Recommend World Cinema

[Kapuscinski]

I've been watching a number of world cinema DVD's over the past year, but have run out of ones to watch.

Recently, I've watched the Three Colours Trilogy (wonderful, thoughtful, slow-paced but never dull), Night of the Sunflowers (gripping), Let The Right One In, Black Cat White Cat, The City of the Lost Children, The Lives of Others, Delicatessem, Offside and City of Men.

All of the above I would strongly recommend, although Offside drags a bit.

Does anyone have any recommendations of world cinema DVDs? Sorry if this is a bit of a list thread,.

One I can't wait to see is Lemming but it is £8 in Fopp which is too much money for one dvd.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The Lives Of Others...in that case...

...these new-wave german films:

The Edukators, Goodbye Lenin!, Sophie Scholl, Yella, The Counterfeiters.

and this- which I confess I have not seen- but is reportedly sensational:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Alexanderplatz_(television)

[Ignatius_S]

Anything by Bahman Ghobadi - in particular A Time for Drunken Horses.
Everything by Luis Buñuel.
Underground
Le Cop

[Ja'moke]

I second The Lives of Others, excellent film.

Run Lola Run is a very enjoyable, odd German thriller.

I've recently watched Crimson Gold, an Iranian film about a pizza delivery driver. It's about the different social classes he meets during his deliveries and him trying to come to terms with his low standing position in society. Definitely worth a watch.

[rjd2]

I'm not really up on my world cinema so take this recommendation with a pinch of salt but the diving bell and the butterfly and Gomorrah were both splendid and well worth a watch. I think they did pretty well when released so most of you will know of them but those who don't, please watch!

EDIT... Might as well namedrop City Of God which totally overshadowed Gangs Of New York which was released at the same time.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Gomorrah was quite good, but after seeing City Of God, it seemed quite slow and lacking in flavour- even detail on the actual system it was supposed to be exposing. Worth a watch yes, but I'd certainly steer people to City Of God.

[surreal]

Maybe not in the genre you're looking for but Battle Royale and The Host are a couple of my favourite movies of recent years

[Bingo Fury]

Russian Ark - there's nothing like it! Done in a single take, taking in some meticulously pre-planned tableaux from Russian history on the way. Not for everyone, admittedly, but you can't help but admire the preparation that's gone into it.

[Serge]

If you liked the Three Colours trilogy, you should definitely check out Kieslowski's earlier work, particularly 'The Double Life Of Veronique' and the Dekalog. I'm also very fond of 'Blind Chance', which is the grandaddy of all 'how one decision can affect the course of your life' movies. (Tom Tykwer obviously saw it before he made 'Run, Lola, Run', thematically, though not stylistically.) Tykwers 'The Princess And The Warrior' is also pretty good if, like me, you like a good slow movie. And talking of slow movies, you can't beat Bela Tarr's remarkable 'Werckmeister Harmonies', which demands that you adapt to its slo-o-o-o-o-o-owness.

EDIT: And seconded on Russian Ark.

Oh, and Lukas Moodysson's 'Together' and 'Lilya 4-Ever' are both worth seeing, although the latter is the most heartbreaking and soul destroying movie I've ever seen in my life - I was numb for a week after watching it. 'Together' is a lot more fun.

And try to see 'Festen', the best of the Dogme movies by a mile.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

There's been some truly wonderful south American films around in recent years.  If you enjoyed City of  God (and if you haven't seen it, you're really missing out) you should watch Tropa De Elite (aka Elite Squad), a film about Bope, Brazil's elite police squad - effectively an army unit with training based on that of the SAS, the only guys capable of going into the Favelas and coming out alive.  The film is scathing about the level of corruption in the police force, and also the complicity of the middle classes in the preservation of the favelas, simply by taking the drugs that people in the favelas are selling.  It's brutal at points, but not without humour, and tells you a lot about why things are the way they are in Rio.  The film really pissed off a lot of people in power (particularly in the police force), and was unofficially banned initially, but so many people saw a pirated copy that it became pointless to keep it locked away.

