For movie SNOBS only - Favorite foreign flicks

Jules and Jim, The Bicycle Thief, Rashomon, and my two favorites Il Postino and Cinema Paradiso

Somehow I cant think of those early Bardot era and the Bergman films

Броноборец Потемкин

Иди и Смотри

Афганский Излом

Монгол

wannabe foreign-movie snob never heard of Russia (or Sanjuro)

Burnt by the sun and battleship potemkin (the first on your list) are the only ones i like. Alexander nevsky?

Good stuff. My list includes Cinema Paradiso (Italian 1988), Rabbit-Proof Fence (Australian 2002), Whale Rider (New Zealand 2002), Raise the Red Lantern (Chinese 1991), Local Hero (Scottish 1983)

wannabe foreign movie snob to the real deal (Bad Wiggins):

Russia? Wasn't that the background for Dostoevsky's The Idiot?

Yep I've seen Sanjuro. It's good, just not one of my favorite Kurosawa movies (I should say: not one of my favorite FILMS like I'm sure Bad Wiggins, the real deal, would)

You should read Crime and Punishment. I'm sure you could relate to Raskonlikov.

If you don't have Satyajit Ray movies on your list, you are definitely not a movie connesseuir.

Run Lola Run- German is pretty good

Das Leben der Anderen

From this millennium.

Nordwand (German, 2008)(English title, North Face)

Cidade de Deus (Brazil, 2002)(English title, City of God)

Plenty of Ray in my top 50 and on my shelf, but my top 10 are from a small list of my most favorite directors, and nearly entirely from northern Europe and Russia.

Andrei Rublev

The Mirror

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Au Hasard Balthazar

The Double Life of Veronique

Three Colors (Red)

Wild Strawberries

Through A Glass Darkly

A Hard Day's Night

Life is Beautiful

Farewell My Concubine

Xu Xu, The Sent Down Girl

Small Changes

Hitchock's British movies

Män som hatar kvinnor (Swedish version, 2009) (English title, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

There are two further Swedish movies in the above series. All were made in 2009. The first the best in my opinion.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (Swedish, 2009)

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Swedish, 2009)

no snob or buff by any stretch but Downfall, Life is Beautiful and City of God are on my list of favourites

Snatch: British 2000

Guy Ritchie (director), Jason Statham, Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro, ...

I haven't seen anywhere near enough foreign flicks. Some have already been mentioned:

Das Boot

Seven Samurai

Whale Rider

A Separation

Spirited Away

Mustang

City of God

There are probably a ton I'm forgetting. Das Boot, Spirited Away, and A Separation were particularly good.

For the obligatory Russian film, I liked 12, a remake of 12 Angry Men, but done much differently.

Also, Battleship Potemkin is like Birth of a Nation or something like that - for people who like to study film, not as a movie that still works. That's fine and it was great for its time, but it's an obviously out-of-date film. Are you going to sit down with some popcorn on a Saturday night to watch BP? Go watch Untouchables for long staircase gun battles with falling carriages.

Roger Murdoch wrote:

no snob or buff by any stretch but Downfall, Life is Beautiful and City of God are on my list of favourites

I forgot Downfall, that's good too.

Zephito, a good selection to start with would be some of the catherine deneuve films, very easy on the eyes.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince