150 From Around The World: My Fave Foreign Films

  To be quite honest, this movie may not really be good enough to recommend to anyone or even to include on this list.
But I do have it on this list simply because I think it's a great way to start off a list, whether it be about favorite films from other parts of the globe or just about any other subject matter.
  Plus, any film that can take a tried-and-true horror genre like vampirism and imbue it with the sexual allure of girl-on-girl action, particularly during the cinematically stiff period of the early 70's, deserves some kind of credit.
So, strap-on a wooden stake or a massive black donkey-sized dong, and let's get going on a super-long journey through many of my preferred choices when it comes to foreign language celluloid escapism.
  Or, if the mention of Vampyros Lesbos makes you feel the inclination, go watch some internet porn. Either way is a good way to "kill off" some time.



  BTW, if you think that putting this movie in the last spot is kind of cheating and not true to the nature of a list that's supposed to be about my "favorite foreign films" then just pretend that VL is not on this list and replace it with Murmur of the Heart. It's a French coming-of-age story that also "came out" in 1971, about a boy whose dad is a gynecologist and who has a habit of engaging in some of the more innocent taboos of the day. Like masturbation. Which means he probably would mind that Vampy Lez is on this list.

The Earth's populace must come to grips with its tendency of abundantly accumulating and disposing it's garbage as The King of All Monsters takes on a giant shambling mountain of red-eyed sludge that terrorizes the island of Japan by transforming itself into a flying smog-billowing force of pollution incarnate.
Kinda makes you want to start recycling, huh?

  There are several bad Santa movies out there, and let's be honest, they're all pretty much very poor in quality in every sense. Including this one. But, since we're all only human, that means that each and every one of us is allowed to like at least one guilty pleasure when it comes horrible Holiday flix. Therefore, for my pick, I choose this one...  "Saint" ("Sint" in its original Dutch title). A creepy and campy Christmas film from them there Netherlands, in which St. Nick lives up to his name. He'll nick you with his large, bladed scythe-like weapon of choice, whether you are the naughty or the nice list. And by "nick" what i really mean is "slash into thin pieces of flesh colored garland strands.  
  And yeah, I know that's not a very witty or even good description for this entry, but this is a bad movie that doesn't really deserve anything better. So I'll just leave it at that and get into some more serious entries that I think might be worth your consideration...

  In 1973, the world was introduced to an Asian butt-kicking femme with whom I fell in love with instantly in a movie from Japan called Lady Snowblood. It was a film that wasn't afraid to step away from the typical samurai flick of the time in that it not only had a female as the lead character, but also, that it depicted her with a much more serious tone than the campy chop-socky fare that was every other cinema warrior was kung fu fighting. It was so well received that it landed this lady who like to spill blood on the snow a sequel a year later. 
   In Love Song of Vengeance, she returns, not with her previous goal of vengeance, but instead with her sights and katana set towards the political realm of espionage (although through circumstances not of her choosing).
  And as everyone knows, there's more than enough blood in that arena to quench the thirst of anyone's (man or woman) sword.

  The first [REC] is a 2007 found footage film that was released from Spain to overwhelming global success. However, a success that big always comes with a price, which in this case meant that sequels with subsequent diminishing quality in each one were soon to follow. Although it isn’t bad, this fourth installment in the series is no exception.  By the time of [REC] 4, the initial shock of the first one had pretty much dissipated and all the those involved in this chapter could do was give it their best shot. Which they did.
  A zombie mini-apocalypse on a ship out in the middle of the ocean is a good vehicle for a horror movie, and had this been a standalone feature, it probably would have been able to leave its own mark in the genre. But this is a story that is marked with the name of REC in its title, and therefore, it'll most likely go down in history as yet another forgettable sequel in a franchise that started out so spectacularly. R4 is a pretty good movie that needed to be great if it wanted to be remembered. Instead, it will languish out in the sea with not much of a search party to save it from an obscurity that it probably doesn't deserve.  

Six years into the future, gangs have taken over a ghetto just outside of Paris France (I know what you're thinking..."Wait... France has ghettos?!). One gang in particular has stolen a very powerful bomb and have unwittingly activated its countdown sequence.
Now one cop must go undercover and team up with a criminal to get passed the ghetto walls and passed the gangs in order to deactivate the bomb before it goes off and takes the ghetto with it.



