Favourite subtitled films?

MOTHERTRUCKER

I have just recently viewed Amores Perres on dvd and was blown away by this movie.
Can anyone suggest their top 10 non english speaking (subtitled) movies of all time.
Here are some of mine:

(1.) Amores Perres (Loves a bitch) Spanish
(2.) Cidade da dues (City of God) Spanish
(3.) Run Lola Run - German
(4.) The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain" or Amelie (France)
(5.) Shichin no Samurai - Seven Samurai
(6.) Huo Yuan Jia - Fearless (Japanese - Mandrin)
(7.) Irreversible
(8.) Battle Royale (Japanese)
(9.) L'Appartement, (french)
(10.)Cité des enfants perdus, La -City of the Lost Children (French)

I have watched most of Pedro Almodovar movies but i just don't think they're my cup of tea, too drawn out and focus on many of the same areas.
I just don't get it.

Mel gibson has 2 movies:
Apocalypto -
Passion of the Christ -
But to me they are still Hollywood blockbusters, so don't count (i.e Babel).

Can anyone suggest their favourite World Cinema movies?

Roddy23

La Haine (The Hate) French film.

You know when you've seen a top notch subtitled film, and someone asks you was it subtitled, it's so good, that for a moment you hesitate in answering.

MonkeyWrench

One of my favourite films of all time: City of God (Portuguese)

Jesus Wept

The passion of St. Tibulus

TerrorFirmer

Downfall. Although a good movie is a good movie - it seems just plain strange to put forward subtitled movies in their own genre and then exclude 'hollywood' subtitled movies. Apocalypto and Passion of the Christ were both excellent movies.

monkeyfudge

MOTHERTRUCKER wrote:

(2.) Cidade da dues (City of God) Spanish

MonkeyWrench is correct. It's in Portugeuse, they don't speak Spanish in Brazil.

There was TV series called City of Men which was a spin off of this... I saw one episode and it was pretty good.

Be sure to check out the Coffin Joe films for some of the finest moments in Brazilian cinema.

"Carlota Joaquina - Princesa do Brazil" is a pretty funny Brazilian film about the early days of the Brazilian royal family.

MOTHERTRUCKER

HavoK wrote:

Downfall. Although a good movie is a good movie - it seems just plain strange to put forward subtitled movies in their own genre and then exclude 'hollywood' subtitled movies. Apocalypto and Passion of the Christ were both excellent movies.

OK point taken.And my apologies your right it was in Portugese.

But maybe i should have been clear i was looking for people to share relatively unknown movies, Arthouse movies or low budget movies.
For example European movies like:

Truly Human (Danish)
Lilja 4-ever (Swedish)
Head-On (German)
Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel), Swedish
Winter's Light (Nattvardsgästerna), Swedish
Wild Strawberries (Smultronstallet), Swedish
Life Is Beautiful (Italian)
El Crimen the Padre Amaro (Spanish)


Its just i've never heard of Amores Perres until last week and i taught people could share some of their favourite instead of listing the usual suspects like
The Passion of the Christ / Babel / Apocolypto / Charlie Chaplin / Kill Bill /

So yeah i suppose what ever you think is a great movie can be listed.

Pugsley

Definately: Taegukgi (The Brotherhood of War)
Best war film I've ever seen, great story progression, great charecter development, and some action scene's that make Saving Private Ryan look weak, truely superb stuff.

Downfall is another great subtitled movie, other worthy mentions to:
Memories of Murder
A Tale of Two Sisters
Hana-Bi

monkeyfudge

A few that might be worth a look if you don't know them already:

The Devils Backbone is an excellent Spanish language film.

Think of it as a companion piece to the recent Pan's Labyrinth film.

"Et Tú Mamma Tambien" is another good Mexican flick... so if you liked Amores Perres it might be worth a look.

Thesis is a pretty good Spanish thriller and I've very surprised it hasn't been remade in the US yet....

"El Día de la bestia" is another good Spanish one about the birth of the anti-christ... it's very funny.

S.M.B.

Sure Amores Perros and Babel are both made by Innaritu. Bit harsh calling one an art-house film and the other a Hollywood blockbuster.

