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20-10s FOREIGN FILM Pimping Thread


RIPPA

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Obviously will we just use the generally accepted notion of "foreign film" here. (Since yes US films are technically foreign films for our UK posters, etc...)

There clearly will be cross-over since folks could easily talk about Train to Busan or Under the Shadow here or in horror

For a starting point - Academy Awards nominations 2010-2014

2010

In a Better World (Winner)

Biutiful

Incendies

Hors la loi (Outside the Law)

Note: Dogtooth was also nominated but that is considered 2009 by IMDB

2011

A Separation (Winner)

Rundskop (Bullhead)

Hearat Shulayim (Footnote)

In Darkness

Monsieur Lazhar

2012

Amour (Winner)

Kon-Tiki

No

A Royal Affair

Rebelle (War Witch)

2013

La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty) (Winner)

The Broken Circle Breakdown

Jagten (The Hunt)

The Missing Picture

Omar

2014

Ida (Winner)

Leviathan

Tangerines

Timbuktu

Relatos salvajes (Wild Tales)

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On the Korean hotness front, I would imagine that Parasite will be widely available any day now thanks to the worldwide COVID lockdown and add The Wailing to the Best International / Best Horror crossover talk.  Also, I was shocked to see that Snowpiercer came out in 2013.  It seems like forever since we started getting hyped for it.

13 Assassins (2010) is totally fucking awesome and should just make the cut for the time frame.  I was thrilled to see that jidaigeki is still gong strong.  God bless crazy ass Takashi Miike.

Edited by J.T.
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This actually brings up a good question. I was going to put Mother (not to be confused with Mother!) on my rough ballot.  It was released in America in March of 2010. It’s in the top 50 on that Vulture decade list. A lot of what I see has it as a 2009 film. Are we beholden to the year it was shot and/or released in its country of origin? 

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2 minutes ago, (BP) said:

This actually brings up a good question. I was going to put Mother (not to be confused with Mother!) on my rough ballot.  It was released in America in March of 2010. It’s in the top 50 on that Vulture decade list. A lot of what I see has it as a 2009 film. Are we beholden to the year it was shot and/or released in its country of origin? 

We are beholden to IMDB since we need a single reference point for determining eligibility.

So in this case Mother is 2009 and ineligible for this poll

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26 minutes ago, J.T. said:

On the Korean hotness front, I would imagine that Parasite will be widely available any day now thanks to the worldwide COVID lockdown and add The Wailing to the Best International / Best Horror crossover talk 

Parasite hits Hulu on either April 1 or April 6 (I am too lazy to double check the date)

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Two Japanese films to pimp. First, another Hirokazu Koreeda.

The Third Murder (2017) is a courtroom drama. Lawyer Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama) is brought into the case of Misumi (Koji Yakusho) going on trial for the murder of his former boss.  When the film begins, his guilt isn't in doubt. Indeed, he has already confessed to it and the very first scene is the crime playing out. But Misumi's ever evolving explanations of his motive are complicating things for his legal team who are just trying to spare him a death sentence. Shigemori is the kind of lawyer that is all in for his client with very little regard for victims and their families. The prosecutor (Mikako Ichikawa) views him as the kind of lawyer that "gets in the way of criminals facing up to their guilt" and when the victim's widow ( Yuki Saito) rips up a letter that he had hand delivered from Misumi, he is actually insulted. But a chance encounter with the victim's daughter, Sakie (Suzu Hirose) and a slow forming bond with Misumi, based upon parallels in their lives, will lead him to question himself, the truth of the case and a judicial system more concerned with observing formalities than in finding truth. And after so many revelations, slips, dips, feints and twists, the final settled upon 'truth' is itself left in doubt. May not be able to find room for this on my ballot but recommended.   

 

 

Domains (2019) Directed by Natsuka Kosano.  A young woman, Aki (Asami Shibuya) listens to a police officer read her confession back to her. Though she doesn't deny murdering her best friend's daughter, she appears disturbed and not quite understanding why she is in custody. She begins talking about her friendship with Nodoka ( Tomo Kasajima). This turns out to be a completed scene from a film within the film and the bulk of the rest of the film will be a series of rehearsals for that film. We'll get a couple of completed takes and several exterior shots sans humans that the characters being rehearsed might inhabit but it will mostly be table reads, with a couple of one-on-one sessions involving  the three featured actors, including the actor playing Nodoka's husband Naoto ( Tomomitsu Adachi). Are Asami, Tomo, and Tomomitsu playing themselves or are the actors also characters? We don't really know because apart from an occasional cue from an off-camera director, all of the dialogue is rehearsing lines from the same 4 or 5 scenes, over and over and over again. What starts as cold readings is eventually shaded in with varying emotion, shot from different angles, sometimes of actors reading, sometimes of actors listening and reacting. Sometimes clunky lines are smoothed out and sometimes words are changed in a line that by now you have heard at least 15 times, which serves to add nuance or to clarify the story being told, because yeah, there is actually a story here and your patience is sometimes rewarded. And once it seems like they have finally nailed a piece only than does a scene that you have now heard about 20 times gets a few additional lines of dialogue. It is like someone took Mr. Orange's drug buy story and figured out a way to make an entire film out of it. As it plays out, with the different POVs and rising and falling emotion and conversational tone, your sympathies shift from character to character. Because yeah, by now you are thinking more of them as the roles they are playing instead of as actors rehearsing even though they mostly remain in that rehearsal space. It is a neat trick to witness if you can handle the repetition.  Absolutely making my ballot. 

