Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War (08.30.24)

 

Perhaps no other time in American history has been quite as romanticized at the Wild West era, and that is not surprising. Cowboys are cool; just ask my 200+ hours logged in Red Dead Redemption 2. Anybody who knows anything about the gunslingers of this bygone time of lawlessness and freedom knows the names Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, but they might not know the story that made them famous. Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is that story, and although the documentary itself has some issues it is nonetheless carried by its interesting subject matter and solid performances that make it respectable entertainment.

Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is a six-episode docudrama narrated by Ed Harris, and boy does it ever lean heavily on the “drama” part. The reenactments and interpretations of actual historical events are plentiful, often eclipsing the “docu” half made up of your usual historian talking heads and voiceovers, and most of the time these moments are quite effective at making the history easily digestible for everyone, although I do wish that it used more authentic visuals such as actual photographs of Tombstone and its famous residents. At other times these reenactments can be hilariously histrionic, turning what may otherwise be a legitimate retelling into a hodgepodge of Western film clichés where everyone walks side by side in slow motion while coolly smoking cigarettes and the delineation between good and evil is clear as day. Wyatt Earp may be a mostly faithful reconstruction, but there is no doubt that it is also a slightly sanitized and highly streamlined version. The Wyatt Earp here is a hero who has never done anything wrong rather than the actual human being that he was, and instead of being a dangerously unhinged and volatile drunk, Doc Holliday simply comes across as a rascal. The streamlining is necessary in its way, as there is only so much time to delve into minutia and nuance, but it bumps up against another issue: Sometimes it feels like the show is dumbing things down for its audience, a fact that is especially apparent with its overuse of onscreen text and insistence on repeating things more than once.

Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is entertaining despite these flaws. The aforementioned melodrama is more of a product of the writing and direction than it is of the acting, which is good but won’t win any awards. And although the reenactments are everywhere they never overstay their welcome as the story keeps chugging along, a fact that speaks to Wyatt Earp’s good pacing and editing. Overall, Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is an enjoyable documentary to watch simply because the story at its core is so interesting with its multiple shootouts, legal dramas, and connectivity to the larger story of the American frontier. It provides entertainment and it provides a solid, if basic, understanding of what went down at the OK Corral and beyond, which is enough, I reckon. Yee-haw and all that.

All six episodes of Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War are now available on Netflix.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 30^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

Alien: Romulus (08.23.24)

The titular beast from the Alien series is one of the most iconic movie monsters of all time, but as with everything, familiarity breeds—well, not exactly resentment in this case, but it does facilitate a definite diminishing return when it comes to scariness. And if nothing else, the five Alien films since the original have fostered familiarity. Alien: Romulus attempts to make H.R. Giger’s xenomorph scary again, and while much of the material seems recycled from what came before, I’m just happy that we finally have another Alien film that doesn’t blow chunks.

Directed by Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe and 2013’s Evil Dead), Alien: Romulus takes the series back to its roots of crew members on a spaceship being hunted down and slaughtered by freaky creatures after the previous two films attempted some pseudo-cerebral world-building that ground the franchise to a halt. The return to form is effective, as are most of the scares, but none of it feels original; in many ways Romulus feels like an amalgamation of all the series’ greatest hits, from overly familiar character archetypes to suspiciously similar sets to winkingly repeated lines. The freshest facet of the film is the relationship between siblings Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (David Jonsson), their sister-brother dynamic causing heightened anxiety because you really want them both to live, much like Ripley and Newt or Ripley and Jones the cat from previous films. Plot-wise things don’t really diverge from the familiar until the third act or so, at which point things finally feel new and surprising; there is one new addition to the Alien mythos here that is genuinely unsettling, and it’s just too bad that it took so long in the film to come along.

The acting in Romulus is quite good, particularly that of the two aforementioned siblings (Jonsson has a fascinating duel role of sorts, and I would not be surprised if the character of Rain catapulted Spaeny to stardom just like Ellen Ripley did for Sigourney Weaver over forty years ago), but the script these actors have to bring to life is noticeably poor in certain parts. The dialogue got an unintentional chuckle out of me a couple of times, with standouts such as one character responding to a terrible story by simply stating “that’s terrible” and another one frantically explaining, seemingly just for the audience’s sake, that elevators don’t work without gravity. I also think I missed an important line or two because of various accents and a lack of diction, particularly during a big exposition dump halfway through, but that’s okay. I still understood everything. It’s not like “alien kills people” is a difficult plot to follow.

The xenomorph is the perfect killing machine and doesn’t need to evolve, so maybe it’s not surprising that the franchise surrounding it has not evolved much either after all these years. Alien: Romulus may not reinvent the wheel, but it does do what it was made to do, and that is make people afraid of space again.

Alien: Romulus is now playing in theaters.

