What I've really enjoyed about these films is not necessarily the raw content being presented. Instead, what I've really appreciated is the sort of cultural window they expose. Coming from the US, I won't for a moment pretend to think that motion picture paints an accurate picture of society, but instead, it's really like looking at a culture through a kaleidoscope.

Because of this, it makes it entirely possible for a film to still be enjoyable to the foreign viewer even if it exhibits the same old boring themes, type-casted actors, and pop culture references that are alarmingly obvious to domestic viewers. With the freedom to bounce around from culture to culture, I feel like the artistic value of films keep their novelty. It's true that many elements of film are transcendent of culture, but I've been consistently surprised about certain little things in each foreign film I've seen.

Beyond the cultural exploration, I've also been enjoying the requirement of reading subtitles. It turns an audio-visual experience into something that is somehow literary. It's easy to let the dialog slip by in a film in your native language, but when experiencing a foreign film, reading the subtitles is often a requirement to understand what is going on, and at least for me, reading makes the lines register more strongly than simply hearing them. To some extent, this might be similar to the experience folks had with silent films back in the early days of motion pictures. I think there is something a little deeper to it though, in which you get to hear and see the emotional expressions of an actor, but also need to read their words to tie it all together.

All in all, watching a foreign film every now and again has sort of refreshed my interest in movies. It's a whole lot harder to guess the entire plot based on what actor is in the movie, or who produced the film. Of course, spend enough time viewing any one culture, and you'll pick up on that pretty quick. Luckily, there are a whole lot of different movies out there!