Cowboy Pete’s Movie Round Up

I am going to be switching Cowboy Pete to be a regular feature on my Patreon account. No, not everything will be: Freaky Friday is going to be remaining right here. But I figure so many people have been asking about it, why not reinstitute it? The TV aspects of it will be minimal during the summer as everything is in repeats, but God knows I see enough movies, so that will get us through the summer.

So what will be discussed in this last public outing? Two recent films.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES. Why in the hell are people bashing this film?

I have to admit, I’ve always had a weakness for these films. People seemed to be hyper critical of the second and third installments, claiming they were overlong and needlessly complicated. Me, I loved the complicated stuff and never once lost track of the plot. The fourth installment never really sang to me–Blackbeard was uninvolving as a villain and Jack was uninvolving as a hero–although there were some moments that were entertaining. What the fourth film proved was that Jack was the most interesting when he was a side character to another hero’s quest. Apparently the folks at Disney realized this as well as “Dead Men” kicks off with exactly that: the son of Will Turner, who first showed up in a post-credits sequence at the end of the third film, is now twenty years old, has a name (Henry), a new actor (Brenton Thwaites) and is looking to free dad from the curse he’s living under. Apparently the last ten years have been hard on Will and he’s starting to get as scrungy looking as his predecessor. But what would a young hero be without a heroine? And that is Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) who is constantly accused of being a witch because she is an intelligent woman, as opposed to nowadays where she would just be accused of being a bitch. They are both looking for the same thing: the trident of Poseidon, Henry in order to free his dad from the curse, and Carina because of her thirst of knowledge that she partly got from her unknown father (whose identity I managed to figure out a half hour into the film.). Meanwhile Jack Sparrow is once again being pursued by an unnatural individual, the formidable Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) who died while pursing Jack but didn’t let that stop him. A full blown ghost with the unique ability to have hair that keeps moving even when he’s standing still, Salazar has managed to escape captivity and is looking to kill Jack once and for all. And it’s up to Jack (Johnny Depp, of course) to ride herd on all this insanity while also keeping his dissatisfied crew happy.

Basically it’s a soft reboot of the series, taking the most popular elements of the first three and crafting a film that could stand as the last one or possibly set off a new series of adventures thanks to yet again a post credit sequence that drove my daughter Caroline nuts trying to suss it out. I found it perfectly entertaining, adventurous, engaging and diverting. Meanwhile everyone else is condemning it harder than Kathy Griffin’s photograph. I can’t even begin to understand why. Did they see the same movie I did? Are they still that pissed off over the fourth film which made over a billion dollars despite negative reviews? I can’t begin to figure it out. All I can tell you is that it was a fun two hours spent at the movies and if you like pirate films or ANY of the first three, it’s definitely worth your time.

WONDER WOMAN.. The whole Marvel vs. DC dynamic has been that Marvel has theatrical films down pat while DC rules the TV waves. Except that now seems to be shifting. Not only does SHIELD remain a fun hour (although they spent WAY too long in the computer world) but the Netflix Marvel series have been great (yes, even Iron Fist, sorry haters). Meanwhile the one thing that every fan in the world agreed on with Batman vs. Superman is that the best thing in it was Diana Prince. Whether it was Diana speaking privately with Bruce Wayne or Wonder Woman grimly smiling as she faced Doomsday, the Amazonian princess walked away with every scene she was in. Now we get her origin and it is quite simply the best DC superhero film since Dark Knight. Forget Man of Steel or Green Lantern or (God help us) Jonah Hex. Wonder Woman is the standard against which all future DC superhero films will be measured.

The filmmakers wisely set it during World War I. This was exactly the right move. Not only is that time period far less explored cinematically than World War II, but it avoids comparison with Captain America: The First Avenger. . It also enables Diana (Gal Godot, an Israeli actress whose nationality got it banned in Lebanon) to come across as astoundingly naive. Yes, she leaves Paradise Island (I’m not going to even try to spell the actual name) because she meets Steve Trevor (Chris Pine doing the best acting he’s ever done), but she is also certain that the God Ares is creating the war to end all wars. So she figures all she has to do is kill Ares and war will stop. Now yes, granted, Ares is out there, and once again I figured out his identity (this time it took me forty five minutes) but Diana is on a steep learning curve as she slowly figures out the world doesn’t conform to her remarkably simplistic worldview. It’s a wonderfully thought out script as we see things from Diana’s POV and know how horrible it is going to be when she learns the truth: that mankind is far more screwed up than she could possibly have imagined. One can only wonder what she thought of World War II.

One can only hope that this film finally puts a lie to the belief that movies with super heroine leads are always going to tank at the box office, if for no other reason than that maybe we can get a Fallen Angel movie launched.

PAD