Great Films from Europe

Fantastic atmosphere-audrey Tautou speek with her eyes.
Most ecxellant sample of europian film in new millenioum

So finally, the city that has inspired so much love gets an omnidus movie that speeks about family, race, religion, crime, love, death, even angels and vampires -- all can be found in this ultimately intertwining narrative. That means this film offers something for every one and provides a different look at the City of Lights a city that never sleep!!! There?s something magical about the small things to be discovered in this big city. So many people so many stories in such a small space, something unexpected and joyful is bound to cross your path one day. All these things makes this movie such a breath of fresh air an European air. Paris Je T'aime is a great cinematographic experience. Is a collection of short films set in Paris and directed by such goods directors as the Coen Brothers, Gus Van Sant, Gurinder Chadha, Wes Craven, Walter Salles, Alexander Payne and Olivier Assayas. Also the all-star ensemble cast includes international stars such as Natalie Portman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Fanny Ardant, Elijah Wood, Nick Nolte, Bob Hoskins, Juliette Binoche, Emily Mortimer, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Rufus Sewell, Barbet Schroeder, Ludivine Sagnier, Gena Rowlands, Miranda Richardson and Steve Buscemi. Each of the 18 short film shows Paris in a different light, but all the vignettes aim to celebrate the most famous and cosmopolitan city in France. Each director tells the story of an unusual encounter in one of the city's neighborhoods, portraying aspects of the city rarely seen in feature films. Racial tensions stand next to paranoid visions of the city seen from the perspective of an American tourist. A young foreign worker moves from her own domestic situation into her employer's bourgeois environs. An American starlet finds escape as she is shooting a movie. A man is torn between his wife and his lover. A young man working in a print shop sees and desires another young man. A father grapples with his complex relationship with his daughter. A couple tries to add spice to their sex life. Best moments in this movie for me: the story directed by South African writer-director Oliver SchmitzA "Nigerian man (Seydou Boro), dying from a stab wound in the Place des fêtes asks a woman paramedic
(Aïssa Maïga) for a cup of coffee. It is then revealed that he had fallen in love at first sight with her some time previously" and also the story directed by German writer-director Tom Tykwer. After mistakenly believing that his girlfriend, a struggling actress (Natalie Portman), has broken up with him, a young blind man (Melchior Beslon) reflects on the growth and seeming decline of their relationship. The result is that after two hours one gets the sense of having seen a panorama of human experience, of having witnessed a moment of time in all its true fullness. A memorable movie experience like no other. (Thank you Logan for this movie).

Babette's Feast (Danish: Babettes gæstebud) is a 1987 Danish film directed by Gabriel Axel . The film's screenplay was written by Gabriel Axel based on the story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), who also wrote the story which inspired the 1985 Academy Award winning film Out of Africa. Produced by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen, and Benni Korzen with funding from the Danish Film Institute, Babette's Feast was the first Danish cinema film of a Blixen story. It was also the first Danish film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.
This movie is one of my "little diamonds" a realy great film of european cimena. The ingredients are marvellous locations, crisp photography, and an excellent cast. It's a tale of self-sacrifice, thwarted ambitions, and lost love, but sheer sensuous joy suffuses the screen when Babette performs her own special miracle for one last supper. Axel, too, is surely an alchemist; compared to most literary adaptations, this is the word made flesh.
Babette's feast talking about human needs. Needs of the flesh and the needs of the spirit and also talknig about choices, talent, gratitude, friendship, grace, and hope. It?s sensitive, funny, hopeful, and ultimately joyous. This film speaks lovingly to all six of your senses.

Recomment by Caltiki - Great period of time - Europian film

I can't wait to see it one more European film...

