2020: The Year Ahead

We've already seen the release of Bad Boys for Life this past weekend.  Here's some other notable upcoming 2020 movies (all release dates subject to change):

• Birds of Prey (2/7) The long-awaited return of Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2/14) For me it's Jim Carrey's big screen comeback.
• Bloodshot (2/21) Vin Diesel attempting to launch another superhero cinematic universe.
• The Way Back (3/6) New from director Gavin O'Connor starring Ben Affleck.
• My Spy (3/13) Another shot at solo stardom from Dave Bautista.
• A Quiet Place Part II (3/20) I've yet to see the first one.
• Mulan (3/27) Disney's biggest live action remake gamble.
• The New Mutants (4/3) The last Fox/first Disney X-Men movie.
• No Time to Die (4/10) Daniel Craig's final Bond.
• Black Widow (5/1) It was finally made.
• The Personal History of David Copperfield (5/8) Starring Dev Patel.
• Greyhound (5/8) Starring Tom Hanks.
• The Woman in the Window (5/15) New from director Joe Wright, starring Amy Adams.
• Fast & Furious 9 (5/22) Latest in the series.
• Wonder Woman 1984 (6/5) Sequel.
• Top Gun: Maverick (6/26) Sequel thirty years in the making.
• Minions: The Rise of Gru (7/3) They're back.
• Free Guy (7/3) Sort of the test pilot of Disney Deadpool.
• Ghostbusters: Afterlife (7/10) They're back!
• Tenet (7/17) Latest from director Christopher Nolan.
• Infinite (8/7) New from director Antoine Fuqua starring Mark Wahlberg.
• Bill & Ted Face the Music (8/21) Keanu Reeves is sort of a demigod.
• The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (8/28) Sequel.
• Unhinged (8/28) Starring Russell Crowe.
• The Trial of the Chicago 7 (9/25) New from Aaron Sorkin.
• Last Night in Soho (9/25) New from Edgar Wright.
• BIOS (10/2) Starring Tom Hanks.
• Death on the Nile (10/9) Kenneth Branagh's next Hercule Poirot.
• West Side Story (12/18) Spielberg's update.
• Dune (12/18) Denis Villeneuve's update.
• The Last Duel (12/25) New from director Ridley Scott starring Adam Driver, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck.
• News of the World (12/25) New from director Paul Greengrass starring...Tom Hanks.

2019

Viewed/Ranked

1. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
2. Yesterday
3. Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
4. Joker
5. Knives Out
6. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. Hotel Mumbai
9. Serenity
10. The Standoff at Sparrow Creek
11. The Lighthouse
12. Detective Pikachu
13. The Hustle
14. Dumbo
15. Glass
16. High Life
17. The Upside
18. The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot
19. Ford v Ferrari
20. Donnybrook
21. Under the Silver Lake
22. Captain Marvel
23. Fighting with My Family
24. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
25. Men in Black: International
26. Dark Phoenix
27. Avengers: Endgame
28. Alita: Battle Angel
29. Shazam!
30. Gemini Man
31. Into the Ashes
32. Spider-Man: Far From Home
33. The Secret Life of Pets 2
34. Hellboy
35. Captive State

Other Notable Releases

• 1917
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• A Dog's Way Home
• Ad Astra
• All Is True
• Angel Has Fallen
• Brightburn
• Charlie's Angels
• Doctor Sleep
• Downton Abbey
• The Farewell
• Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
• Fast Color
• Frozen II
• Good Boys
• Harriet
• Hustlers
• Jojo Rabbit
• Judy
• The Kid Who Would Be King
• Little Women
• Midsommar
• Missing Link
• Motherless Brooklyn
• Pain and Glory
• Parasite
• Pet Sematary
• Rambo: Last Blood
• Richard Jewell
• Stuber
• Terminator: Dark Fate
• Toy Story 4
• Uncut Gems
• Us
• The Wandering Earth
• Where'd You Go, Bernadette
• Zombieland: Double Tap

Favorite Movies 2010-2019

Since we recently concluded a decade, there have been a few "best of" lists for those ten years.  Let's chip in!  Rather than go through the process of picking out the ten best movies regardless of where they fell (I have been very obsessive about ranking movies in the past), I figured I'd list my favorite from each year.

2010: Inception
I've been a big fan of Christopher Nolan since Memento.  I went back and watched Following when I became aware of its existence.  Memento was my favorite movie for a while.  The Dark Knight instantly was a favorite.  Outside of Batman, Inception became Nolan's most famous movie thanks to its trippy visuals (later replicated in Doctor Strange) and outstanding cast.  It singlehandedly revived Tom Hardy's career! 

2011: Warrior
Speaking of Hardy, Warrior was my favorite movie released a year later.  It's Hardy's Brando moment.  And he stars opposite Joel Edgerton in his breakthrough role.  It's an unspeakably breathtaking cinematic achievement on a strictly human scale, in a decade that increasingly belonged to spectacle.  Many dismiss it as an MMA movie, but if it is, then it's the Rocky of MMA movies, and nobody ever dismissed Rocky as a boxing movie. 

