The scale of both Reds and Black Hawk Down is very impressive and I love the characters in both. I think Reds is my favorite performance by Beatty.
And yeah, I just seem to connect more with recent films. A lot of these are from when I started getting into film, but even then, I'll watch an older film that is acclaimed and really appreciate the craft and even my emotional response will be one of admiration, but I sometimes just don't connect with them on the same level as I do something like Magnolia or American Beauty. Then an occasional film from the 40s or 30s comes along in my queue that I'm just smitten with like Children of Paradise or It Happened One Night.
As for non-English films. That is just a category I need to keep working on.