After honing his skills behind the camera as a cinematographer, Pierre Moral is still behind the camera, but this time he's sitting in the director's chair. Teaming up with famed French writer and producer Luc Besson, the pair produce  a frenzied French film in which parkour (look it up) is used to create a very unique brand of the action film called District B13.

  Down in the subterrestrial passages of the Paris Metro, a "secret society" of Morlock-like eccentrics stumbles through life as a means of separating themselves from the dissatisfaction that feel towards the world above. Among them is a small-time safecracker named Fred, who along with his fellow "mole men", has a "passion" for petty crimes, stylistic clothes and Avante Garde music.
  Starring the guy from Highlander (and you who I'm talking because as everyone knows, "There can only be one"), Subway is an artistically "visually vibrant" piece of underground French cinema about those French citizens who like to live artistically underground.

  Here is a movie about World War II that goes against everything that most WW2 movies go for. Instead depicting the conflict and tragedy that other films of the same subject matter usually try to portray, Mediterraneo goes the opposite route and tells a tale of peace and serenity that comes from being abandoned by the worldwide war machine.
  A band of soldiers who range from average to below average are assigned to a remote Greek isle to stand as a lookout for the enemy. After realizing that they have been forgotten, the small group soon find themselves integrating with their new surroundings and its picayune community of people into a life more satisfying and fulfilling than even before the war began.

  Back in 1979, when the first Drunken Master movie came out, it wound up becoming quite of a surprise hit, even outside of the borders of China where it was made. Even more surprising was that, by the 90's, Jackie Chan had become an international sensation, the caliber of which no one, not even Jackie himself, could have foreseen. Therefore, it was hardly any surprise that eventually, the country's movie making machine decided to release a sequel despite the fact that there was a fifteen-year difference between the two films. And luckily, for us hardcore fans, that fifteen-year span didn't affect the quality of this follow-up, especially considering just how often any sequel, no matter what country it's made in, tends to fall short of its predecessor. 

A woman goes to the Doctor, worried about her husband's temper.
The Doctor asks: "What's the problem?"
The woman says: "Doctor, I don't know what to do. Every day my husband seems to lose his temper for no reason. It scares me."
The Doctor says: "I have a cure for that. When it seems that your husband is getting angry, just take a glass of water and start swishing it in your mouth. Just swish and swish but don't swallow it until he either leaves the room or calms down."
Two weeks later the woman comes back to the doctor looking fresh and reborn.
The woman says: "Doctor that was a brilliant idea! Every time my husband started losing it, I swished with water. I swished and swished, and he calmed right down! How does a glass of water do that?"
The Doctor says: "The water itself does nothing. It's keeping your mouth shut that does the trick."
I know that joke has nothing to do with this movie, but it's one that always come to mind whenever I think about the idea of women playing with fire. :P



The second chapter of the Millenium Trilogy, a series which despite it's fiery debut, seemed to burn out with most other connoiseurs of cinema. But for me, I found it to be quite a satisfactory series, overall.

I don't how to describe this movie other than to say
it's something along the lines about adopting a baby outside the conventional means....
Or maybe,
the way this story pans out,
the best I can say is that it's pretty f#cked up.

Inside is part of the New Movement of French horror movies in which the stories are presented with a visceral, no holds barred type of attitude. Therefore, this is just one of the very few that movies of that type that can be found on any of my "favorite films lists".

  A couple of entries earlier I mentioned the second film to the Millenium Trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and now, here is the third film in that series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  Actually, this is a trilogy that get a bad rap because after the critical success of the first movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, everyone expected the two follow-ups to be just as "great" as that first one. To the point where many film experts were predicting that this would be the Triad equivalent to Let the Right One In, which is considered one of the best films to ever have come out of the county of Sweden. 
  And a triplicate set, this was a franchise that did not manage to meet the high expectations that were set upon it, and some even like to accuse it of being of failure because of it. But the fact that I have all three films on this list is an obvious observation that I wholly disagree with that general consensus. Now, I will admit that Hornet's Nest and Played with Fire aren't as good the Dragon Tattoo, but at the same time I do think that they still managed to bring the adaptations of the books to a life on the screen in a manner that effectively follows the journey a social misfit with an exceptional talent as a computer hacker and the relationship that she forms with an investigative journalist who much more her senior.
   Each chapter is an "about a girl" type of story that is quality, provocative and emotionally involving and in my opinion, they each manage to stand on their own two feet as solo motion pictures that are well worth a watch either separately or as a set.

