A Nick at a Time

Looks terribly exciting.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Shrek the Third. Spider-Man 3. Harry Potter 5.

Was anyone else underwhelmed by this summer’s film releases?

If you’re like me, you love a good movie. And, if you’re even more like me, rarely is there a new release that excites you enough to plunk down something approaching $10 to see it in a theater, or even $5 to rent. While really good movies do come out, it’s usually too much work to sift through the dull parade of recycled (or even remade) Hollywood thrillers, romantic comedies, and shoot-’em-ups.

For those who feel the same way, I recommend an excursion past the land of the stars and stripes to homes of other, less formulaic cinema.

Yes, foreign films. Many nations around the world have industries churning with movies that offer anything you could be asking for - entertainment, enlightenment, attractive foreign performers. Yet very few people at Penn seek out good foreign films to watch.

A common concern is subtitles. “I’ll watch some movies with subtitles, but for the most part I’m not really interested in reading during the movie,” explains College freshman Raymond Kwok.

But to allow subtitles to deter from enjoying some of the world’s greatest movies is unfortunate. Especially when extensive collections of foreign films are available to us completely for free.

Many students are introduced to foreign films through language study at Penn. The mind of many a German student has been expanded by Run Lola Run. And this is how Wharton senior Jontae McCoy became a fan of Spanish films, though she added, “I hate French films.”

Which brings up another point - each country’s films have a flavor of their own, and you have to explore them yourself to see.

I enjoyed the movies I watched in Korean class so much that I took a whole course last semester on Korean cinema. Some were excellent and some were terrible, but almost all were refreshingly different from what I’ve come to expect out of America. I learned. I laughed. I cried. Seriously.

So, if you don’t have a good reason for not checking out foreign films, I suggest you give them a shot. Between Van Pelt, the many departmental or dorm-based collections at Penn, and places like Video Library, availability is no excuse.

If you’d rather not, there’s always Good Luck Chuck.

A Nick at a Time appears every Tuesday and Thursday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 10:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.