Below are some brief, non-English language movie
reviews and some links to my full length reviews.
Explore some non-Hollywood cinema, there are
some absolute jewels out there. Being English,
I've assumed for convenience that movies spoken
in English/Yank English are
not foreign
language in that context.
- Jim
103 Reykjavik
Das Experiment
L'Emploi du Temps (Time Out)
Good Bye Lenin!
Le Libertin
Solas
Stanza del figlio, La (The Son's Room) - latest
Sur mes lèvres (Read my Lips)
Some Japanese Ideas
More foreign language movie reviews
103 Reykjavik
(cert 15 (sex) 2000)
103 Reykjavik
is a story about the half-hearted social and
sex life of a man in his early thirties who
lives with his mother in Iceland. One day a
Spanish woman moves in and his idle, rather
aimless life is upset in bizarre ways.
103
Reykjavik is an adult, character-driven
drama with plenty of humour. It's often philosophical
without being too heavy. The movie quotes a
great quote, "
you can't be dead all the time".
If you don't mind subtitles, it's well worth
a watch. It's a beautifully played,
human
movie.
Icelandic and fun 4.5 / 5
Das Experiment
(cert UK 18 (violence, sex) 2001)
Das Experiment,
is a German movie loosely based on an incredible
prison experiment in Stanford (US) in the 60's.
The idea is simple, you find a bunch of paid
volunteers, then randomly assign them to the
roles of prisoner and prison guard, and watch
what happens. It's a relief, but at the same
time it's a shame, that in our law-suit happy
world, such fascinating but unethical experiments
could never happen now in the West. (Except
in top secret by the military I suppose).
Das
Experiment extrapolates the events of the
real Stanford experiment. Having read about
the neuron-exploding
real
Stanford prison experiment, on a psychological
level, the mind blowing thing about
Das Experiment
is that it does not exaggerate by much. Indeed
in some aspects, the movie underplayed reality.
! SPOILER - plot giveaway
!!! For example, in the real experiment
the prisoners were extremely dehumanised, more
so than in the movie. The movie overplays the
physical violence, and underplays the psychological
torments. That's a shame: having the prisoners
turn into zombies instead of rebels would not
only have been true to the real experiment,
but it would have been much more interesting
as a movie too. The German filmmakers made the
Hollywood mistake of promoting violence over
psychology. This was a missed opportunity to
make an already-superb movie immortal.
END OF SPOILER.
Das Experiment
is a cracking thriller with guts. Not for children.
Not for some adults either.
A guarded 4.5 / 5
L'Emploi du Temps (Time Out)
On BBC TV I watched Time Out and it was a steady
way to spend two hours but there is much here
about the fragility of the human mind when enmeshed
in modern life, and family and relationships.
I already knew the bit about work can sometimes
be hellish, in a soul-destroying kind of way,
if you're not wary it can hew you down, and
many share the same inclination. It is hard
to put my finger on the exact lessons I've taken
from this movie, but I'm just letting it wash
over me, so I can absorb it. The acting was
perfect, it was a surprisingly involving experience,
a complete antithesis to the stoopid look-at-me-I'm-so-cool
Kill Bill
I saw yesterday
Gloomy, longish and compelling 4.5 / 5
Good
bye, Lenin!
(cert UK 15 2001)
Good bye, Lenin! is
a paradox: a quietly - but genuinely - funny
German comedy. The theme is the effect of the
fall of the Berlin Wall upon an East German
family, with many sub themes, such as the morality
of deception, and how absurd the West is to
those that experience it for the first time.
(It's certainly absurd to me, and I've known
little else). There is light hearted farce,
but also much humanity and emotion, Good Bye
Lenin! combines drama, historical goings on
and humour very pleasingly indeed.
A deceptive 4.5 / 5
Le Libertin
(cert UK 15 (sex) 2000)
Le Libertin, is a French farce about the famous Enlightenment philosopher, Denis Diderot, and his attempts to hide his wickedly atheistic encyclopedia from the church until its completion.
Le Libertin is, on the surface, a bawdy, sexy, perverse farce. But beneath this surface, there is more bawd, sex, perversion and farce. But beneath that, there is genuine genius here, the dialogue, humour, acting, eroticism and, most of all, the send-up of the church is a delight. (It's a shame Islam cannot be so mocked, for Islam now is as insidious as the Church was in the 1700's). There is real philosophy here too, not particularly deep, but a millionfold more witty than anything produced by the
Matrix movies.
Raunchy intellectual 5 / 5
Solas
Solas is a Spanish story of the interrelationships between a hard drinking thirty five year old woman, her saintly mother,
her wicked father and a lonely neighbour. The initial themes deal not only with motherly concepts, but with desperation, alienation and loss of happiness
caused by an anonymous world. The tale seems stark and slow at first, and you think, O Lordy, this is a bit bloody grim!
But at some indifinable point, you're hooked! Solas is one of the most moving films I've seen. The acting, characterisation and dialogue (as far as I could tell from the subtitles)
is priceless. Solas is quietly masterful, a rewarding work of passion. Simply recalling how the characters started
out and comparing that with how they ended up is awe inspiring.