  Cheng is an iceman who has just moved in with his cousins, and as a courtesy to them, he has promised them not to get into trouble. Which, being that this a Bruce Lee Kung Fu klassic, means that it's a promise that going to get broken pretty quickly. Hsioa Mi runs the ice making factory that employs most of the family, and his use of the facilities to manufacture more "snow" that ice is the reason some of the cousins are starting to go missing. 
 And that is something that will not stand for Cheng. Pushed to the limit, the time comes when he must tell his employer to take this job and shove it and, in the effort, come to understand that when it comes to defending his family, it is Cheng who is the Big Boss. 
  Martial arts mayhem in that mighty Bruce Lee manner!

  Outside of Romeo and Juliet, is there a more long-lasting romance story than that of Cyrano de Bergerac? A French libertine famous for having an unusually long body part that drives the ladies wild, his is a story that has been told for many ages and in many different forms. In this 1990 movie, it is a straight up adaptation of the original play that was written back near the start of the turn of the century. 
Oh, and by the way, did you know that Cryano was an actual who was an actual libertine? Of course, much of the play is fiction, but the inspiration was real. And this real person was played here Gérard Depardieu, France's biggest start at the time and someone who like the fictional de Bergerac, wasn't exactly the standard in what one would perceive as a sex symbol. But despite his contradictory 
 appearance, when it came to what makes the opposite sex go ga-ga, he's one those guys who "nose".

Anyone familiar with the history of space exploration knows that Sputnik was the very first man made object that was placed in Earth's orbit. Built and set off to space by the Russians, and , it was symbol of mankind's lofty aspirations to fly outside of the planet's atmosphere and beyond, despite the Cold War rivalry of the great space race. Sputnik's only function was to circle the globe and send continual beeping transmissions down to Earth. It was a harmless piece of machinery that in the end, demonstrated that when it came to ingenuity of humankind, the sky was truly the limit.
Sputnik the movie, was also created by the Russians, in 2020, long after the thaw of the Cold War. But in this film, the "Sputnik" in question is an alien with parasitic tendencies and a taste for human flesh. And with it's ability to control it's host to meet it's appetital demands in a rather macbre version of "how to serve mankind", this Anti-Sputnik shows that it when it comes to human race acting as an "all-you-can-eat" buffet, this orbital nasty is much more of a symbolpc statemants that says that what's down here on the ground is what truly is the limit.

Here's a movie that comes from France and that is made up a series of short stories, and while each one is in animated form, it is a form rarely seen on film, called silhouette animation. It's a method in which all the characters are shown in silhouette by having a back light shining against articulated cut-outs. This was a European style of storytelling that was popular back in the late 1880's/ early 1900's and had partially evolved from an even older form of storytelling called "shadow play" (look it up). Combined with modern animation techniques and technology, the final product is one that is unique and stylish and allows the silhouette animation style used here to add a sense of mystique that enhances the ethereal themes that are the foundations of each short story.
Now while Tales Of The Night may initially come off as sounding like a horror film, in actuality, it's not. Presented more as moral fables of old, each one is like a tale filled with a "nightish" like sensibility that helps to effectively get across the point and danger of each lesson learned.

