Top Foreign Language Movies

Just plain brilliant.

This film holds the honour of being the 2nd (of many) anime films I've endured and have actually really loved. (The other one is Grave of the Fireflies). This is a genuinely heartbreaking at times piece of anti-war-art. It has compelling characters and doesn't shy aware from the horrors of war.
The animation sucks as is the case with most anime, but I am a firm believer that animation is just gloss. A film can't be made or broken by it, just enhanced. This film is good enough for it's quality to shine through in spite of the animation.
It's fantastic. 2nd best anime movie I've ever seen.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

A masterpiece, pure and simple.
Near the start of the film, we hear a character talk about his distaste for opera and how he prefers movies. This subtle sense of very French humour somewhat sets the tone for the film, at least it's lighter side.
The film itself deals with a very mundane and overall very sad storyline simply about love and a man going off to war only for his girlfriend to marry someone else.
It's the music that elevates it a notch. Whilst the lyrics (and I'm pretty sure this isn't just because I don't speak French) are really nothing special (they don't even rhyme), they just flow like normal dialogue, and at times that's annoying, however, at others, it really just serves to emphasise the emotion at hand.
Something about the film's tone just makes it beautiful. I've heard it refered to as like a fairy tale within the real world, and whilst I can see why people would use this as comparison, I'd say it's more of a dream on the surface and a nightmare underneath. It's quite a bizarre blend of fantasy and underlying sadness. All in all, the film is a beautiful masterpiece. Shame it's French.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

A beautiful little film. It somehow takes the feeling of being an outcast, genuinely sweet romance, exploration of ethical grey areas and the Guillermo del Toro vein of horror and expertly gels them into one film that somehow works.
It's what vampire films should be which is pretty much the opposite of what the current 'popular trend is' in spite of the plots being very similar (yes I am slagging off Twilight).
I waited a long time to see this and it didn't dissapoint.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

Absolutely incredible. Beautifully shot and beautiful in tone and message. There's so much to take in from it all, I know I'd have to watch it again to catch everything.
It's also educational (in an interesting way) for those of us not that familiar with Buddhism.
Brilliant; the best film I've seen in ages.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

One of the most moving films I can remember seeing. A lovely little poignant affair and it's hand-drawn animation for adults that isn't emulating that exact same style that all anime is in! Yay!
It's a wonderful coming of age story about a somewhat unique main character who's life also serves as an educational exploration of cultures as well as human beings in general.
Basically, it's bloody good.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

It's a very disturbing and yet very entertaining piece of work. Brilliantly written and directed, beyond some slightly iffy "what the hell are you on about?" moments (which I expect are due to the translation in the subtitling process). Even the acting isn't half bad (basing this purely on visual acting, I can't really judge vocal acting when it's in a foreign language).
Anyway, it's a simple story, but one that suprisingly is fairly untouched. It's also executed brilliantly.
The music was terrible in places, but this is a low budget, 80s affair. Any horror film to achieve any level of disturbing, particularly without resorting to gore deserves alot of praise.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

Forget the over-rated Cloverfield, THIS film is the "giant pussy that eats YOU out!".
Possibly the scariest film I have ever seen, certainly the most tense. I'm yet to find a film that properly scares me, but this one got my heart going for most of it's running time.
I couldn't give one about any of the characters if I'm honest. And unlike Cloverfield, that works here because the film doesn't seem too fussed about them either and they're realistic enough for me to feel for them simply as human beings in a crisis. Just because I don't care for them doesn't mean I want them to die, you know?
The zombie origins are handled brilliantly in a fairly original twist on the usual formula of zombie movies.
There's very little to separate this from the countless other zombie films out there, other than it makes such effective use of it's zombies. The film is all about jump-scares, and that's fine here. That's all the film is meant to be taken as, a wild-roller-coaster ride of a movie. And allmost all of the film's scares are incredibly obvious. You see them coming a mile-off, BUT they're still just as effective as a normal jump-scare, if not more effective because by making you wait for it, the film forces even more tension upon you.
That said, the film is far from perfect. There's a period of about 20 minutes where it just drags sort of after the middle. This is when the zombie crisis starts to kick off. It's just boring because all the characters seem to be doing is running in circles and shouting alot. However, it soon stabalises back into being fantastic for it's final moments (although the ending is abrupt and frankly a bit dissapointing).
The dragging moments would have lost this film a point, giving it 7/10, however I felt the need to give it an extra point for being the most tense movie I've ever encountered. As such...

