A Few Random Notes

I always feel that Licence to Kill is the nearest we ever got to a Cannon Bond film. In the same way Diamonds are Forever is a kind of Russ Meyer at Fox-meets-ITC Bond. A lot of the cast worked at Cannon (Carey Lowell, David Hedison was in the Naked Face, Robert Davi  was in the Cannon-distributed Wild Thing, which is similar to Quiet Cool (1986), in its urban Tarzan hero rumbling around Canada posing as NYC, but is quite boring, and I didn't really like Quiet Cool, found it bland) and the exDe Laurentiis-Churbusco interior filming and the action, and the random 80s ninjas. Bond had featured ninjas before, but that was in the 60s, in You Only Live Twice as a vital plot point, here it's random coattail-riding.
I'm sorry but I found Walter Hill's Streets of Fire too 80s for me to like, if that makes sense.
I'd describe Enemy Territory as if a Street Wars-era Jamaa Fanaka made Assault on Precinct 13. Ray Parker is great, but Tony Todd steals it. The way he plays it as kind of sinister yet kind OTT. Some great reddish lighting.
I forgot to list Nighthawks with Sylvester Stallone. That is really good. Great cast too. Nigel Davenport I always felt steals it, and the scenes in London add an idiosyncratic quirkiness to it, seeing character actors like Robert Pugh and Frederick Treves among it.
Adam Ant steals Cold Steel (1987), a cop-revenge Brad Davis and Sharon Stone vehicle. The end theme is really soppy, like some kind of granny-favourite crooner.
Also saw Adam Rifikin's 1999 comedy, Detroit Rock City - 4 kids trying to enter a Kiss concert. Found it really 70s-like, and almost like a film from 1978 that was left in an archive.
Finally saw Guillermo Del Toro's robot-rumble Pacific Rim. Found it brilliant. Really thought that Burn Gorman (off Torchwood) as Gottlieb, the eccentric toff-scientist with the limp and Charlie Day as his excitable partner stole it, as did Ron Perlman as the teddy boy black marketeer, Hannibal Chau. Great recreation of Hong Kong in Canada, and interesting to see The Haunted House of Horror (1969) star Julian Barnes as the British UN representative. Interesting monster design.
Also saw the boring South African-made BBC-coproduced Sam Neill miniseries from 2005 The Triangle. Rene Cardona somehow did it better. This now may have had Eric Stoltz, but it needed dolls that ate people.