Recommend some Non-American Films and Expand Ted Striker's Horizons

[Nostromo]

Some other suggestions:

"Wild strawberries" by Ingmar Bergman.

Almost anything by François Truffaut. You probably saw "Fahrenheit 451".

"Contempt" by Jean-Luc Godard with Brigitte Bardot.

"Belle de jour" by Luis Bunuel:

Severine is a beautiful young woman married to a doctor. She loves her husband dearly, but cannot bring herself to be physically intimate with him. She indulges instead in vivid, kinky, erotic fantasies to entertain her sexual desires. Eventually she becomes a prostitute, working in a brothel in the afternoons while remaining chaste in her marriage.

Good stuff!

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
"King of Hearts" (France) WWI movie where a British scout is sent into a French town the Germans have just evaculated. But the gates to the local asylum have swung open, and the loonies are now running the place.

"Ran" (Japan) I'm vote number three for this one. King Lear set in mideval Japan.

"Crouching Tiger; Hidden Dragon" [or something like that] (China)

"Das Boat" (German) How come no one's mentioned this one yet. C'mon!

"Like Water for Chocolate" (Mexico)

King of Hearts (great movie)
Ran
Das Boat (classic)
Crouching Tiger (stop jumping around so much goddamit)
Like Water for Chocolate (goddam magical realism, hates it I do!)

Amelie was great, moved my dad, though it has somewhat painful memories for me.

Very cute romantic comedy

Swedish
My Life as a Dog

Not bad at all

The seven samurai

Classic. What's the one by Kurosawa that Fist Full of Dollars ripped of. That one was great.

I think you meant Alexander Nevsky, not Ivan. It's black and white movie of 1941 or 1940, iirc.

Years earlier than that. Stalin just wouldn't let it be released until Hitler attacked.

Shall We Dance? (Japan) Currently being remade by Hollywood with Richard Gere, who undoubtedly will butcher it. See the original!

Yeah the original is quite good, well worth watching.

Cross of Iron (Steiner - das eiserne Kreuz)

Aaaah that movie rocks. I saw the second half on TV once and I've been looking for it since and I can't find it anywhere
Damn good book too.

joint security area (korea)

Nah bad, but was slow-paced and badly in need of editing. Love the choco pie scene though, that was worth watching the whole thing for

[Bosh]

Oh another Korean one is Samarra (I think that's the right spelling). Its about two middle-school girls, one is a prostitute and one is her pimp. Much death and wierdness results. Very well done and good camera work (except for the one annoying dream sequence). I wasn't shown anywhere in Korea (might've been banned) until fairly recently since it won some international film awards.

I'm continually pleasantly suprised by the quality of Korean cinema.

[Wraith]

--"Classic. What's the one by Kurosawa that Fist Full of Dollars ripped of. That one was great."

Yojimbo. Probably my favorite of his films.

Hmm.

Anime:
Perfect Blue - Pop singer decides to move into acting. Her first role starts as a minor part in a muder myster show. Insecure about her identity, she starts to lose touch with reality as other people working on the show are attacked by a mysterious assailant. Classical thriller.
Millenium Actress - Based on a true story. Kind of. Three true stories, really. An actress who gained fame in Japan after WWII suddenly drops out of the public eye. Many years later, she's interviewed about her career.
Tokyo Godfathers (yeah, all three of these are Satoshi Kon movies) - Three homeless people find an abanonded baby on Christmas Eve.
Jin-Roh - In an alternate universe, Japan was occupied by Germany at the end of WWII. Faced with economic and political problems, many revolutionary groups formed and committed various levels of violence. To fight this threat, the Capitol Police was formed. An elite, heavily armed strike force. This is the story of Fuse, a constable in the Capitol Police, who runs across a young girl carry satchel charges for the revolutionaries.
Grave of the Fireflies is another I'll second. It's a war story without the war being in focus. It's about two kids in Japan near the end of WWII.
Patlabor (movies 1 and 2, haven't seen the new one yet.) They're pretty standalone, so you don't have to watch the series first. It's about a group of police in a Japan that uses mecha, called Labors, for construction. This police department deals with Labor crimes.
Anything by Miyazaki (not sure which ones are out in R1 right now. Disney keeps changing the release schedules):
Spirited Away - A small family is moving to another town. On their way, they run across a mysterious abandonded amusement park. While looking around, the parents find a stall with food and dig in. The girl refuses to eat, and looks around, meeting a strange young boy who tells her to leave quickly. Running back to her parents, she finds a pair of pigs instead... Japanese folktales
Princess Mononoke - A prince is cursed when he is forced to slay a crazed god. He goes on a journey to discover the cause of the curse.
Kiki's Delivery Service - A young girl training to be a witch has to take the next step in her training. Living in a new city on her own for a year.

