From my childhood I remember tons of French comedies. France and Italy had influential Communist parties - therefore, French comedies and some Italian ones easily circulated inside the Soviet Union, in its cinemas and TV screens. 

In particular, Fantomas, almost unknown to the masses in the West outside of France, was well-known to the Soviet audience thanks to three parody comedies featuring Louis de Funes. Funny to know that the Soviet people thought the movies were based on no less funny books. In reality, the books about Fantomas were your good old detective fiction of a merciless killer in a mask. Nothing funny, at all. 

 

I'll update my little list ... mostly it's all on the reviews ... since of those listed (for example) there were very few I did not review ... although there were a couple I did not review on purpose as anything I said would probably not be appreciated and I was not looking to hurt the films in any way ... they all deserve some attention, but not reviewing them is my way of preventing me saying something that is not right, or bad all around.

In general, there are not more than a handful of those films in the 30 years I have been reviewing them ... 

If I included that, I would have to include another 50 :)

I liked the moody atmosphere, but it's a 7/10 for me.

The Orphanage - Spanish film produced by Guillermo Del Toro . Really emotional final act but also some very scary stuff along the way. 

Pan's Labyrinth - talking of Del Toro , this is his best film imo.

Rec and Rec 3 . The first is a proper good scary film (was remade as Quarantine for US audiences) with a great final act . Rec 3 is my favourite spoof horror film , an absolute blast! 

Insomnia - the original Norwegian psychological thriller with Stellan Skarsgaard (seen recently in Chernobyl), Chris Nolan remade this with Al Pacino. 

The Vanishing - yes the original Dutch language film is by far the best , truly creepy ending.

There was also a French horror film I liked a lot , think it was called Them.

There was a also an interesting French thriller from a few years ago by Hollywood director Paul Verhoeven called Elle. Perhaps notable for Isabelle Huppert 'bearing all' in her sixties. 

I do like thrillers and horror films!

Other favourites are "The Return of Martin Guerre," "8 1/2", "The Red Balloon," "White Mane," Carlos Saura's "Carmen," and "Babette's Feast."  I'm sure I could come up with more, but those all come quickly to mind that weren't on the list.  

I got caught in between the age of the video and the digital age, when all the far out movies disappeared from the video stores that died.

Essentially, my 1990's were spent catching up on things I had missed, and they were too many and not enough videos around ... goodness .. it took me one year to get a video store to bring in PERFORMANCE, and then the idiots buried the film instead of putting it where folks could see Mick's face on the box!

The last 20 years have been tough for me, trying to catch up with films, and only if I buy them can I get to see them and possibly review them ... mind you I do not review everything since at times (for me) it's best not to say anything rather than say something not nice, that does not help the film maker.

Someone once told me that would not be fair for an audience to not know/feel something like that, but I prefer to stick to stuff that moves me well ... than I do stuff that did not click with me ... for example, I find no need to do reviews on at least 3 Trier films that I have seen ... they are not bad ... but what the heck can I say about them? 

With that said, I went by the films I have on my website, which tells you I have seen them ... and that's about as much as I have (am working on redoing the site!!!), and need to upload about 10 more reviews.

They are, in alphabetical order, btw ... no preferences otherwise.

I probably missed about 10 things, but I did not wish to have 5 films by Bunuel and 4 films by Nicolas Roeg, for example, or 5 films by Ken Russell .... there are some folks that are way too fine and deserve more attention but I wanted to slim it down ... David Lean is another example, as is Terry Gilliam.

eXistenZ (UK-France-Canada)
El espinazo del diablo (Mexico-Spain)
[Rec]
Tesis
Los cronocrimenes
La cara oculta (Colombia-Spain)
Malpertuis
Faust (1994)
Metropia
Valhalla (animation-1986)
Dagon
Das Experiment

L'aveu 

Mephisto

Labyrinth of Lies

Jack Strong

Der Tunnel

Das Boot 

La Revolution Francaise

Sunshine 

Le Train (the Train) 

Hi,

Saw BEFORE THE RAIN, when it came out at the Film Festival ... it's a monumental film with some excellent music, the group, apparently does not exist! (Anastasia or something like it).