Anyway, here are my recent recommendations:

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Good Bye Lenin!
Funny Games
Cache

azezil

Lola Rennt and Pan's Labyrinth.

johnny_ultimate

Some of the best:

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi - Spirited Away (Japanese)
Batoru rowaiaru - Battle Royale (Japanese)
Chung hing sam lam - Chunking Express (bit of everything)
Funny Games (German)
Caché - Hidden (French)
Tillsammans - Together (Swedish)
Tonari no Totoro - My Neighbour Totoro (Japanese)
The Edukators (German)
Ran (Japanese)

Lemming

Some of my own favourites would include:

Seven Samurai
Yojimbo
Pans Labyrinth
Downfall
City of God
When the last sword is drawn

I'm avoiding the temptation to list any Studio Ghibli films, because tbh, if I do I'll end up listing half the collection.

Oh, and why oh why has Akira not been mentioned yet?

johnny_ultimate

Lemming wrote:

I'm avoiding the temptation to list any Studio Ghibli films, because tbh, if I do I'll end up listing half the collection.

Oh, and why oh why has Akira not been mentioned yet?

Echoing my sentiments exactly. Was tempted to list Akira, but when you enter the wonderful world of anime, lists fill up very quickly.

Karl Hungus

It's a little pointless listing favourites isn't it?

Lemming

Karl Hungus wrote:

It's a little pointless listing favourites isn't it?

Quiet you!! Back in your box!!

gandalf

Downfall - Showing the final days of the Third Reich, imploding under the pressure of the advancing allies especially the Russians. The portrayal of Hitler as a flawed, disturbed and very sick but human character is refreshing compared to the normal one dimensional representation of him. The films works because it is in German.

Akira - The film from Japan that tweaked interest in the west of Japanese animation. Stunning visuals and a very inventive storyline. Definately recommended.

Karl Hungus

Lemming wrote:

Quiet you!! Back in your box!!

Well technically speaking, "Favourite" threads are against the rules, because generally they consist of no discussion, and have a kind of chain-reaction in the sense that once you have one of these threads, people often start other "Favourite" threads then, and it all ends up as a big pile of pointless spam and the Film board has about 10 different threads that all read "Favourite X/Y/Z."

Still, see if we can inject a bit of discussion into this thread, and not go down the spammy route. Hopefully it'll run it's course and we won't have spammy immitator's pop up.

Lemming

Meh Karl!! meh!! To the box with you!!

But yes, I have to agree with Gandalf regarding the portrayal of Hitler in Downfall. There was a lot of controversy over it because the usual suspects were crying outrage that he wasn't being willfully demonised in it.

Probably the sickest/most horrifying bit in it for me was

Goebbels wife being so fanatically nazi that she kills her kids not wanting them to not grow up in a nazi world

rediguana

City Of God
And Your Mother Too
Respiro

tman

gandalf wrote:

Akira - The film from Japan that tweaked interest in the west of Japanese animation. Stunning visuals and a very inventive storyline. Definately recommended.

I thought that it and Ghost in the shell were both massively over-hyped films. I guess they would've been far more impressive had I seen them at the time of release, though...
Princess Mononoke is my favourite anime film, but one that I would find tough to recommend to people. (unless I knew that they had appreciated a more popular Ghibli film, such as spirited away)

Pan's Labyrinth is fantastic stuff
I seem to have a bit of a thing for Korean movies as well, The Host, Oldboy and A bittersweet life all rank among my favourite films of the past few years.

Karl Hungus

tman wrote:

I thought that it and Ghost in the shell were both massively over-hyped films. I guess they would've been far more impressive had I seen them at the time of release, though...
Princess Mononoke is my favourite anime film, but one that I would find tough to recommend to people. (unless I knew that they had appreciated a more popular Ghibli film, such as spirited away)

Pan's Labyrinth is fantastic stuff
I seem to have a bit of a thing for Korean movies as well, The Host, Oldboy and A bittersweet life all rank among my favourite films of the past few years.

I think Akira is under-rated in a round-about way, in that a lot of people seem to have taken in it's mythic reputation, and became dissapointed when it didn't meat their unrealistic expectations. This is something I find happens a lot when films are widely acclaimed, you get a backlash of people who feel that maybe it needs taking down a peg in public estimation.

Shocking as it may seem, Pan's Labyrinth, A Bittersweet Life, and Oldboy are all films I've heard people making ridiculous statements about how they're actually crap films. :rolleyes:

So I think Akira is an incredible film, just that a lot of people may not have given it a chance. Now I'm not saying you haven't given it a chance, Tman, because people can be very superfluous in their praises when it comes to a film they love, so it's a certain that any film is going to be over-rated by someone.

That said, I'd agree with you on Princess Mononoke. Absolute masterpiece.

