These were bad ideas on a regular basis.

Electric Boogaloo:

The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

(2014)

Mark Hartley’s history of the studio that exemplified ropey straight-to-video (or should have been straight-to-video) ‘80s movies is an embarrassment of rich anecdotes of excess and cheapness. So much so, it would have been very easy to take a detour and focus entirely on one particular disaster. Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films recounts the litany of terrible business and creative decisions that fuelled Cannon Films’ unlikely period of boom (and then bust), and Hartley revels in the studio’s complete lack of aesthetic and narrative competence.

As such, it’s a celebration more than it is an evisceration, jubilant at the sheer tat Cannon turned out week after week (in some cases; when junk bond king Michael Milkin raised $300m they were churning out a ridiculous 40 films a year). Which isn’t to say Menaham Golan (the “dreamer”) and his brother Yoram (the “shrewd business person”), who bought the studio in 1979, the former having earned the title “the father of Israeli cinema”, never put Cannon’s name to anything halfway decent or even good, but that the good was inevitably tarnished by the Cannon name. There was the occasional John Cassavetes film. Or lesser Goddard. Against the grain, Franco Zeffirelli, who made Othello with the brothers, loved the collaboration. And I’m not sure it’s wholly true that Runaway Train would be regarded as a classic if it had been released by another studio; it’s pretty much regarded as a classic anyway.

It’s evident how shunned the brothers were in Hollywood, though, a due who expounded “Cinema is our life” and would go to a movie if they had four hours free but were incompetent at making good ones. The distribution deal with MGM is met with bafflement (it didn’t last) and the flop (there were a lot of flops) Sahara is referred to as an “intersection of ideas that should never meet each other”; they failed to operate according to the Hollywood rules (a black tie opening for a Chuck Norris film!), and were awarded dismissive epithets suggesting an anti-immigrant bias (including the “Bad News Jews”).

But Hollywood respects the dollar most, and they were never able to show any kind of consistent business sense other than hopelessness. Stephen Tolkin notes they loved cinema in the abstract; there was no concept of struggling through the pain of repeated drafts to finesse a script, added to which their modus operandi was “bad ideas on a regular basis”, spit-balling posters for movies that were never made, and those that were were based on crazy ideas that somehow mustered pre-sales. They owned 40% of the British cinema market at one point (including Thorn EMI, Elstree, Pathe and ABC) but failed to capitalise on it.

Electric Boogaloo is probably the best way to witness the majority of their output, in bite-size chunks rather than enduring entire movies. There’s Menaham’s The Apple, his disastrous attempt to fashion a Ken Russell musical, the hitching of their cart to Sylvia Kristel (Mata Hari) who was in a state of some disrepair, their successful collaborations with Charles Bronson (one of Cannon’s two chucks, with Norris) and Sir Michael Winner, through reviving the Death Wish franchise (Alex Winter, who appeared in Death Wish III, provides amusing anecdotes throughout, and refers to Winner as the “perfect Cannon director”, one who put making money above any propriety in working practices, with comments from Marina Sirtis underlining Sir Michael’s generally deplorable approach; presumably Cannon had to makee sure the catering was good). Particularly amusing is a response to Death Wish II; “It is obviously very much on Mr Winner’s mind to be sodomised. I hope it happens to him soon”. Winner also provided them with The Wicked Lady, as insalubrious as his Bronson bouts.

Then there is Enter the Ninja (with a dubbed Franco Nero) and Revenge of the Ninja (“Only a ninja can stop a ninja”), rare hit Breakin’ and the disastrous sequel that lends the doc its title, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (Menahem, once something was a success, summarily proved he hadn’t a clue as to how or why), Bo Derek in Bolero, Missing in Action and the Chuck Norris ‘80s legacy, Michael Dudikoff and American Ninja, the horror that is Going Bananas, the rise of Van Damme and Alan Quatermain. The latter is one where a devoted doc might be highly rewarding, with Richard Chamberlain telling how Sharon Stone was hated on set and the reveal that she was only cast because Menaham wanted that Stone woman (Romancing the… Stone woman).

The big spend era of the mid-‘80s provides some of the most interesting material, perhaps partly because I’m more familiar with Cannon product at this point, but definitely because the examples of profligacy are all the more ludicrous. There’s the relationship with Tobe Hooper, which yielded three pictures (Lifeforce, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Invaders from Mars), only one of which the Golans liked (Lifeforce) and all of which bombed. There’s the “star fuckers” reputation, whereby they secured Stallone for arm wrestling disaster Over the Top; it cost $25m and made little more than half that (to be fair, the previous Stallone picture with them, Cobra, is appalling but made a lot of money).