  Before there was Beatrice Kiddo, the Bride, waking up after her supposed death and staining the snow with blood in Kill Bill vol. 1*, there was Yuki Kashima, aka Lady Snowblood, doing the exact same thing. But unlike the Bride, who did it as a homage to the Pinky Violence genre, Lady S did it as one of the true originators of these kinds of story themes and was an early entry into the field of female film bad-assery.
  Yuki was created as character who was born to be an assassin. Literally. Before Yuki was even conceived, her family, with the exception of her mother, were all killed by underground criminals. After stabbing one of the murderers, being the time that it was, the mid 1800's when the women in Japan had very little rights, her mother was sent to prison while the criminals got away what they did. So anger was she from this, that the mother initiated sex with a prison guard with the intention of getting pregnant. She dies died during childbirth but not before she sets it up that her daughter be trained as a killer to exact revenge on the family honor. Yuki, named after the Japanese word for snow, does indeed grow up, and thus the stage is set for what would be the primary plot device of this story and its sequel. 
  A sequel that was a direct result at the surprise popularity of this film and introduced the world to a subgenre known as pinky violence (although, that's a name that is used for some genres that more "sexed up" that what this franchise is).  For it's time, Lady Snowblood was a rare use of a lead character who was a woman and warrior in the ways of violence and vengeance. 



* (For any fans of the Kill Bill films, the battle scene where Kiddo goes Hanzo sword to Hanzo sword with O-Ren Isgii was inspired by this movie.)

The Three Colours Trilogy was an emotional and ambitious project for famed Polish director Krzystof Kielowski in which he aimed to create three stories based on the three political ideals in the motto of the French Republic: liberty, equality, fraternity. Which is why each film is titled on the colors of the French flag (Blue, White and Red).
Taking on the subject of equality as it's theme, White tells the tale of a man named Karol Karol, who after losing literally everything in his life, embarks on a series of acts with hopeful result of setting his life aright.



Despite some of it's darker plot elements and unlike it's movie brothers, White takes a lighter approach in it's unfolding of it's machinations (which may be due to it's color scheme). Considered as the "weakest" of the three Colours, it is nevertheless still regarded as one of the best films to come out of the year 1994.

As I mentioned in the entry for the movie Kung Fu Hustle, Chop Socky, a subgenre of the martial arts films from Asia, is a spawn of the comedic style combat that Jackie Chan brought to the forefront a decade earlier. Once the New Millenium began, the door was kicked wide open for other wacky wunderkind warriors like Stephen Chow, who directed and starred in both Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, two films that have since become staples in the burgeoning genre. After taking the absurdity of both the humor and the high kicks from this new style of Asian cinema and cranking 'em up a notch, he and his fellow directors of Socky then placed the stories and situations of these movies in unlikely settings. For example, like that of a soccer field. And when it came to finding an audience for such out-of-the-ordinary chop 'em and sock 'em kick-flicks, Chow and Co. quickly discovered that they had scored a goal.

On an Italian island so small that there are no automobiles, a local and dissatisfied fisherman looks for other, more "exciting" forms of employment. So he becomes the island's sole postman. With only one customer: a famous poet from Chile exiled to the island for political reasons. A friendship soon developes between the two, and the postman soon finds out the power that poetry has to change one's life.
A small piece of cinema about quiet people in remote circumstances who yearn for more expansion, not so much in their physical surroundings, but in their hearts, minds and souls.

Man,
forget all those stupid Chuck Norris internet memes that you see running ridiculously rampant all over the world wide web. The reality is, his so-called brass balls could never hope to stand a chance against Bruce Lee's raging fists of fury. Let's face it, Chuck's milquetoast martial arts style is nothing but a mockery of a not so mortal combat. The truth is, there is only one true path to the style of the original oriental street fighting technique. And that way is through the path of the man known simply as The Dragon.

A family is found dead in their house out in the country and the only evidence that authorities have to work on is a video cassette found at the site. On it is a recording of the family's last five days and the strange occurrences that built up to tell the story of what (or may have) happened, and led up to the "end".



Following the runaway success of The Blair Witch Project, a slew of low-budget films took on the formula of the found footage genre in order to cash in the popular and easily accessible process of making a movie. And just like most overnight fads, the majority of the end results of these efforts fall short of the movies that originally made the trend so trendy.
However, within the vast sea of these film failures, one or two of 'em, just out of the odds of the numbers, stand out as an above average effort. For me, Atrocious is one of those few.

Véronique is a teacher of music who lives in France. Weronika is a soprano singer in a Polish choir. Two women who have never met yet in the same manner that they share the same name just in different translations, they also appear to share the same "soul", thus causing them to share the same empathetically reactions to each other's individual experiences.
A unique story idea for a film, The Double Life of Véronique is "poetically" directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski, famed director of the highly acclaimed Three Colors Trilogy.