But yes, Korean movies tend to be very good, especially if you avoid many of the overly clichéd and formulaic Horrors.

monkeyfudge

When I first saw Akira I knew next to noting about it.

I was 15 at the time, which is the same age as the main characters and it absolutely blew me away... Tetsuo was a major role model for the adolescent Monkeyfudge. I watched the film a vast amount of times and I had about 3 different versions on VHS, each with slightly different translations for the subtitles.... I'd study them all closely in the hopes of trying to make some more sense out of the plot which really is a bit messy...

But if you read the comic... and I did... I collected the whole thing as a teenager.... you get to understand it all more clearly.

It's important to note that the story in the comic was still ongoing when the film was made, and so what you get in the film near the end is a highly compressed version of the second half of the comic.

For instance.. after Tetsuo frees Akira in the comic, they go on to form 'The Great Tokyo Empire' together.

johnny_ultimate

Some people say they were disapointed when they first saw Akira. For me, it completely reached the levels of hype.

It was probably one of the first Japanese films I saw, and its a vastly different experience to your typical Western action film.

For me, it is the pinnacle of action film making. On terms of scale, the threat posed by Tetsuo throughout is far greater than most other 'bad-guys' - Especially towards the end,

as he undergoes his frightening transformation

. Its an epic masterpiece of a film, extremely exciting and wonderfully drawn (the fact Ôtomo went out of his way to animate the 'difficult' elements makes it all the more impressive).

rivers

anyone seen Farewell my concubine (mandarin chinese? I just saw it the other night. It's about a friendship between two members of a beijing opera troupe that spans over 50 years through fame, the cultural revolutionn and back again. Good film. I'd 2nd chungking express too...

tman

Karl Hungus wrote:

So I think Akira is an incredible film, just that a lot of people may not have given it a chance. Now I'm not saying you haven't given it a chance, Tman, because people can be very superfluous in their praises when it comes to a film they love, so it's a certain that any film is going to be over-rated by someone.

In fairness, I wasn't really in the mindset for watching a movie at the time I sat down to watch Akira. I might give it another chance this week

Dont be at yourself

Off the top of my head:

Happiness of the Katakuris
Audition
Pan's Labrynth
The Devil's Backbone
Tanpopo
Hard Boiled
Hero
Old Boy

The above I consider to be classics. There are other films, like Battle Royale, The Waterboys, HoFD and so on that are certainly watchable, but I wouldn't say they're my favourites.

I don't understand the appeal of Akira. A part of me thinks it's a case of the Emperor's New Clothes, but I guess it's different strokes for different folks.

WindSock

Cinema Paradiso was lovely.
I can't think of all my favourite subtitled ones, theres quite a few. Some popular ones I didn't enjoy much at all and don't feel compelled to say they are good just because I watched them.

Karl Hungus

NekkidBibleMan wrote:

Happiness of the Katakuris

Have you seen the Korean film it was based on, The Quiet Family? Very different to Miike's remake, and I'd highly recommend it.

Aedh Baclamh

Pan's Labrynth a classic? How long is it out, a few months?

S.M.B.

Karl Hungus wrote:

Have you seen the Korean film it was based on, The Quiet Family? Very different to Miike's remake, and I'd highly recommend it.

I've been trying to get my hands on that for a while but have yet to come across it. I've been very impressed with all of Ji-woon Kim's films I've seen so I'm eager to check this one out. Do you think it's worth the blind buy?

Karl Hungus

S.M.B. wrote:

Do you think it's worth the blind buy?

Certainly. But then again, I'm the kind of person who makes blind buys all the time.

Actually, it's up on play.com as being released on 15/05/07 at the price of £3.99! :eek:

Nothing to lose at that price really.

S.M.B.

Yeah, I've no problems with buying blind either. Found it on ebay for £3.99 with another £3 p.p. but I think I'll just order it of play.com now. Nice find!

Thrill

Nikita (the french version) is my favourite subtitled film.

I loved Das Boot as well.

quickbeam

Surprised nobody's mentioned:

Amelie - such a heartwarming, sweet film, always bound to put you in a good mood.

El Mariachi - Robert Rodriguez made it for peanuts and it's a lot better than Desperado, the sort of English remake (though some say it's a sequel).

Like Water For Chocolate - another worthy mention for a great film.

