10 Foreign Films You Don’t Have to be Artsy to Enjoy.

When it comes to foreign movies many people are apprehensive.  It could be the culture differences or even the subtitles that scare people away.  Foreign films have come up with some of the most original and clever material around.  Still, many feel that only artsy types watch foreign movies.  Here are a few great movies from around the world that you can watch to broaden your horizons. 

10. Haute Tension – France

Haute Tension, or High Tension as it was called in the United States, tells the story of two girls on a trip to visit their family.  A killer arrives and brutally murders the entire family; it becomes a game of survival for the two remaining girls.  It is a strange and dark story that does not skimp on violence and gore. While it is not the most critically acclaimed movie, it has a certain sense of style that should not be overlooked and certainly is underrated.  The twist is wildly outlandish but probably not the worst you’ll see. If goofy twists were banned then 90% of the movies in Hollywood would never get made.

9.  Kung Fu Hustle – Hong Kong

Take a Kung Fu movie and mix it with Looney Tunes style humor and that is what you will get out of Kung Fu Hustle.  In the 1930’s a Shanghai gang called the Axe Gang are terrorizing a tenement building.  A local low-life finds himself entangled in the gang and eventually must figure out a way to fight them off.  It is a fun, action filled movie that is very enjoyable. The characters are wild and cartoonish and steal every moment they are on screen. 

8. Dead Snow - Norway

A group of youths are enjoying some time vacationing in a cabin when they awaken Nazi Zombies that are after their gold.  Yes, it’s as silly as it seems.  The action is over the top and the movie is very aware of how ridiculous it is. The music continually plays along with the humor of film.  For example, In the Hall of the Mountain King is played during a chase scene.  As outrageous as this movie is, there are a lot of great moments that make it a very worthwhile movie experience.  

7. Suspiria - Italy

A dance school is the scene of some grisly murders. It turns out that the school houses a secret coven of witches.  It’s an eerie tale that is colorful and almost nightmarish in it’s content.  The effects are good and there are plenty of shocking and wince worthy moments. For example, a girl crawls into a window and falls directly into a huge pile of barbed wire and becomes stuck in it. Grit your teeth and give it a watch.

6. District 9 – South Africa

A group of aliens that landed in Johannesburg in 1982 are living in slums called District 9.  A man comes to relocate them and is sprayed by a mysterious chemical that makes him start turning into one of the aliens.  Now a weapons manufacturer and groups of gangs are all out to get a piece of him.  The acting, the effects, and the story for this movie are fantastic.  Anyone who is a fan of sci-fi should give this a watch. It is a great movie that will impress any that see it.  It will certainly lead to some interesting conversations once the credits start to roll.

5. Ginger Snaps - Canada

Two teenage sisters are moping about their suburban lives when a werewolf attacks.  Slowly, she becomes more promiscuous and more of a wild child while the other tries to find a way to stop the transformation.  It’s a unique take on a girl’s coming of age story.  The effects make the film a really fun movie to watch.  The girls are both decent actors and they have a real chemistry that makes them seem related.  It had two sequels as well in case you wanted to further the story after this movie.

4. [REC] - Spain

[REC] is the story about the host of a late night reality show following firefighters for the evening.  The movie is shot from the point of view from the cameraman.  The firefighters go into an apartment building and become trapped there as it becomes quarantined.  Rage zombies attack them and the survivors must do what they can to survive.  The movie has decent acting, likable characters, and an interesting story. You really grow to care for the character of Angela and you want her to live through this ordeal. It ended up getting two sequels with a third on the way. It was also the original of an American remake called Quarantine and an unrelated Quarantine 2.

3. Battle Royale - Japan

Classes of school children are picked at random to be taken to a small island.  They are given random weapons and then told to kill each other within a certain amount of time or they will be killed.  The kids must fight for survival, make amends with one another, try to fight the system and in some cases kill themselves.  It is a very interesting character story as well as wildly entertaining to think about what you would do in this Lord of the Flies style situation.  The film is violent and actually pretty emotional at times. The kids are interesting and all have unique plans to survive the truly awful experience.