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 7/10

Just like The Dark Knight, this film isn't 'the greatest movie ever made' like too many people make it out to be. However, again like The Dark Knight, it's bloody brilliant all the same.
A rather unique subject matter for a film (or at least setting as the basic themes are the same as countless gangster movies and such). It's somewhat educational and has a really raw kind of energy. Plus it's nice to see something so low budget with such scope, including how it's shot (Scorsese techniques are ten a penny here).

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

Deep, meaningful stuff, this one, especially how it goes full circle at the end.

There's a certain sick pleasure to be had in watching 40 studients fight to the death.

It's a fairly masterfully made film. Unfortunately, I'm probably (very unfairly) putting it up against Pan's Labyrinth in my mind without really wanting to. It's not even close to being that good, but it is similar (although I'd say it's a lot closer to The Orphanage). However, judged on it's own, it's a solid piece of work. A little slow and almost lacking, but that's just my tastes. It's very good. A little creepy too. Not much more I can say for it. I'm sure you all already know how good Guillermo Del Toro is.

Personal enjoyment: 7/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

Energetic, messed up, original, it's all good.

There's something so endearing about Hong Kong's sense of humour. This film, whilst no masterpiece, is a great bit of fun.
Almost every character is candidate for the most 2-dimensional character I have ever seen and some of the dialogue is awful, however, I have a sneaking suspicion this is due to the dub I watched as opposed the film itself (couldn't get a subtitled copy). Especially as some parts of the dialogue are great and really witty.
It's a very strangely structured film, starting off almost like if Stephen Chow had directed Mallrats and soon turning into a typical straight-to-video zombie film (except it's good) before moving on to a dark ending. But for some reason that works here. Zombie films are often weirdly structured after all.
Overall, it's incredibly enjoyable, but if you can, go for the subtitled option. The two main characters are very likeable and there's some great humour. Also, it's the first film or anything that I've ever seen suggest the notion of human sushi, which is in my opinion something for it to be proud of.

Personal enjoyment: 7/10
Actual quality as a film: 6/10

Only the 2nd anime I've ever seen that I genuinely enjoyed alot.

Didn't scare me in the slightest, but it's a well made, cool little story.

It's like The Ring mixed with a sprinkle of Pan's Labyrinth.
As far as ghost story mystery films go, it's very competent. Not incredible and I'm not in any hurry to rush out and see it again, but it's a good watch and very well made.

Personal enjoyment: 7/10
Actual quality as a film: 7/10

A vastly inferior and incredibly unnecessary sequel, but far from a bad film on it's own terms. It's watchable and has some lovely poignant little moments and characters, but a lot of it (mostly the group of pick pocket children) just seems a tad out of place.

Personal enjoyment: 6/10
Actual quality as a film: 7/10

I watched this as part of my uni's film society and at first I thought maybe I didn't enjoy it because I misunderstood it, but following the post-film discussion I realised that I was the only person who did understand it (not counting those who'd already seen it). I explained it to them and yeah, that explanation held up.

So I suppose that means I'm completely justified in not enjoying it.

Although whenever it tries any arthouse tricks and plays with the conventions of cinema it just feels like a parody of arthouse cinema in general, the film itself is mostly made fairly well.
I just plain didn't enjoy it. Didn't enjoy the subject matter, the characters, the music... anything. That's not to say they're bad. It's one of those films where they're good, you just don't click.

Personal enjoyment: 4/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

Absolute shite animation as is the normal for anime, but a decent movie if you don't mind that. Still, horrible, horrible animation.

Meh, it's French so it's already off to a bad start, but it's just so cheesey and uninvolving.

What is the point. Nothing happens. A film where nothing happens is fine, but give it some sort of purpose. Yet sadly, countless people are happy to sit back and enjoy pretty colours and the fact that it's Japanese. Miyazacki can suck my tits. I've written enough reviews explaining my distaste for anime culture, I'm not going into it again.