Wow I love this movie, I love the red hair girl that run and run like dancer, I loved the music I loved everything. It's too good a movie to be true. It has everything - a great story, two amazing and believable characters, an adventure, a mystery about time. And it is really fast. There isn?t moment with no action. From the start and the lightning-speed exposition to the quirky final credits, this movie grabs you by the throat and some how runs with it. The story is simple Lola (played by the wonderful Franka Potente) is in trouble. If she can't come up with 100,000 marks, her boyfriend Manni will die. But the worst is that she has only twenty minutes to come up with the money. Lola's race to save her lover is repeated three times with minor variations that lead to widely different endings. "Run Lola Run" is set in a brightly-collared fairy-tale world in which the elements of the story can be rearranged and connected at will. Direction plays with nuns, bums, guns, crooks, bankers, ambulances, and policemen is pure delight - it's as if we were granted a glance at the creative process itself, three different drafts of the same story, revised and rearranged until the final version satisfies. And the soundtrack, an integral part of Lola's full speed flight through the city, should be on everybody's dance list. But above all it's the story. So simple that you can sum up in one sentence then you know that you have a great one: "Lola has twenty minutes to come up with 100,000 marks and run through the city to rescue her true love." And she does it, and then she does it again, and then she does it again. Lola is amazing.

During World War 2, a pair of friends in the Serb resistance hide in an intricate cellar. Years later, the war is over but the lies and deceptions continue.A surreal, absurd mix of politics, sex, fantasty, black comedy.
So passionate, so exciting and so very odd at times. One of the great moviegoing experiences a work of staggering sadness and vitality but also and comic invention. Original music by composer Goran Bregovic, who incorporates a collage of Eastern European sounds and traditions in an explosive, manic triumph. Winner of the award for Best Film at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival!!!

Veronica and Boris are walking in the streets of Moscow and they love each other. Veronica is laughing, cause they are happy together this morning. They see some cranes in the sky, stay and look at them... enjoing the moment and they talk about a rendezvous at the bank of the river. But destiny sometimes is cruel and the 2nd World War begins in Moscow. Boris hasn't got time to speak with Veronica. He has to go to the war and they do not have the chance to say goodbye to each other!!! However, Veronika does not forget Boris, and keeps waiting for him ...What a tragic compination War - Love... I realy fell entranced by the beaty of this movie. Like most great films, is at its heart a love story but not only. Two scenes are still remaning in my mind and I can't forget them!!! A death of a young soldier, an endless moment into a swirling visualization of his last thoughts and spinning trees above with a desperate race up a flight of stairs. In the other Mark confesses his love for Veronika in the midst of a massive air raid, with Verokina's repeatedly slapping his face and screaming "Nyet!" rhythmically syncopated with the dropping of the bombs. That she would turn around in the very next scene and marry him is a bit hard to swallow. Beatiful performance by Samoilova. Her face grounds the story as she reacts to a diatribe against faithless women, and as she falls into despair over whether Boris will ever return. Though Kalatozov goes to the battleground for one key segment of the film, his interest lies mostly with those left behind and damaged by war indirectly. The emotional force of Samoilova?s acting makes that pain as real as a gunshot. The Cranes Are Flying ranks among the best war movies ever made.

The story of this film begins at dawn over a stunning Aegean sea, introducing a mythic note that will underlie the entire film. When the Coast Guard confiscates the tub, Elias (Scamarcio) is one of the brave lads who jumps (jump to freedom) into the dark waters and swims ashore. He awakens on the beach which is part of the luxurious Hotel Eden. Mistaken for a hotel employee, he mutely wanders around, fighting off the sexual attentions of the hotel manager, until a lonely lady from Hamburg (Juliane Kohler) takes him into her bed. Though it sounds like farce, this is is all played straight to show the decadent West assaulting the shocked innocent. Because of the police Elias leaves this artificial Western paradise and strikes out for a mythical Paris, where he hopes to find a stage magician who has befriended him. On the road to his paradise, he passes through some very interesting advendures..
Director Costas Gavras has always been strong on social commitment and he is responsible for some of the most revered and influential films in the history of modern political cinema He was directed memorable films like "Z" (foreign language Oscar), "Missing" (Cannes Palme d'Or) and "Music Box" (Berlin Golden Bear). I think it's not surprising he would choose to explore Europe's currently gigantic socio-political problem, though at this point the immigrant genre is so overworked in European cinema it should probably be banned for the next five years. It's an episodic film, a journey, not of an individual, but of all those people who, as the director comments ?have to leave in order to survive.It is like a number of Costa-Gavras?s films in that it concentrates on a human rights/social justice issue, not so much on characters, plot or aesthetic. And as someone who identifies as a ?cultural and economic immigrant,? Gavras has inside knowledge of this experience. Also in this film Gavras is eager to flex the funny bone he showed in Mad City and The Ax, delivering the brightest, most-entertaining film of his illustrious career.