Americans suck at watching foreign films -- Pick the worst of the top 25 highest-grossing flicks

several very good films here too (well, Kung Fu Hustle and Das Boot)

The worst that I have seen is Amelie. if I ever deign to watch Life is Beautiful it would probably trump it.

Best - KUNG FU HUSTLE

Pan's Labyrinth. No question

I'll stick up for Crouching Tiger, Pan's Labyrinth and Lives of Others too.

really hate Pan's Labyrinth myself but that's an outsider opinion on ILX iirc

ive only seen two of these

which 2

house of flying daggers & y tu mama tambien

this is a genre i avoid fairly scrupulously

Didn't notice y Tu Mama, totally decent movie.

also voted for pan's labyrinth, ghastly film

fair enough. I've only seen about 5 or 6, all from younger days (except Kung Fu Hustle which I saw last year and is great)

this guardian reader's list from 2007 isn't much better - david thomson's blurb on the winner is funny:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/may/11/1

Voted Like Water for Chocolate, but realized that I got it mixed up with Chocolat. Sorry for fuxxing up your poll.

amelie write-up is pretty damning too xp

I voted House of Flying Daggers but it's only cos it's the worst of the ones I've seen (and it's not bad)

from the whole list i only like caché and amores perros which i thought was pretty great when i was 15 and conceivably would still enjoy

im yet to explore the wide-angled historical bigness of late period kurosawa

Our verdict: O Guardian readers, I love you and perhaps sometimes (as a Guardian reader for 50 years) I come close to understanding you. But Cinema Paradiso as the best foreign language film of all time? Better than M, The Rules of the Game, Ugetsu Monogatari or ... Maybe I'm a snob, and I know we're playing a game, not voting for president. But can't you see that this is the kind of movie lousy presidents remember when they want to be kind to cinema and show their humanity? The film is clever and touching, and in its way it's an ad for cinema. But ... there is work to be done.

I liked all the movies on this list that I saw \o_o/

Also, The Artist doesn't qualify for the list, but if it did, it would be in slot #4.

Pan's Labyrinth
Y tu mama tambien
Volver

hispanophobe

xpost Swap Pan's for Hero, and that would probably be my list of the best 3, too.

ok am cheered by the hate for P's L coz first time around everyone went fucken nuts for that shit

soto's favourite director (also mine) is spanish lol

Films on this list I have seen

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Pan's Labyrinth
Amelie
Jet Li's Fearless
Kung Fu Hustle
Iron Monkey
Das Boot
Brotherhood of the Wolf

I liked Amelie when I watched it but that was a long time ago. Brotherhood of the Wolf was kinda boilerplate, iirc. Wasn't as impressed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at the time, but it's been a while and I've seen a lot more wuxia since then. It's likely that I would think more favorably of it.

The Pan's Labyrinth thread, with spoilers

truth was spoken to power that day

then a few months later, the inevitable ad hominem blowback

Lotta fightin' in this list. Best two fightin' films are The Protector for the elephants and the 4 minute single take fight sequence and the no wirework; and Kung Fu Hustle for the lolz.

I believe I have seen 12 of these, and it's hard to pick between Y Tu Mama Tambien and The Lives of Others (both even worse than Amelie).

Why is Volver the top grossing Pedro?

this is a genre i avoid fairly scrupulously

Genre, eh?

I misread the poll! PL and YTMT and Volver my favorites.

Like the Academy's list of Best Pic nominees of the eighties, a lot more average than terrible on this list, but Amelie, Life is Beautiful, Il Postino are grisly things to be stuck with on a winter's night.

So many good films, but I had to go with Amelie after watching it again recently.

Of the four I've seen, Kung Fu Hustle.

as worst? u r mad sir

oops, didn't read scrap my vote please :(

a (terrible) movie from 1979 is still among the top 10 highest-grossing foreign films in this country.

you really do hate comedy, except for Showgirls I guess.

Yikes, another reading comprehension lapse. If it weren't too late, I'd change my vote to Crouching Tiger, but it would be for "least favorite" and not "worst."

y tu mama tambien is absolutely terrible, so thats getting my vote

i haven't sat thru the worst of these so i can't vote

did all of you scroll past Life Is Beautiful or something

I am slightly surprised "Eat Drink Man Woman" and "Farewell My Concubine" aren't on this list; I tend to assume that my taste in non-English films is the middlest of the road (I mean, I've still seen 10 of these and don't really have anything negative to say about any of them)

re: La Cage ... When people say "you had to be there," they usually mean things are better now.

voted Amelie.

all this hate towards Pan's Labyrinth is kind of baffling to me

I love House of Flying Daggers

was y tu mama tambien the spanish Porky's? I can hardly even remember that one now.