[Emma Raducanu]

Kikujiro is a pleasant mix of cuteness, violence and humour and while the story is great; it's main strength is the various magical moments scattered through the film that you'd have to discover for yourself.

It takes a man with a face as cheeky as Hsiao-hsien Hou's to make a film as great as Cafe Lumiere, which is a slow-paced, microscopic view of life for a few people in Tokyo. I've always thought of the lead girl as Hpmons, though I'm not sure she has kept her pregnancy a secret like Yoko. Plus, while Hpmon's father wears a wonderful pair of pants, I'm not sure whether he has the hypnotic presence of Yoko's Father: his almost permanent silence is something to be both marveled and infinitely recreated.

Tony Takitani was a film I mainly used as sleep medicine during insomnia but it holds up to day time viewing also. Tony learns to appreciate the small things in life and falls in love. He also buys his wife lots of clothes, which makes him smile and cry. It's a mixture of hypnotic narration, beautiful photography and quietness.

Chungking Express

Otar Iosseliani's Monday Morning is one of the all time greats. A man grows disillusioned with family and working life so disappears to get drunk for a while and relax in the sun. I watched this film for the first time when I was in the mood for doing the same thing myself: It's resonance was lovely and so was it's peacefulness. Also, it has one of my favourite cinema scenes - An illiterate man getting a boy to write his feelings for his wife in a letter.

[lipsink]

Martyrs and Inside are 2 films that have been classified as part of the 'French New Wave of Horror'. Both are bloody brilliant and full of absolutely horrific sick shit.

For a grungey mental punk rock movie watch the Belgian film Ex-Drummer.

[Absorb the anus burn]

"Fanny And Alexander" (nee 'Och') the full five hour version.... No kidding. Sometime a good way to start swimming is to jump into the deep end and see if you sink or swim. I saw it when I was 18 (got the two VHS videos for a quid each in a car boot sale and watched them none stop until six in the morning) This is by far Ingmar Bergman's most accessible film. The three hour version is a cinema edit - good, yes - but the real meat is in the 5 hr long chapters that make up a year in the life of an introspective boy and his sister in turn of the century Sweden. If you can read subtitles, have read some Shakespeare / Dickens, then there's nothing to be scared of.... An hour of the best family Christmas ever; statues coming to life; God as puppet; a miserable Chekovian Uncle who farts out candles; sympathetic servants; septuagenarian affairs; an elderly avuncular Jewish magician who keeps his dangerous psychic nephew in a cage; pre Christmas dinner sodomy; bodily transportation; Freudian transference; a funeral with a cast of thousands in heavy snow; thirty members of a family dancing around a house; the ghost of a dead son returning to comfort his mother; a beautiful violin score; a sadistic Bishop; vomiting ghosts... And a brief flash near the end of eternal evil to scare the crap out of you!

This film is so good that I have not given away 0.01% of its brilliance. Bergman's most beautiful, funny, sincere and endearing film... A gateway for me to watching 1000s of foreign language movies and slowly learning to filter out cinematic shit (my triggers are rom coms / stale action movies / cute animation that tries too hard to please everybody / British gangster films from the past decade / anything by Sally Potter) so I largely - say three fifths of the time - really enjoy the films I see. I owe this to Fanny Och Alexander.

[Doomy Dwyer]

'Last Year at Marienbad' is a film I can and have watched again and again. Dreamlike, hallucinatory, fragmented, beautifully shot and acted. Like a poem. Repetition, memory, disorientation. You could drown in this film. Blur ripped it off for one of their videos if I remember rightly (The Universal?) but I might be mistaken. Not that that's a reason to watch it, I'm just saying, y'know.

