Hey....

I used to do articles and criticism for my friends online mag...I used to have the same disgust with american films, too...lately, though, I've seen a lot of great films coming mostly from american film-makers.  I mean, in the past couple years, we've seen from these shores the release of "Happiness", "Rushmore", "Fight Club", "Cider House Rules" (OK, Lasse Hallstrom is from Norway, but his last 4 films have been made here), "Chasing Amy", "The Matrix", and "Magnolia" (My pick for the best film of the last decade).

At the same time, these films wouldn't have been possible without the great foreign films of the past couple decades....I usually tend to stick in geographical areas, so here are some ideas

The French New Wave-duh!

The New German Cinema-usually what the films of Fassbinder, Wenders, and (the always under-rated) Herzog are called.

Hong Kong-yeah, everybody knows Jackie Chan and John Woo, but there are other greats like Yuen Woo Ping, Ringo Lam (whose "City On Fire" was reworked for American Audiences as a little known film called "Reservoir Dogs"), Ching Siu Tung, Ronny Yu, and many others who are, undeservedly, ignored or not given enough credit.

Toho-Japanese studio that gave rise to Kurosawa, but also gave careers to Inoshiro Honda (man who created "Godzilla") and Seijun Suzuki (one of the most bleakly hilarious directors since Samuel Fuller)

The Italians-yeah, there's always Antonioni, and Fellini, but it'd be really easy to make a "family tree" of sort of great directors that stem from Sergio Leone (Sergio worked with Clint Eastwood, wrote the script for "Once Upon A Time In The West" with Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertollucci, who was also involved in a literary circle with Passolini, who also hung out with Rossellini...etc etc etc)

Canada-now here's a country that actually helps finance films coming out of their country....and look at the filmmakers who've worked with the system....Atom Egoyan, David Cronenburg, Denys Arcand....

Australia/New Zealand-Doctor George Miller, Gillian Armstrong, and Peter Weir are all Australian...Peter Jackson and Jane Campion are both from New Zealand....hmmmm....

hope this helps you out.
