How often do you watch asian films?

Frequently. South Korea makes the best films. Well, it's certainly my #1 country for movies. I also love Japanese cinema. If only Europe would be better. The English are great, but everyone else in Europe makes lackluster films.

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Thanks again, Mr Portridge.

It's the largest population group as well so more people => more ideas for stuff => more stuff => more great stuff.

If you usually only watch movies in your language it's pretty much 100%, since you will not know anything else.

Don't get to see foreign movies too often, but when I do, it tends to be either Asian or Latin American. Most recent was Train to Busan, which I greatly enjoyed.

Do you mean British? Or do you specifically mean English?

There are some fine mainland European films of late from countries like Greece, Turkey, Italy, Belgium and Romania. France is a powerhouse of European cinema!

I suppose British overall. I haven't seen many mainland-European films worthy of accolades, especially from France. They're horrible.

Not often enough. I'd say i watch Asian films most often outside of American films, very high hit rate for me, % wise i may have liked more Asian films than anywhere else but then i've seen much less overall than American or European films.

The 40's Countdown has slowed down my foreign movie watches lately as so many of the ones i want to see from that decade are American or British.

Also French films are great.

This one is really good.



Also this one, though, strictly speaking, it is Belgian-French.



And this one is a superb classic.

The French film industry, although the largest in Europe, is a rather problematic because it depends heavily on government subsidies (nearly 1 billion dollars directly to the movie producers in subsidies every year). These massive government subsidies means that French movie makes don't need to make movies that people actually want to watch and so the French film industry is essentially a huge festival of self indulgence by the directors who make movies that few people actually like to watch. This explains the fact that many people say "French movies suck" because these movies are not made to be enjoyable to normal people.

Normal people?

Would these be the same normal people who don't watch anything that has subtitles?

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Well, in my country normal people watch movies with subtitles. But I think that in your country, yes, those are the normal people.

Then it stands to reason that none of us can really determine what is and isn't watchable to "normal" people if our standards for what counts as normal are so different.

Normal just means average or typical. What's your definition of normal?

French movies are self indulgent art movies made by directors who don't need to care for their audience since their movies are paid by the government, so they don't make movies that a large number of people might be willing to watch, hence, "normal" people don't watch that. A guy like Bresson was never mainstream in France, a mainstream French movies that normal people watch is The Intouchables.

In Brazil normal people watch the same kind of movies as American normal people do. They often watch movies with subs mainly because Hollywood movies are not made in portuguese. Besides very few local movies that were popular with Brazilians, like the Elite Squad movies which are more similar to hollywood blockbusters than French art movies.

The thing is that I don't think that "self-indulgent art movies" are inherently bad. Am I really supposed to care that directors "don't need to care for their audience"? The flip-side of caring too much about your audience is what you get with Hollywood trying to capitalise on whatever faces or brands will make them the most money from audiences, which is more likely to stifle creativity than inspire it. Why else do so many people piss and moan about the floods of reboots and sequels and whatever else? Even the trade-off of French directors trying to make more accessible movies isn't going to be an improvement if it means we get sh*t like The Transporter or Taken. Bresson not being mainstream even in France doesn't mean anything to me if I can still recognise the strength of a film like A Man Escaped sixty years later - how many popular Hollywood films from 1956 can claim similar status? Hell, wasn't Akira more beloved by non-Japanese audiences than Japanese ones?

I never said that they were bad. However, I can understand why 99% of the people would perceive then as bad. It's like viking metal: I love it but I understand why 99% of the people would not love it.

Well, sometimes it tends to make the stuff pretty boring. I like Miyazaki because he makes stuff to entertain the audience but simultaneously is his own artistic expression: the perfect marriage of art and entertainment.

I think that things can get bad if you go to far in either direction (self indulgence or pandering to your audience). Finding a healthy middle ground like Miyazaki does is ideal.

I think the problem of Hollywood these days is that they are making films for the world and not for the US market. This means that their movies are stripped down from any cultural background and become soulless visual exntertainment. Still they made some very good blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings.

Yes, the majority of the blockbusters is bad but that applies to the majority of ANYTHING. The majority of everything is bad: manga, TV shows, indie movies, blockbuster movies, etc.

I really enjoyed those two movies actually.

Well, I never said not being mainstream was bad, since most of my favorites are not mainstream. For instance, I actually have A Man Escaped in my top 50 movies/TV shows list. That was a really powerful experience.

Not remotely. In Japan Akira is not a "cult" title in any way shape or form.

In Japan, Akira grossed 6.4 billion yen in 1988 which makes it a blockbuster sucess (equivalent of grossing about 350 million dollars in North America today).

While the Akira manga remains the single most influential manga/graphic novel of the past 40 years. Specially in terms of its line art and aesthetic style, it has redefined the comic medium. And that's considering manga/graphic novels are enormously more popular than movies in Japan (manga sales are about 10 to 15 times larger than movie ticket sales over the past 40 years in Japan, Japanese live action film directors are starving and they complain that the Japanese government doesn't give then subsidies like the French ones get).