More recently 'Hidden' and 'The White Ribbon' caused me to soil my trousers with appreciative joy at their continental sophistication. 'A Prophet' was the best film I've seen in a long while, terrifying in places, great performances. It was so good I also had a look at 'The Beat That My Heart Skipped' by the same chap, Jacques Audiard, and the boy's got talent. He's no Guy Ritchie, but give him time.

[The Boston Crab]

Kikujiro is a pleasant mix of cuteness, violence and humour and while the story is great; it's main strength is the various magical moments scattered through the film that you'd have to discover for yourself.

It takes a man with a face as cheeky as Hsiao-hsien Hou's to make a film as great as Cafe Lumiere, which is a slow-paced, microscopic view of life for a few people in Tokyo. I've always thought of the lead girl as Hpmons, though I'm not sure she has kept her pregnancy a secret like Yoko. Plus, while Hpmon's father wears a wonderful pair of pants, I'm not sure whether he has the hypnotic presence of Yoko's Father: his almost permanent silence is something to be both marveled and infinitely recreated.

Tony Takitani was a film I mainly used as sleep medicine during insomnia but it holds up to day time viewing also. Tony learns to appreciate the small things in life and falls in love. He also buys his wife lots of clothes, which makes him smile and cry. It's a mixture of hypnotic narration, beautiful photography and quietness.

Otar Iosseliani's Monday Morning is one of the all time greats. A man grows disillusioned with family and working life so disappears to get drunk for a while and relax in the sun. I watched this film for the first time when I was in the mood for doing the same thing myself: It's resonance was lovely and so was it's peacefulness. Also, it has one of my favourite cinema scenes - An illiterate man getting a boy to write his feelings for his wife in a letter.

It's not just my mancrush based on shared adoration of 'the best movie', all of these sound so wonderful and up my street, I'll have to see them. I will see them and talk more.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The Beat That My Heart Skipped and The Piano Teacher are two piano based films I felt I didn't enjoy as much as I should've.

[Doomy Dwyer]

The Beat That My Heart Skipped and The Piano Teacher are two piano based films I felt I didn't enjoy as much as I should've.

What were your thoughts on 'The Piano' and 'The Pianist'?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Still yet to see. Well, I saw bits of The Pianist but not enough to form an opinion.


Shine is awesome though.

[Serge]

Blur ripped it off for one of their videos if I remember rightly (The Universal?) but I might be mistaken.

'To The End', I think. 'The Universal' is more 'Clockwork Orange'.

[Doomy Dwyer]

You're so damned right Serge. I'm not a Blur man, but the Universal's a good enough tune. Can't remember 'To The End'.

'Jar City' directed by Baltasar Kormákur is a great film. Bleak as fuck. Rotten. Based on the crime novel by the Icelandic writer Arnaldur Indrioason. These grisly Scandinavians seem to be very much in vogue in recent years. The film's got that washed out quality that gives it a more realistic feel. I watched 'Let the Right One In' last night and recommend that as others already have. It's got that similar washed out look. Can't wait for the Hollywood remake. I'll bet it'll be twice as good.

[jutl]

"Fanny And Alexander" (nee 'Och') the full five hour version....

Definitely; in fact I'd recommend all Bergman with the exceptions of 'All These Women' (Bergman tries kooky 60s comedy) and 'Persona' (overrated, juvenile and tedious). Particularly I'd recommend the two films that followed 'Persona' - 'Shame' and 'The Hour of the Wolf'.

[Serge]

I really must get around to watching more Bergman. I've only ever seen 'The Seventh Seal' and 'Wild Strawberries', both of which are absolutely marvellous. In my ever growing piles of unwatched DVDs [nb]Unwatched and unread things are becoming a common theme on these forums....![/nb], I also have 'Winter Light' and 'Smiles Of A Summer Night', so maybe I'll get stuck into them at some point. As well as 'Downfall', 'Sophie Scholl', 'Solaris' and all those other DVDs I haven't watched yet....

