If not favorite, ones that touched you in some way.
I’ll start by mentioning some movies from my mother tongue(Malayalam of Kerala, India):
- Mumbai Police
A crime thriller (Came out almost 2 decades ago n was very striking for the time) - KammaraSambhavam
Political/Historic satire/drama (The main actor has some cases on him, but the movie is quite good) - Kathavasheshan
- Devasuram
Conservative sigma male upper class Kerala dude getting character development. I really liked how the transformation happened in it - Maheshinte Parthikaaram (Mahesh’s Revenge)
Not an action movie.
From my country, but not in my mother tongue:
- Super Deluxe - A Tamil movie that I recently watched, quite unique
- Enthiran (Robot), a Tamil movie
Has over the top stuff, but is fun to watch - Viduthalai(Liberation), another Tamil movie
- Agent Vinod - A Hindi spy-comedy movie
The anime that I like are Hunter x Hunter, Parasyte, Samurai Flamenco, Gintama.
Dark (German/Netflix)
Best show, period. I was happy that finally there is a story thought out from start to finish, is smart and does not hold your hand. I should rewatch it soon.
I dont remember another tv show where we watched 10 hours of recap/explanation/theory videos on youtube before each new season.
Amazing show and my favourite part is not even how brilliant the storyline is, but the god tier casting of different aged actors for the same characters.
Agreed. Some of that casting was SO spot on (Jonah in particular)
Hands down.
I wanna add to that Who Am I
It’s a movie made by the same people
If you liked the mystery of Dark and are looking for something to scratch that itch you’ll love it.
Thank you. Will check it out!
Shaolin Soccer for sure
Yes!
Brotherhood of the Wolf Kung Fu Hustle Shaolin Soccer
Punctuation helps.
Looked fine when I posted it. It had line breaks. Weird.
Double space + linebreak
for this and double linebreakFor a paragraph.
Doesn’t help that thunder seems to eat a trailing space when you linebreak.
I’m on Connect. Not sure I’ve noticed this before. Lol
Brotherhood of the wolf is excellent!
I enjoyed Dark(German), Deutschland 83(German), and Gomorrah(Italian)
I liked the idea of Dark, I just disliked having to pull up a convoluted family tree hastily constructed from Reddit so that I could work out who was screwing who whilst visiting themselves.
Deutschland 83! Loved it. I’ll add Babylon Berlin.
Oh nice I’ll have to check that one out
City of God, (Portuguese/Brazil) One of my all time favorite movies period. Gangster/Crime lord style movie about kids running the Favelas in Rio
Elite Squad 1 and 2 also (Portuguese/Brazilian) Top notch Cop/shoot out movie really reinvigorated the Sicario and John Wick style films.
Oldboy (Korean) The WTF twist is an early stand out of what the amazing Korean producers are now famously known for.
City of god was a great movie
Reminder that city of God and elite squad are based on historical facts.
Pan’s Labyrinth is a rare modern fairytale, in the old sense of the word, not the Disney sense.
Series:
- Dark: I love this series. It’s complex and smart and isn’t afraid to let the viewer think and not hold our hand. I re-watch this at least once a year, sometimes more. The show runners also made another series, 1899, which I liked - but didn’t love - and Netflix killed it after only one season.
- Alta Mar/High Seas: The first season especially just captured my heart. It’s a fun murder-on-a-cruise-liner scenario with absolutely lavish set dressing, costumes, etc. The cast is a delight. There are a few unnecessary twists and the subsequent seasons didn’t grab me as hard, but this is one I happily come back to periodically.
- Paranormal: This is, in some ways, only an “okay” series if I’m honest. The stories are solid, but mid-tier, the effects are pretty low grade, and the episodes didn’t connect well. But why I still have a fondness for this one: This series wasn’t just set in Egypt, it was an Egyptian production. So you don’t have some of the baggage of Hollywood/the U.S. or even other, major media countries. It’s refreshing to get a different cultural view occasionally.
- Control-z: This was a fun, stylish mystery series set in a Mexican high-school. Not terribly deep and after the first season the quality drops pretty quickly, but it was enjoyable.
- Squid Game: Who doesn’t love a game? :)
- Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes: Not very long series but it was enjoyable if you like the possibly over used trope of someone coming back from the dead and the challenges they encounter.
- Katla: A short Icelandic supernatural series. Creepy vibes aplenty.
