While I am not the biggest fan of foreign language films, I am the first to admit that when a foreign movie is excellent, you get to the point where you don’t even notice you are reading subtitles anymore. You become so gripped by the film that it’s not just a great foreign film you are watching…but rather it’s a great film. However, on the flip side, when a foreign film is terrible, it tends to drag and drag and drag. I think part of that reason is that you’ve tuned out the movie so much that you have no idea where you are in the film when you do glance back. As a result, it becomes a dreadful movie experience. I feel that almost all foreign films I watch are based on recommendations. Rarely will I be perusing Netflix and seeing a movie and adding it to my queue because it’s a “foreign movie.” I am far more likely to eliminate a film in subtitles than I am to entertain it. As a result, I rarely find a foreign film to be mediocre. I usually end up either liking the movie a ton of feeling like I just wasted two hours of my life. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and that is exactly what Two Days, One Night is. It is a movie that is mediocre in every sense. It had nothing to do with it being a foreign film. Had it not had subtitles, it would have been equally mediocre.
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Category Archives: Art House and Independent
Maria Full of Grace (2004)
Joshua Marston’s (The Forgiveness of Blood) Maria Full of Grace is one of the best foreign-language films I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, I watched this movie on the heels of another foreign language film (A Girl Walks Home At Night), which, despite the 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, I thought was an incredibly dull film and one I had no interest in reviewing. So I was a little uncertain about watching another subtitled movie the next day, but I am happy I gave it a fair chance. It’s a great movie that tells a heart-wrenching and believable story.
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All the Real Girls (2003)
Director David Gordon Green is quietly creeping into the upper echelon of movie directors. However, he is probably a name most people still have not heard of. Green is known for doing these smaller, independent, character-driven movies that are often set in Anytown, USA. To me, the movies are incredibly realistic because they dive so deep into raw, everyday emotions, explicitly dealing with love and lust and jealousy and anger and hurt. Keep in mind as I say this that he has also directed stupid humor comedies like Pineapple Express, The Sitter, and Your Highness, but that shows how ultra-talented the man is. The movies I am talking about are George Washington, Undertow (which I didn’t like but appreciated), and Snow Angels, a film I admire in every aspect. I’d need to go back and watch Snow Angels again (a movie I watched for the second time ever, no more than 3 or 4 months ago) before deciding if I like it or All the Real Girls better. To me, both of these movies capture the pureness of simple film-making.
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12 Years A Slave (2013)
The typical moviegoer of America will soon be introduced to one of the next big names in feature film directing when the Academy Award nominations come out in a few weeks. Steve McQueen will undoubtedly earn a Best Director nomination for 12 Years A Slave, a movie that some say is the greatest movie about slavery ever told. While those who have seen the film have talked a lot about the acting (and rightfully so), this movie, like any great movie, needs a captain to steer the ship and bring the story together. McQueen does just that. In a few weeks, the typical moviegoer will ask what else McQueen directed. Well, this is just his third feature film. He has 23 “Shorts” that he is credited with directing, but only two feature-length films. But these two other films weren’t just any movies. Much like Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento), everything that McQueen has touched in his young career has had a purpose. He doesn’t have any “throw away” movies. The movies he has tackled thus far in his full-length directorial career have been on slavery, sex addiction (Shame), and the true story of an Irish Republican Army activist who, in 1981, protested the way British guards were treating him and fellow inmates by embarking on, perhaps, the most internationally recognized hunger strike since Gandhi (Hunger). While Shame and Hunger earned critical acclaim, many people didn’t see them. Shame is a brilliant movie about the taboo topic of sex addiction. As a result, I expected much more when I saw Hunger after this. While I appreciated many aspects of Hunger, I found it rather dull. So now, with 12 Years A Slave, McQueen has three movies I admire and two that I think are brilliant.Continue reading 12 Years A Slave (2013)
Amour (2012)
Michael Haneke’s (Funny Games, Time of the Wolf) Amour might not be the most depressing movie of the year, but it is the most horrifying. The plot line could be “growing old with the one you love the most while facing life’s misery.” Instead, this movie is simply about the deterioration of a wife and what an elderly husband is able and willing to do to take care of her when she can no longer care for herself. A universal belief is that we all want to age gracefully and not impose on others. A universal truth, I know, is that this does not often happen. The idea that a husband and wife can fall in love in their 20s, live 60 years with minimal health issues, and then die in their sleep on the same night isn’t realistic, no matter how much we want it to be. In all likelihood, each spouse will rely on the help of their partner. In the end, one partner will most likely care for and make the decisions of the other. That’s what this movie shows us. And it shows us to it in an oh-so-brutal way.Continue reading Amour (2012)