Burt Kennedy’s specialty was the western genre, having written scripts for the TV series Lawman, and directing Return of the Magnificent Seven (1966), the first of four sequels in United Artists’ popular franchise, but it’s perhaps his grasp of western tropes that made him the perfect director for Support Your Local Sheriff! – a western spoof written by William Bowers which predated Mel Brooks’ better-known Blazing Saddles…
Burt Kennedy’s follow-up to the hugely successful Support Your Local Sheriff! isn’t a sequel nor sort-of sequel, but a regrouping of the director’s stock company in an alternate reality where James Garner is trapped in a lawless mining town with feuding entities, and a combustible finale…
Toei’s 2013 film offers another variant on Leiji Matsumoto’s mythos, and to the filmmakers’ credit, it’s also an accessible space drama for newcomers to the popular and prolific franchise that originated in Japan and gained huge international popularity, especially in France…
Made after he co-directed the critically lauded Lemmy (2010) with Wes Orshsoki, Greg Oliver’s Turned Towards the Sun is an intimate chronicle of Micky Burn, a WWII veteran who participated in the daring and deadly Operation Chariot, in which a team of British commandos rammed a TNT-packed ship…
When Kim Philby died in Soviet Russia, the last member of the notorious British Communist spies was given a hero’s funeral procession, sealing one of England’s most incredible spying sagas. Branded The Cambridge Spies, the group of five, reduced to a key four, were ultimately responsible for giving away major secrets during their tenure in high-profile positions…
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