Even though Enter The Dragon & Fist Of Fury often interchange with this movie as far as my being my favorite Bruce Lee film, Game Of Death is the one that I find myself watching the most.
Maybe it's cuz, with since it actually remains unfinished (in my eyes, the post-Lee parts don't count... ) it leaves plenty of room for interpretation on what could have been.
After Lee's death, martial arts genre took a real nose dive as far as the kind of quality & especially the kind of integrity that Bruce seemed to be striving for.
And while lately, the genre has taken many strides forward as far as being taken more seriously as a cinematic art-form, watching the ideas that Bruce set upon this early "kung fu flick" always make me wonder about the potential that the original Dragon must have dreamed, strived & hoped for.

  Here is a piece of German cinema that takes advantage of the sign of times that was the zeitgeist of the time in which it was released. It's also a good example of why this list, aside from my all time favorites list, has a much more concentration of highly rated pieces of cinema than many of the other of lists that I've posted up her on this site. Because it’s made up of movies that are a combination of independent and foreign genre, two types that offer an alternative to the typical Hollywood formula flix that dominate the market.



  Back during the tail end of the 80's, the Berlin Wall and all that it represented was crumblin'. Well, actually, the wall itself was still holding up pretty good, but the politics behind it was starting to come apart. Germany, after it's decades long history of turbulence and social strife which resulted in its country being literally divided (by the wall) was ready to be unified and made whole again.
Goodbye Lenin! is the story of a young east German citizen whose mother, after suffering from a serious stroke, holds on to her fragile sanity with the delusional belief that East Germany is still separated from its evil capitalistic western twin. And in order to spare her from any more emotional grief, her son, along with the daughter, finds himself performing daily acts of deceptions to keep her believing that.
  A 2003 "tragicomedy" set in late 1989/early 1990 that skillfully dances twixt the tragedy and the comedy that gives the rarely used cinematic term it's name.

   Y'know, in their earliest appearances in the cinema, vampires were made to be undead monters that dwelled within the genre of horror. After a while however, particularly through the sixties and 70's, the idea of a fanged neck-biter became aligned more on the campiness of creature features. Nowadays, we tend to divide 'em into the two categories: that of the comic-book crowd (as in Blade) or worse, in the rallying side of the younger-minded female romantics (as in a famous franchise that I won't mention here but that you know what I'm talking about).
  In this film, we get to see the concept of vampirism in manner that was probably the original intention of those whose first spawned the folklore:
As a soul-craving thirst to unleash our deepest desires and darkest urges with an immortality that flies above those of pitiful human morals.



 Damn.
 I never realized that I could scribe down something that sounded so.... Freudian.

A porn flick that has to be seen to be believed. This is one of those rare cases where the term "legend" is not used loosely. And neither is the word "fist".



Oh wait....
I think I might be getting this mixed up with another movie......

  In practically the exact same vein as Blair Witch Project, Noroi is a horror mockumentary from Japan which is supposed to make us "believe" that it is a found footage. If I can be honest though, I think that its story of an ancient curse bought forth to modern times comes off as a bit more complicated than it really needs to be. Trying to sort out a lot of the information that is presented can sometimes be a bit tedious, not to mention some of the side paths the plot takes feels like they could've been edited out. But, by the time we reach the end, Noroi does manage to provide a bit of fright-filled freakiness that is usually expected from this subcategory of the shaky-cam.
  This is by no means a perfect product, but as someone who has grown restlessly tired of the formulaic so-called scare flick that the American movie market had been soullessly cranking out for the throughout the 80's and decades, with this one, I was just glad to see any effort that steps out of today's tired horror-themed same-ol' same-ol'.

Zombies who speak German. Well, not actually speak.....
growl is more like it. But still, whatever noise you can hear rumbling from outta their rotworm-infested mouths, it's definitely Deutschland.