2. Let the Right One In - Sweden

A young boy befriends a young girl in his apartment building.  She helps him deal with being bullied and he discovers that she is a vampire.  Can their friendship last? It’s beautiful movie that is really one of the best vampire stories I’ve ever seen.  It has great acting, amazing atmosphere, and is dark in all the ways that you expect a vampire movie to be.  It has an ending that is both incredibly lovely and incredibly bittersweet.  It was remade in the United States starring Chloe Grace Moretz.

1. Old Boy - South Korea

A man is kidnapped and trapped in a room for fifteen years.  There he has nothing to do but exercise and plan out his revenge- should he ever get out.  One day he wakes up and he is free. Naturally, he goes out on a violent vengeance streak.  The movie is brutal and wonderfully filmed.  It has the brilliance of a plot put together by the Count of Monte Cristo.  With every action it shows raw emotion ad great intensity.  The finale is so raw and well done.  There is an American remake that will be coming out soon starring Josh Brolin. 

There are millions of movies all over the world. If you are willing to give some a try you might find a true diamond in the rough.  No matter what the genre you can find something new and impressive. Let go of your sheltered sensibilities and use your passport to the world in films. You might just like what you find in your travels. If you don’t enjoy the film, the worst you have done is waste a couple hours of your life; you have nothing to lose.

POV Horror Movies

I was looking up when “The Last Exorcism” is coming out on DVD and blue ray and I realized how excited I am to see it again.  It really was a good movie.  Some people are really not fans of this POV genre.  I think it can be done right and when it is you can really be amazed with what you see.  Some of the scariest moments I’ve seen in movies were in POV camera style but other times things will come off as fairly ridiculous. Let’s take a stroll down the movies I’ve seen with this style.

​“Paranormal Activity” comes to mind as one of the best I’ve ever seen where the characters live in a nice suburban area Micah is such a puts about wanting to document the events that he will not quit no matter how it effects Katie and exacerbates the situation.  The tension builds so well because the camera is there so it still gets high marks from me.  The sequel was so-so.  I just thought it was so much more of the same that it wasn’t all that scary.  The dog stole the show though.  I’ve seen PA2 a couple times and both times I’m impressed a great deal by the performance of the dog.

​“The Blair Witch Project” was what I think made this style of filmmaking what it is now.  It had an amazing backdrop and creeping settings leading to a chilling conclusion.  It will always stand out for me as one of those movies that remind me that the woods are truly wild and foreboding.  The one thing that makes it stink of bullshit more than anything for me is after a few days of being lost in the woods wouldn’t you ditch your camera and crap to carry only what’s essential to survive? I know recording wouldn’t be a priority.

​On that same note we have “Cloverfield”.  A modern giant monster movie told through the point of view of a camcorder.  While most people would ditch the camera I think it was enjoyable and actually really well done.  Plus the monster itself was pretty neat to look at.  I really liked the way the footage of the camera kept switching between the day at Coney Island and the monster attack which was recording over it.  It made it a lot more realistic in terms of home video.

​The next on the list is the dual action of “Quarantine/ [REC]”. I have written a full review about what I thought about these movies compared to one another.  “[REC]” is the superior version of the film by POV standards.  The footage is held steady so it seems more believable that a professional is handling the camera.  There is a lot to say about the fact that the camera man in Quarantine uses his camera, lens first to mouth fuck a zombie to death.  It’s ridiculous, and stupid to imagine that the camera would function after that but all he does is wipes the bloody away and he’s good to go.

​We also have George Romero’s Film “Diary of the Dead” Basically he is telling the events of Night of the Living Dead through some asshole kids with YouTube.  It is pretty bad.  There are two aspects that make it REALLY noticeably bad.  For starters at the beginning the narrator tells you that music was added sometimes for dramatic purposes.  Ok, so she’s acting like this horrific event (the dead are coming to life for crying out loud!) is being documented and she is adding music to it?  That is really stupid.  It would be like a documentary on 9-11 and someone feeling the need to add the song “Everybody Hurts” to it because the event itself wasn’t “dramatic enough”.

​The end line really stuck in my craw too.  Because basically you watched a movie where a bunch of kids fought to stay alive and suffered through a lot.   The last line involves the narrator talking about some rednecks that she got footage of killing zombies.  One is a girl tied by her hair in a tree and they shoot her with their shot guns.  She closes with “Are we worth saving? You tell me.”  Are you fucking kidding?  These freaks are the walking dead.  I know they want to make it out like man is super cruel but there is another way to do this.