1986 is given as the beginning of the end for the studio, with Menahem Golan cited as asking why they only owed $6m, he wanted to owe $100m; they made a loss of $90m in ‘85-’86, so he was heading in the right direction. They made Superman IV for $17m, but its budget was supposed to be $30m; the results spoke for themselves (although you’d think it cost more like $5m to look at it). Then there was Masters of the Universe at $22m, banked on as the Star Wars of the ‘80s; it tanked.

When they split (on hearing of his brother’s cancer, Menahem pronounced “He should never have left me”) they sparred with competing Lambada pictures (Menahem had “two words: Naked Lambada” as a sequel proposal) and are astutely referenced as the forerunners of the Weinsteins, the difference being the Weinsteins actually cared about quality. Since then, former Cannon man Avi Lerner’s Nu Image appears to have learnt from his former bosses’ failures, delivering Cannon-esque action fare (The Expendables, Olympus Has Fallen) that turns a profit and has a veneer of professionalism.

Electric Boogaloo is blessed with a raft of talking heads including Derek, Catherine Mary Stewart, Hooper, Gary Goddard (Masters’ director), Dudikoff, Elliot Gould, Dolph Lundgren, Molly Ringwald and Sybil Danning; the only thing it lacks is the brothers themselves. Menahem died the year it was released, but not before his own competing Cannon doc, The Go-Go Boys was released, painting a rather more positive light on the studio and the siblings. Like the Lambada picture, it was a race to have it released, beating Electric Boogaloo by three months. I think it’s probably safe to say that this is the one to see.

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I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

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(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

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(SPOILERS) The reviews for Bad Boys for Life have, perhaps surprisingly, skewed positive, given that it seemed exactly the kind of beleaguered sequel to get slaughtered by critics. Particularly so since, while it’s a pleasure to see Will Smith and Martin Lawrence back together as Mike and Marcus, the attempts to validate this third outing as a more mature, reflective take on their buddy cops is somewhat overstated. Indeed, those moments of reflection or taking stock arguably tend to make the movie as a whole that much glibber, swiftly succeeded as they are by lashings of gleeful ultra-violence or humorous shtick. Under Michael Bay, who didn’t know the definition of a lull, these pictures scorned any opportunity to pause long enough to assess the damage, and were healthier, so to speak, for that. Without him, Bad Boys for Life’s beats often skew closer to standard 90s action fare.

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Welcome to the future. Life is good. But it can be better.

20 to See in 2020
Not all of these movies may find a release date in 2020, given Hollywood’s propensity for shunting around in the schedules along with the vagaries of post-production. Of my 21 to See in 2019, there’s still Fonzo, Benedetta, You Should Have Left, Boss Level and the scared-from-its-alloted-date The Hunt yet to see the light of day. I’ve re-included The French Dispatch here, however. I've yet to see Serenity and The Dead Don’t Die. Of the rest, none were wholly rewarding. Netflix gave us some disappointments, both low profile (Velvet Buzzsaw, In the Shadow of the Moon) and high (The Irishman), and a number of blockbusters underwhelmed to a greater or lesser extent (Captain Marvel, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Terminator: Dark Fate, Gemini Man, Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker). Others (Knives Out, Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum) were interesting but flawed. Even the more potentially out there (Joker, Us, Glass, Rocketman) couldn…

So the moral of the story is, better Red Riding Hood than dead Riding Hood. You read me?

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(SPOILERS) Despite its pedigree – director and writer Billy Wilder reteaming with Jack Lemmon, the first teaming of Lemmon and Walter Matthau, a clutch of Oscar nominations – The Fortune Cookie isn’t up there with the best of Wilder’s Lemmon collaborations. Which were, at this point, in the past.

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Small Soldiers (1998)
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Dante acknowledged Small Soldiers was basically a riff on Gremlins, and it is. Something innocuous and playful turns mad, bad and dangerous. On one level it has something in common with Gremlins 2: The New Batch, in that the asides carry the picture. But Gremlins 2 was all about the asides, happy to wander off in any direction that suited it oblivious to whether the audience was on …

You’re a slut with a snake in your mouth. Die!

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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