Wuthering Heights - Luis Brunel's Mexican take on the classic story.

shrapnel222

agree with a lot of stuff here, but a few more that spring to mind are

jamon jamon by bigas luna (spanish)
ran by kurosawa (japanese)
delicatessen by carot and jeunet (french)
subway by besson (french)

Wacker

Nobody has yet mention the Wages of Fear. Great, great movie. Let me assure you that you guys have seen few films with more raw tension than this one. It is worth buying blind.

aurel

Alot of good suggestions so far, I would add some Andrei Tarkovsky.

A complete visual master in my eyes but also incredible characters, story and dialogue with heavy philosophical leaning. Two of his films I would recommend unreservedly are Stalker and The Sacrifice

MOTHERTRUCKER

Just out of curiosity where does everyone source their suggested movies.
I've only recently started raiding the World Cinema section of my local Xtravision, but have more or less seen most of them.
Any good suggestions apart from blind buys?

How do ye do?

kmick

Spirited Away - now that was movie. Animation as the last bastion of imagination. I just had son and I can't wait to show it to him. I think I'll wait till he is 4 weeks old. His attention span is a bit short at the moment.

Beelzebub

Aedh Baclamh wrote:

Pan's Labrynth a classic? How long is it out, a few months?

I think it's what 'they' call an 'instant' classic.

aurel

MOTHERTRUCKER wrote:

Just out of curiosity where does everyone source their suggested movies.
I've only recently started raiding the World Cinema section of my local Xtravision, but have more or less seen most of them.
Any good suggestions apart from blind buys?

How do ye do?

Online rental is the way to go as far as I can see. Amazon Rental has been great but it's not available in the South.

aurel

Beelzebub wrote:

I think it's what 'they' call an 'instant' classic.

At its root the word classic simply means "of the first or highest quality, class, or rank" so I don't think it matters when the film was produced.

damonjewel

If you are in Dublin then Mothertrucker, Lazer has easily the best foreign film selection I have seen.

Aurel, indeed Tarkovsky is a master and I am a big fan of his style and think Solaris is a masterpiece. However Tarkovsky's films are not something I would readily recommend as they are very heavy going at times, and not to everyone's taste.

Europa, europa is great. Also 'Come and See' (russian war film 'idi i smotri') is one of the most harrowing films you would ever see.

bullpost

Laser in Sth. Great Georges Street can't be beaten for rental.
They've got a whole floor dedicated to World Cinema.

I'd recommend:
Amarcord
Amelie
Betty Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Delecatessen
Amores Perros
Il Postino
Diva
Old Boy
Volver
Monsieur Hire
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Hero
Jean De Florette
Manon Des Sources
A very long engagement
Like Water for Chocolate

MOTHERTRUCKER

damonjewel wrote:

If you are in Dublin then Mothertrucker, Lazer has easily the best foreign film selection I have seen.

Aurel, indeed Tarkovsky is a master and I am a big fan of his style and think Solaris is a masterpiece. However Tarkovsky's films are not something I would readily recommend as they are very heavy going at times, and not to everyone's taste.

Europa, europa is great. Also 'Come and See' (russian war film 'idi i smotri') is one of the most harrowing films you would ever see.

Thanks damonjewel.
But what and where is "Lazer"?

aurel

damonjewel wrote:

Aurel, indeed Tarkovsky is a master and I am a big fan of his style and think Solaris is a masterpiece. However Tarkovsky's films are not something I would readily recommend as they are very heavy going at times, and not to everyone's taste.

Europa, europa is great. Also 'Come and See' (russian war film 'idi i smotri') is one of the most harrowing films you would ever see.

I suppose you're right that a heavy going Caveat may be in order with Tarkovsy I just find it hard to imagine someone not being deeply affected by his films if they give them a fair chance.

Must check out come and see, thanks for reminding me.

damonjewel

Laser video/dvd rental is in Sth Great Georges street, and has a branch in Ranelagh too (near MacSorleys)

tc20

Theres quite a few of the films already mentioned (not sure about the 'faves' tag, i guess its too broad a moniker if you know where i coming from)
Anywho, some of the films i greatly enjoyed for a variety of reasons (story/acting/filmography/effects...you get the drift)

Letters from Iwo Jima
Downfall
Das Boot
Run Lola Run
Life Is Beautiful
City of God
Amelie/ Very Long Engagement

and one of my all time favourites (;) )
Night On Earth (English/French/Italian/Finnish) - a Jim Jarmusch film from late80s/early 90s, about the lot of a taxi driver in 5 different cities, featuring cameos from a great cast.

emeraldstar

Amelie for me.

Haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth but looking forward to.

Beelzebub

I'll add Indochine and Belle de Jour. Worth watching for Catherine Deneuve alone.