- Money Heist: Spanish bank heist series. Good, not great, but good. A little predictable in places, a little unpredictable in places. Went for several seasons and spawned a couple of spin-offs.
- Fallet: An interestingly little series from Sweden. The premise is a stretch, but the characters were kind of endearing. I enjoyed it.
Movies:
I know I’ve watched a lot more foreign films recently that I liked than this, but I’m having a hard time recalling any that stand out. Here’s still a few I felt like mentioning:Classics: Pan’s Labyrinth, Run Lola Run, Seven Samurai.
A few you might not have heard of:
- Errementari: a stylish, enjoyable fable of a blacksmith and the devil
- The Little Switzerland: A silly little comedy set in Spain. Not a lot of depth, but entertaining.
I had totally forgotten about 1899. I think it had as much potential as Dark, just didn’t have a great first season. And the multiple languages was an interesting concept.
Life Is Beautiful
City of Lost Children, and to a slightly lesser extent, Delicatessen and Amelie, all directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
I’ve yet to see worldbuilding as effortless as it is in the first two movies.
Drop you in blind, explain nothing, get very weird, and tell a fantastic story.
Yeah, these guys are great. I love seeing some of the same faces in completely different roles)
- Brahmayugan (2024)
- 3 Idiots (2009)
- Akira (1988)
- Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
- The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)
- Princess Mononoke (1997)
- Spirited Away (2001)
- The Lunchbox (2013)
- Newton (2017)
- Titli (2014)
I put lunchbox in my watch list, it’s the one that’s pg and available where I live. I’m not up to these animations lately, though I saw Akira in the 90s and loved it.
Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front). A movie about WWI from the German perspective. While not 100% accurate, it does a great job of showing the harrowing trench warfare, the propaganda, and the out-of-touch militarism in the higher ranks. I highly recommend it.
A much older one: Le Grand Vadrouille (The Great Escape). A French WWII comedy about a few British pilots that need to escape occupied France. There is a little bit of English but it’s predominantly French in language. While not all movies from that age have stood the test of time (e.g. Les Gendarmes are quite racist), this one does a decent job!
Some great favorites of mine that I haven’t seen mentioned here yet:
- Extraordinary Attorney Woo is a Korean drama which follows Woo Young-woo, a female rookie attorney with autism, who is hired by a major law firm in Seoul.
- Lupin is a French series about Assane Diop, a man who is inspired by the adventures of master thief Arsène Lupin.
- Ragnarok is a Norwegian fantasy drama television series reimagining of Norse mythology. It takes place in the present-day fictional Norwegian town of Edda.
- Tribes of Europa is a German series set in 2074, 43 years after a mysterious global technological failure caused nations to slip into anomie and fracture into dystopian warring tribal microstates.
I second Extraordinary Attorney Woo, what a wholesome and heart-warming show!!
Lupin and Ragnarok were pretty cool
There’s no streaming service in my country with these titles except lupin 🙃
Streaming sucks, but not as much as plain old air tv 🤷♂️
If you have Netflix, you have access to Ragnarok too I think
Oh true, the service I used to find what service has movies doesn’t cover Netflix apparently. What do you guys use?
Lots of info here about something to use that always has everything available.
Oh yeah the high seas is always an option, but as my family goes it’s not convenient
There are many good thriller/horror movies in spanish.
- La piel que habito
- REC
- Los ojos de julia
- La cara oculta (I think this one’s from Colombia)
Shutter is also a great Thai horror movie.
From my country Murderess (Φόνισσα - Greek) from last year is pretty impactful.
Have you watched “Historias para no dormir”? It was series of Spanish horror movies, I think four or five. My favorite from that series was “La habitación del niño” such a good story! I am a horror buff and it is always refreshing to watch something that surprises me in a good way.
I didn’t watch the rest after the first episode… It felt so… Forced.
I guess you are talking about the tv series? Because that was, indeed, kind of not so good. I watched a couple of episodes.
The movies, at least for me, were good in a general sense but La habitación del niño was great in my opinion.
Oh I hadn’t heard of those, added to the watch list
Train to Busan is without a doubt the best zombie movie I have ever seen.
Persepolis, the tragic animated story of how Iran transformes from a modern and rich country to a religious dictatorship
The Handmaiden by Park Chan-wook is fantastic for movies.
For books, Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, and the movie adaptation Stalker by Tarkovsky, are sci-fi classics.
Human Acts is another amazing book, this time from Han Kang.
