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Well ever since I got on the NETFLIX bang wagon I've been watching a lot of foreign films since their library of this genre is pretty vast. I was wondering if you guys can recommend any foreign films that I can check out next time I'm on it??? Action/Thrillers are what I'm most into but I'm open to all suggestions except chick flick types movies :p... :D
Guess I need to start it off.. :p
Ip Man- Honk Kong movie
Chocolate- Thai movie
Wednesday- India movie
IP Man = BADASS!
The diving bell and the butterfly (its a thinker movie) and Dead Snow.
- Red Cliff (Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro): Decent movie. Good cinematography. Good war scenes
- 1988 movie Painted Faces: a movie that retells Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao's experiences in the Peking Opera. They claim that the movie was 'toned down' because most people wouldn't be able to accept the brutality of the training and lives they actually endured.
- Warlords (Jet Li, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau): Good movie. One of Jet Li's more dramatic roles. Another good depiction of war
- Sha Po Lang/Killzone (Sammo Hung, Donne Yen): Decent storyline not fleshed out quite as well as it could have been. Some great fight scenes, especially between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing and Donnie Yen vs Sammo
- Flash Point (Donnie Yen, Collin Chou): Storyline is.. meh... Fight scenes are pretty good. As with SPL above, these films are set in modern times and actually include some MMA/grappling techniques in the fights
- Hero (Jet Li): If anyone hasn't seen this film yet, it's quite a treat from a cinematographic standpoint. Decent storyline although the fight scenes are a lot more stylized (eg. wires)
- Banlieue 13 & B13 Ultimatum: (David Belle, Cyril Raffaelli): Storylines are meh... standard action fare. The action is where the fun is. David Belle is one of the co-founders of Parkour (sometimes called freerunning). Cyril Raffaelli ('Kiss of the Dragon', and the 'hamster' in 'Live Free or Die Hard' is just cool, combining, the agility and acrobatics of freerunning with karate and wushu.
Max
City of God
Ong Bak
Bang Rajan
The Killer (John Woo)
Hard Boiled (John Woo)
A Better Tomorrow
Ichi the Killer
Downfall
Tae Guk Gi
The Warlords (Jet Li)
Redcliff
Oldboy
District B13
Léon the Professional
Knife in the Water - Roman Polanski's directorial debut (1962), and the only film he ever directed in his native country.
Generational angst + sexual tension in the Eastern Bloc.
The girl is kinda sexy.
It helps if you understand Polish.
[REC] - good Zombie movie
City of God - Great movie
Hero - Jet Li's best IMO
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - pretty good flick
Let the Right One In - vampire movie that "Let Me In" is based on
Interesting recommendation guys some I've seen already but several I have yet to enjoy I deff look into them... keep em coming!!!! :D
Stalingrad
I like tragic films myself.
I watch alot of chinese movies.
Some of my favs are To Live, The Banquet (in America its called Legend of the black scorpion)
Pan's Labyrinth (Labarinto del Fauno), although it was wide release, it was in Spanish.
A Prophet (Un Prophete)
My Left Foot
El Orfanato (The Orphanage)
Ones I have yet to see myself and would appreciate reviews if any of you kids have seen them:
Yojimbo
Sanjuro
Ran - so as not to be confused, 1985, directed by Akira Kurosawa, considered one of the top samurai films ever made
Cronos
The Devil's Backbone (El Espinazo del Diablo)
Ringu
Once Upon a Time in China 1 & 2
Der Unhold (The Ogre)
Pusher I, II, & III
Good thread though, I have yet to see a number of those listed but am planning to.
IP Man was really good! watched it on streaming netflix, excellent movie!
District B13 pretty bad ass... :D FYI
Yojimbo: If you liked any of Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune's collaborations (eg. Seven Samurai), you should like this film. Although the movie can be slow moving at times, I never found it boring. It's amusing to see the way Mofune's charcater plays with his adversaries. Fight scenes, as typical with Kurosawa's samurai films, are not overly flashy and pretty realistic. If you've seen Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and liked it, you'll like Yojimbo too. For anyone who hasn't seen either, you should give these movies a shot. Seven Samurai was the inspiration for Western 'Magnificent Seven'.Quote:
Originally Posted by 19Eclipse90
OUATIC 1: Depends on how much you like Wuxia (chinese theater about martial arts and honor etc.). The storyline is OK (and shares one of the themes that Ip Man used, i.e. the poor martial artist from somewhere else wanting to make a name for himself by defeating the best in the city). Has decent fight scenes although they do use wires in many of the fight scenes (fans of the genre either learn to ignore the use of wires, or accept it as part of the genre). One of the fight scenes inspired the reproduction of an almost completely identical scene in the (pretty mediocre) 2001 movie 'The Musketeer' (the scene with the ladders).
OUATIC 2: Storyline is OK. They still use wires in the fights in this movie (especially in one outrageous fight). IMO, it would have been a far more impressive movie if they hadn't used wires at all, because they had numerous martial artists with pretty impressive talent on their own. IMO, OUATIC II has some of the best staff fighting scenes (between Jet Li and Donnie Yen) ever filmed.
Max
Das Boot
Chopper (foreign for you not me :p)
Has anyone mentioned Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle? Two of my fav kung fu comedies.
I really enjoyed the following:
Nochnoi Dozor (Russian, sci-fi)--A fantasy-thriller set in present-day Moscow where the respective forces that control daytime and nighttime do battle.
Dnevnoy Dozor (Russian, sci-fi)--A man (Khabensky) who serves in the war between the forces of Light and Dark comes into possession of a device that can restore life to Moscow, which was nearly destroyed by an apocalyptic event.
