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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
dont watch the sequel (i havent either).
but yeah, it's a james bond type story set in a super weird garbled mirror image of the cold war. with mice and cats. and bats. and rats.
man i'm gonna re-watch it tonight. got myself hyped up :D
What I found especially interesting was how the movie showed a cycle of violence.
The main cat is being threatened by the boss cat to the point of needing to take anxiety medication.
The main cat then relentlessly bullies and injures his assistant.
His assistant then bullies the person lower on the social ladder than him... Aka his daughter...
His daughter then breaks the chain by not bullying the mouse who in turn doesn't bully anyone.
At the end of the movie when it's all ended and the assistant is no longer being actively harmed by his superior, we see him as a loving father again.
- 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)
The Good, The Bad, and the Weird (좋은 놈, 나쁜 놈, 이상한 놈) is a fantastic slapstick take on the classic western that has a lot of fun with the setting.
Trollhunter (Trolljegeren) is a great horror-mockumentary done in a found footage style.
Basically anything by Kurosawa.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.
Pridyider, the Filipino movie about a haunted fridge. Haven't been able to find a copy of it in years unfortunately.
For Korean media:
TV shows:
- Beyond Evil
- Moving
- D.P.
Movies:
- The Handmaiden
- Parasite
- Decision to Leave
- Old Boy
Persepolis, the tragic animated story of how Iran transformes from a modern and rich country to a religious dictatorship
