A few weeks ago, shortly after that Online Bestest 100 Movies flap, Ed Copeland invited me and a crew of other critics and bloggers (you can see the full list of participants here) to nominate titles for a Top 25 Foreign Language Films list. The rules were much debated behind the scenes, but in the end it was decided that silent films were off the table (no spoken language to speak of), as were films released within the past five years.

I tend to gravitate towards the lesser-loved films by well-known directors (ie: Happy Together instead of In the Mood For Love; Even Dwarfs Started Small instead of Aguirre Wrath of God), so only 11 films from my list of 25 nominees made the final cut. They are: Pierrot Le Fou, The Rules of the Game, The Conformist, Suspiria, Red Desert, The Blue Angel, L’Eclisse, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Au Hasard Balthazar, and The Bicycle Thief. More thoughts after the jump.

Over all, I think the nominees list is very strong. There really isn’t a film on it that blatantly doesn’t belong, with the exception of what seem like token nods to the past twenty years, like Cinema Paradiso and Run Lola Run (and Amelie, but I understand why a lot of people enjoy that one, even if it does set off my own twee allergy).

I always have mixed feelings about en masse listmaking, but one of the things that drew me into the fold in this case was the fact that Copeland encouraged us to be transparent about which films on the nominees list we haven’t seen. This way, the activity actually motivates us to watch more films, and perhaps find new favorites.

I actually haven’t seen what I consider to be an embarrassingly large number of films on the nominations list, so I decided that since I theoretically have 14 slots left on my next ballot, I’ll list just 14 films that I haven’t seen, but would like to:

Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais)
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
Cleo From 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda)
The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog)
The Leopard (Luchino Visconti)
Playtime (Jacques Tati)
Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmuller)
Tokyo Story (Yasujiru Ozu)
The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman)
Satantango (Bela Tarr)

I’ll do my best to make a dent in these before ballots are due on September 16, although with Telluride and Toronto coming up, it will be a challenge. I’ll do a write-up of each on here at SpoutBlog as I check it off the list. In the meantime, David Hudson has a roundup of assorted, associated commentary.