Technically there’s no such thing as a foreign language film. No language is foreign to everyone, every language is native to someone. We Americans just call them foreign language films because they’re in a language that’s not English. Subtle nationalism really do be like that! But all of that is beside the point.
There are many foreign films that are absolutely vital to the history of world cinema as a whole. From French New Wave to Bollywood films, the world of cinema beyond the U.S. has so much to offer. Watching foreign films expands your horizons and helps you understand the world better as a whole, which is something we can and should always strive for. How better to understand your fellow global citizens than by watching art created by their people?
One of the worst popular ideas of world cinema is that they’re all ultra serious dramas or tragedies that depict wars or other such atrocities. World cinema is as varied as American cinema, and thought it does include serious dramas, it also includes some uproarious comedies, amongst other genres.
In recent years, global cinema has become more and more accessible, mostly thanks to Netflix, which has made more foreign language films available to the US and many other countries. This increased availability hopefully means that Netflix’s English-speaking users will get over their fear of subtitles and get some education in world cinema.
Without further ado, here are the best foreign films of all time.
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007)
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Country: Romania
Director: Cristian Mungiu
Stars: Adi Carauleanu, Luminita Gheorghiu, Madalina Ghitescu, Vlad Ivanoc, Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu
Film critic J. Hoberman writes about ordeal cinema, movies with situations so painstakingly rendered that they become experiences inflicted on the viewer. They take you under and hold you there, where you can't breathe, where you can't do anything but watch. Winner of the Palme d'Or in 2007, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is an ordeal.
Set in Romania in 1987, this is the movie: Găbiţa (Laura Vasiliu), a university student is pregnant. Her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) will help her get an illegal abortion from Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), as the procedure was banned under the communist regime. They meet him in a hotel room. The payment is discussed, becomes complicated. The procedure occurs. Then, Găbiţa needs Otilia's help after the procedure.
That's it. That's the paraphrasable content, but as with the best movies, the formal decisions turn the experience into something a summary can't possibly convey. —RS
8 1/2 (1963)
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Country: Italy
Director: Federico Fellini
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Rossella Falk, Sandra Milo, Claudia Cardinale
Let's do the necessary and obvious thing, and crown 8 1/2 the best film about filmmaking ever made. In 2013, this is no grand pronouncement, but it would be irresponsible to ignore the fact, lest we forget it.
Coming off the heels of the seminal La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini found himself in a bind. He didn't know what to make as his follow-up to the acclaimed examination of the glamorous life in postwar Italy. Straight-jacketed by writer's block, he made a movie about his straight-jacket.
The film opens with one of the greatest dream sequences in movie history, with director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) struggling to escape a claustrophobic traffic jam. He wakes up, but he still doesn't know what the fuck he's doing with his next project, despite the giant rocket ship he's constructed as one of the principal sets. As producers, writers, and former lovers smother him, Guido's pushed into a corner from which one of the greatest endings in movie history emerges. —RS
The 400 Blows (1959)
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Country: France
Director: François Truffaut
Stars: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Albert Remy, Claire Maurier, Guy Decomble, Patrick Auffay, Georges Flamant
After spending nearly a decade working as a film critic, Francois Truffaut knew what made film work, and when it came to sit down and write his feature debut, The 400 Blows, the auteur kept things personal. A key piece of the Nouvelle Vague, Truffaut's best known film treats adolescence with a respect and restraint.
The film's preteen protagonist, Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud), is a deeply unhappy kid who, following accusations of plagiarism at school, gets sent by his asshole father to live behind bars. Thanks to Leaud's controlled performance, The 400 Blows never descends into the goofiness you've come to associate with movies about precocious youngsters. —MB
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
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Country: South Korea
Director: Kim Ji-woon
Stars: Im Soo-jung, Moon Geun Young, Yeom Jeong-ah, Kim Kap-soo, Lee Seung-bi, Lee Dae-yeon
Thanks to the influx of "J-horror" remakes in the early 2000s, Japan was universally recognized as Asian cinema's top purveyor of scary movies; yet the best of all recent Asian horror flicks hails from South Korea.
Ji-woon Kim's A Tale Of Two Sisters (unconvincingly remade by Hollywood in 2009 and re-titled as The Uninvited) holds up, nine years after its release, as one of the last decade's strongest psychological creep-outs. Showing hardly anything in the way of gore or jump-scares, master filmmaker Ji-woon Kim blends mental instability with potential supernatural activity, showing how a girl's return home from the loony bin, after her mother's death, triggers full-blown insanity.
As an unsettling mood piece, A Tale of Two Sisters is tough to beat. It will also function as a point of entry into a great director. Proceed to A Bittersweet Life next. —MB
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
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Country: Germany
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo, Ruy Guerra, Del Negro, Peter Berling, Cecilia Rivera
A major player in the New German Cinema movement, alongside Rainer Werner Fassbinder and others, Werner Herzog is not like you and me. This man once saved Joaquin Phoenix from a car accident. He's eaten a cooked shoe. He's made some of the most unforgetting and insane films the world has ever seen.
New German Cinema explored the state of the country in the wake of WWII, which is to say in the wake of Hitler. In Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Herzog gets at Hitler obliquely by telling the tale of a group of conquistadors looking for El Dorado in the 16th century. This band of men is led by Aguirre, played by the crazy-eyed Klaus Kinski, the De Niro to Herzog's Scorsese.
Shot on location in the Amazon, where the danger was very real, Herzog's film has none of the polish of a Hollywood historical epic. Instead, it's like you're watching a community theater troupe try not to die in Peru. There's nothing like it —RS
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
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Country: Germany
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Stars: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin, Irm Hermann, Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Having already established the New German Cinema by the early '70s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder looked to Hollywood melodrama of the '50s as an influence for the next detour in his career. While paying tribute to All That Heaven Allows, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul translates Douglas Sirk’s May-December romance to accommodate a portrait of Germany’s fickle social politics and willful blindness to the racism in the cultural DNA.
The love story between the elderly widow Emmi Kurowski (Brigitte Mira) and the young, hulking Arab Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) begins as an act of defiance, thwarting social conventions to the displeasure of everyone around them. But when their friends evolve and accept Emmi and Ali’s relationship, the couple begins to internalize the oppression that once came from without. Their romance becomes the story of neocolonial love and a society’s inability to come to acknowledge and confront its own dark history. —Rad S.
Amelie (2001)
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Country: France, Germany
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Stars: Andre Dussollier, Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Serge Merlin
We’ll be the first to admit that Amélie is not a film suited to everyone’s taste. With its whimsical style and cute-as-a-button leading lady (Audrey Tatou), it’s a Disneyfied version of life in Paris’ Montmartre neighborhood. One where young Amélie works as a waitress on a mission to make life happier for those around her, concocting a number of elaborate schemes in order to manipulate joy from the strangers who surround her. Until she eventually realizes that it is she who is need of a personal pick-me-up.