Akira and Ghost in the Shell could be good to try. Sci-fi movies.

Non-anime:
Seven Samurai - This is the one remade as The Magnificent Seven. Seven samurai are hired to protect a village from bandits.
Hidden Fortress (both of these by Akira Kurosawa; his other films are good, too) - Two peasents are caught up in a war.
Wandafuru raifu (this will probably be titled "After Life")
Maboroshi (Both of these are by Kore'eda. His other films would be worth a try, if they're out in R1) - A woman remarries after her first husband commits suicide.
Tokyo Story (or anything else by Yasujiro Ozu, but there aren't many out in R1 yet) - Ozu's films are hard to describe. He's the master of the shomingeki genre, which really doesn't have a Western equivalent. This movie is about a pair of elderly parents who decide to visit their kids in Tokyo. Very much more worth watching than the description would suggest.

Edited to add descriptions.

If you want a good resource to look for more Japanese films, check out Midnight Eye.

Wraith
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

[Ted Striker]

Alright this weekend I watched:

Umberto D.
The Devil's Backbone
9 Queens


All of these were really good movies, with a very simple plot sitting on top of a bunch of complex social issues, and alot of metaphoric symbolism going on.

Umberto D definitley was the most moving of all of them, very emotional.

Flik

Maria
Chicks with one leg

I'd hit it.

[Tingkai]

Caught the last half of My Sassy Girl on cable yesterday. A lot better than the title led me to expect.

Also check out the Korean movie Shiri. A great action flick. The main actor in it is also in Christmas in August.

For Hong Kong flicks, try The Longest Summer, directed by Fruit Chan. It's about a bunch of Hong Kong guys who served in the British army and now have to adjust to civilian life after 1997. Or try Little Cheung and Durian, Durian. The three are triology about post-1997 Hong Kong.

[Ted Striker]

Tonight I watched Mexican film Amores perros.

Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic.

I gave it 5 stars out of 5 stars.


Awesome awesome film, and a wonderful surprise.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245712/

Most memorable quote:

"You and your plans. You know what my grandmother used to say? If you want to make God laugh... tell Him your plans. "



This film also featured hitting it with a one legged chick for some reason.

Must be a Spanish language thing.

Cheating on your wife with hot supermodels.

Hitting it with your brother's wife.

Ted Striker at the box office

[Hueij]

I saw The Vanishing on your list. Be sure to get the original Dutch version, not the American remake.

[Ted Striker]

Yep, I've got the Dutch version in my queue, thanks.

[chequita guevara]

Anything by Igmar Bergman, esp. The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and Persona

Anything by Juzo Itami, esp. A Taxing Woman, Tampopo, and The Funeral.

An actually decent French film whose title I can't remember. A French hitman comes home to find his neighbors have been murdered. The daughter who was getting groceries survives and seeks his protection, and learns the assassin trade. I want to say it's called the Assassin, but it's not coming up in the IMDB.

Johnny Stachino, an Italian farce where an Italian mobster sets up an unwitting double to be killed in his stead.

[Buck Birdseed]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
An actually decent French film whose title I can't remember. A French hitman comes home to find his neighbors have been murdered. The daughter who was getting groceries survives and seeks his protection, and learns the assassin trade. I want to say it's called the Assassin, but it's not coming up in the IMDB.

Leon

[chequita guevara]

That's it, but the title under which I saw it was The Professional.

[GePap]

Fritz Lang's M, from 1930. First appearance by Peter Lorre, must be one of the first films about serial murders.

[chequita guevara]

Actuallly, M is an allagory for the rise of fascism. Despite it's pro-Hitler leanings, it's definately a brilliant film.

[GePap]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Actuallly, M is an allagory for the rise of fascism. Despite it's pro-Hitler leanings, it's definately a brilliant film.

What the hell are you talking about?

I fail to see how anything in the last 20 minutes of that films is pro-facist in ANY way.