Dull. Boring. Utterly pointless. Not imaginative particularly, at least not in a well crafted way. I mean, I'm all for a bit of surrealism, but there has to be a reason for it. You can just through a giant hollow cat bus with 12 legs, spotlight eyes, little glowing mice on it and a scrolling sign on it's head into a movie for the sake of it.

Ugh.

Yet for some reason, the animation isn't too shit in this one, and it's one of the earlier Ghibli efforts. Doesn't make much sense.

Personal enjoyment: 4/10
Actual quality as a film: 5/10

A loud, obnoxious anime that pretty much epitomises the genre. But as far as Sonic adaptations go, it could be (and has since been) WAY worse.
The animation is cheap, but fair enough. The voice acting is apallingly bad. It's fun to see stuff getting lost in translation though, like Sonic giving Robotnik the finger and Tails groping a girl's boobs.
It's watchable, I'll give it that.

Personal enjoyment: 5/10
Actual quality as a film: 4/10

Michael Haneke is a pretentious prick who loves himself.
This film is one of the worst kinds of film. A film that starts off well and is destroyed by a crap ending. Only because it makes you think of the lost opportunity.
This is a very well made film. The acting is superb, the cinematography is great (for the most part) and it builds suspense brilliantly, but ultimately the ending is appalling. It's not saying anything, it's just a cop-out.
The film doesn't say much about anything, at least not anything important. Yes I "get it"; but just like with Funny Games, i think "it" is prentious twoddle. It certainly doesn't make for an entertaining of satisfying experience, though with Haneke, that's usually the point.

Personal enjoyment: 5/10
Actual quality as a film: 5/10

This review is about the 1997 original version of Funny Games. I'm pretty sure this page is meant for that film as opposed to the remake (which also has a page), but the year is wrong as is the cast listing. There are no other listings for "Funny Games" however so this will have to do.

I really am stumped by this one. I don't know how I feel about it. On one hand it pretty much achieves everything it intended to without fail, but on the other, it absolutely reeks of pretentiousness.
It works as an attack on the thriller genre and audience's expectations from it. It repeatedly serves to basically say "shame on you for enjoying this" despite being worse in many ways that it's counterparts.
I also disliked how it constantly broke the 4th wall despite the rest of the film going for absolute realism and the horror of what was transpiring. That was the one thing that didn't work.
Ultimately though you just get the impression that Michaele Haneke hates everything and everyone and thinks anyone who watches this film or any other film is an idiot. It's almost like 2001: A Space Odyssey in that you can't really judge it as a film. More as an experimental piece of art full of social commentary. I'm not sure how I feel about it as art either, but it's certainly better to think of it that way.

Personal enjoyment: 5/10
Actual quality as a film (at least in terms of what it wanted to achieve): 8/10

I don't think I will ever understand what people see in this film. It's the worst movie-experience regarding things being over-rated since I sat through Brokeback Mountain.
I don't care how much of a milestone this film was for cinematic history, (it pretty much brought anime to a Western audience), it's still absolute shit.

I'm going to get my usual animation rant out of the way first. Before I start, I should make it very clear that I think it's very, very possible to make a fantastic film with bad animation; I think need to re-address the balance after many people have blindly praised this film's animation.
The animation sucks. It's plain, jerky (thanks to anime's usual low frame-rates) and does nothing to grab your attention. People praise it because it didn't cut corners like anime often does such as only animating someone's mouth as they talk. That doesn't make this animation good; it just makes it less shit than all the other shit. I don't care if it was the 80s, there's beautifully animated work from the 40s, and I don't care that it was made on a tiny budget because some of the best animation going has been low budget stuff. The Iron Giant springs to mind.

And on top of the animation, there is no art style. It's just "anime". There's nothing original about it and the character designs have 0 effort put in to them to the point that everyone looks exactly the same except for 2 children that have aged really badly. The characters themselves all suck too.

The plot is just complete nonsense. I do understand what happenned, let me make that very clear, but it's still nonsense.

And on top of that, this film offers no new ideas. The post-apocalyptic cyberpunk thing had been done countless times before and much better. The whole psychic super-powered freak thing had been done countless times before and much better.

All I can say that was good about this film is that the blob at the end was somewhat cool and it inspired a fairly good episode of South Park.

Personal enjoyment: 1/10
Actual quality as a film: 2/10