Actually, to be honest, while I did end up liking this film, I still found to be somewhat underwhelming. However I decided to still include it on this list just because any time anyone makes an honest effort to create a quality zombie flick with it's own unique twist to it, to distinguish it from all the others, it's always a good thing.
Besides, the year that Rammbock "came to life", 2010, also saw other movies that were released like Atrocious, Changi, Rare Exports, Stakeland, and Trollhunter. I wanted to show what an exceptional year that was for scare-fare of a more independent and worldwide nature.

No, no, this isn't that one film that starred Madonna and became infamous as one of the worst in cinema history.
This is the original movie, an Italian produced rough-edged romantic romp on a deserted island that is considered by a film connoisseur or two as one of the best foreign releases of 1974.
Which, when you think about it, only helps to drive the later ravaged Ritchie english version deeper into the pit of pitifully pulverized remakes.

  Being that this movie is about vampirism, I'm not giving away anything when I say that, according to Cronos, the secret to eternal life is human blood. And I'm also not giving anything away then I say that there comes a very high price to pay for becoming an eternal bloodsucker. A price that kind of gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "get busy living or get busy dying". 
   As the directorial debut of Guillermo de Toro, Cronos right away sets the stage for his distinctive and unique brand of filmmaking, particularly when it comes horror and or thriller type of films. This is a great looking piece of cinema, it’s beautifully shot, the themes covered within are presented in an interesting, thoughtful manner, all of which highlight the talents that Mr. Del Toro always brings to the table.

Here's a Mexican movie that was remade three years later in the U.S., under the same title, but with some pretty dramatic changes to it's setting. And it's because that these changes were so dramatic (some may even say "drastic"), that this is the version that many feel has more spice in it's menu.



After the father dies unexpectedly, a struggling family must find a way to put food on the table. But which family member will "man up" and fill the role of bringing home the bacon when this is a family that has very "particular" tastes when it comes to what they eat? Or, to put it in another way, one of them must now rise to the challenge of becoming the new breadwinner when getting their kind of food isn't as simple as going to the local grocery store.

Two separate stories about two different police officers, each trying to deal with their situations of heartbreak.
Even though Chungking Express deals with matters of the heart, it's not really a romance movie. It's a film about dealing with the concept of love.
The usual formula of love isn't followed in the premise, and instead, it is left almost ambiguous on what the people involved are feeling towards each other. These are couples that are definitely looking for love, but in the midst of the dense crowds of Hong Kong, they are lonely rangers whose definition on how to couple are as jumbled & stagnant as the jungled buildings of the city in which they reside.
Express is a film that uses the visual imagery of background colors and the kinetic energy of a hand held camera to help charge this story of emotional yearning through the subtle yet tangled search for a "partner in crime".

    Bruce Lee was the modern day warrior who made martial arts movies more mainstream during the late 60's and early 70's. Fellow (and surviving) warrior, Jackie Chan took this brand of action genre into the 90's and made it a force of farce to be reckoned with in the film industry of the Far East. As a result, he had involunteerily started a cinematic movement wherein the kinetics of kung fu fighting would extend past the limits of physical restrictions.
    In the first decade of the new millenium, following the rise of the subgenre now known as Chop Socky, the door was kicked wide open for other wacky wunderkind warriors like Stephen Chow, star and director of both Kung Fu HustTaking the absurdity of both the humor and the high kicks from this new style of Asian filmmaking, and cranking 'em up a notch, movies like these prove that when it comes taking Kung Fu to the next level, ya gotta be willing to do the Hustle.

To be honest,
I completely agree with the title of this film.
We truly need to simply just let sleeping corpses lie.
Cuz if we did,
we wouldn't have to worry about all this zombie apocalypse craziness.
And there would be no need to have to publish any handbooks depicting how to handle the situation.
Not to mention that our delectable edible brains (a cornerstone of any zombie's nutritious breakfast) would be able to sleep alot easier at night.

  Now while I agree with most people that (Legend Of The) Drunken Master II was technically a better and more masterful movie than it's predecessor, this first film is the beginning, and my favorite one of his early works that features Jackie Chan's comedic style of "combat". There are still times when I watch the action scenes of DM and they still seem as energetic, cool and creatively crazy today as back when this first came out.
  And to this day, there are many times when those alcoholic induced martial arts moves inspire me to think "I bet I could fight like that too."
  If I was drunk.
  And I mean like, really, really drunk.

