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Jean-Pierre Melville is one of the most slept on directors of all time. A little too old to ride the crest of the French New Wave, Melville was respected by Godard, Truffaut and the rest but never caught the attention of the international film community like those who followed him did. Melville's crime tales are directed perfectly straight forward without the hipness that permeated the French New Wave . His protagonist of choice Alain Delon had the ability to portray either cop or crook and the audience would always side with him. "The Red Circle," is one of Melville's best collaborations with Delon--not as good as "Le Samourai" (1967) but superior to "Un Flic" (1971). Nowadays cats tend to say "they don't make movies like that anymore" but "they" weren't making films like Melville during his time--over thirty years ago. Don't sleep on Melville, he's the real deal. To put it simply, Melville was and still is the man.

Imamura Shohei has come in to his prime at a point when most directors of his age begin their downward spiral. Along with his completely different although equally impressive film, "Unagi (the eel)" (1997) Imamura has made two of the greatest films of the 1990s. This particular entry into the Imamura canon deals with a Kyushu doctor during WWII. Of course, the film goes way beyond just that; it's a film that cannot be summed up in words, it's the kind of movie that you sit back and enjoy and you come out of smiling, for you've been entertained in a way most films cannot. "Kanzo Sensei" affects like a truly satisfying book does, something most films cannot come close to copying. If you dig it, rent "the eel" and look out for his next work coming soon to a theatre far from you and me--Japan. Let's hope his next one is as good as his last two, and that it is released in theatrically in the US. Highly recommended.

Check this one out. I hate Peter Bogdanovich films with a passion. His films generally bore me to death or annoy me to the point of immense anger. However, in the late 1970s he put out a splendid character study of an American Pimp in Singapore. It's a great movie, incredibly slow-paced, well-acted with great camera-work, great location filming, and a meaningless cameo by the director himself. Ben Gazzara makes this picture, without him as the title character, Jack Flowers, the film is nothing. Gazzara's performance rings true in the end and that is what makes or breaks this film. If you're at all familiar with the Coen Brothers' classic "the Big Lebowski" (1998), it's interesting to compare Jack Flowers the Pimp to Jackie Treehorn the Pornography-Tycoon; in both roles Gazzara gives his all except he's twenty years younger in "Saint Jack" and twenty years older in "the Big Lebowski"--but in both he will remain timeless in his coolness. George Lazenby, James Bond of the well-done but poorly acted "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969), has a small cameo as a US senator with homosexual tendencies.