For those who like Foreign Films??

I love foreign films. It used to be French films, and I guess I liked Truffault, Alain Renais, all the good old French directors. My favorite French film, well I have 2 are Breathless with Jean Paul Belmondo and A Man and A Woman. I saw both of these the summer of 1966, I believe. It was the summer I was living in Grenoble, France going to school. I know it was the year that A Man and A Woman won as the Best film at the Cannes Film Festival and it was wonderful seeing it in a movie theater in Paris. Luckily both movies are easy to understand for someone who doesn't speak fluent French. I still watch both movies often.

As to current films, I guess I've switched to Spanish films, I think Almodovar is a genius. His movies are strange, and I think the earlier ones are better, but I did enjoy Volver recently.

Unfortunately I am married to a man who doesn't like foreign films, so I am thankful for Netflix, I can watch my films while he watches his baseball games.

Oh, you asked why, well, basically, I think that most foreign films are made a lot better than a lot of the American films. How can you compare these films, including things like Pans labyrinth to movies about the Simpsons and all the films staring Adam Sandler. Ok, I may come across as a snob, but I do perfer films that have some talent to provide, not that all foreign films aren't silly, but they do just seem to be made better. Fellini may not always make sense, but it is truly eye candy.

My favorite foreign film director is Akira Kurosawa (from Japan), but I think this is because I've seen more films by him than any other foreign director (I've seen close to ten by him).

Also, he's directed two films that I would count among the ten or so best I've ever seen, those being Seven Samurai (1954) and Ran (1985). I would count three of his other films (Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), and High & Low (1963) in my top thirty or so. It's interesting to note that that he made great films more than thirty years apart, so he never really failed to continue making great films, unlike some directors (Francis Ford Copolla comes to mind, though he's not foreign).

I think the thing I see in many of his films is that they are simple, often seemingly melodramatic, but they have little tints of darkness: sometimes total bleakness, other times just existential "hints," and even occasionally dakr humor. These elements help make his movies so much greater than their stories or plot summaries would usually suggest. They are also often open to interpretation, and have mixed bittersweet endings (there are certainly exceptions though; one of his films, Dreams (1990), I thought came across as very heavy-handed, and the ending to Ran is so bleak that I could never call it "mixed").

Here is a list (in no particular order) of some other great foreign filmmakers that I have seen at least one great film by (I've listed some films next to their names that I've enjoyed and/or been impressed by).

Vittorio DeSica (Italy: Bicycle Thieves)

Ingmar Bergman (Sweden: Wild Strawberries, Persona, Cries & Whispers)

Federico Fellini (Italy: La Strada, 8 1/2)

Yasujiro Ozu (Japan: Late Spring, Tokyo Story)

Abbas Kiarostami (Iran: Close-up, Taste of Cherry)

François Truffaut (France: The 400 Blows)

Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan: Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff)

Robert Bresson (France: Au Hasard Balthazar)

I am not a fan of the French director Jean-Luc Godard, but you should probably check him out too, since many feel that he is very important, and I think throwing him into the list above, would give a pretty diverse sample of foreign filmmakers (although most of those directors were prominent in the 1950s-1960s, so the sample might be skewed toward a specific time period).

As for a currently active film director, Abbas Kiarostami, whom I listed above is quite great, but I haven't seen any of his 2000s films, so I'll go with the Hong Kong director Wong-Kar Wai, who came out with at least two fantastic movies this decade: In the Mood for Love (2000) and 2046 (2004). It's easier to explain why I like him than Kurosawa, as simply put: WKW's movies are breathtakingly beautiful, especially in their use of color and music. While I could say the same for many other directors, WKW's films always seem to standout aesthetically. WKW's films also depict love, nostalgia, memories, etc. in such a fascinating and, at least as far as Western cinema is concerned, unconventional way. I'd highly recommend those two movies, along with his earlier "classic" Chungking Express (1994).

Roberto Benigni. I only like him because I love the movie,"Life Is Beautiful." I don't have a favorite foreign film directors.

Another GREAT foreign film is,"Pan's Labyrinth."

Fo me, it's Ang Lee - he's great! My favorite film of his is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Lion"..perfect movie!

My current favorite foreign director right now is Guillermo del Toro - "The Devil's Backbone" is my all time favorite, but he was brilliant directing "Pan's Labyrinth" too....He just knows how to tell a story visually and emotionally....great great director!

fave director of all time/modern director=Almodovar, "Talk To Her (Habla Con Ella)" was a really good movie

Kim Jee-Woon because, in my opinion, 'A Tale of Two Sisters' was amazing.