Over at a dynastically run hotel, a high ranking family is holding a celebration for their father's 60th year.
And one of the patriarch's major surprise gifts, by his only son, is the unveiling news that he is responsible for the suicide death of his daughter as a result of a family history of sexual abuse.
Although, coupled with the other troubled revelations that reveal themselves as the party chugs along, "Big Daddy" probably would have preferred on just getting a tie.

Y'know how when you try to wake up your foot after it's fallen asleep and it then feels like there are a hundred thin needles piercing thru the flesh? Raise the level of that feeling from uncomfortable to horrific,
add a little razor-wire and an angelic smile, and there you go. You've got this movie.
Rarely does the face of horror look so beautiful and hurt so torturously bad at the same time.

Considered by many film critics as a spanish version of Grapes Of Wrath, this film tells the story of Enrique and Rosa, a brother and sister pair who are forced to flee the civil war torn country of Guatemala after the rest of their family have been either killed or captured by soldiers. Deciding that the only place where a couple of Mayan Indians may stand a chance of a fruitful future is the U.S. they begin a trek that takes them through the equally troubled land of Mexico. But as they transpire north, they find that as harrowing as the journey "up" was, their struggles don't end when they finally reach the "promised land".
Just as people of peasant stock were looked upon only as "strong arms" for cheap labor in their native land, they quickly realize that this a view that is still the same in "el Norte".

Every Sunday evening, the grown girls of a chef's family convene at the dinner table for a feast of food, beverage and conversation of the latest news in each of the sibling's lives. Which, for the aged cook, usually translates to how the modern ways are constantly challenging the traditions of the old ways. It's enough to give and old man indigestion. Or at least gas.
The third installment to what is often loosely referred to as the "Father Knows Best" trilogy, Eat Drink Man Woman was one of the seminal films to the international rising star of director Ang Lee

  I've always felt that one of the best things that came out the French style of filmmaking was in the ability in which the stories they crafted for the cinema often required a lot of participation from the viewers. Of course, the downside to this is that sometimes these stories don't translate very well outside its borders (such as in the U.S. where mainstream audiences often tend to prefer escapist fare of a shallower nature). But anyone with the mental patience to play along, it can be a fun and deeply involving experience.
  located with this particular Cache, we have a plot which starts when the host of a local TV show begins to feel as though his family may be under threat when strange drawings along with stalker type video cassettes start mysterious showing up at his door. When these "messages" also begin arriving to his wife's place of employment and then at his son's school, he tries reporting it to the police. But since no actual threat had been made, the tension in the situation methodically stacks up to the point of an underlying sense of uneasiness, both in his homelife and in his work.
 A deepening mystery whose solution requires the intellect of the viewer, Cache is a well-written and well-acted film that elegantly builds up its psychological drama with confident strides that walk, but do not run, down a road less traveled but well journeyed.

A quiet and single clockmaker is visited by the local police and is reported that his son has committed a murder.
Now, as he contemplates the why's of his son's actions, he begins to delve into the nature of their relationship and into the nature of the crime.
A road of reflection that eventually leads the clockmaker into an internal confrontation with his own deceptions as a parent and now, must find a way to come to terms with his past.
L'horloger de Saint-Paul is a film that, while it may not live up to the levels of the New French Wave movement that preceded it, still makes a worthy effort into the introspective type of storytelling that put this kind of cinema on the map.

Following the formula he started with the first of his famed Three Colours Trilogy, Polish director Krzystof Kielowski concludes the series with the last of the French flag colors, Red. With a theme based on fraternity, this story follows the lives of two primary characters and their different personalities, along with a few secondary characters, and how all of these separate lives are in one way or another, connected, mostly without their awareness. Using different physical levels of the two main actors to emphasize their juxtaposition and the color red dominating the scheme of the visuals, Red masterfully rolls up into a distinctive tale with an ending that brings home the fact that this is part of a trilogy and therefore bringing it's concept of connection to an even higher and creative level of storytelling.
This final story of Colours is widely considered by critics and connoiseurs alike as the best of the bunch (luckily so since this also ended up being the final work of the director who passed away just two years later).