Though dismissed by some for being too cutesy (it was famously rejected from screening at Cannes when a programmer described it as being “uninteresting”), the film’s fanciful depiction of The City of Light conjured up more than $30 million at the box office, making it the most successful French film to hit American shores. —JW
Audition (1999)
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Country: Japan
Director: Takashi Miike
Stars: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki, Jun Kunimura
When a middle-aged widower named Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) attempts to find love again after the death of his wife, his movie producer friend sets up a fake casting audition to find him his next great love. He falls immediately for Asami (Eihi Shiina). Sounds like a romantic comedy, right? Acclaimed director Takashi Miike's comment on gender in Japan is anything but, but we won't spoil the outcome. To get the experience, you should know as little as possible. But just by telling you that, we've already said too much.
—RS
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
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Country: France, Algeria
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
Stars: Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Saadi Yacef, Tommaso Neri, Fawzia El-Kader, Michele Kerbash
In the midst of its War on Terror, the Pentagon deemed The Battle of Algiers necessary viewing. You should too. Gillo Pontecorvo’s film about the Algerian revolution, where rebels planted the seeds to oust the French occupation, is revolutionary in its own right. Pontercorvo’s handheld, documentary-like aesthetic was groundbreaking for achieving such startling realism, capturing both the government’s strategy to quell the rebellion and the Algerian tactics to break them off.
Meanwhile, the film’s purview does not center on a lone individual as traditional narratives go. There is no one hero for us to identify with. In true democratic fashion, The Battle of Algiers is about the many individuals who unite around a cause, disappearing among the crowds to stay tactical. —Rad S.
Belle de Jour (1967)
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Country: France, Italy
Director: Luis Buñuel
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Puccoli, Genevieve Page, Pierre Clementi
If you’ve ever caught an episode of HBO's Cathouse, you know it’s not every day that a woman who looks like Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve) decides to work in the sex industry. Especially when that woman is happily married to a successful doctor (Jean Sorel) whom she loves. But sex is not a big part of Séverine’s marital equation, because her desires lean more toward the BDSM side of the spectrum. So she spends her weekdays working at a brothel, where she’s free to act out her dark carnal fantasies. Except there’s one problem: a friend of her husband’s (Michel Piccoli) has discovered her secret and one of her regular clients (Piette Clémenti) is getting a little too attached. Mon Dieu!
Directed by famed surrealist Luis Buñuel, so loved is the film by Martin Scorsese that he has twice taken it upon himself to reintroduce it to modern audiences, first with a limited theatrical re-release in 1995 followed by a special DVD release in 2002. —JW
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
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Country: Italy
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Stars: Lamberto Maffiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell, Gino Saltamerenda, Vittorio Antonucci
The Kid With a Bike, 2011's brilliant fairy tale, gathers some of its power from Vittorio De Sica's neorealist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves. It was with this film about poverty and desperation that the bicycle became a potent symbol in cinema.
It's 1948 and Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maffiorani) needs work badly to support his family. Maria (Lianella Carell), Antonio's wife, pawns her dowry sheets to get her husband a bicycle so that he can take a job posting ads around Rome. The theft of the bicycle on Antonio's first day of work sets the stage for one of cinema's most moving portraits of humanity kicked to the curb and exhausted.
From the film's release onward, the bike would become a powerful image in cinema, forever associated with De Sica's classic. —RS
Black Girl (1966)
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Country: France, Senegal
Director: Ousmane Sembene
Stars: Mbissine Therese Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinek, Robert Fontaine, Momar Nar Sene
The first feature from Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene—figurehead of independent post-colonial African cinema—is a bleak, artfully constructed portrait of neocolonialism. Mbissine Thérèse Diop plays Diouana, the titular black girl plucked from Dakar to become a nanny for a wealthy couple in France. Diouana dreams of taking care of white children and enjoying the spoils of the first world. She quickly learns that she’s been brought over to cook, clean, and deflect abuse, pretty much performing the duties of both slave and exotic ornament.
Sembene’s film is democratically critical, not just towards the whites who overpower Diouana but also the black girl herself, who is foolishly delusional of material riches and upward mobility, sporting high heels while she mops the floor. Sembene’s camera often refuses to shoot from Diouana’s perspective, acknowledging her lack of agency in a world where she’s relegated to the lowest common denominator. —Rad S.
Branded to Kill (1967)
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Country: Japan
Director: Seijun Suzuki
Stars: Joe Shishido, Koji Nanbara, Isao Tamagawa, Annu Mari, Mariko Ogawa, Hiroshi Minami
Beloved pulp filmmaker Sijun Suzuki couldn't find work for ten years after making the gangster picture Branded to Kill. It's not hard to see why—the film is too absurd for this world. Suzuki says he just wanted to make an entertaining movie, but the man is clearly too modest.
Branded to Kill takes all the rules about continuity editing—establishing shots, the 180-degree rule, etc.—and shoots them full of holes. There is so little logic holding this batshit movie together, it's amazing that you can watch it and have a good time. And yet.
A film cited as massively important by the likes of Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and John Woo, Branded to Kill follows Goro Hanada (Joe Shishido), the #3 ranked hitman in all of Japan, on a series of jobs. In between, he makes time for his two favorite hobbies: sniffing rice and aggressive sex. Really, there's no point in summarizing. You just have to experience it. —RS
Breaking the Waves (1996)
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Country: Denmark
Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr, Adrian Rawlins
Fifteen years before he was declared a persona non grata by the Cannes Film Festival, Lars von Trier was happily accepting the festival’s Grand Prix award for Breaking the Waves, about a God-fearing young wife (Emily Watson) who believes that the only way to keep her recently paralyzed husband (Stellan Skarsgård) alive is to sleep with other men. Yeah, it was her husband’s idea.
The film made a name for von Trier on the world cinema circuit and gained attention for the Dogme 95 Manifesto, a list of rules created by von Trier and fellow Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg, which sought to replace cinematic trickery and cutting-edge technology with old-school moviemaking technique and authenticity. Among the movement’s rules were that all shooting must be done on location (Breaking the Waves used some sound stages), music can only be used if it’s occurring within the scene (Breaking the Waves uses dubbed music), the film must take place in the present (Breaking the Waves is a period piece) and the film must be shot with a handheld camera (okay, so he got that one right).
While von Trier has since suggested that the Dogme 95 “movement” was a joke from the start, Breaking the Waves' grainy, documentary-like style did indeed help to democratize the filmmaking process and usher in a new wave of low-budget digital filmmaking over the next decade. —JW
Breathless (1960)
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Country: France
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Henri-Jacques Huet, Roger Hein
Godard's first feature is one of the original and best known artifacts of the French New Wave movement of the '50s and '60s. Breathless expressed the director's love for American pulp and Italian Neorealism, while using formally-challenging techniques (jump cuts, long takes) and experimenting with narrative.
What's best about Godard, especially in his early work, is that his intellectualism never becomes too serious. Breathless features a larger than life Jean-Paul Belmondo, a man-sized child in gangster's clothes, who runs around Paris as if it were a playground, chasing pleasure while running from boredom (and the law). He shoots a cop, meets a woman (Jean Seberg). On paper, the plot sounds unfinished, but the film is so in love with the possibilities of film, it gains a vitality that transcends what can be written with words. —RS
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
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Country: Italy
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore.