Wo Hu Cang Long (Chinese, drama) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon here in the US--Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled, teenage nobleman's daughter, who is at a crossroads in her life. Best seen in Chinese with no subtitles/dubbing.
There is also a Russian drama that I enjoyed, but am searching for the title cos it's been a while.
German - Run Lola Run
Spanish - Mar Adentro, Pan's Labyrinth, El Aura
I keep forgetting about this one!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by pezcore
I watched Run Lola Run last night and wasn't extremely impressed. It was interesting enough to keep me watching, but as a whole I didn't care for it much.
I don't know if they have been mentioned, but
The Holy Mountain
El Topo
Both great movies, tho I cant remember if the films are foreign or if its just the writer.
BTW, for folks interested in checking out some of Jackie Chan's older movies:
Police Story 1 - Great action, great fight scenes and impressive stunts typical of Jackie Chan's best, coupled with Jackie's comedic flair. One of the car stunts was replicated in Bad Boys II.
Police Story 2 - Once again, great action and fight scenes.
Police Story 3 - IMO, not quite as good as the first 2 but still entertaining and definitely worth watching nonetheless (some folks I know preferred PS 3 to PS 2).
Project A - One of Jackie's finest examples of martial arts action comedy. Also considered a classic because it's one of the collaborations between the 'Trio', Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. This movie is one of the main movies that displays Jackie's fondness for the comedic flair of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton and some of the stunts are crazy (falling 3-4 stories from a clock tower and landing on his head in one uncut take. The insane thing is, he wasn't happy with the first take of this stunt, so he did it again!). One of his most inspired movies (love the bicycle chase), it was fueled by his disappointment with his failure to break into the US/Western movie market with appearances in Cannonball Run and starring in the (pretty crappy) Battle Creek Brawl.
Project A 2 - Another fine example of Jackie's style of combining action, comedy and martial arts
The Young Master - try to find the original Asian releases of this movie. The last fight with the bad guy is very long and impressive, but the US release cuts out a chunk of it.
Dragon Lord - Another entertaining movie with more Jackie style fun and intricate fight choreography.
Meals On Wheels - Another Terrific Trio collaboration with some great fight scenes, in particular, some of my favorite Jackie fights ever against Benny 'The Jet Urquidez, who is still, IMHO, one of the most impressive Western fighters EVER. When Benny retired from full contact competition, he was undefeated, with 57 KO's from 63 sanctioned fights. He fought full contact MMA before there even was such a thing as MMA. In '74, the US Karate circuit first began running full contact tournaments, as opposed to the limited point contact tournaments. The pussy known as Chuck Norris (who competed in and won many point contact tournaments) retired from competition, Benny on the other hand embraced full contact kickboxing and at one point, held 6 World Titles in 5 weight divisions.
In the early days of those full contact competitions, they hadn't quite fleshed out the rules, so grappling and throws were allowed along with kickboxing. Benny was one of the main reasons the tournament rules were later revised to kickboxing only. He won many of those early fights by KO with a throw that dropped opponents on their heads. The US Karate association began changing the rules to restrict the matches to kickboxing. I've seen footage of both Benny's And Chuck Norris's competition fights. Benny was one aggressive, fast and powerful. fighter If Chuck had had the balls to face him in a full contact bout, he would've been put to sleep too, like most of Benny's opponents.
Dragons Forever - Another Terrific Trio collaboration and another terrific match between Jackie and Benny 'The Jet'.
Drunken Master and Drunken Master II - The first movie is old school and fun. DM II (also titled 'The Return Of Drunken Master') was even more impressive. One of my favorite fights is between Jackie Chan and Lau Kar Leung, who is acknowledged as one of the all-time greats in HK martial arts theater (both in ability and fight choreography). The scene I'm talking about was particularly impressive for LKL's demonstration of how to use a long weapon against a short weapon in very confined spaces (where to the average person, the long weapon would be cumbersome and at a huge disadvantage).
Max
P.S. These are not Jackie Chan movies but definitely worth watching nonetheless:
36th Chamber of Shaolin - considered one of the classics of the Wuxia genre, starring Gordon Liu (adopted martial brothe of Lau Kar Leung who directed this movie).
Jet Li movies:
The Shaolin Temple series 1, 2 and 3 - You can see the difference between mainland China's style of Wuxia and movies in the martial arts genre compared to the HK movies. These were Jet Li's intro to his martial arts movie career (he'd already won Wushu Championships) and these movies feature numerous Wushu instructors, champions and masters, including Pan Qing Fu, one of the most well known Wushu Masters/instructors in China.
My Father's a Hero - The rest of this movie is pretty good but there is one outstanding fight scene that shows just how devastating a fighter can be if they REALLY know how to handle the weapon called Tonfa (which is now recognizable as the PR24 side handled police baton).
Hero - this was an absolutely phenomenal movie. if anyone hasn't seen it, i highly recommend it.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Das Boot (watch the extended directors cut, I know it's like 4.5 hours but it's totally worth it.)
Shichinin No Samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954)
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo
These are some of my favourite movies:
Tell No One - French Thriller - A guy's wife vanishes, he has to find out what happened to her
Run Lola Run - German Thriller (someone already mentioned this one, really good)
The Orphanage - Spanish Thriller / Mystery (really good movie, a kid has an invisible friend, ghosts etc..)
Timecrimes - Spanish This is a really good movie, a total mind #%$ck ,
Let the Right One In - Swedish vampire movie, pretty good
I watched Banlieue 13 (District B13) last night and this is fairly accurate. The story is pretty terrible; the acting isn't terrific either. But it sure is fun watching the freerunning, especially these two characters physically matching each other move for move.Quote:
Originally Posted by bluemax_1