Pan's Labyrinth was so good, you guys are weird.

I think my favorite thing about Pan's Labyrinth was when all of the stupid parents who read the word "fairy tale" in conjunction with it decided to take their little kids to see this violent R-rated movie about grim human brutality.

freaky monsters and the spanish civil war. for kids!

I loved Y tu mama tambien but haven't read a good takedown. Why is it terrible?

xp: There were a couple of traumatized kids in our screening and I kept going back and forth between feeling really sorry for the kids to laughing endlessly at the parents, who for whatever reason weren't taking the kids out of the movie and therefore were really setting the stage to reap the endless nightmares and bedwetting incidents they were sowing.

probably amelie or life is beautiful -- amelie is a worse movie, but life is beautiful is kind of more egregious and bathetic.

these are all fine & as a poll this is akin to virulently hating on the shawshank redemption as an opportunity to flex one's esoteric movie cred

hero is sort of entertaining but it's also blatant chinese imperialist propaganda, so maybe it should get a ding for that

Pan's Labyrinth isn't dreadful but it feels overpraised in some quarters, considering how heavy-handed it is and how the two "worlds" never successfully mesh. i'm sure it's better than Cinema Paradiso tho

of the ones I've seen on this list, more are decent than not.

hate the American people so much for thumbing their noses at limited releases of Chantal Akerman movies

If the two worlds meshed, the main character would have lost her sanctuary from the horribleness of her situation.

Voted TGwtDT because I didn't see Volver on the list when I scrolled through. Dreadful film, really soured me on seeing more Almadovar (though I know I should).

the ennio morricone score for cinema paradiso redeems it in my opinion. for a mawkish, nostalgic film about childhood it's not that bad... as good as that genre gets really.

tbh i was in my 20s and 'pan's labyrinth' kind of traumatized me! was not exactly expecting something like the scene where the captain kills someone by smashing him in the face with a broken bottle.

i remember 'y tu' being quite good but haven't seen it since it came out.

I kind of hate cinema parediso just because my mom loves it and will never stfu about it

i agree with DJP that the worlds separateness is a major point of that film, which is about trauma and dissociation. that movie is good.

i mean he didn't make a convincing necessity of the two co-existing bits of the story i think, it just felt like "hi i like fantasy here are some scary muppets" but the film itself - not the girl's fantasy - felt kinda like it was a weak excuse for him to do that bit. also i swear the monsters were ripped from one of the Basket Case movies, probly the third one

i think it might insist on itself or something

morbidly curious what a hideous americanized das boot reboot would be like, but not if it would be like battleship.

virulently hating on the shawshank redemption just shows you know a phony baloney yuppie prison fable when you see it.

what if it had been a more realistic yuppie prison fable

I've seen half these movies and liked them all except "Life Is Beautiful"

What is "The Intouchables"? *clicks through* Ohh ughh

I liked Amelie, not a movie for me or my life but it was nice enough. I think I bought it on DVD for my mom

The only films here I ~loved~ were Das Boot and Crouching Tiger

i dunno abt virulently hating, but i don't think it's arch snobbery to say that there are many many better prison movies, let alone other kind of movies, than the shawshank redemption.

popular taste expressed through ticket sales or write in votes (or fucking ilx polls) is just another canon to be tackled and argued about - and yes, THERE IS WORK TO BE DONE

Anti-snobbery snobbery is as bad as Christians whining that they're the real victims of persecution.

or when real Christians are in lion pits

If I could cast some of these movies into the pits, I would.

In days of old A Man and a Woman might have been on this list, but it has long been overtaken by other stuff. I know, I know, the stars are great but...

i haven't seen the intouchables but from what i've read i'm p certain it's worse than all these

agree there is some very good stuff on this list (yes Kung Fu Hustle) worst is probably that Benigni movie but I'll be fucked if you actually expect me to watch it

david thomson's blurb on the winner is funny:

lol yes love this dude

The Benigni movie, when it's interested in being funny (mostly the first 30 mins), is not that bad.

I wonder what the "adjusted for ticket price" list would look like? There is an alltime chart for that somewhere, right?

