What films do you like to see?

I have recently had an intersting interview with Richard from England about the films.
I think that this interview can be interesting for many lingqers.
It would be good if you can tell here about your favourite films and favourite actors.
Someone could perhaps inform us about the experience how it’s possible to use films by the language learning.

And here is the link to this this interview with the British accent:

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That’s actually a very good question.

Really, I’d say it’s more important to me whether a film is good - regardless of the genre!

But if I had to pick a genre, well, I think it’d have to be crime drama!

An excellent example would be: “A Perfect Murder”

A super smooth villain with a wickedly devious plan, delicious plot twists, sharp dialogue, sex, violence, money, art…darn it this flick has it all :smiley:

i like the james bond franchise even the ones older than i am.although hollywood is the biggest movies producers in the world i like independent movies from other countries to help with languages they don’t have the budget of hollywood but they are excellent i hate dubbed american movies into another languages,latin america has a good film industry as well as spain if you study spanish,and i watched alot with the spanish actress penelope cruz .and i like the african french film industry,i don’t hate british films per see but i don’t like historical british movies anything to with the royal familly or their ancestors bores me

It is very easy to find Russian films. Hundreds and hundreds appear to be online for free viewing, many older ones on YouTube. It is harder, perhaps, to find films that will particularly interest you, which is probably what Richard means.

Kino-Teatr.ru is something of a Russian analog to IMDB.com. I don’t see a lot of ways to search out particular genres, but perhaps I’m not looking in the right places. If you find an actor or director that you like it’s easy to explore the rest of his work. There are some lists, such as Soviet films by year, Hollywood films, etc. The short summaries and user comments might help you decide whether to search out a particular film for viewing.

Looking at Kino-Teatr.ru for the purpose of writing this post, I see a very interesting article, “33 российских фильма 2016-го: Чем дышит наше кино?” (33 Russian Films of 2016: What Inspires our Cinema?). I’ll have to take a closer look at that. http://www.kino-teatr.ru/blog/y2016/1-24/766/

For the purpose of language learning, I have found that children’s films can be very good. Both the language and the plots may be easier to follow than in a film intended for an adult audience. Maybe the fact that I have many kids of my own (grown, now) helps me to appreciate their world. There are many, many Soviet-era children’s films, and of course many of those are semi-propaganda, but they can still be enjoyable, and there are some very good ones. Propaganda or no, the films help make it very clear that kids are kids the world over.

Earlier this year I found a modern Russian film in black-and-white in the film noire style. It seemed very interesting to me, though I could not understand the dialog very well. Then I read some about the film and discovered that Russian audiences panned it and laughed at it. I guess I need to improve my listening comprehension more in order to be able to understand why. Film: Уик-энд - http://www.kino-teatr.ru/kino/movie/ros/96709/annot/

Evgueny recently recommended some very good New Year’s-inspired Russian films. I found Russian subtitles for “Особенности национальной охоты” that I am importing into Lingq lessons with the goal of being able to watch and fully understand that movie in Russian.

Russian internet sites with films for on-line viewing often have many, many foreign films dubbed into Russian – from Europe and the rest of the world in addition to Hollywood. Some of those have high-quality dubbing. Many have dubbing on top of the original sound track – talking right over the English, e.g., – which is easier and cheaper to produce. Some have a single person voicing all the parts, and I find that very annoying.

Poor dubbing aside, I have been able to watch many films, in Russian, from all over the world. If one particularly interests me I will search for English subtitles in order to be able to catch all the nuances and also to be able to share with my wife if I think she would enjoy it. Occasionally I will find Russian subtitles for a Russian film. If the film is merely dubbed into Russian, however, the subtitles and the dialog often use two differing translations, and that is very annoying indeed.

[Edit: silly typos]]

I like science fiction genre. It can make me imagine something not real to be a real thing. I love to movie relate with space war and space journey such as star war, star track, interstellar, etc. I also love to watching cartoon and anime especially One Piece and Naruto…:slight_smile:

I tend to like films that take place in a specific time period — not just historical films that try to portray actual historic figures and historic events — but films that revolve around a specific time and place. Even if it’s completely unrealistic and non-historic, like the horror-comedy Army of Darkness (1992), which takes place in “Medieval times,” supposedly the year AD 1300, with characters named “Lord Arthur” and “Duke Henry the Red.”

Someone recently asked me what my ten or twelve favorite films are. That is like asking what my favorite color is. Some shade of orange or green or yellow or red.

But I was able to come up with a list. This list doesn’t even include an M. Night Shyamalan film that I never seem to get tired of seeing: Signs (2002), or the hordes of horror films I have collected, or one of my all-time favorite directors, Quentin Tarantino, or my favorite Dutch director, Alex Van Warmerdam; indeed this list only includes one non-English language film. But the list does include one of my all-time favorite writing/directing teams: the Coen brothers.