Stars: Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin, Antonella Attili, Enzo Cannavale
Every director dreams of making that one great film that also serves as a love letter to the art of cinema. For Giuseppe Tornatore, Cinema Paradiso is it. Though commencing in the 1980s, the bulk of the movie is told as a flashback as a filmmaker named Toto recalls how he fell in love with the movies as a child at the Cinema Paradiso and the friendship he forged with the theater’s projectionist, Alfredo. Which makes it even more appropriate that it would take a movie about moviemaking to truly appreciate the art of the film editor.
The film bombed at the box office in its original Italian format, which clocked in at 155 minutes; editors cut 31 minutes out of the film for its international release, where it was an instant hit. It was this shorter version of the film that earned it a Special Jury Prize at Cannes as well as an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990. The film’s beloved stature led Harvey Weinstein to release a third version of the film in 2002, this one the official Director’s Cut weighing in at 174 minutes, which encouraged fans of the original U.S. release to “Discover what really happened to the love of a lifetime.” Turns out, they didn’t really care. Though not outright panned, the across-the-board response was that the second, Miramax-ed version of the film was its best. And, indeed, that's the one you want to seek out. —JW
City of God (2002)
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Country: Brazil
Director: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund
Stars: Alexandre Rodriguez, Alice Braga, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen, Douglas Silva
Fernando Merielles’ visceral and dizzying account of how violence begets more violence is like watching Goodfellas in the favela. As the characters learn in this intricate, decades-spanning, based-on-facts story of a gang war in Rio de Janeiro, the fastest way to get out of the ghetto is in a pine box.
Alexandre Rodrigues stars as Rocket, an innocent, pot-smoking slum resident who constantly ducks gunfire between the malevolent Li’l Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora) and his vengeful rival Knockout Ned (Seu Jorge). Charges of poverty porn are not inaccurate. City of God is consumed by blood and filth. But the authenticity is undeniable and the horror deeply felt. The gags—yep, these gangster can be funny—are sweet, fleeting relief, constantly punctuated by a bang. —Rad S.
Close Up (1990)
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Country: Iran
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Stars: Hossain Sabzian, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami, a powerful member of the Iranian New Wave, makes movies about the big questions. What is truth? How do we come to know anything? Close Up is the filmmaker's most acclaimed puzzle of a film. Part fiction, part documentary, Close Up examines the real-life trial of the man who impersonated the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
Where does the documentary end and the film begin? How much is Kiarostami fabricating? The answers reveal much about the complexities of identity. —RS
Closely Watched Trains (1966)
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Country: Czechoslovakia
Director: Jiří Menzel
Stars: Václav Neckár, Vlastimil Brodsky, Jitka Bendova, Josef Somr
At the same time Jean-Luc Godard and his New Wave cronies were politicizing French cinema, a group of burgeoning Czech auteurs—many of them students at the Film and TV School of The Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague—were using cinema to revolt against their communist regime. Among the movement’s best-known entries is this directorial debut from Jiří Menzel, which depicts the coming-of-age of Milos, a sexually inexperienced young train dispatcher (Václav Neckár), with embarrassingly brutal honesty.
While the film is riddled with bleak themes—it takes place during World War II, when Czechoslovakia was a German-occupied country, and has Milos attempting to kill himself when a night of deflowering ends, well, prematurely—Menzel’s ingenious ability to maintain a level of comedy—both broad and understand—throughout the film makes it a master class in tone and balance that many of today’s filmmakers would do well to emulate. —JW
The Conformist (1970)
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Country: Italy
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Stars: Jean-Louis Trintingant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio, Fosco Giachetti
Subtlety has never been director Bernardo Bertolucci’s strong suit. Nor has political correctness. Which is why the legendary auteur has been able to consistently elicit such strong reactions from audiences throughout his 50-odd-year career. And no film has been a better metaphor for the director’s unwillingness to adapt to societal norms than The Conformist.
Jumping back and forth in time, we are introduced to the film’s poor little rich boy protagonist, Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), through a series of flashbacks. We learn about Marcello’s well-to-do but dysfunctional upbringing, the alienation he suffered as a child and his propensity for violence if it will help him assume the “normal” life he so desires. Of course, all of this emotional turmoil has turned Marcello into little more than a sociopath, which makes him well suited to his job with the fascist secret police. And when he’s tasked with assassinating his former professor, an outspoken anti-Fascist (Enzo Tarascio), a honeymoon in Paris following a loveless marriage to Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli) provides Marcello with the perfect cover (and certainly helps in that whole quest to seem normal thing). But Marcello’s attraction to Anna (Dominique Sanda), the professor’s wife, confuses his chameleon ways. Temporarily, at least.
Legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro plays with light and shadows in strikingly meaningful ways, creating visuals that match the message. No matter how dissenting it may be. The Washington Post critic Stephen Hunter called The Conformist, “pure magic as story, as drama, as photography, as conviction, as everything except its ideas. It feels, therefore, like a beautiful, even mesmerizing automobile—dare we say Ferrari—without an engine.” —JW
Contempt (1963)
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Country: France
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll, Fritz Lang, Jean-Luc Godard, Raoul Coutard
Embarking on his first big-budget, cinemascope venture, Godard made a hyper textual film about the very act of selling your soul and compromising for commerce. And yet he comes out the other end with perhaps his most emotionally charged piece of subversive art. Michel Piccoli stars as Paul, a writer with ambitions for artistry who is handed a big check by a sleazy Hollywood producer (Jack Palance) to doctor the screen version of The Odyssey. In a stroke of art imitating life, the producer is at odds with the renown German director Fritz Lang (playing himself), mirroring reported tensions between Godard and Contempt’s producers Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine.
Contempt is all about the compromises in filmmaking—between director and producer, art and commerce—and also in marriage. The heart of the film lies between Paul and his wife Camille (sex-kitten Brigitte Bardo, displaying some skin but even more emotions). Their union slowly and tragically unravels because Paul compromises everything for his producer, his integrity and wife included. —Rad S.
Death of a Bureaucrat (1966)
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Country: Cuba
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Stars: Salvador Wood, Silvia Planas, Manuel Estanillo
Fans of Brazil should eagerly seek out one of Terry Gilliam’s inspirations, the witty black comedy Death of a Bureaucrat. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s classic takes notes from Buster Keaton and Luis Buñuel while poking fun at Communist bureaucracy and red tape. In Cuba, well after the revolution, a celebrated bureaucrat is killed by the machine he created and buried with his labor card as a tribute to his work.
The problem with this particular tribute is that the bureaucrat’s wife (Silvia Planas) needs that labor card to collect her pension. She enlists her nephew (Salvador Wood) to exhume the body and collect the card, but to do that he must contend with the ridiculous nature of bureaucracy, which spins you around in circles so that you always return to the same spot.
With this tragic but hilarious gem, Alea got the ball-rolling on New Latin American Cinema—ironic since Death of a Bureaucrat is all about not getting anything done. —Rad S.