Here's a movie that is remembered not just as probably the best foreign film of the year 1977, but also as a movie where two actresses alternatively play the same female lead character. Her name is Chica, a woman who happens to be a Sevillian flamenco dancer and at the same, an off-and-on temperamental tease. And when you think about it, two ladies making up one woman of that particular make up, it leads to a very profound and philosophical question;
is there any object of desire more obscure than that?

Do you like movies that feature bullets, babies, lots of all-out, gun-toting action and that don't come sunny-side up?
Then this is the film for you.

While in most parts of the world, this South Korean zombie epic is simply called "Peninsula", in a few other areas, it is being marketed as "Train To Busan presents: Peninsula". In other words, movie execs want it to be known that this film is basiclly a loose sequel to 2016's runaway success, Train To Busan.
If there was a way to describe the first Busan movie in theatrical terms, I guess whe say that it's basically Runaway Train meets World War Z. In that regard, we could probaby then describe this fast-fiend follow-up as The Fast and the Furious meets World War Z ... with a nod to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome ....and another nod to the Road Warrior ... and maybe a slight hint towards Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Basically, it's a series whose major premise is to hve different types of fast moving vehicles smash into World War Z types of carcass-accumulated pile-ups. And just like it's predecessor, Peninsula does a good job of delivering it's goods while at the same time, stitching it's undead body count action scenes with the type of talking head scenes that build a story that actually comes to life in the midst of all the macabre and mercurial moving mayhem.

  It is well known that most of us are not living in the kind of environs that are conducive to following our heart when it comes to our career paths. And one of the environs most notorious for being like that is the world of the Underworld. In those kinds of surroundings, how talented are your fingers isn't as important as how well you can break fingers. Breaking a leg before a performance is as breaking a leg as primary part of the performance.
   A French remake of the Harvey Keitel American "forgotten classic" from 1978 called Fingers, The Beat That My Heart Skipped is the French take of the daily journey of a "land shark" and criminal, Thomas Seyr, and the chance encounter which reignites his passion for playing the piano. 
 An international critical success, this version takes a more personal angle of shady realtor trying to balance his love for music and his lifestyle in the mob, Seyr becomes caught in a struggle between his heart for the art and the hearth of his profession.  
  This heart-skipper is an excellent example of how a film remake takes the story of the original and fashions it into its own production, one that manages to skip to its own beat.

Special effects, even in a rudimentary form, started almost as quickly as when the idea of actually making pictures move began. And soon after, follows that when an early film encounters a limited budget, then comes creativity in the form of cinematic expressionism.
And in the beginning of the twenties, that creativity came nicely boxed in the form of a cabinet (or, to keep in tune more with this story, an insane asylum. Cabinet, insane asylum, in the realm of artistic expression, they're all the same).
One of the first movies to start using film to the level of potential that the medium allows.
Surreal, distorted, disturbing, and in my opinion, particularly for it's time, it's was pretty cool as hell.

Here's a film that I hesitated before putting on this list because in order to help me decide which titles to put in my favorite foreign films list, I went with those mives from other conutries which also spoke in a foreign language. However, since Pandora's Box is from the silent era, it's "foreigness" might not be as evident. But I came to the conclusion that as a piece of cinema that is widely considered iconic with a cultural movement from the early stages of filmmaking, it's defintely worth mentioning. Not just the movie, but also the country from whence it came.



Initially, I watched P's B mostly because I was curious about what was it that made the flapper girl the embodiment of the female liberation movement from back during the roaring twenties.
Alongside legendary "It" girl, Clara Bow, this was the look and style that made it's star, Louise Brooks not only the biggest female movie actress of the silent era, bit also, the definition of what it meant to be a free-spiriting flapper.

It a post apocalyptic planet Earth, and in France, supposedly like everywhere else, meat is scarce. So when circus clown Louison comes to work at a local butcher shop, his hopes are high on attaining a steady means of living with the delicatessen's delicacies as a benefit of the job.
Only soon to find out that it could be the very opposite of those things that he may "end" up with.



Delicatessen is an "after the big one" small story that comes off a bit more charming that one would expect based on it's subject matter. Especially, if you're a vegetarian.