Edited by Execproducer
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We Are the Best! is one of my favourite movies I saw all decade (Am working at trying to get a copy so I can watch it again!) about a couple Swedish girls whom, in a mutual hatred of P.E., decide to form a punk band despite a complete lack of musical ability or knowledge.  It's such an incredibly accurate and fun and knowing look at a very specific time of life.  Anyone who ever had a punk phase will recognize so much of it.  Their performance and what happens after is one of my favourite cinematic memories of the decade.  Find this.  See this.

 

Things to Come: Everyone is going to bat for Mia Hansen-Love's 'Eden' which is funny because despite really loving two of her flicks, it really left me cold (My theory is that people are just so into the music as it's about the French house music scene circa the mid-to-late 90s with Daft Punk and all that they tend to overlook that the movie doesn't really give much to learn about its main character but maybe it's just me) but no one talks about this WONDERFUL little flick.  Isabelle Huppert plays a middle-aged woman who is suddenly beset by the end of her marriage and a number of other personal tragedies and tries to cope with it all.  Huppert is great as always as she tries to cope with these tragedies then find meaning in her life to go on.  The ending of this one gave me such a warm, perfectly fulfilled feeling in the quiet joys one can take in life.

 

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Two more!

Toni Erdmann: They're supposedly trying to remake this and it will be just awful, so see this now before it's tarnished by a shitty remake.  It's about a father who tries to reconnect with his grown succesful daughter, so he follows her around and tries to pretend to be a succesful businessman to integrate himself into her world.  The climactic scene with the daughter hosting a party is one of the most bizarre, awkward, hilarious and ultimately joyfully warm scenes I've seen in some time.  So wonderfully weird, but don't be put off by the length, it breezes past.

 

A Man Called Ove: An old curmudgeon who is the terror of his suburb, yelling at people and enforcing the most miniscule bylaws on his neighbours is gradually softened by the presence of new neighbours, as we learn his story.  I'm a little afraid to revisit this one, because even as I watched it, I was aware of how cliched it was, but something about it came at just the right time after just having lost our beloved family dog, a little bit of warmth and sappiness was exactly what I needed.  So it'll always have a place on my list for being there just when I needed it.

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Just watched DHEEPAN last night, which won the Palm d’Or and which is like a leftist social realism story tied to a conservative no-go zone nightmare, anchored by amazing performances by non-actors, including the lead, a former child soldier and Tamil Tiger:

 

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16 hours ago, RIPPA said:

We are beholden to IMDB since we need a single reference point for determining eligibility.

So in this case Mother is 2009 and ineligible for this poll

I should also ask then, 'Enter the Void' pops up on a lot of these Decade lists, IMDB has it as 2009; US release in 2010.  Also ineligible? 

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3 hours ago, caley said:

I should also ask then, 'Enter the Void' pops up on a lot of these Decade lists, IMDB has it as 2009; US release in 2010.  Also ineligible? 

Correct

There are always going to be some movies screwed. I still remember all the nonsense with Audition when we did the 2000s and the redone 90s (and how it didn’t matter in the end because only 2 people voted for it)

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I watched Cold War and Holy Motors this week to work on prepping my ballot. Both are going to make it. One minor thing about Cold War that I think is worth pointing out is that it has the best use of the song Rock Around the Clock I’ve ever experienced. It’s been used in innumerable period pieces, but this is the first one where I felt like I was really watching young people get on the dance floor because they were hearing a new song, and it’s a bop. 

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HOLY MOTORS is great—maybe too 10, probably top 25.

Two foreign (language) films I demand y’all watch.

INCENDIES is by the director of BLADE RUNNER 2049 and SICARIO and all that, so you know it’s good.

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT is kinda like Heart of Darkness in South America, except told from the perspective of the colonized. It’s also beautiful as fuck:

 

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HOLY MOTORS is phenomenal. I have that for sure in Top 25 also.

 

Hard to Be a God 

 

One of my favorite theater experiences. I think it was in 2015 but it might have been playing in 2016. It was sold out at the Trylon Microcinema, in Minneapolis. I was sitting in a stiff folding chair in the far-front corner. After about 20 minutes of spitting and goop a good deal of people walked out. And there I was in need of a shower and in absolutely icky-sticky awe.

I adored how tight everything felt. Going into it I naively was expected very wide shots of beautiful scenery. Little did I know it was going to be filled mainly with moving shots, scanning through very packed/ on top of each other rooms. One of my favorite visual experiences of the past few years.