Yeah, I'm sitting here unable to imagine circumstances under which I would have watched Amelie or Life is Beautiful or some Jet Li whatever. Of the movies on this list I've seen I've liked them all, so. (La Cage used to run CONSTANTLY on Cinemax when I was a kid.)

wasn't La Dolce Vita the highest grossing foreign film for years? Adjusted for inflation it looks even better.

Amelie or Life is Beautiful or some Jet Li whatever

one of these things is not like the other

Cinema Paradiso was hard to endure.

xp I know, I just am not into Jet Li very much.

i liked y tu mama tambien, esp. the omniscient narrator which gives it a new wave energy, letting u know about the universe going on concurrently beyond the frame

h8ed pan's labyrinth & life is beautiful, liked crouching tiger, smiling politely & flying daggers

hero is ... blatant chinese imperialist propaganda, so maybe it should get a ding for that

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Thursday, 20 June 2013

man, so true and brought out emphatically when the showing i caught it at in dublin was preceded an obsequious welcome for some chinese dignatories of some sort

a lot of these are just meh to me

i got no problem with imperialist propaganda i like lots of Hollywood movies

Cinema Paradiso was hard to endure.

It's not a foreign language film but The Legend Of 1900 also by Tornatore manages to be even worse than Cinema Paradiso. It is pure 'I can't endure this shit anymore' walkout garbage. One of the worst movies ever made.

xp hee hee me too! but have a crazy idea that the wider world of cinema should be some kind of alternative to stuff we're gonna be force-fed anyway, even if just some different sensibility or window on the world. pan's labyrinth seemed just like a hollywood film to me.

Cinema Paradiso is inoffensive, Amelie is inoffensive, La Vita e Bella is... well, pretty offensive, but it's hilarious in the first half hour. I have a hard time imagining that they are worse than stuff like Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Protector or Under the Same Moon (I haven't watched any of those, though, but they look pretty dreadful) The directors cut of Cinema Paradiso is pretty dumb, though. Another hour of the kid as a grown-up, who on earth would want that?

'pan's labyrinth' seems a lot lamer and more obvious and heavy-handed once you've seen 'spirit of the beehive' imo.

i like color palette of amelie. it's a visually beautiful movie.

i don't love pan's like i like beehive and there's an obvs connection between the two but i don't really like pan's any less cause of it. different approaches and all

*like i love beehive

(sometimes it's my favorite movie, idk)

not crazy about Beehive.

alfreds suck at watching erice

Let's screen it!

Love Pan's. Love Y Tu Mama Tambien even more. If i ever bothered to make a top 100 of all time list, Pan's might *just* make the cut, where YTMT would place somewhere in the 20s or 30s.

Enjoy Cinema Paradiso but don't feel compelled to launch a defence of it.

I haven't seen Amelie since it was in theatres and even as a fairly twee early-twentysomething at the time I couldn't muster up much enthusiasm for it beyond "that was cute."

you should watch the quince tree sun instead. post

xpost rather!

let's just watch all of em

really, how much did those high-profile Bergman and Fellini films make in the US? The Box Office Mojo alltime adjusted chart doesnt have any foreign films in the top 200. I think Mondo Cane supposedly made a ton of money. I Am Curious Yellow?

I've never seen:

Hero
Jet Li's Fearless
Il Postino
Like Water for Chocolate
La Cage aux Folles
Kung Fu Hustle
The Motorcycle Diaries
Iron Monkey
Under the Same Moon
The Protector
Das Boot
The Lives of Others
Brotherhood of the Wolf
House of Flying Daggers
La Vie en Rose
The Intouchables

Do I need to see any of these?

xpost

yeah?! what abt that supposed "art house craze" of the 50s/60s/(70s?) that I keep hearing about?

Kung Fu Hustle is a delirious slapstick comedy, if you like such things

Probably more so than I would a non-slapstick comedy by the same name.

I need to rewatch Kung Fu Hustle someday. At the time I thought it lacked a lot of what I liked about Stephen Chow's earlier films.

La Dolce Vita earned $19,516,000 in the US, according to IMDB, which is, yeah, quite a bit of money in 1960s dollars.

Why is Volver the top grossing Pedro?

a) released within the past 10 years (i.e., higher ticket prices)
b) generally good reviews (the 4th-best Metacritic score of his career)
c) Penelope Cruz
d) Penelope Cruz's Oscar and Golden Globe nominations...
e) ...after which (and this is key) Sony Pictures Classics pushed it into 689 theaters (almost three times as many as for his next-widest release, Talk to Her)

Huge fan of Spirit of the Beehive and every single thing that Erice has done.

