Don’t let them scare you — many foreign films worth the read

Great movies are good in any language.

So kindly spare us the carping about subtitles. How lazy can you get? Did audiences whine about it during the silent film era?

Unless your vision is poor and the lettering at the bottom of your theater or TV screen in illegible, there's no legitimate excuse to reject seeing nondubbed foreign language films. It's pure chauvinism. And it doesn't say much for a filmgoer's curiosity about other lands and cultures that he or she would refuse to watch a terrific movie just because it's not in English.

It's hard to name a country that hasn't produced at least one (and generally many more) film classics. Spain, Germany and Mexico have been especially fertile in recent years, but every continent has had its share of gems.

"The Lives of Others" and "Nowhere in Africa" from Germany, "Talk to Her" and "All About My Mother" from Spain, "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Amores Perros" from Mexico, "City of God" from Brazil, "The Motorcycle Diaries" from Argentina, "Burnt By the Sun" from Russia, plus the yearly cascades of fine work from the rest of Europe and from Asia. The list goes on.

Do yourself a favor. Take the time to have your own personal foreign film festival (it could run for years). Ready to be rented or bought is a trove of treasures.

Here's a list, just for starters: "Metropolis" and "Das Boot" (Germany), "La Dolce Vita" and "The Bicycle Thief" (Italy), "Battleship Potemkin" (Russia), "Fanny and Alexander" and "Faithless" (Sweden), "Rashomon" and "Yojimbo" (Japan), "The 400 Blows" and "Children of Paradise" (France), "Closely Watched Trains" (Czechoslovakia), "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" (Taiwan), "Babette's

Feast" (Denmark), "Farewell My Concubine" and "Hero" (China), "Fateless" (Hungary), "Moolaade" (Senegal) and "Water" (India).

Again, this is nothing like an exhaustive list, just a cherry-picked handful. Go. Seek. Be impressed.

Throwback Matt

Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons," promises the long-awaited feature film version of his popular cartoon series will be deliberately "imperfect," which is to say it will showcase the virtues of traditional animation techniques.

Opening Friday, "The Simpsons Movie" is "a tribute to the art of hand-drawn animation, which is basically disappearing," he told the BBC recently. "All the animated movies these days are computer generated," he said, underscoring that his film has been brought to life, "the old-fashioned, clumsy, 'erase it if you don't do it right' way.

"It's not a CGI movie with a thousand perfect penguins dancing in unison," a not-so-veiled dig at the Oscar-winning "Happy Feet."

What else is new?

Contract negotiations between the Writers Guild of America, representing feature film and television scribes, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (their employers), are underway. And it took only minutes for the usual rancor to surface, accompanied by all-too-familiar recriminations. Both sides insist the other's demands are "unfair, unrealistic and out of touch."

Writers, who fret they are losing money as new technologies change the way Hollywood makes products (and profits), say they still are not getting their fair share of the pie. Studios, it must be said, whose accountants often find arcane ways of showing that even megaprofit blockbusters in fact "made no money," claim the WGA demands would impose "unreasonable costs and Draconian restrictions."

The guild, whose new leaders are more militant than in the past, retorts that "the conglomerates always try to paint us as unreasonable and bellicose. Our proposals simply try to ensure that writers keep up with the industry's growth."

While it is true that the most prominent screenwriters are paid much better than in decades past, writers as a group want the old formulas revamped to reflect current realities of the marketplace. Producers, who think nothing of paying tens of millions to stars of questionable worth (but are happy to stiff the rank and file), are digging in their heels. Sound familiar?

The WGA contract expires in November of this year. The Screen Actors Guild expires in June 2008. There are the usual predictions of crippling strikes if accords are not reached.

Sigh.

Woo-ing us back

"All the Invisible Children" (2005), co-directed with Ridley Scott, helped get Hong Kong action filmmaker John Woo back in discerning audiences good graces after a pair of colossal flops — artistic and box office — in "Paycheck" (2003) and "Windtalkers" (2002).

In fact, Woo hardly has lived up to his genius reputation in his U.S. films, debuting with the clunky, preposterous "Broken Arrow" (1996) and following with the solid if overlong "Face/Off "(1997). Then came the so-so "Mission: Impossible 2" (2000). Hardly earth-shattering stuff.

Our advice: Go back and check out his more fertile periods, when he was rewriting the action film how-to book. Which you can do courtesy of new two-disc DVD set from Dragon Dynasty (distributed by the Weinstein Company and Genius Products).

The first film in the package, "Hard Boiled" (1992), is Woo's follow-up to "The Killer" (both starring Chow Yun-Fat of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" fame). A crackerjack gun-nut's actioner — with three-dimensional characters — that will keep your pulse throbbing, its violence is so expertly choreographed that you almost forget how excessive it is. Particularly memorable are the opening tea-house bust, a kinetic warehouse set-to, and the climactic 30-minute long showdown. Co-starring is the formidable Tony Leung ("Hero").

The sword fight epic "Last Hurrah For Chivalry" (1978), "Hard Boiled's" companion piece, is young Woo, notable for its complex characterization as much as its action. It was precisely this quality that set Woo's films apart until his emergence in the States. The latter movie stars Fung Hak-On and Lee Hoi-San.

Accompanied by the customary featurettes, the DVD set debuted Tuesday. For more info, check out www.geniusproducts.com.

Bits and Pieces

The new French version of "Lady Chatterley" already has captured five Cesars, the French Oscar, including best picture and best actress for its star, Marina Hands. Early reviews suggest it is the best adaptation yet of the celebrated D.H. Lawrence novel about the forbidden love. ... Sad to report that, to date, only three women have been nominated for the best director Oscar: Lina Wertmuller (''Seven Beauties"), Jane Campion (''The Piano") and Sofia Coppola (''Lost in Translation"). None has won, though Coppola did take home the Academy Award for her screenplay. ... Indy film darling Parker Posey, also currently on view in "Fay Grim," sets her customarily offbeat demeanor aside for "Broken English," a small and rather unremarkable film from debut writer-director Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of actor and indy film pioneer John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands. Parker stars as Nora Wilder, an attractive 30-something Manhattan hotel guest-services director who can't find an appropriate guy. Rowlands give her kid a hand by appearing in the film, as do veterans Peter Bogdanovich, Roy Thinnes and Dana Ivey.