Not sure what was the first film I watched actually *in* a foreign language but I remember watching Bruce Lee films when I was about 14. Game of Death is it?

Probably Battle Royale

Ooo yeah good shout

poprock wrote:

Went to see the Fantastic Beasts movie at the pictures tonight. It’s beautiful to look at but utterly vacuous. Quite annoying too, when an entire film turns out to be just setup for sequels. Still, it’s really very pretty. And that does count for something.

Was just about to post much the same sentiments.  It's basically 2 hours plus of beautifully rendered fan service, in search of a plot.  (Which never really emerges).  There are characters present purely so that Potter fans can go "ooh" in recognition, and family trees are explored in a manner that risks making the world feel smaller rather than more expansive.  There is also a twist so stupid that even the die-hard fans I went with struggled to make it work.

But it looks amazing.  (Though I think I preferred the previous movie's 20's americana.)  The performances (with the exception of Depp) are all pretty good - particularly Jude Law who is suitably charismatic.  But yeah, it's a film all about shuffling pieces round the board, without really achieving anything much.

The Daddy wrote:

Trying to think what my first foreign language film was.

We watched quite a few, at my dad’s behest, as children, with him often reading out the subtitles if we couldn’t keep up. The first I can think of is Seven Samurai, one of his favourites.

afgavinstan wrote:

Good ol' Marty celebrates his birthday today so let's do him next.

Over-rated Marty.

tin_robot wrote:

(Though I think I preferred the previous movie's 20's americana.)

Ditto. But I still really did enjoy the atmosphere – and the period setting is dripping with it, despite being less fun than 1920s New York was.

The Mrs and I went in knowing nothing about it, and having enjoyed the first film. We’re not Harry Potter fans, but the previous Fantastic Beasts was a lovely bit of stylish fun. This was confusing and even a little exclusionary to non-fans. We left not knowing what to make of the big twist and not much caring either.

Some lovely tailoring on show though. Cracking costumes.

Think mine was Taxi.

Aye, as others mentioned, director (Tjahjanto) also did Headshot with Uwais, Estelle and Pang in the cast. It’s on Netflix uk as well.

Suspiria wasn't bad, although anyone that had a problem with Hereditary going off the rails towards the end will likely have similar issues here. I have seen the original, but so long ago that I'm unable to make any meaningful comparison.

The first foreign language film that I saw at the cinema would appear to have been The City of Lost Children based on my IMDb lists, but it is possible that I saw something prior to that and have forgotten... No idea about non-cinema, but I imagine that it would have been something that I taped on late night TV in the early 1990s when we finally bought a VHS.

(Actually, this may be incorrect. I may have only seen this first at the Film Society at university.)

I'm finding it difficult to remember what my first foreign film was.

BBC2 used to put a lot of them on at night. The 1st I remember is one (according to wiki) from 1977 called In a Wild Moment about a middle aged divorced guy who has an affair with his best friend's daughter. The reveal in the film where he owns up "C'est moi" is punctuated with a thunder clap and had a great impact on me.  However that is all I remember of the film - and I don't know what age I was - I was still living at home so probably late teens/early 20s.

First I pro-actively watched may be Decalogue - which revealed to me how superb World cinema could be if I averted my eyes from Hollywood.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Slightly late for Thanksgiving but that seems appropriate.
I love this film, still has me in fits. It's a shame Martin and Candy didn't do more together they are a great odd couple.

Aye. It's a killer that. And I just love the whole rental car set-up.

"WHY WOULD I PUT IT THERE?!"

.... "Kindness."

Followed by THAT realisation.