Est.hu is still the best, Google not so much.
Recently I discovered that Google is offering yet another good service – movie listings in Budapest.
Movie listings in a country where you do not fully understand the language is more difficult than you would imagine.
For myself, the first problem is figuring out what the Hungarian title of the film is that you are looking for. ‘Amerikai mesterlövész‘ sounds like it would be a chickflick about an American girl who rides horses — Amerikai = American, mester = master, lövész = horse rider because Lö means horse in Hungarian, oh wait, fuck! That’s Lö, not Ló! gggrr!! O! the frustrations of the Hungarian language and its fucking vowels!!!
At that point you get frustrated and usually give up — and, only later, you might discover after the film had left Budapest’s cinemas that Amerikai mesterlövész was really American Sniper. Not a chickflick, at all.
The second problem is finding a non-english language film with english subtitles. Forget about it! This only rarely occurs, usually it is a bleak human rights themed documentary French film at an international film festival.
The third problem is finding an english language film in english. say what?! Yeah, well, Hungarians love their Hollywood films dubbed. Strangely, this means that the best time to see an english language film in english is immediately after its Budapest release, because these films tend to quickly disappear and leave the dubbed version of the film lingering on in the cinemas for months.
But let’s go back to the beginning. Google now offers movie listings, but this is useless to me. Yes, you can click around and see the listings by cinema and by film title — but not by language or dubbed vs not dubbed.
So, Mr. Google, take my suggestion and change this. Est.hu has been offering this on their website for years.
Est.hu is still the best, Google not so much.