 

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT is a film I wanted to see when it came out. Never got around to getting the Oscilloscope dvd. I’m aiming to see it for the project. Thanks for the reminder, @Control.

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15 minutes ago, Execproducer said:

I had Hard to Be a God at #2 when we did the 2015 poll. Sadly, I did not get to see it in a theater.

Bummed I wasn’t here during that. Do you still have your ballot? That would be cool to check out. 

———

a few more winners

A Separation 

 

Probably the best Iranian divorce thrillers I’ve ever seen. Asghar Farhadi is a wonderful filmmaker of edge of your seat, melodramatic tales of interpersonal conflict. She wants to leave with her daughter, he wants to stay taking care of his Alzheimer’s suffering father. Drama ensues.

Aferim!

Dark Comedy about the Romanian slave trade. I know that sounds insane, and it is. 

 

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7 minutes ago, OctopusCinema said:

Bummed I wasn’t here during that. Do you still have your ballot? That would be cool to check out.

 

Spoiler

1. The Assassin (Hou)

2. Hard to Be a God (German)
 3. Mustang (Ergüven)
 4. Tokyo Tribes (Sono)
 5. Amy (Kapadia)
 6. The World of Kanako (Nakashima)
 7. Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller)
 8. Best of Enemies (Neville, Gordon)
 9. Ex Machina (Garland)
10. An Honest Liar (Weinstein, Measom)
11. The Hateful Eight (Tarantino)
12. Alice in Earnestland (Ahn)
13. It Follows (Mitchell)
14. Hitchcock/Truffaut (Jones)
15. Brooklyn (Crowley)
16. The Revenant (Iñárritu)
17. Cartel Land (Heineman)
18. Listen To Me Marlon (Riley)
19. Almost There (Wickenden, Rybicky)
20. Ant-Man (Reed)
21. The Martian (Scott)
22. Spectre (Mendes)
23. Love (Noe)
24. Hyena (Johnson)

25. I Smile Back (Salky)

 

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A couple French films

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_SqZRLjuoQ
Valley of Love: I basically stumbled across this at the library and gave it a whirl, having heard nothing about it/reviews/previews or anything and loved it.  Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert play a divorced couple who receive invitations to Death Valley, California.  The twist is the invitations come from their son, who committed suicide 6 months earlier.  They walk around, talk about their lives now, their previous lives together, struggle with the heat, waiting for this bizarre appointment.  It's a hypnotic film with two terrific actors and a beautiful score that uses Charles Ives' 'The Unanswered Question' to underscore the otherworldliness of everything. I don't want to give too much away, because that's part of the film's charm.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwkacrln26o&t=75s

Climax: In the title card this movie boasts that it is a "French film and proud", it should also add "a Gaspar Noe French film and proud" because it is unabashedly his, so, if you don't like his other films or are tired of his stuff, you should stay way far away..  The plotline is that it's a group of French dancers who get together one night, drink acid-spiked sangria and freak out., as they try to figure out who's poisoned them.  Of course that's not really the full film but it also kind of is.  I'm not sure the last time that I saw a film with such a specific viewpoint of what it is and how it wants to operate.  It opens with a scene of a person struggling through a snowscape, then goes into a looooong sequence of dancers being interviewed for the project, then breaks into a 6+ minute spellbinding dance sequence.  Credits and title cards seem to break in out of nowhere, one set turning up over halfway through the film.  After the aforementioned sangria is drunk, the film basically turns into a slow descent into hell, with the occasional dance sequence and the last 15 minutes are almost impossible to watch and tell what is going on.  It's a wholly unique challenging watch, almost confrontational with what it wants to reveal to its audience.  I greatly enjoyed it (And I'm really not that into dancing) but I also understand that it's going to drive a lot of people up the wall.

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I really loved Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. I loved the 1960s original and loved Miike’s remake.  This will be a top 10 pick for me.

The Blade of the Immortal is another great samurai film.

I Saw the Devil is another top contender for me. Incredibly bleak and horrifying.

Incendies the film that put Denis Villeneuvre on the map before Prisoners.

The Skin I Live In really hit me in the gut when I first saw it. Big fan of Almodovar.

Tyrannosaur great film about anger.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

The World of Kanako was another gut punch for me when I watched it for the first time last year. A great film about just how little a parent can know about how awful their child can be.

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18 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Confrontational is right. 

Climax_Poster_1200_1685_81_s.jpg

Haha, that's awesome, and a pretty good summary of this film.  I LOVED 'Enter the Void' and am bummed I can't vote it here because it was a Top 20 pick for me, maybe Top 10 if I found a way to revisit it before the poll.

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55 minutes ago, caley said:

 I LOVED 'Enter the Void' and am bummed I can't vote it here because it was a Top 20 pick for me, maybe Top 10 if I found a way to revisit it before the poll.

Me too. Especially since it was eligible for the half-decade poll. I believe both RT and metacritic had it at 2010. Of course, it only had 2 votes in that poll.

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