One of the great joys in watching most anything produced by The Cannon Group is recognizing and appreciating how delightfully antiquated these films appear. The disproportionate action, the garish costuming and colors, the chintzy special effects, the music: it’s all ...
Read More »The Cannon Canon: ‘Bloodsport’ (1988)
Bloodsport is based on the life and livelihood of Frank Dux, a source of gradually diminishing credibility. He was, as he tells it, an undefeated martial arts champion and the essential catalyst for a wide-spread 1980s interest in ninjutsu. While ...
Read More »Movie of the Weak: Trilogy of Terror (1975)
To begin with, Karen Black didn’t even want to appear in Trilogy of Terror. To hear her tell the story, it took an all-night coaxing session by her agent, as well as the promise that her then-husband Robert Burton would ...
Read More »Bronson Gets One More Shot: ‘Death Kiss’ (2018)
Forget that Charles Bronson passed away in 2003. And disregard the negativity that greeted Eli Roth’s 2018 Death Wish remake since trailer one. Rene Perez, writer/director of the recently released throwback Death Kiss (2018), clearly didn’t get the memo. Either one ...
Read More »An American Tragedy: ‘Country’ (1984)
Rural America has been politicized and pigeonholed for decades, exploited by deceitful candidates of all partisan persuasions, stereotyped by a pervasive popular culture, and frequently represented in the most superficial fashion by an often-patronizing mass media. If not literally realized, ...
Read More »The Great Return: ‘The Coolest Guy Movie Ever’
To the extent that they are necessarily divergent, the worlds of film fandom and film history overlap to equally avid ends with Christophe Espenan’s 2018 documentary, The Coolest Guy Movie Ever, a 58-minute look back at the 1963 John Sturges ...
Read More »Man and Machine: On Steve McQueen and ‘Bullitt’ (1968)
Under the banner of Solar Productions, Bullitt was the first film Steve McQueen made with producing partner Robert E. Relyea. As their prospective director, McQueen had his sights set on Peter Yates, having recently seen the Englishman’s 1967 UK feature ...
Read More »The Cannon Canon: ‘The Delta Force’ (1986) [Film Review]
The Delta Force is everything that was great and maddening about Golan-Globus Productions and because of that it’s perhaps The Cannon Group’s defining feature. This 1986 Chuck Norris-led property takes a ripped-from-the-headlines impetus and engorges the facts with a vigorous ...
Read More »The Cannon Canon: Runaway Train (1985)
But wait, it has regularly been advised, this one is actually good. It’s true, Runaway Train (1985) is the Cannon Group production most often cited as a genuinely excellent movie, not a cult hit, not a niche genre oddity, not an ...
Read More »Kino Lorber rounds-up two Republic Westerns: ‘Trigger, Jr.’ and ‘Singing Guns’
There’s nothing the least bit ambiguous about Trigger, Jr., a 1950 Western starring the legendary cowboy crooner Roy Rogers. Released by Republic Pictures, this musical matinee is a swift, 68-minute jaunt through the lighter side of the wild west, where ...
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