Western

Guilty Pleasure – American Outlaws

/ / Home Video
  • Title: American Outlaws
  • IMDb: link

American Outlaws Blu-ray reviewBy any objective standard, you can’t call 2001’s American Outlaws a good movie. The western is historically inaccurate in countess ways, features over-the-top performances from a number of actors, feels far too modern in tone and style, is punctuated with juvenile humor, and ignores almost any context for its characters’ actions and place in history. What you can say about American Outlaws is it’s dumb fun in the style of Young Guns (which obviously inspired it). Heavy on dumb, yes, but still fun.

Opening at the end of the Civil War, which involves some heroic foolishness by our leading man almost single-handedly winning the group’s final battle, the film stars Colin Farrell as Jesse James, Gabriel Macht as his brother Frank, and Scott Caan and Will McCormack as Cole and Bob Younger. The weary soldiers return home from war only to find railroad baron Thaddeus Rains (Harris Yulin) pushing families off their farms in the name of progress through bribes, theft, arson, threats, and murder.

…

Guilty Pleasure – American OutlawsRead More »

Guilty Pleasure – American Outlaws Read More »

Buffalo Boys

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Buffalo Boys
  • IMDb: link

Buffalo Boys movie reviewAlthough only the first scene of Buffalo Boys takes place in the Old West, there’s never a doubt that Singapore’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film in the 91st Academy Awards is a western through and through. The film tells the story of two brothers (Yoshi Sudarso and Ario Bayu) raised in exile in America who return home to Java with their uncle (Tio Pakusadewo) to avenge their father’s death and bestow some justice to the Dutch oppressors led by the villainous Van Trach (Reinout Bussemaker).

While far from the most polished or original tale, Buffalo Boys proves to be an entertaining mix of marital arts and western themes. On the return home, the family comes across a village whose rebellious daughter (Pevita Pearce) will get wrapped up in their plans leading to the brothers standing against an army of Van Trach’s men in the middle of town.

The final product could have been helped by the addition of more traditional wide-sweeping landscape shots and some tighter storytelling in spots, but it certainly hits the mark in old-school justice themes and in its extended gunfight that, of course, starts with a showdown on Main Street.

…

Buffalo BoysRead More »

Buffalo Boys Read More »

Firefly – The Train Job / War Stories

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Firefly – The Train Job / War Stories
  • wiki: link
  • wiki: link

Firefly - The Train Job / War Stories TV review

This week’s Throwback Tuesday post takes us into the black for more of Joss Whedon‘s Firefly. Although separated by several episodes, “The Train Job” and “War Stories” are connected by the team’s involvement with the sadistic criminal Adelai Niska (Michael Fairman) who hires Serenity and her crew to perform a job for him in “The Train Job” and proceeds to take his pound of flesh in “War Stories” for their failure to see the job through. Both episodes are character-driven and delve into the people who keep Serenity flying. In the first we discover that, despite being smugglers and outlaws, there is a limit to how far Mal (Nathan Fillion) and his crew will go. And in the second we see the complex dynamic in the Mal/Zoe (Gina Torres)/Wash (Alan Tudyk) relationship along with how far the rest of those aboard the ship will go when one of them is put in danger by a sadistic madman like Niska.

…

Firefly – The Train Job / War StoriesRead More »

Firefly – The Train Job / War Stories Read More »

The Ballad of Lefty Brown

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Ballad of Lefty Brown
  • IMDb: link

The Ballad of Lefty Brown Blu-ray reviewWriter/director Jared Moshe‘s The Ballad of Lefty Brown is a passable, if forgettable, western starring Bill Pullman as Lefty Brown, a screw-up who vows to avenge the death of his closest friend (Peter Fonda). Meanwhile others, including the man’s widow (Kathy Baker) are more than willing to believe the crime was committed by Brown himself despite the scarcity of evidence (or credible motive). The performances are solid, and the western vistas are pleasant to watch, so even if the journey doesn’t lead anywhere all that interesting it at least makes for a modest diversion.

The film follows the cowboy’s misadventures, eventually leading to him discovering the real reason his friend was murdered and seeking vengeance against one of the most powerful men in the territory. The idea of turning the dimwitted sidekick into the central character goes against the western template, but that’s really the only place The Ballad of Lefty Brown strays from the expected in a rather straightforward revenge tale.

…

The Ballad of Lefty BrownRead More »

The Ballad of Lefty Brown Read More »

Firefly – Serenity

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Firefly – Serenity
  • wiki: link

 

“Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear: I do the job, and then I get paid.”

 

Firefly - Serenity television review

This week’s Flashback Friday post takes us into the black and the two-hour pilot episode of Joss Whedon‘s Firefly. While it turned out that Fox could indeed take the sky from us, the show’s introduction (which the network, in all their genius, chose to run at the end rather than the beginning of the show’s short run) does a great job of setting up the universe of Firefly and introducing us the Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and the crew of Serenity: the loyal first officer (Gina Torres), her wacky pilot husband (Alan Tudyk), the bubbly engineer (Jewel Staite), the gruff mercenary (Adam Baldwin), the space hooker (Morena Baccarin), and their guests in the man of god (Ron Glass), big city doctor (Sean Maher), and a girl in a box (Summer Glau). And, not to be overlooked, the show’s eighth character in Serenity herself which would be home for so many of us that fell immediately in love with the space-western.

…

Firefly – SerenityRead More »

Firefly – Serenity Read More »