I learned of Jean-Pierre Melville's super-cool, ultra-controlled gangster movie Le Samouraï from John Woo. In my defense, it was the '90s, I was young, and Woo's highly stylized films A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled had me reading every possible interview with the director. It was probably in the pages of Asian Trash Cinema where…
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If you haven't seen the key films by Jean-Pierre Melville, now is a great time to change that. Movies like Bob le Flambeur, Le Samourai, Army of Shadows and Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle) have inspired many notable filmmakers and are, simply, magnificent cinematic experiences. Remarkably, most of his major films have escaped being…
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Jean-Pierre Melville's film Le Cercle Rouge (aka The Red Circle) has been possible remake fodder for years. John Woo had his eye on it at one time (he's long been a Melville devotee) and over the last couple of years it looked like Johnnie To was going to direct his own version. (Which was an…
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