​Finally we have “The Last Exorcism” this was a damn good movie.  People said there were some orchestral stings in it at times but I never really noticed.  It’s got very likeable characters and a pretty clever script that was fairly creepy and dramatic.  All in all it’s one I am excited to watch when it comes out. The biggest question for me though is who found the footage for that movie?  Of all of these horror movies this last one seems to be the most unlikely to have footage not destroyed.

​ One thing is for sure.  These movies are very popular.  I’m sure many more will be down the pipe.  They really let a person tell interesting stories with very little there.  I just hope it doesn’t become over used.  Like any spice, too much is just annoying.

[REC] vs Quarantine

​Last night I finally saw the Spanish movie “[Rec]”, the movie that “Quarantine” is based on.  I had attempted once to see “[Rec]” before but I was exhausted from lack of sleep so I kept dozing.  Needless to say now I got the full experience.  So let’s compare a bit.  “[Rec]” was a 2007 Spanish film about a late night program following some firemen into a building only to have it become invested with rage zombies and have it quarantined off by the government.  The American version “Quarantine” was made in 2008 (and I gave “Let me in” crap for being made too soon).  A sequel to “[Rec]” was just released in 2009.

​We can start by talking about the posters of these movies.  “[Rec]” featured the main actress looking sweaty and disheveled.  It’s a scary and gritty image.  Meanwhile in the “Quarantine” camp you have a huge spoiler poster.  It actually shows the main actress being dragged off into the darkness.  Why the hell would they make a poster like that?  It would like having Bruce Willis wearing a sheet with holes over the eyes on the poster for “Sixth Sense”.

​  Anyway the movie themselves are almost shot for shot the same.  There are some glaring differences though.  For example, you can see a hell of a lot better in in the “[Rec]” version because the lighting is better and even though the movie is filmed in that “shaky cam” technique it still manages to not seem like it was held on a paint mixer.   “Quarantine” is all over the place.

​“Quarantine” also just has a few scenes that are just arbitrary.  For example, a rat runs right up to the camera man who just steps on it and kills it.  It adds nothing to story.  Then when being attacked by a horrible zombie the cameraman attacks the assailant with the camera.  Oh, and I don’t mean just uses the camera like a bat like a smart person would.  He uses the LENS and bashes her brains in with it and the camera continues to work perfectly after the fact.  If the director intended to freak people out with this he FAILED because the audience was laughing their asses off watching this.  “[Rec]” actually had more class.

​I’m siding with “[Rec]” once again when it comes to the main actresses.  While Manuela Velasco can sometimes come off childlike in appearance her portrayal of fear is still pretty genuine sounding and she doesn’t come off like a scenery chewing spaz.  Unlike Jennifer Carpenter, Of “Dexter” fame who stutters, cries, and makes so much noise you’d think an ice truck killer was after her.

​But the BIG thing that makes “[Rec]” superior is that it actually explains what the hell is going a little better, or at least attempts to.  There is a scene where an old woman infected by the virus has somehow managed to subdue, bite and throw a full grow fireman over a railing.  In “Quarantine” no one says anything about how odd that is. In “[Rec]” the medical intern at least finds it very hard to imagine an old woman doing this to an adult man.  Way to ask the question that should be on our minds guys.

​Finally there is the ultimate evil that lies in the penthouse.  In “Quarantine” it’s a man who is part of a doomsday cult that had stolen a virus.  Not much to say there. You don’t even find out if he experimented on himself or if this weird thing is the test that went awry. But “[Rec]” told us a different story.  The penthouse was rented by a man that was an agent of the Vatican that found a virus believed to be the cause of demonic possession.  The agent kidnapped a possessed girl bringing her to the penthouse to be experiment on.  The virus mutated becoming contagious so he sealed her up in the room hoping she would die of dehydration and starvation while he left the city.   So the girl was this emaciated ghoulish thing now.  That is a COOL backstory and you find it all out by his notes and tape recordings.

​Bottom line is “[Rec]” is a good movie.  Seeing “Quarantine” first made me wonder what it could possibly bring to the table.  But it impressed me greatly.   I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen “Quarantine” and especially to anyone who thought “Quarantine” was watchable but lacking in some areas.   If you want to see it for free there is a site I’m becoming a huge fan of, fearnet.com.  Check it out.