Dogtooth (2009)
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Country: Greece
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Stars: Christos Stergoiglou, Michelle Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Christos Passalis, Anna Kalaitzidou
The last few years have seen a shock of new talent in Greek's cinema, with Giorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth marking the first time most Americans were made to take notice. The conceit is eyebrow-raising: A couple has raised their three children in isolation from the outside world, and to keep them handicapped further, the parents have instructed them in language incorrectly. For instance, "sea" means chair. The children are young adults now, the parents' plan having gone smoothly.
This starts to crumble, however, when Dad brings an outsider to the family's compound to sleep with the son. The world begins to intrude, and the parents find themselves out of control of their kids.
Shot in a suitable off-putting style, with long, static takes and compositions that bisect the actors' bodies, Dogtooth is beautiful, frequently hysterical, and ultimately unnerving. —RS
Elle (2016)
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Country: France, Germany
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny
Paul Verhoeven is a bit of an odd character in the history of cinema. The Dutch director is best known for directing RoboCop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers, which are all considered ‘90s action classics. But he’s also known for directing the infamous bomb Showgirls, often considered one of the worst films of all time. Verhoeven returned in a big way with 2016’s Elle, which was one of the most critically acclaimed films of that year. Based on the French novel Oh…, Elle follows Michèle (Isabelle Huppert), the CEO of a video game company, who, after she is raped in her own home, tries to achieve some sort of justice. Elle is as pulpy as Verhoeven’s action films, but also contains the female empowerment that Showgirls arguably tried and failed to portray. Elle also features one of Isabelle Huppert’s most critically acclaimed performances, one that earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Elle is a dark, but ultimately rewarding female-focused thriller. —Andy Herrera
Funny Games (1997)
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Country: Austria
Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Muhe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering, Stefan Clapczynski
You can rarely beat an original, and Funny Games is a prime example. Michael Haneke's 2008 U.S. remake is undoubtedly a tough watch, but it's far less scarring than this 1997 original, which presents the exact same series of events yet pierces the senses much more sharply.
For one, there are no recognizable Hollywood stars (i.e., Naomi Watts or Tim Roth) that allow us to acknowledge that Funny Games is only a movie. More importantly, though, the general concept was unique back in '97; take the film's unexpected use of internal rewinding, for example, through which one of the bad guys erases his partners death, pretty much shitting all over the viewers' hopes for a happy ending.
Like most of his films, Funny Games comes from a truly dark place within Haneke's mind, a section of the brain where his most cynical thoughts lie, and, basically, we're all seen as scum. Folks who'll gladly pay to see people brutally murdered on screen, as long as there's fresh popcorn and overpriced soda on hand. By the time the fittingly bleak ending of Funny Games reaffirms the notion that Haneke is one sick (and clever) fuck, you'll feel quite bad about yourself. Or you'll want to slap Big Mike in the face for subjecting your eyes to such unwavering nihilism. Either way, Funny Games will leave a mark. —MB
Gomorrah (2008)
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Country: Italy
Director: Matteo Garrone
Stars: Toni Servillo, Gianfelice Imparato, Maria Nazionale, Salvatore Cantalupo, Gigio Morra, Salvatore Abruzzese, Marco Macor
A gangster film for the globalized, corporate world, Gomorrah is nasty, brutish, and a little over two-hours long. Much like Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, Matteo Garrone's film is based heavily in the facts of organized crime in Naples, and takes a macro approach to the proceedings by following a number of characters related to the nefarious web, in various ways and at different levels.
The chilly detachment of the camera as it documents the lives of low-level wannabe bosses, a tailor with mob ties, a waste management specialist, and a handful of others creates a creeping feeling of dread that lingers long after the movie is over. Hard to keep your head up in a world so rotten with corruption. —RS
Goodnight Mommy (2015)
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Country: Austria
Director: Veronica Frankz & Severin Fiala
Stars: Susanne Wuest, Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz
A recent Austrian horror film, Goodnight Mommy made waves on the Internet thanks to its absolutely chilling teaser trailer. Two young twin boys (Lukas & Elias Schwarz) in the Austrian countryside await their mother’s (Susanne Wuest) return from cosmetic surgery. She arrives with her face covered in bandages and acting strangely, and her children begin to suspect that she is not their real mother. If you’ve seen the trailer you know the movie somehow also involves a cave of bones and a lot of cockroaches (including one getting eaten), so if you have a fear of bugs, this might just be too much for you. The film is well acted and very atmospheric, leaving the viewer guessing as to what’s really going on the entire time. Goodnight Mommy is a good, spooky time. —Andy Herrera
Grand Illusion (1937)
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Country: France
Director: Jean Renoir
Stars: Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim, Dita Parlo, Julien Carette
The simplest way to illustrate the importance of Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion—which examines the ways in which society rules change during war time, as seen through the escapades of two French soldiers who are captured and sent to a German POW camp—is this: there would be no Casablanca or The Great Escape without it. At least not in the versions audiences have come to know and love. “The digging of the escape tunnel in The Great Escape and the singing of the ‘Marseilles’ to enrage the Germans in Casablanca can first be observed in Renoir's 1937 masterpiece,” Roger Ebert noted of the film’s lasting influence. “Even the details of the tunnel dig are the same—the way the prisoners hide the excavated dirt in their pants and shake it out on the parade ground during exercise.”
Though Renoir’s work is less talked about in today’s cinema circles than the work of the French New Wave filmmakers that followed him (included Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut), his influence is actually far more reaching, particularly from the audience’s perspective. In 1939, Grand Illusion became the first foreign-language film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. —JW
The Handmaiden (2016)
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Country: South Korea
Director: Park Chan-Wook
Stars: Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Kim Min-hee
Based on the British novel Fingersmith, The Handmaiden transposes its twisty story from Victorian-era England to Korea under Japanese colonial rule. Directed by Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy), The Handmaiden is a psychological erotic thriller that explores the countless deceptions and schemes by a conman (Ha Jung-woo) and a young pickpocket (Kim Tae-ri) to scam a rich Japanese woman (Kim Min-hee) out of her inheritance. The film deploys its turns beautifully and gracefully, and never loses sight of its characterization thanks to great performances from the entire cast. The Handmaiden is also surprisingly a romantic movie, though to explain how would be to give away some of the hidden surprises, in this fun, definitely NSFW thriller. —Andy Herrera
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
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Country: France
Director: Alain Resnais
Stars: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Bernard Fresson, Stella Dassas, Pierre Barbaud
Early on in the modernist hallmark Hiroshima Mon Amour, Emanuelle Riva’s character utters: “I am endowed with memory. I know what it is to forget.” You may not be able to make sense of that contradictory line, but long after you sit through Alain Resnais’ game-changing masterpiece, you will understand exactly how Riva’s character feels.
Hiroshima Mon Amour works on you like a distant memory that is impossible to forget; an unsolved enigma that haunts you long after its over. The brief but resonating affair between Riva’s unnamed French actress and Eiji Okada’s Japanese architect is set against post-WWII Hiroshima, a city reconstructed, where memories from the war are placed in museums like an effort to bury the past and move forward. The couple takes on the burdens of their landscape.
