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Even if you didn’t know that director Susanne Bier’s In a Better World had won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, you’d at least be able to tell it was nominated. It’s gorgeously shot, deals with a timely topic in a thoughtful way, and gives you a teary but relatively happy ending.

Police, Adjective is about as low-key a police procedural as you’re ever likely to see. It does have some of the ingredients of the Hollywood Cop Drama–a young, conscientious detective who is defiant against his bureaucratic superiors, scenes of pursuit and concealment, even a taste of the detective’s home [...]

Three stories of individuals in torment. Sins tallied against them, for reasons unfair and for reasons perhaps just. Two of these films are worth seeing while one should be chalked up as an actor’s first-effort directorial stumble.

*The following is a transcript of a conversation between two guys who have just seen the Norwegian fantasy film Troll Hunter. It was obtained via subcutaneous audio implants that were surreptitiously injected into the guys’ necks via movie-studio-hired snipers as the guys were walking out of a theater.*

The French are great at this – Queen to Play is a small, compelling drama centered around the unexpected flowering of a grown woman. Can anyone remember the last American movie to do it? I suppose one might say Julie and Julia, but to me that was forced and cloying in [...]

Want something with subtitles? We’ve got twenty new films for you to choose from, check out the synopses below:

It’s been an amazingly fruitful month for Foreign Film releases, with more than 30 new movies on our shelves in the last thirty days – sift through the synopses below, you’ll find plenty of great options to choose from!

The Concert, at least initially, is a goofy farce with a moderately ridiculous premise. A janitor working at the Bolshoi in Moscow, who himself was once its celebrated–and politically discredited–conductor (Alexeï Guskov), intercepts a fax from Paris inviting the orchestra to fill in for the L.A. Philharmonic, which has canceled. He [...]

There was not a single thing about Biutiful that was a deal breaker for me. The director, Alejandro Iñárritu, has composed for Javier Bardem a melodic dirge in the form of a film, and Bardem digs deep and finds in his core an aching sorrow that he transmits in his face, body, and tone. Iñárritu [...]

Whether it be from France or Italy, the UK or Australia, we have a lot to recommend out of last month’s new foreign film releases:

France/Belgium:

La belle personne (2008) – Beautiful 16-year-old Junie attends a new school only to find herself in love with her charming Italian teacher while also pursued by a fellow student. [...]