.html These are two decent lists of foreign films, most of which I haven't seen of course.
I saw All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre) a couple of years back and enjoyed it a lot, and I've been meaning to check out Talk To Her (Hable con ella). Also want to check out Abre Los Ojos since I enjoyed Vanilla Sky so much. Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien are both excellent of course. Haven't seen El Crimen del Padre Amarro yet. I understand mainland China is producing decent flicks but I haven't been able to check them out yet.
The Chinese movies are better known outside of China in the 1990's. Both Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou got a few Oscar nominations. Raise the Red Lantern by Zhang Yimou Farewell My Concubine by Chen Kaige To Live by Zhang Yimou My favorite is actually "Yellow earth" by Chen Kaige. It was the break through movie for Chinese cinema. Chen has a new movie called "Together" which is best of the bunch.
Chinese movies rock the freaking house. They put out some of the world's best movies in my sometimes humble opinion. There are some really strong movies coming out of Iran, Vietnam, Japan, France & Germany too.
I've yet to get a satisfactory explanation of what's so great about Y Tu Mama Tambien. Chen Kaige tends to do darker stuff. I'd bet his movies aren't as popular in China as they are with western "art" crowds. His English language film debut Killing Me Softly was abyssmally bad. I've seen some other great Chinese movies like Shower, Not One Less, The Road Home, etc.
You have seen more than I do.... even through I am Chinese. I also recommended HK director -- Wong Kar Wei if you like weird movies.
I don't know why, but Chinese movies greatly appeal to me. I get tons of them through Netflix. I can't even begin to imagine how many I've seen. My wife even had to tell me to stop getting them for a while, because she wanted to watch something without subtitles for a change.
"Run Lola Run" is excellent and doesn't have that much dialogue so it's really easy to watch. A good fun film to sit back with a beer and pizza.
I need to check it out. I always have mixed emotion about his pictures. Parts of them I really, really like (usually the Gong Li parts ), but sometimes they're just too dark for me. He seems to like putting heroin in his movies.
From the IMDB description, this looks like a departure for Chen Kaige. I definately want to check it out as I like his style and think he's great, I'm just not so keen on some of the content of his movies.
Since Hollywood is doing a (assuredly terrible) remake of it, I recommend everyone watch the Japanese movie "Shall We Dance". A very gentle movie, with warmth and emotion. Not my usual kind of movie, but I really enjoyed it.