Soulful 5 / 5
The Son's Room/Stanza del figlio, La (2001)
This Italian movie is a study of grief that
is told in an almost matter-of-fact way. This
is fortunate, for the theme is so touching I
felt that the mostly-detached tone was a wise
strategy. Spoilers ahead. A contented nuclear
family suffer a destructive blow and we watch,
in horrified awe, as the emotional shrapnel
wreaks hell. This linear movie, a Cannes winner,
makes you ponder the unthinkable. The performances
are convincing and the score interesting. The
direction was good too. The claustrophobic shots
of the analyst at the time of disaster; the painful
scene with the coffin where the daughter requests
one final glimpse; the scene where she breaks
down in the clothes shop; the (Spoiler!) cathartic
appearance of the innocent girlfriend, who,
with the endearing lack of tact of the young,
had brought along a replacement boyfriend! That
last point is fascinating, it suggests to the
family that even their lost son was replaceable
and people move on.
We are replaceable.
Someone once said that when you quit a job,
the hole you leave will be like that left by a hand being pulled
from a bucket of water. Tis true of death too.
Incidentally, the MPAA rated this movie R !!
This over-powerful organisation obviously prefers
teenagers to watch ubiquitous Hollywood violence,
may the gods help us if kids are exposed to
thoughtful, character-driven foreign movies.
Whether it is driven by an ass-backwards "morality"
or a cynical desire to make more money for Hollywood
studios and itself, the MPAA's absurd behavior
seems to me to be akin to a burning-of-books
mentality, and makes America look immoral.
Ponette, a French movie about grief, this time
as experienced by a small child, was for me
the most moving I've seen of the sad film genre
(but I've seen few). That movie deeply affected
me, at a time when I was troubled.
P.S. I saw
The Son's Room
on the evening of 10 January 2004 and left a
comment about it on this site, you can probably
see it below. The following day I was driving
in the fast lane of the motorway when a thick
plank of wood, about ten feet long, struck the
passenger window of my car. It had become detached
from a truck just ahead of me, like a contrived
"accident" from a playful horror movie:
The Omen or
Final
Destination 2 spring to mind.
The passenger window exploded, it was as if
a grenade had detonated, glass everywhere! Luckily
no one else was in the car. I managed to pull
over, and noticed a dent in the car door post,
about chest height to a sitting passenger. If
the post had fallen few feet to the right, I
may have been a gonner.
The Son's
Room was not exaggerating. Accidents
will happen, just as randomly as portrayed in
the movie. That very night I chatted to a woman
who mentioned she lost a thirteen year old daughter
to pneumonia. The grieving parent did not leave
her house for three years. Whether survival
or death is one's fate is, in my opinion, not
down to the machinations of angels or the skeletal
hand of becloaked Death: it is dumb luck, atoms
and energy versus atoms and energy. Feels damned
good to be alive a few seconds more.
Coffin nails: 4.5 / 5
Sur mes lèvres (Read My Lips)
A hard-of-hearing secretary is both bored and
insecure in her job. The one thing that makes
her unusual is her expertise in lip reading.
Her boss suggests he hire an assistant to help
reduce her work load. She gets to interview
a dodgy-looking bloke for the job. He is obviously
a ne'er do good type, but there is something
about him that appeals to her and she decides
to risk all and take him on. She flirts with
him and is drawn into a perilous game.
This French movie is the best I have seen all
year.
Sur mes lèvres does not
force the pace, yet the tension builds. There's
a fair bit of violence and darkness, yet there
are many funny touches in this movie. The acting
is just superb. It is a cliché, but it
is a true cliché: style is always key
to French movies; few English language movies
come close to matching Gallic charm.
Stylish thriller 5 / 5
Some Japanese ideas
I asked a Japanese lady, Akemi, for some movie recommendations and am pleased
to provide her opinion. Her
email was informal, so I've edited some of the wording:
Takashi Miike
is quite famous in Japan and the Times magazine chose him as one of the top ten promising directors for the future, see
interview with Takashi Miike.
I guess
Kitano Takeshi is quite famous as well.
I'm not sure there are English pages on his official site,
so here's
another Kitano Takeshi link.
Maybe you don't like to watch animation, but
my generation grew up with
Hayao Miyazaki. He won an Academy animation award this year this year, I believe, as well as awards from European film festivals.
His latest movie is
Spirit Away, and now he is working on another film that should will be out here [in Japan] in about 2004.
As for European cinema I've seen, one interesting movie is a
German movie called
knocking on heavens door.
(I can't a find good url for the movie).
A UK movie I liked was divorcing jack, based on the novel.
Eadon's full length foreign
movie reviews:
Amelie (France)
lilja 4-ever (Sweden)
Astonishing
Le Pacte Des Loups
(France)
La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher)
(Austria)
Run Lola Run (Germany)
Swimming Pool (France/UK)
Zatoichi (Japan)
Other foreign movies I have seen recently and
can remember off the top of my head,
Le
Diner De Cons (France, 5/5);
Talk
To Me (Spanish, 4/5);
My
Life As A Dog (Sweden, 5/5);
Solaris
(Russia 5/5);
Doberman
(France. Violent. 5/5);
A Man Escaped
(France) 4.5/5;
Seven Samurai
(Japan 5/5);
Throne of Blood
(Japan 4.5/5)
Rashomon
(Japan 5/5). Of course, I've seen many more
foreign language films like this, and will add
more titles in the fullness of time.
More short foreign reviews in the fullness of
time.
For my
long(er) movie reviews
click
here.
Final
thought: the EU should make itself useful and
curtail the Hollywood movie distribution monopoly
in Europe - it is garrotting the less commercial,
more worthy European film industry. The
increased competition might even inspire the
Americans to raise their art.
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