Anyway, here are twelve of my favorite films, in order from oldest to newest, but it really doesn’t do justice to the dozens and dozens and dozens of other films that could just as easily be on this list:

Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz, director), based on an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, it takes place in Vichy-controlled French Morocco during WWII. genre: classic romantic drama; starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman

Lifeboat (1944, Alfred Hitchcock) from a story by the great American novelist John Steinbeck, the entire film is set on a lifeboat launched from a passenger vessel that was sunk during WWII. genre: drama thriller; starring Tallulah Bankhead

The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed), screenplay by the great English novelist Graham Greene, it takes place in Allied-occupied Vienna following WWII. genre: film noir; starring Joseph Cotten

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, Robert Mulligan), based on the novel by Harper Lee (widely considered to be the greatest American novel of the 20th century), it takes place in the fictional Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. genre: southern drama; starring Gregory Peck

Hud (1963, Martin Ritt), based on the novel “Horseman, Pass By” by Larry McMurtry (the title of which is taken from the famous line by Irish poet William Butler Yates), considered an “Anti-Western,” it is centered around a Texas cattle ranch in 1954 during an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. genre: revisionist western; starring Paul Newman

Doctor Zhivago (1965, David Lean), based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, it takes place in the time leading up to and during WWI, the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War. genre: epic drama romance; starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie

Paper Moon (1973, Peter Bogdanovich), adapted from the novel “Addie Pray” by Joe David Brown, it takes place in Kansas and Missouri during the Great Depression. genre: comedy-drama; starring Ryan and Tatum O’Neal

The Elephant Man (1980, David Lynch), adapted from surgeon Frederick Treves’s personal account and Ashley Montagu’s anthropological profile of the severly deformed Joseph Merrick, it takes place in 19th century London. genre: surrealist drama; starring Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt

Fargo (1996, Joel and Ethan Coen), takes place in Minnesota in 1987. Don’t miss Season 1 (takes place in 2006) and Season 2 (takes place in 1979) of the TV series Fargo, set in the same fictional universe as the film, all of which claim: “This is a true story. The events depicted took place in Minnesota in ____. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” genre: black comedy crime thriller; film starring Frances McDormand and William H. Macy

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet), takes place in Montmartre in the late 1990’s. genre: romantic comedy; starring Audrey Tautou

There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson), inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil!,” it takes place during the Southern California oil boom at the turn of the 20th century. genre: epic drama; starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, Wes Anderson), inspired by the writings of Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, it takes place in a fictitious Central European country on the verge of war in the 1930’s. genre: comedy; starring Ralph Fiennes

Did you ever watch 'Der Untergang"? That’s a great film. Also, ‘Goodbye Lenin’ is worth a watch.

Yes, as a rule I see all of the “big” German films. I’ve seen “Der Untergang”, “Goodbye Lenin”, “Das Leben der Anderen”, et al…

Funnily enough I happened to be in Germany (during my last time Würzburg) back when “Der Untergang” came out. So I even saw it in a German cinema.

Apropos Hitler films, I see they are now doing a Verfilmung of the book “Er ist Wieder Da!” as well. I have an excellently read audiobook version of that - one which literally made me crack up with laughter while walking along the street!

I was in Berlin when “Goodbye Lenin” was shown in the “Tacheless” and I watched it with a large part of my German class, including the teacher. It was quite an experience!

I watched Der Untergang with Russian dubbing over the top of the German – could hear both – and with English subtitles! That was too much distraction for my wife, and I watched it alone. It was very good, though.

I found Good Bye Lenin dubbed into Russian. It looked interesting enough that I found it on Netflix with English subtitles so that my wife could watch it with me, and we both enjoyed it very much. I am reminded of Katrin Sass’ character, Alex’s mother, when reading the parts in “Время Секонд-Хэнд” (Second-hand Time) by Svetlana Alexievitch concerning the poor bewildered and disillusioned regional party secretary Елена Юрьевна.

Were your class former East Germans who experienced that time of transition? What was their reaction to the film?

Well, my classmates were foreigners and my teacher was a Wessie who had been living in (West)Berlin for a long time. She told me about the times when she had to drive from the federal Republic all the way to West-Berlin. She couldn’t leave the designated road, once in the GDR and her encounters with the eastern Police (sie waren scheiss-arrogant!)

But I’ve met a lot of Ossies, both then and later and I’ve talked a lot with them. One of my best friends is an Ossie! He was a Lenin pioneer (“Seid ihr bereit?” Immer bereit!) and he has told me about those times. And I’ve asked several people about their experiences over time, etc.

I’ll quote a few comments that I especially like (feel like S. A. Alexievich!!!) [not specifically about the movie, but about the time it describes. Most people liked the movie and thought it was pretty accurate]:

A Berliner guide told me how he wasn’t allowed to study medicine because he was religious, his life in Prenzlauer Berg, his ideas about the monuments in East Berlin the city and how there was a visible tension even in the architecture (e.g. Martin Luther’s statue, Fernsehturm competing in height with the Marienkirche, the “cross” on the Fernsehturm, …)

A girl I met at a techno-music venue (she was woking there):
-“At the “Wende”, when I went into West Berlin, what impressed me most were ‘Bücher und Klamotten’”. She told me also how the west is more classist.

Another friend:
“Well, Wessies are much ‘anspruchsvoller’”. This person spoke very good Spanish because he had to change from an eastern school where he was learning Russian to another one where most classmates had been learning English for several years, so he was lagging behind and he preferred to start with Spanish.

An artist, living in Prenzlauer Berg (when it was still “what it used to be”):
“To this day, we still speak only 30% the same language as Wessies, …, the words are the same, but they don’t mean the same thing”.

My friend, raised in the GDR::
“You know, even today Wessies have a very different relationship to their body. ‘FKK’ was big in the DDR, so we like going nude, etc. whereas most Wessies, even younger, “modern” ones still have a problem with that”.

Another interesting fact for us, fan-boys of language learning, one that I’ve seen repeated over and over:
Former GDR citizens who learned Russian for years on end, got pretty good at it, had penmates from the USSR … and now
they can’t say a single word of Russian, if their life depended on it!
(some kind of “trauma” as a Russian friend has surmised?)

My friends have also told me a lot about GDR-culture, music, well-known people from the time, …