Devastated by an unresolved past and helplessly trapped in a singular moment, they are consumed by flashbacks while looking towards an uncertain future. If time is meant to heal, Resnais’ film is all about when the clock stands still. —Rad S.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
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Country: Hong Kong
Director: Wong Kar-wai
Stars: Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Siu Ping Lam, Rebecca Pan, Lai Chen
In the Mood for Love, the masterpiece in Wong Kar-Wai's impressive career, is one of the most beautiful pieces of art in existence, regardless of medium. The story is simple: Two couples move into the same building in Hong Kong circa 1962, and gradually one of the men (Tony Leung) and one of the women (Maggie Cheung) discover that their partners are cheating on them with each other.
From this smart starting place, Wong creates an aching tableau of restraint. It's more about what the characters don't do, how they don't move, what they don't say, than anything else. Wong lets the repetition of certain musical motifs, the slow-motion sequences, costume changes, and gorgeous formal flourishes do more than any actor could. —RS
Irréversible (2002)
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Country: France
Director: Gaspar Noé
Stars: Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Joe Prestia
Told backwards, Gaspar Noé's Irréversible depicts the aftereffects of one of cinema's most horrible rape scenes. Clocking in at nearly 11 minutes long, the unbearably savage sequence is the film's centerpiece. That the rape doesn't totally overshadow everything else in Irréversible is a testament to the picture's overall power.
In addition to the sight of a guy's head getting smashed in with a fire extinguisher, shot in an extreme close-up, Noé's visceral mind-basher of a film operates with an intense sense of dread; credit the unshakeable sensation to the director's decision to open with a dizzying and nightmarish trip through a seedy gay nightclub that culminates in the aforementioned skull-crushing. Once that scene ends, one gets the feeling that they're in the hands of a dangerous filmmaker, giving the remainder of Irréversible a haunting command on the nerves. —MB
La Dolce Vita (1960)
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Country: Italy, France
Director: Federico Fellini
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimee, Yvonne Furneaux, Magali Noel, Alian Cuny, Nadia Gray
Translated as The Sweet Life, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita portrays a week in the life of Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), an Italian paparazzo tasked with getting on the good side of Rome’s high-society and celebrity crowd but (sort of) longing to make the jump to hard-hitting journalism, trading fluff pieces for think pieces. There are, of course, benefits to both options. But in the seven days the audience witnesses, the glamorous life seems to have the edge, as we watch Marcello bed a bevy of beautiful women and, in one of the film’s most famous sequences, splash around with a famous movie star (Anita Ekberg) in the Trevi Fountain.
Like a 1960 version of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Marcello lives in a world where style trumps substance. Except that, unlike today’s royal family of reality television, Marcello seems to understand that none of this is real. It is, however, awfully fun to watch. —JW
L'avventura (1960)
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Country: Italy
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Stars: Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti, Lea Massari, Dominique Blanchar, Renzo Ricci, James Addams
You would be hard-pressed to find another film as beautiful, resonating, and structurally faultless as Michelangelo Antonioni’s timeless masterpiece, L’avventura. The film premiered in 1960, a moment of radical change in society and cinema. It captured the mood and sensibility of a generation that was eager to break from the past but remained uncertain of where to go.
The plot revolves around Anna, a woman (Lea Massari) who inexplicably disappears while on a boating trip, leaving her fiancé Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and best friend Claudia (the ravishing Monica Vitti) to search for her. That search across landscapes burdened by history turns into an illicit affair, while Anna becomes a memory that won’t go away. Sandro and Claudia’s new relationship is anchored to their former relationship with Anna, who by being absent remains a constant presence. L’avventura is as much about the peculiar behavior of Sandro and Claudia as it is the landscape that surrounds them; a landscape full of decaying architecture that they prefer to ignore even though it seems to be watching them.
Antonioni frequently places the camera on some unhinged perspective, as detached from his characters as they are from the world. The camera peers at the new couple from a void, watching them, as they have nowhere to go. That void, like Anna, is a persistent character in L’avventura and the one thing that will continue to haunt you long after the film is over. —Rad S.
M (1931)
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Country: Germany (Weimar Republic)
Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke, Gustaf Grundgens
If you know anything about the criminal hierarchy, you know that violence against children is reserved for the very bottom-feeders. Fritz Lang’s M, about a manhunt for a serial kid-killer (Peter Lorre) in Berlin, proves that this philosophy is universal. What Lang didn’t realize was that, in the filmmaking hierarchy, making a movie about violence against children is equally frowned upon. So when he announced that he would be making a movie about a murderer of children, it didn’t take long for the death threats to pour in. Or the local film community to distance itself from the production.
Talking pictures were still a relatively new invention at the time of M’s release, with directors struggling to cram as much singing and talking as they could into their running time. Lang, however, decided that less would be more for his first sound film. There is limited on-screen dialogue, with the directing opting instead to use narration and off-screen sound effects to move the story forward (and make it easier on himself in the editing room).
M also pioneered the idea of using a leitmotif as part of the narrative; you know the killer is near when you hear him whistling “In the Hall of the Mountain King” in the same way that you know Jaws is coming when John Williams’ score swells. In a career full of groundbreaking work that included 1927’s Metropolis, Lang himself considered M to be his finest achievement—and understandably so. —JW
Metropolis (1927)
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Country: Germany
Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Gustav Frohlich, Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Heinrich George, Fritz Rasp
Phenomenally ahead of its time, German director Fritz Lang's marvel Metropolis was the most expensive flick ever made in Germany at the time of its release, and every dollar shows up on screen.
Watching it today, it's incredible to think that the damn thing was made way back in 1927—the effects, as well as the pacing and overall imagination, rival most of the sci-fi films released in modern times.
A certified silent film era classic, Metropolis takes place in a dystopian society where the classes are divided between the rich folks and the grunt workers, but the story is the least of the film's concerns. Lang's magnum opus is a feast for the eyes, inspiring awe with its large-scale cityscapes, overcrowded setpieces, and iconic shot of a female robot given life through Frankenstein-style electrical experimentation.
If you're unfamiliar with the kind of attention a silent film demands, have no fear. Metropolis is that rare example of a non-talky picture that's too immense to bore less savvy moviegoers. If someone does nod off during it, just tell them to use their limited attention span to see The Hangover. —MB
Offside (2006)
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Country: Iran
Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Sima Mobarak-Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ayda Sadeqi, Goinaz Farmani
Jafar Panahi has been a consistent, compelling voice in Iranian cinema, even after he was imprisoned for his content and banned from filmmaking (see This is Not a Film). Offside is perhaps the most sweet natured and hopeful among his films. Girls disguise themselves as boys to attend a World Cup qualifying match because women are banned from the stadium. Rounded up by soldiers and held captive in a makeshift cage, the girls begin a verbal sparring match against their male captors.