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 23rd, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/ 

Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 (08.09.24)

 

Like most nerds, I like Batman. Most people do, if one takes the shear amount of times the character has appeared in print and on the small and big screens as evidence of his popularity. But I’m kind of getting tired of Bruce Wayne and his rogues, if I’m being honest… after all, there’s only so many times one can watch a trust fund orphan dress up like a rodent and beat up mentally troubled people on the streets without getting a bit bored. Batman: Caped Crusader, a new animated show on Amazon Prime, is in many ways an exceptional Batman experience  that goes out of its way to offer something different. But despite this I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we have already seen all of this before.

Caped Crusader has a lot of the same DNA as the popular 90s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series, which makes sense, considering that DC’s animation maestro Bruce Timm is the mastermind behind both. The animation is very similar, as is the respect that the subject matter is treated with—it does not dumb things down, despite the fact that kids are among the target audience. They're both shows that adults can enjoy as well, particularly Caped Crusader, which is a bit more violent and considerably darker than its predecessor.

Caped Crusader does some cool things with the Batman mythos, reimagining some characters, genderbending others, and setting the whole thing against the backdrop of a vaguely 1940s era of Gotham City. The noir approach that Caped Crusader takes is appreciated, the serialized tales of crime and murder really leaning into the detective facet of Batman’s nature.

But at the end of the day, Batman: Caped Crusader is still the same old Batman stuff. Bruce is humorless and dour, Alfred is concerned and frustrated, Catwoman is sassy and flirtatious. Despite all of its attempts to be different Caped Crusader is still what we’ve seen over and over again since Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the character in the late 30s, and I wasn’t able to appreciate the craftsmanship of the show that much as a result. This is not a problem with the Caped Crusader as much as it is a direct result of media saturation. Why not do a Wonder Woman cartoon instead? Or maybe a lesser known DC comics character like Midnighter or Zatanna? There’s only so many times you can run back to the Batman well without the thing running dry. I don’t subscribe to the idea of super hero fatigue in the media; I think that as long as there is innovation the genre can be as long lived as action films or comedies. But man, Batman: Caped Crusader just exhausted me.

But it’s a great show! This is the Dark Knight at his best. But the fact is that we have so many examples of the character at his best that the sum of those feels lesser because of it.

Batman: Caped Crusader season 1 is now available on Amazon Prime.

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 9th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/ 

Deadpool & Wolverine (??.??.??)

Some actors and roles are just made for each other, and Ryan Reynolds and Marvel’s Deadpool are one such pair. Snarky, irreverent, and hilarious, the merc with a mouth was always a natural fit for Canada's second-best Ryan, so nerds everywhere rejoiced when it was announced that he would continue in the role even after FOX was bought by Disney and the fictional universe that his version of the character existed in was discontinued. Deadpool, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first permanent transplant, would get a third film, but this time it would take place in the world of Iron Man, Captain America, and other fan-favorite Avenging heroes.

Deadpool & Wolverine, a threequel that also sees the return of Hugh Jackman’s iconic version of the latter character, is less of an exciting look forward at what’s ahead for the MCU and more of a fun look back at what came before it. Strictly speaking, the film isn’t perfect; the simple plot on its face isn’t terribly interesting and has numerous holes, the villain is cool and excellently portrayed but only has the vaguest motivations, and there are some noticeable pacing issues that effect the momentum of the film. But I would be lying if I said that Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t also provide one of the most fun movie-going experiences for me in years.

From start to finish I was grinning like an idiot, enjoying every joke and every well-choreographed moment of ultra violence (D&W is the MCU’s very first R-rated film, and like its predecessors it thoroughly earns this rating) as the mercenary and the mutant slice their way through waves of bad guys as well as each other. The dramatic moments work as well, the writers and actors once again proving that they know what makes these characters so memorable and enduring—Deadpool isn’t just a live-action Loony Tune but a thoroughly messed-up and disturbed individual who hides behind humor and wants to be better, and Wolverine is the best there is at what he does but would rather be anyone else.

The MCU has always had the problem of alienating new viewers who don’t want to watch a few dozen films as homework to understand what is going on in the current film, and I’m sorry to say that Deadpool & Wolverine is, as a celebration of not only the MCU but also the FOX X-Men universe that came before it, probably the worst offender yet. Though I absolutely loved each and every reference and cameo (indeed, they proved to be the best part of my viewing experience), I can comfortably say that most of them will probably go over the heads of all but the most hardcore viewers. I can’t tell you if that is a deal-breaker or not, but I don’t think I would have had nearly as much fun watching Deadpool & Wolverine if I wasn’t already a MCU groupie in it for the long haul. It may not be a perfect movie, but it sure was fun!  

Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing in theaters. 

This review has not been published in the Keizertimes yet and may not be ever at this point, but here is the link anyway-  www.keizertimes.com/