Dogme? You hardly know me!
◊ I think I could live in a world with only three TV channels as long as they were Bravo, Nickelodeon and the Independent Film Channel. I'd have my queer-happy TV to assuage the inner flamer (Say it with me: "Well, it's a look."), all the SpongeBob I could handle and a small army of offbeat comedies and foreign films. Yay for Dogme and French films! Ooh French films are so sexy and ooh Dogme films so aren't!
What I love about foreign and indie films is the risks they take. There's no big buildup to an obvious Hollywood finish (or outright crappiness like Jersey Girl). The stories have depth and realism, and they draw you into the complex, painful lives of real-feeling characters who invariably die, get their hearts broken, or suffer like true stoics for 20 years and then die.
Example: Two star-crossed lovers destroy their lives and the lives of their families, their friends, their coworkers — hell, of their pets, even — with their doomed love. They're too proud to admit to themselves or anyone else that they are eaten alive with love for each other and they try to bury it in the past for the sake of their children, spouses, careers, communities, whatever. Then finally after years of agony and two hours of film time you've spent riveted to the screen not doing anything else because you might miss one of the subtitles, one of them confronts the other at last. They confess to each other that their souls still vibrate together with a resonance the very stars can hear. And just when you're so sure they're finally about to throw themselves onto the bed and have it out in true uncensored non-American-film-board-approved fashion, they give each other a long look and then one of them goes to the door, half turns around to look at the other, then walks out the door and down the stairs and away down the sidewalk and you can hear the person's footsteps echoing as they just keep on walking away with their hands in the pockets of their jacket for like two minutes with nothing else happening and then the credits start rolling and the music starts playing and you throw your remote at the TV and start screaming "God I hate you Euro bastards! You can't end a movie like that! Haven't you read Shakespeare? Death or wedding! Give me a goddamn DEATH or WEDDING!" and the film you watch right after is about a little kid whose mom dies and then his dog dies and everyone's afraid to tell him so he keeps pestering them to bring his dog back from the kennel and he finally finds out everyone lied to him and then you spend the rest of the day brooding on the couch.