The beauty of Offside is that while it criticizes the Iranian regime, it doesn’t point a finger at any of its characters. The soldiers on guard would rather the girls be allowed to attend the game, since that means they could watch too. They are all prisoners of age-old customs, suffering from a conflicted notion of nationalism. When Iran wins the game, the female prisoners and male soldiers spill out onto the street, joining the festivities with the national anthem blaring. They celebrate their country together, which happens to mean they’re defying their government by doing so. —Rad S.
Oldboy (2003)
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Country: South Korea
Director: Park Chan-wook
Stars: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung
Acclaimed South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s most famous film, Oldboy is an action thriller classic. Based on the Japanese manga of the same name, Oldboy is the story of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) who, after being trapped in a sealed hotel room for 15 years, is finally released and thrown into a complicated web of conspiracies and lies as he tries to figure out who imprisoned him and why, in order to exact revenge. Oldboy is actually the second installment of Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy, following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and preceding Lady Vengeance. Oldboy is an engaging and violent pulpy thriller that will leave you guessing until the very end. Chan-wook’s direction is also beautiful, whether he’s capturing intimate love scenes or violent action scenes. Oldboy is one of the best action thrillers of the 2000s, and Chan-wook is one of our best directors, period. Just avoid the completely unnecessary Spike Lee remake. —Andy Herrera
Pather Panchali (1955)
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Country: India
Director: Satyajit Ray
Stars: Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Subir Banerjee, Runki Banerjee, Uma Dasgupta
A contrast from the singing and dancing of Bollywood usually associated with Indian cinema, Satyajit Ray’s slow, low-budget, neorealist drama stands out among the nation’s output.
The first installment of “The Apu Trilogy” observes a rural Indian family at the turn-of-the-century as they barely survive crushing poverty. Small joys and tragedy follows but the film’s monumental moment comes along when the family’s two children, Apu (Subir Banerjee) and Durga (Uma Dasgupta), happen upon electrical wires in a field. The curiosity surrounding their discovery is interrupted by a train, which roars by as the children observe in awe. The train—that grand symbol of modernity—ushers in the future but remains out of reach for these rural children, who it just as quickly leaves behind.
Given the gaping divide between the modern and rural in India today, that powerful scene remains tragically relevant. —Rad S.
Rashomon (1950)
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Country: Japan
Director: Rashomon
Stars: Toshiro Mifune, Masayaki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki
The most intricate and puzzle-like of Akira Kurosawa's films, the groundbreaking Rashomon is still a jaw-dropper 60 years after the fact. Told through the eyes of four different characters, it's a courtroom drama minus any actual legal quarters or clichés-hell, Rashomon established many ideas that have since devolved into clichés. The plot is a headbanger: After a woman is raped and her husband is slaughtered, a quartet of witnesses recount their versions of the events, frequently contradicting each other's accounts and twisting the story into an Auntie Anne's mystery that's tricky to decode the first time around.
Fans of the countless lawyer and cop shows on television are no doubt familiar with the "Rashomon effect," even if they don't realize it. To broaden matters a bit, pretty much any piece of whodunit fiction told through eyewitness accounts owes its existence to this Kurosawa masterwork. Hollywood has tried several times to emulate Rashomon-sometimes well (Courage Under Fire), and other times so ineptly that you'd wish Kurosawa could backhand slap producers from beyond the grave (Vantage Point). —MB
Raw (2016)
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Country: France, Belgium
Director: Julie Ducournau
Stars: Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Naït Oufella
A movie that actually caused several people to pass out at early festival screenings, Raw is a beguiling teen drama/horror hybrid. The film follows Justine (Garance Marillier), a vegetarian college student, who, after being forced to eat raw meat during a hazing ritual, suddenly finds herself with an intense desire to eat meat, specifically human flesh. A nasty metaphor for female puberty and sexuality, Raw finds its young female protagonist coming to terms with herself, in all of her horrific beauty. Director Julie Ducournau captures the juxtaposition of bloody carnage juxtaposed and Justine’s budding sexuality unflinchingly. Raw isn’t for the faint of heart, but those that can stomach it (no pun intended) will enjoy a darkly fun macabre teen horror thriller. —Andy Herrera
Roma (2018)
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Country: Mexico
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Stars: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf
Already considered by some to be acclaimed director Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece, Roma is one of the best reviewed movies of 2018. Loosely based on Cuarón’s own life, Roma follows the life and experiences of the live-in housekeeper (Yalitza Aparicio) of a middle class Mexican family living in Mexico City in the early 1970s. The film has received much critical acclaim for Cuarón’s beautiful direction, its breathtaking black and white cinematography, and a moving performance by Aparicio. Notably, Roma was released by Netflix, making this gorgeous film available to a huge, international audience. It’s an evocative drama that captures a time and place so well, it feels like it’s part of your own memory. —Andy Herrera
The Rules of the Game (1939)
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Country: France
Director: Jean Renoir
Stars: Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Marcel Dalio, Jean Renoir, Julien Carette
On the eve of the second World War, a handful of colorful characters gather at an elegant estate on the French countryside, half of them the upper-crust of Parisian high society, the other half their maids and servants. Jean Renoir’s comedy of manners is chock full of power and privilege, love and sex, fidelity and philandering, comedy and murder. And it’s regularly cited as one of the greatest films of all time, usually just behind Citizen Kane.
Ironically, Orson Welles frequently cited The Rules of the Game as an inspiration for the visuals in Citizen Kane, particularly its pioneering use of deep focus (a technique regularly credited to Welles’ DP, Gregg Toland). In 2010, Bernardo Bertolucci wrote a stirring piece for The Observer, calling Renoir’s masterpiece “The film that changed my life.” And if the plot sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because Robert Altman borrowed from it freely for his Oscar-winning Gosford Park. —JW
Russian Ark (2002)
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Country: Russia
Director: Alexander Sokurov
Stars: Alexander Sokurov, Sergei Dreiden, Mariya Kuznetsova, Marksim Sergeyev, Anna Aleksakhina, Vladimir Baranov
It’s in a filmmaker’s DNA to want to experiment with the medium. With Russian Ark, Aleksandr Sokurov revolutionized it. The film’s official synopsis is that it’s an historic fantasy spanning 300 years of Russia’s history, as a 19th-century French aristocrat encounters historical figures real and imagined as he makes his way through The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. But the film's plotline is secondary to its methodology.
Sokurov was given just one day to utilize the museum as a location, and he was determined to make the most of it. So he made a bold—some might say crazy—decision: he would shoot the film in one continuous take and choreograph the movements and actions of 2,000 actors and three live orchestras spaced throughout 33 rooms in the 250-year-old museum around it. An insurmountable task? Sure sounds like it. But the third take proved to be the lucky one for Sokurov and his team. To put it into perspective: Martin Scorsese’s famous three-minute tracking scene through the back door of the Copacabana, which clocks in at around three minutes of screen time, required eight takes to complete.