I've only seen El Sur (thanks to ILX's own nakhchivan) and it's about as solid a 10/10 movie as I've ever seen, just incredible. Should probably see Beehive right now, or at least in the next day or two

crypto you should see Das Boot

I haven't seen Amelie since it was in theatres and even as a fairly twee early-twentysomething at the time I couldn't muster up much enthusiasm for it beyond "that was cute."

I saw it with a boy I'd been dating for a couple months and he came out gushing that he adored it and that it made him want to, like, go and fall in love with someone! The relationship didn't last.

the sentence was grisly enough at the "he adored it" part.

should have ended at 'gushing', really.

there is nothing wrong with adoring that movie.

or 'out', or 'came'

what a truly versatile skein of text

lol

well, I just saw The Spirit Of The Beehive and yeah it was amazing

only marginally inferior to the all-time El Sur

'inferior' is the wrong word. it's still sheer magic. El Sur practically had me in tears though. what an amazing director

I've seen a ton of these:

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Hero
Amelie
Jet Li's Fearless
Il Postino
Like Water for Chocolate
Kung Fu Hustle
The Motorcycle Diaries
Iron Monkey
Monsoon Wedding
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Volver
The Protector
The Lives of Others
Brotherhood of the Wolf
House of Flying Daggers
La Vie en Rose
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I'm inclined to vote for Brotherhood of the Wolf just 'cause it's completely fucking bonkers, but will probably wind up voting for The Protector:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVyfmeyO898

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers - martial arts films are boring anyway, grandiose martial arts films are fucking torture.

I think I hated HFD more.

i really like motorcyle diaries.

That single-shot staircase fight is great.

glad to see some love for 'beehive.'

freaky monsters and the spanish civil war. for kids!

― goole, Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:33 PM (Yesterday)

post-Spanish civil war, Basque/Maquis v. Franco to be precise.

for some reason motorcycle diaries being on here shocks me. who the hell went to see that

No matter how bad American taste in foreign films is, other countries' tastes in foreign films must be worse: top grossing American films outside the US.

I've seen all but 3 of these, and frankly, I don't mind Miramax sentimentality as much as martial arts comedy. So Kung Fu Hustle it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_in_film

in the course of looking for something else a couple of weeks ago i was surprised to notice that blow up and a man and a woman made the top twenty grossing movies of 1966. i am curious yellow placed in 67.

oh and la dolce vita was #7 in 1961.

tbf 66 looks like a real shit year for hollywood movies

everybody ignoring Iron Monkey, huh

iron monkey's good, why would anyone be talking about it

because people are talking about films they like as well :|

but yr right, it's a good movie ,i saw it in theaters, very fun

i guess it's easy to see CTHD/HFD as a pair, HFD released with i na year or two of CTHD, obviously trying to capitalize on CTHD's success overseas

think iron monkey was released in the same time period? but that was just 'quentin tarantino presents' etc.

hero is ... blatant chinese imperialist propaganda, so maybe it should get a ding for that

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Thursday, 20 June 2013

man, so true and brought out emphatically when the showing i caught it at in dublin was preceded an obsequious welcome for some chinese dignatories of some sort

a lot of these are just meh to me

― zvookster, Thursday, June 20, 2013 4:47 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i got no problem with imperialist propaganda i like lots of Hollywood movies

― The drone that was played caused panic and confusion (Noodle Vague), Thursday, June 20, 2013 4:50 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

otm, shouldn't be a ding against hero, amazing movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e8ZiBWQkAI

everybody should be excited for when the weinsteins release this stateside (tbd)

la dolce vita was the answer to a trivia question i got right last night

does anyone have any reason to dislike "pans" or is this just ilx at it's here

in the end i was just underwhelmed

tbf 66 looks like a real shit year for hollywood movies

Would be thrilled if a movie like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? had even a whisper of a shot at landing #3 during the last decade.

going upthread, I loved Motorcycle Diaries (largely for the cinematography and the 'road trip' aspect), as long as I kept in context that the movie was essentially a 2 hour fellatio of Che Guevara at its core.

Would be thrilled if a movie like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? had even a whisper of a shot at landing #3 during the last decade.

the greatest failing of brangelina

as long as I kept in context that the movie was essentially a 2 hour fellatio of Che Guevara at its core.

well at least he killed some eliitist assholes

and also a bunch of ordinary people

The Intouchables, by far. It's basically The Bucket List via Pretty Woman, but French.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

martial arts films are boring anyway

hey now

truth bomb