[lipsink]

Of Bergman, I also like Scenes From A Marriage, Through A Glass Darkly and Cries and Whispers. I think I found Winter Light to be his bleakest film.
Will have to finally get around to Shame and The Hour of the Wolf.

[Phil_A]

Any fans of Chris Marker here? He's one of the great pioneering filmakers of the French new wave, but sadly most of his work has been unavailable for many years. However, I did manage to pick up Sans Soleil(Sunless) on a budget price DVD a few years ago. It's the kind of film that's hard to summarise, but what it basically consists of is footage from around the world(mostly Africa and Asia)assembled into a dream-like collage while a dispassionate female narrator discusses ideas of time and memory. The result is a hypnotic and occasionally profound experience.

I've checked on Amazon and it looks like you can still get as a "twofer" with his other well-known film, La Jetee.

It's also freely available on google video if you don't want to pay for it.

[Famous Mortimer]

I love La Jetee, natch, but haven't seen anything else. I shall go forth and experiment.

[Absorb the anus burn]

After 'Fanny And Alexander', I'd say 'Shame' is my favourite Bergman film. A terrifying & surreal portrayal of war, with 'Max Von Sydow' as the sensitive musician who is brutalised into becoming a killing machine, intent on nothing but his own survival. The final scene with the refugees in the rowing boat has plagued my nightmares for years. 'Scenes From A Marriage' is an excellent character study, though I've only seen the edited version. 'Cries And Whispers' is beautiful, but so depressing that I could never sit through it again - great ensemble acting by the four female leads. 'Smiles Of A Summer Night' has always been a bit of a disappointment, but then again, I don't like the Woody Allen reworking or Sondheim's musical, despite my loving their other films / shows.

An obscure, but scary as fuck Bergman film is 'The Rite' - made for TV in Sweden (1969 ish) but shown internationally in cinemas... Three actors are interrogated by a judge for obscenity. He questions and bullies them one by one - then during a restaging of their 'act', a weird occult revenge takes place. Chilling.

Serge's suggestion of 'Wild Strawberries' is a good one - an early road movie, with a cold lead character, a grumpy, mean-spirited old professor, who gradually wins our sympathy and respect. 'Persona' is a little overrated, but contains some electric moments - Liv reacting to the Vietnam Monk burning himself alive; the Hitchcockian suspense with broken shard of glass; the film burning out mid-story, as well as opening credits so inventive that their tricks are still being copied.

[Serge]

I bought 'Smiles Of A Summer Night' largely because it had Gunnar Björnstrand on the cover, who stole both 'The Seventh Seal' and 'Wild Strawberries' for me. Not to run down anybody else in either film - especially the majestic Max Von Sydow - but Björnstrand's laconic squire in 'Seal' is one of my favourite characters in cinema, and his brief scenes in 'Strawberries' are amazing. But I'll get round to 'Smiles' at some point, anyway...!

[Absorb the anus burn]

Gunnar Björnstrand is a great actor! And he's the best thing about 'Smiles...' for me, because of his expressive, sad face. He has a small role in Fanny And Alexander as a senior actor in a provincial theatre. He is also extremely good in 'Winter Light' as the ineffective, doubt-ridden priest... He certainly features in 'The Rite' which I mentioned earlier.

[chocky909]

The last proper World Cinema I saw (if you don't count Rec²) was the French film 'Les Valseuses'. It's a fascinating tale following the travels of Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere as they mooch around the French countryside getting into trouble with every female they see. The main reason it's so good is the way the morals of this pair of reprobates are so believeable that even though they get up to some appalling stuff, you can't help but like them. It's a funny, sexy film that also makes you think innit.

[micanio]

Man Bites Dog
Le Haine
Cronos
Shoalin Soccer
Kung Fu Hustle
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Y Tu Mama Tambiens
Iichi the Killer
Akira
The Icicle Thief
The Hairdressers Husband