While the point of cinema is typically to engross the audience enough to make them forget they’re watching a movie at all, it’s impossible to separate technique from story in Russian Ark (it doesn’t help that there’s a whole lot of fourth wall-breaking happening). In his four-star review of the film, Roger Ebert remarked that, “The film is a glorious experience to witness, not least because, knowing the technique and understanding how much depends on every moment, we almost hold our breath. How tragic if an actor had blown a cue or Buttner had stumbled five minutes from the end!” —JW
The Secret of the Grain (2007)
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Country: France, Tunisia
Director: Abdel Kechiche
Stars: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Hatika Karaoui, Bouraouia Marzouk, Farida Benkhetache
Now that writer/director Abdellatif Kechiche has nabbed the Palme d'Or for the lesbian drama Blue is the Warmest Color (out this fall), you should make a point of nabbing his earlier gem, The Secret of the Grain. The masterful immigrant drama draws you in to a sprawling Arab family living in the portside town Sète. Recently unemployed, the patriarch Slimane (Habib Boufares) plans to open a restaurant on a boat with the aid of his girlfriend’s daughter Rym (Hafsia Herzi) and his ex-wife’s couscous recipes.
Like the boat hanging off the shore, where Slimane’s dreams are anchored, the characters in this film live in liminal spaces, cast aside to the margins. But you wouldn’t know it the way this joyous and raucous family makes themselves at home, inviting you to take part in their casual routines, mundane dilemmas, and domestic dramas that only have a slight sociopolitical context. These people aren’t concerned with issues of race, but when push comes to shove in the thrilling finale, all they have to sell are ethnic stereotypes. —Rad S.
Seven Samurai (1954)
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Country: Japan
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Stars: Takashi Shimura, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Kato, Minoru Chiaki, Seiji Miyaguchi, Kokuten Kodo, Bokuzen Hidari, Kamatari Fujiwara
Not only regarded as the best Japanese movie of all time, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is widely considered to be one of the most important and expertly made films ever made in any country. Directed, edited, and co-written by the man of the hour back in 1954, it's a violent and epic (clocking in at over three hours long) tale of vengeance and honor. Sounds like a description applicable to any martial arts-themed flick, no? Indeed—except that all others examples of the genre wish they were Seven Samurai.
Seven samurai (hey, no one ever said the title was clever) are hired by residents of a poor and beaten-down Japanese village for protection against bands of criminals during the late 1500s. With a plot as simple as that, Seven Samurai could've easily progressed on cruise control and preceded the story-less monotony and mindless brawn of The Expendables by 56 years. Kurosawa didn't get down like that, though. In his gem, the characters are all well-drawn, the performances hit their marks, and, not surprisingly, the action sequences are massive and seamlessly executed.
And about that "simple" plot: Seven Samurai is credited as being the first movie in which a group of experts are assembled for a common cause, a narrative device that's since been rehashed to death. The multi-hero plot trope is so common nowadays that it's actually difficult to accept that there was a "first" of its kind. Even movies without a single fist-and-foot moment have sucked on Kurosawa's teat-think Ocean's Eleven and its sequels.
Chances are you love movies of its kind, right? You know, ones with tons of brawls and camaraderie. Well, Seven Samurai is the genuine article. Claiming to favor action movies despite having never seen this classic makes you a chump. —MB
The Seventh Seal (1957)
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Country: Sweden
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Stars: Max von Sydow, Bengt Ekerot, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson
Ingmar Bergman’s existential look at man and religion is as integral to art cinema as The Book of Revelations is to the bible.
The Seventh Seal stars a young Max von Sydow as Antonius Block, a knight from the Crusades who searches for meaning during the plague, questioning the existence God who remains absent while only Death (Bengt Ekerot) reveals himself to be constant. As Death and the Knight play a game of chess, Bergman weaves his allegory into a touching, straightforward plot about an indifferent soldier surrounded by the evils of organized religion, eventually finding grace in the warmth of a young, agnostic family.
Meanwhile, Bergman searches for grace through pristine black-and-white photography that makes the landscape, the skies and everything in between look immaculate. —Rad S.
Solaris (1972)
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Country: Soviet Union
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Stars: Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Juri Jarvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky, Nikolai Grinko
If you’re rooting for the day when we finally make contact with extraterrestrial life, Solaris just may have you rethinking your enthusiasm. Because in Andrei Tarkovsky’s big-screen adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, the alien life form that covers the planet of Solaris is not the cute and cuddly type that Steven Spielberg promised us. No, this otherworldly organism is downright nasty. And it’s got an uncanny ability to see deep inside your emotional closet and drag out all of last season’s baggage.
For Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), a psychologist dispatched to Solaris to determine the cause of the on-site scientists’ recent despondency, that baggage is the years-earlier suicide of his wife, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk). Shortly after his arrival, Hari—or at least a non-human copy of her—appears to Kris and helps him begin to (try to) understand that the cosmonauts’ mission is futile; the harder they try to understand the planet, the more unknowable Solaris will make itself. It’s sort of like trying to make a brick wall laugh. Except, instead, the brick wall makes you cry.
With its measured pace, stunning cinematography, and a set design inspired by the Old Masters a la Rembrandt, Solaris stands with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as one of cinema's true sci-fi masterpieces. And while Steven Soderbergh did a fine job of remaking this unearthly mind-fuck for the English-speaking masses in 2002, it didn’t come close to matching the originality of Tarkovsky’s vision. —JW
Spirited Away (2001)
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Country: Japan
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Stars: Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takashi Naito, Yasuko Sawagachi, Tsunehiko Kamijo
If you want the math, fine: Spirited Away is the most successful Japanese film of all time, with box office receipts totalling nearly $275 million.
If you want the art, here goes nothing—Spirited Away, Miyazaki's eighth feature-length animated film, is a pure expression of cinema. It's a dream the viewer falls into. It takes you to a place you can't get to by any other means.
The story is simple, as it should be. A little girl, Chihiro, is moving with her family to a new home. On the way, her parents take a detour that deposits the family at what looks to be an abandoned amusement park. From there, Chihiro finds a bathhouse for spirits, where she becomes trapped.
The themes of childhood alienation and loneliness are prominent, but truly Spirited Away is plain magic. The animation, most of it hand-drawn, feels alive in a way that has nothing to do with computers and everything to do with the power of the human body acting in accordance with limitless imagination, a hand illustrating the impossible. —RS
Suspiria (1977)
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Country: Italy
Director: Dario Argento
Stars: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bose, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett, Udo Kier
Horror has long been the bastard genre of the film industry, with little critical consideration given to those movies that aim to scare, even if and when the director has an arsenal of impeccable technique at the ready. Giallo master Dario Argento may be one of the few exceptions to the rule, if only because his over-the-top, surrealistic style and technique are impossible to ignore. Argento’s films are the kind you pause on when you’re flipping channels late at night and, by the time you actually wonder “What the fuck am I watching?” aloud, it’s too late. You’re hooked.
