Top Five Films That I Desperately Want to See (But which aren�t Available on DVD in the US)

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I hate to try my hand at the Cracked-style N Somethings that Something, but I�ve long sought an opportunity to discuss these movies that I haven�t seen.  These are the five movies that I most want to see, but which aren�t available here because the distribution system is run by philistines and also because of the DVD region coding system, which exists for the sole purpose of allowing large multinational corporations to engage in price-fixing.  Anywho, without further ado, here are the films in question:

5. Visage, (2009).  This is Tsai Ming-liang�s first movie set entirely outside of the Sinosphere.  Set in France, it stars Tsai regular Lee Kang-sheng, as well as a constellation of big-name French actors, including: Jean-Pierre L�aud, Jeanne Moreau, and Mathieu Amalric.  I have no idea what it�s about, and I�ve heard that the critical response has been decidedly mixed, but I�ve seen all of Tsai�s films prior to this one, and I think he�s one of the best filmmakers working today.

4. Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbors (2011). Directed by Rirkrit Tiravanija, this film certainly lookslike another Thai New Wave masterpiece, featuring the same engagement with the rhythms of nature and rural life that one finds in the more internationally well-known works of Tiravanija�s compatriot, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, although Lung Neaw looks to be more grounded in realism and naturalism than Apichatpong�s more fantastical outings, like Tropical Malady (2004) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives(2009).

3. A Brighter Summer Day (1991).  The late Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang is best known in the U.S. for his 2000 film Yi Yi, which appeared near the top of many critics� best-of-the-decade lists at the end of 2010.  It is therefore deeply perplexing that, despite the widespread popularity of Yi Yi, none of his other films have been released on Region 1 DVD.  This shocking oversight includes his 1991 epic A Brighter Summer Day, which launched the career of Chang Chen and features over a hundred actors in a complex story of murder, adolescence, and deracination.  Or, again, so I�ve heard.  Because I haven�t gotten to see it yet.

2. Taurus (2001).  The second film in Aleksandr Sokurov�s quartet on the subject of power, Taurus presents a typically atmospheric and �Sokurovian� depiction of scenes from the life of Vladimir Lenin.  The first movie in the trilogy, Moloch (1999), presented a few days in the life of Adolf Hitler at his Berchtesgaden retreat, and The Sun(2004) presented a portrait of Hirohito in the last days of WWII and the first days of the American occupation of Japan.  The fourth film, which might as well be on this list, is an adaptation of Faust, and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2011.  Now, although Moloch and The Sun are morally troubling films (Sokurov seems to absolve Hitler of knowledge of Auschwitz in Moloch, and he follows the standard narrative of Hirohito as passive figurehead in The Sun, despite recent historical work which would suggest that he was far more complicit in the crimes of Japan�s military), Sokurov is one of the most intelligent and original filmmakers in the world (he is like Tsai in this respect), and I badly want to see the others films in this series.

1. Chung Kuo, Cina (1972).  In 1972, the same year Nixon went to China, and with the Cultural Revolution still ongoing, the great Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni was invited to China to make a documentary about conditions in Mao�s communist state.  The resulting film was three and a half hours long, and apparently pissed off Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing terribly.  I have no idea what�s in the film, or how it was received internationally, but I can�t imagine it�s anything but fantastic.  Although Antonioni was past his prime at this point (his prime, for the record, being the one-two-three punch of La Notte, L�eclisse, and Red Desert in the early 60�s (I am leaving L�avventura out of the �prime� deliberately because it is profoundly boring)), the political chaos and social anomie of the Cultural Revolution must surely have presented the Italian master with ample material for his documentary, which I assume(again, having not yet seen this movie), captures the zeitgeist of Maoist China must as Red Desert captured the zeitgeist of Italy during the economic miracle.

Readers are encouraged to comment on (a) other films that belong on this list and (b) legal means of viewing these movies in the U.S., if you are aware of any (and bearing in mind that I don�t want to spring for / deal with a multi-region DVD player).  I would be terribly grateful to you for help on this score.