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I've increased my "movie IQ" by a factor of 100 by using netflix. Here are my non-American favorites. I've included imdb.com links:

Sex and Lucia
Trois couleurs: Bleu
Trois couleurs: Rouge
Trzy kolory: Bialy
Fire
Remember Me, My Love
Irreversible [caution - an extremely dark movie]
Amores Perros
Talk to Her
All About My Mother
Downfall
Run Lola Run
The BRD Trilogy: The Marriage of Maria Braun
Nico and Dani
The Other Side of the Bed [this one isn't good as much as a pop-movie made in Spain which makes it interesting in its own right]
Broken Wings
Don't Tell

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Thu Apr 5th, 2007 at 05:06:07 PM EST
Three Colours but no Dekalog? And while we're on Kieślowski, Blind Chance uses the same device and is an interesting take on Polish society in the late seventies.  Sticking to Polish stuff, Wajda had done some good movies, e.g. Man of Marble is excellent. His early neorealist trilogy - Pokolenie (Generation), Kanal, and Popiól i diament (Ashes and Diamonds) is good if a bit dated and his study of nineteenth century industrialization Promised Land is very good as well. Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water was even better than I remembered when I saw it again recently.  For a fun thriller on the transition to democracy see Psy Dogs - about ex secret police 'adjusting' to the changes.
by MarekNYC on Thu Apr 5th, 2007 at 06:10:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Dekalog is now in my netflix queue. Based on this thread all my movie viewing is going to include reading subtitles for a good while.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Thu Apr 5th, 2007 at 06:21:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Blind Chance uses the same device and is an interesting take on Polish society in the late seventies.

meant to say 'uses the same device as Run Lola Run'.

Also, googling around I noticed that Promised Land was rereleased in a cut version a couple years ago - Wajda may be getting prudish in his old age since he chose to get rid of the sex scenes. They are very graphic, however, IMHO not gratuitous - sex as exploitation, but also flight from the grim reality not just by the exploiters but by the exploited as well.  

by MarekNYC on Fri Apr 6th, 2007 at 04:12:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I saw Seksmisja recently. I am surprised it is not more widely known. It is a very rare (unique?) kind of film: a European film with a plot along the lines of Logan's Run or The Island. If they could make something like that under communism, that suggests that maybe communism wasn't all bad.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
by Alexander on Fri Apr 6th, 2007 at 07:28:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Look at any movie by Sergeï Parajanov, like Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, by Andrei Tarkovsky, like Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Stalker, or anything by Sergei M. Einsenstein, and find out cinema was quite "free" in the Soviet Union... Parajanov and Tarkovsky had some difficulties, Parajanov even ended up in jail ; but their movies wouldn't have been made by the US industry, at all... (Eisenstein was Stalin's favorite filmmaker, so he had little difficulties in making his great movies. His October still has some of the best editing ever)

Soviet movie makers and cinema theorists indeed built the base of movie theory...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Sat Apr 7th, 2007 at 05:16:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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