Suspiria is Argento’s masterpiece. Though its plot—about a coven of witches running an esteemed German dance academy—is rather nonsensical, it’s only confusing if you actually stop to think about it (or the fact that the global assembly of actors are each speaking in his or her native tongue, all of it later dubbed for the appropriate country). Suspiria’s brilliance is in its nightmarish style, particularly its vivid use of color—and the color red specifically (not coincidentally the color of blood). Also memorable is the score by Goblin, a creepy cacophony of keyboards, drums, whispers and bells that speeds up as the film progresses and was reportedly recorded ahead of time and played at full volume on set in order to inspire the actors’ performances. Mission accomplished! —JW
Tabu (2012)
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Country: Portugal
Director: Miguel Gomes
Stars: Teresa Madruga, Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira, Henrique Espirito Santo, Carloto Cotta
Forget The Artist. That delightful Oscar-winning ode to silent cinema served little purpose but to take a bubble bath in nostalgia. Instead, check out Miguel Gomes’ Tabu, an uncelebrated work of art.
Tabu excavates silent cinema to weave a plot about love and colonialism while digging for greater truths behind memory and the dark side of nostalgia. The film is divided into two chapters, beginning with “Paradise Lost.” Set in modern-day Lisbon (but shot in pristine black-and-white), the chapter follows Pilar (Teresa Madruga) a do-gooder bent on international aid who tends to her elderly neighbor Aurora (Laura Soveral). The senile Aurora is haunted by memories, lost her grip on reality and believes that her black maid Santa (Isabel Cardoso) is out to get her.
The second chapter, “Paradise,” returns to Aurora’s past in Africa but is told as a cinematic memory: a (not quite) silent film shot on 16mm with a voice-over narration and telling sound effects. Here, a young Aurora (Ana Moreira) living on an African plantation engages in a swooning and passionate love affair that has consequences on colonial history.
Together, the two chapters form an intricate essay on cinematic memory, where the past informs the present but nostalgia clouds the message. —Rad S.
Talk to Her (2002)
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Country: Spain
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Stars: Javier Camara, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores, Mariola Fuentes, Geraldine Chaplin
Two men from different worlds relate to each other while speaking to their comatose girlfriends, their words falling on deaf ears. This is the basic storyline in yet another joyfully demented ruse by Pedro Almodóvar and we won’t spoil things further by telling you more. The diabolical Spanish director has fashioned his own genre, like Douglas Sirk by way of Dario Argento. His erotic romances are often as much about passionate, gender-bending serial killers as they are obsessive lovers.
While Talk to Her contains Almodóvar’s perverse fascinations and jaw-dropping twists, they are more subdued and less jarring in a film that exhibits a late-breaking maturity from the director. Talk to Her stands out as Almodóvar’s most sensitive film; a story about men who are tortured by longing and imprisoned by love, figuratively and, eventually, literally. —Rad S.
Three Colors trilogy (1993-1994)
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Country: France, Poland, Switzerland
Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski,
Stars: Juliette Binoche, Benoit Regent, Florence Pernel, Julie Delpy, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Janusz Gajos, Jerzy Stuhr, Irene Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Pierre Lorit, Frederique Feder
Great movies rarely come in threes. (You’ve seen The Godfather: Part III, right?) But Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Red, White, and Blue are not your typical trilogy. Named for each color on the French flag, each entry in the trio of films dissects an ideal of the French motto: Liberté, égalité, fraternité (in other words: liberty, equality and brotherhood).
Blue, the first in the series, takes on liberty, as a woman (Juliette Binoche) must learn how to reconnect with people following the death of her husband and child in a car accident. In White, a man (Zbigniew Zamachowski) uses revenge to gain everything he lost when his wife (Julie Delpy) divorced him. In Red, a model (Irène Jacob) and a former judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) with a penchant for spying on his neighbors strike up an odd relationship based on a difference of opinion in matters of privacy. Viewed separately, each film is a quality piece of cinema. Together, they paint a portrait—at once comical, heartbreaking and thought-provoking—about the ties that bind us as individuals and a society. —JW
White Material (2009)
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Country: France
Director: Claire Denis
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Lambert, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Isaach de Bankole, Adele Ado
Claire Denis is one of the most talented directors working in movies today, making the sexist conditions of film production around the world look even stupider. Her most recent film, White Material, is a return to her roots. Born in Paris, Denis moved to Africa with her father, a civil servant, at a young age. She and her family lived in many francophone countries including Burkina Faso, Somalia, Senegal, and Cameroon.
White Material, based on a screenplay co-written with French-Sengalese author Marie NDiaye, is set in an unnamed African country in the days leading up to a civil war. Maria Vial (the ever dependable Isabelle Huppert) runs a coffee plantation that's barely staying afloat, no thanks to her ex-husband or her increasingly unhinged son.
A terrible violence lurks at the edge of this eerie picture that explores the legacy of colonialism with a remarkably clear head. —RS
The White Ribbon (2009)
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Country: Austria
Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Christian Friedel, Ernst Jacobi, Leonie Benesch, Ulrich Tukur, Ursina Lardi, Fion Mutert, Michael Kranz
“Unrelenting” and “insufferable” are two words that could easily be used to describe Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon. And those descriptions would come from fans of the film, which depicts a series of strange and disturbing events that take place in a small village in Germany on the eve of the first World War. Suspiciously, these happenings only seem to occur when a creepy group of local kids are in the vicinity.
Despite boisterously-sounding titles like Funny Games (see #49) on his resume, Haneke’s tendency to lean toward the dark side of life for inspiration was only furthered by The White Ribbon, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and earned two Oscar nominations (for Best Cinematography and Best Foreign Language Film) in 2010. But those looking for easy answers—or any answers, really—will be disappointed. Because the film doesn’t offer a true resolution. Just 144 minutes of abuse, humiliation, punishment, and unexplained events in stark (and beautiful) black-and-white.
"People always want answers,” Haneke told The Guardian in 2009. “But only liars have the answers. Politicians have answers." He also noted that the only television he watches is the weather forecast because, “that's the only thing that is not a lie.” But somehow it all works and accomplishes Haneke’s real goal: to make the audience think. (Even if that does come with a side order of depression.) —JW
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
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Country: Mexico
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Stars: Maribel Verdu, Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Diana Bracho, Andres Almeida
Y Tu Mamá También is only a raunchy road trip comedy on the surface. Carefully embedded within Alfonso Cuarón’s crafty sex-com is a sociopolitical critique of post-NAFTA Mexican society. Cuarón intently acknowledges globalization’s influence on Mexico simply by adopting genres popular to Americans (the road trip, the coming-of-ager). Meanwhile, the randy triangle that ultimately forms the film’s ménage-a-trois—two teen boys and an older woman—are representative of Mexico’s social make-up.
Gael García Bernal plays Julio, a boy from a working-class family whose name and face reveal an indigenous background. Diego Luna plays Tenoch, the upwardly mobile son of a politician. There’s class tension between the two best friends that goes by unacknowledged until they embark on a road trip across Mexico with Luisa (Maribel Verdú), a vacationing Spaniard. As the boys bicker while trying to impress Luisa, she takes charge like the neocolonial presence she is meant to represent, soothing the boys with sex and bringing them together to fulfill her own needs.
All the while, Mexico is there in the background, a country rife with poverty and borders, barely noticed by the film’s characters as they pass through. —Rad S.
