The Top 5 Foreign-Language Films I Saw in 2014

Her is part 2 of The Best Movies (I Saw) in 2014, this one being:

The Top 5 Foreign-Language Movies (I Saw) in 2014

L'Atalante, Jean Vigo's terrific 1934 film shot almost entirely aboard a small boat plying the canals and riverways around Paris. Great, sorrowful story about a newlywed couple and a difficult marriage, filmed with extraordinary care and at great cost (essentially, the horrible filming conditions cost Vigo his life).

The Great Beauty. A movie set in contemporary Rome about a frustrated novelist become a successful celebrity journalist - in other words, a modern-day La Dolce Vita, and possibly just as good. Need I say more?

Man with a Movie Camera. Vertov's is one of the most imaginative and enduring of all the silent films, filled with witty visual imagery and creative shots and angles, a true cinematic portrait of a city (Odessa) in a time and place long gone that, in a way, still feels contemporary. 

Playtime. Jacques Tati's 1967 dystopian, comic look at what he envisioned life would be like a major world cities some 20 years hence. His love-hate with the glass-steel structures of modern architecture was prescient in some ways and way off the mark in others, as he had no sense of the preservation and gentrification movements that would come. The 45-minute scene in which the horribly designed restaurant-night club literally begins falling apart is a great sequence.

Two Lives. An under-appreciated Norwegian spy thriller with a complex plot that isn't just cloak-and-dagger but is about real people and their lives and culture. Almost unique among spy films in that we care about the characters and can actually believe their story.

With nods as well to: Amores Perros, The Intouchables, A Man Escaped, Omar, Pandora's Box, Reprise, La Terra Trema, and Together. 

Coming within the next few days: The Top 5 Documentary Films (I Saw) in 2014.