IRREVERSIBLE, I wanted to included, but decided not to, as films by Gaspar Noe, are so incredibly difficult to review ... it will be misinterpreted, and I had that issue with I STAND ALONE, and the folks from the Film Center here in Portland when it was shown ... I did not dislike it, but I can't say I liked it, but visually and from its point of view, it was a stunning experience, up to and including the sound being intentionally out of sync to make you jump ... which half the audience did and left!

From a conceptual design and idea, it is incredibly well done and insane. But it is not something that many of us can sit through and ... not come away ... wow ... not to mention the violence in it is probably a bit too much, even for a horror film person (the early stuff, not the later carnage crap!) like me.

Hi,

I wish I was not caught up in nowhere land where I can not see many other films that I need to and would like to. Too many companies own too many different things and they are not interested in showing them, and after a while, you only get the same 5 Godard films, the same 3 Truffaut films, the same 4 Fellini films, the same 3 Kurosawa films and so on ... and it is really sad.

The "art" of the film director, at this pace, will be dead courtesy of the commercial attitudes and greed for the money making film factories ... saddest thing in the world, was Kurosawa having famous battles in Japan, and he found money in France and America to give his own country men a finger or two! In the end, he will be remembered and the rest of those rich b*****ds will never be remembered, but they still control the media and the arts in Japan as seen by popular music ... you would think that R. Sakamoto would be respected as a serious composer of music ... but I only see articles about half naked young ladies ... and no one cares about anything else! Heck, he's better known in Europe and here than over there I bet!

Ostrov

Avalon

Kontroll

The Princess and the Warrior

After the Wedding

Force Majeure

Run Lola Run

La Femme Nikita

The Day I Saw Your Heart

Romantics Anonymous

Somebody mentioned Ostrov... 

My favorite movie of all time.

I wouldn't say the same, I rather like only comedies. But yes, it definitely has its exotic charm, special chamber atmosphere, et al. Moral values, depth, suffering - that's eternal, and important, for sure. 

I must admit though that for the foreigners from non-Orthodox-Christian countries there's much more exotic in that movie than it was for us. 

Hi,

It's a tough film to get through, but one thing that carries it beautifully is one actor ... Sir John Gielgud, and it's like his words are alive and it makes Shakespeare sound a lot better than we think.

The visual side is crazy, insane and out of this world, and putting a thinking mind to use is a challenge and then some, since it will throw off any idea you have about the whole thing, but it is really well done, despite it being ... the experimental Shakespeare that some folks in England's RSC and NT dreamed about in the mid 1960's! But we got Peter Brook and Peter Hall and Jonathan Miller that made it worth while! 

Their visionary and idealistic works are massive and historic, and it shows the progress that theater was going through, something that also happened in music (both rock and jazz) just slightly later ... although in America Miles Davis was already breaking the grounds into smithereens with his improvised concerts. Something that rock music never learned in almost all of the world, with maybe a smidge of an example in Germany for a few years before it died!

I seemed to sound rather unwarm if not angry in my last answer to your words. Well, I didn't mean it to sound that way. Just noted that I personally prefer comedies to such serious deep movies. 

By the way there's an American unblack metal that used lines from the movie in one of their songs... 

 

As to "Krabat": I highly recommend the book by Ottfried Preußler; it scared the hell out of me when I read it at age 12.

As to "Malpertuis": Definitely recommended by me too.

I generally prefer European movies to American ones. Of course there are exceptions. I will recommend just one European movie:

"Ossegg oder die Wahrheit über Hänsel und Gretel" ("Osseg or the Truth about Hansel and Gretel") by Thees Klahn. A movie based on the brilliant satirical novel "Die Wahrheit über Hänsel und Gretel" by Hans Traxler. Amateur archaeologist and schoolteacher Georg Ossegg tries to prove that "Hansel and Gretel" is based on fact. It stars the French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, who is probably best known for his collaboration with François Truffaut.

The truth, by the way, is that the bad witch was actually not a witch at all but an innocent female baker who was killed by Hansel and Gretel, who were not kids but adults, because they wanted to have the recipe for the baker's gingerbread.