MARCO C
this documentary is amazing, full of amazing movies.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
03/14/21
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Audience Member
In many ways more accomplished and better crafted than the bevy of schlock under discussion, this enthusiastic documentary both celebrates the "it's more important to just get it done than to get it done well" attitude of the Go Go Boys and their ilk without ignoring their ignoble practices.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/30/23
Full Review
sean l
Even if you don't think you know Cannon Films, you know Cannon Films. They're the low-budget, rapid-fire movie studio who filled out countless VHS rental shelves throughout the 1980s. Under their banner, Chuck Norris became the king of the B action movie. Charles Bronson blasted his way through three Death Wish sequels. Jean-Claude Van Damme fell into overnight stardom.
The studio specialized in schlock, there's no two ways about it. Schlock and imaginative, bold, blunt promotional artwork with only a loose connection to the movie itself. Yet, because they were so anxious to flood the market, Cannon was also something of an artistic paradise. So long as a director came in under budget and on time, they'd usually have carte-blanche. Naturally, this led to some wild swings and misses (like 1980's The Apple, a self-professed science fiction / comedy / musical that defies explanation), but that freedom also bore fruit that wouldn't have otherwise existed (see 1984's open-hearted urban snapshot Breakin'). It's an interesting paradox, and a tempting what-if story, considering the studio's ultimate demise after a ruinous series of big budget mainstream efforts. Remember Superman IV or Masters of the Universe? These guys still wish they could forget.
A fun target for a documentary, with a surprising cache of familiar names hanging around to reminisce about the murkier portions of their respective filmographies, but it feels incomplete without either of the head honchos present to share the serious dirt. They, of course, caught wind of the film's pending release and raced to create their own, competing, retrospective.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
lots of information on a film company I was not familiar with, but i had watched several of their films. Its an interesting documentary, but does drag on after a while.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A look behid the rise and fall of the fairly legendary Cannon Films label, this is loaded with great stories and trivia about the company and its biggest stars. If you were an action movie fan in the '80s, this is highly recommended.
Give that mother a day in court!
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
Full Review
lariste l
Sorry, I just couldn't fully get behind this film; Canon group littered video stores of the 80's with bad taste action, horror and camp teen-comedy B-movies, a few of them will stand the test of misty nostalgia (if you were fourteen when you saw American Ninja, or Barbarian, or whatever) but the films are mostly garbage. This documentary's third act gets all sentimental about Canon's rise and demise but, honestly, the only thing the producers were interested in was money; they raised enough money to run overseas distribution, invest in cinema chains and also obtain the rights to a classic film library, but then it all collapsed because, like the bad filmmakers they were, they made the classic bad business decision of over-investing, over-expanding and over-predicting how well their (terrible, embarrassing, sexist, cheap looking) movies were going to do at the box office. It DOES stand to reason that Canon are sometimes hilarious, and their one surprise mega-hit of a one million dollar budget earned about 74 million worldwide. This is unusual, and is a success story, but then the film was also nasty, derivative, mindless and probably more sexist than most other video releases of it's year. Why the interviewees claim at the film's end that the Canon legacy is important is unclear; they paved the way for lowest-common denominator interests over intelligence and substance, and of course pre-sales, a concept that means a film will usually be generic in type, but the rights to distribute a movie are sold before it's actually made. Typically Menahem Golan would make up strings of improbable rubbish at meetings to try and please anyone anywhere that would finance a picture, based on the evidence of a gaudy poster and the "star quality" of people like Chuck Norris, or Michael Dudikoff. Time wastey.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
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