2012: Django Unchained
I thought Quentin Tarantino and Christoph Waltz had engineered magic in Inglourious Basterds, but I hadn't seen anything yet.  Waltz has continued to be a significant presence in film, but he will never top the moment he tells Leonardo DiCaprio that the writer (Alexander Dumas) he was attempting to use to legitimize slavery was actually black.

2013: Saving Mr. Banks
The incredible story of how Mary Poppins was made not only gave Tom Hanks an unexpectedly brilliant role as Walt Disney, but Colin Farrell another career highlight as the inspiration for the title.  The whole thing is great insight into the creative process, besides.

2014: Interstellar
Here's Christopher Nolan again!  A lot of viewers, I think, were exhausted over his supposed genius.  They saw Inception.  They were wowed by Inception.  But for a lot of people, one towering achievement can never truly be followed by another.  So they saw Interstellar and thought..."Well that's not 2001: A Space Odyssey," a movie it superficially resembles.  I was never wowed by 2001.  I ended up reading all four Arthur C. Clarke books at one point, but I never thought the books, or the Stanley Kubrick movie, was really as great as they clearly want to be.  But Interstellar is truly great, and it achieves that status by being transcendent, which is what 2001 desperately wants to be, but instead is just one of those projects that grapples at big ideas but doesn't know what to do with them except toss them up on a page or the screen.  And as he always is, Nolan is in full control of Interstellar, and I still wonder if it's his best film.

2015: The Force Awakens
Okay, I'm a Star Wars nerd, but in the same way I'm a Star Trek nerd.  I generally like all of it, even the stuff most of the fans despise.  It's not because I'm indiscriminant, but that I don't choose to hate something just because it exists, which seems like the primary motivating factor of a lot of fans, even if they will never admit it and come up with a million things to defend their views.  So I really loved seeing another Star Wars trilogy begin.  And this was a great beginning.

2016: Arrival
Denis Villeneuve is about as close to the second coming of Christopher Nolan as we're likely to get, at least anytime soon.  I missed Prisoners when it was released, but was sufficiently wowed when I got around to it.  And he has never disappointed me.  And Arrival is a masterpiece (still want to read the original short story on which it's based), the best showcase Amy Adams has gotten in an already phenomenal career.

2017: Logan
After Dark Knight, this is the best superhero movie ever made.  Hugh Jackman was born to play Wolverine, and this is the performance he was building toward all along, and everything around him works, at last, equally well.

2018: Isle of Dogs
A hugely charming fable, exquisitely put together, a towering artistic achievement from Wes Anderson.

2019: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
I can't stop praising this one.  I've been a fan of Terry Gilliam since before I really had a personal reason to be (that was how much I loved The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus), and so I was well aware of the tortured history to this becoming a reality, so it was a great relief to see how much it was worth the wait.  Especially having recently read and very much enjoyed the original Cervantes, to see how cleverly Gilliam updated it, with enough original charm, I'm still aghast at how little anyone else seems to care.

Ranking the MCU (2008-2019)

The MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or the Avengers cycle, as I tend to think of it), has reached a climax in 2019.  Having begun in 2008 with Iron Man and seen that particular superhero meet his end in 2019 with Avengers: Endgame, it's as good a time as any to rank the twenty-three films released during this span.  To that end, worst to first:

23. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
I think fans of the MCU in 2019 forget that this was even part of the sequence, produced before Disney acquired Marvel Studios and the rights to Hulk movies subsequently left the character in solo film limbo.  But this was the second entry, a light reboot of the unrelated 2003 Hulk, saddling Edward Norton with the thankless task of playing second-fiddle to a story that loses most of the character work of the Eric Bana version for even more mindless CGI destruction. 

22. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
I think this is the MCU descended into outright parody, and no manner of fan acclaim or interest in director Taika Waititi will change that opinion.

21. Iron Man (2008)
The first film of the sequence is terrible.  Unrecognizable, by later standards (sensing a pattern yet?), salvaged only by the Iron Man suit itself and the effortless charm of Robert Downey, Jr.  I seriously wonder how many fans have bothered to revisit it in the past decade.  That's essentially the problem the whole MCU is going to face in years hence: whether it will be worth savoring as much in hindsight as it was getting caught up in it.

20. Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Other than following up on Loki, this is a consensus dud by all accounts, the definition of going through the motions.

19. Doctor Strange (2016)
Essential only in the sense that if you want more of what looks really cool in Avengers: Infinity War, but aren't yet prepared to discover it doesn't look as cool in its own movie, despite every effort to make the visual effects pretty much the whole movie.

18. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
James Spader is an inspired choice to voice Ultron, but this is essentially an excuse to spend time with the Avengers without really accomplishing anything but nudging the narrative along, delaying the relevant Thanos material for...reasons.

17. Black Panther (2018)
This one became almost an entirely separate phenomenon by leaning into (whether deliberately or not) Black Lives Matter by somewhat inadvertently buying into the racist myth that black people belong in Africa.

16. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
I was a bigger fan of this one in 2011 than I am today, in part because its nominal sequences are infinitely better.

15. Iron Man 3 (2013)
I actually think this is otherwise a huge wasted opportunity, but think the big twist concerning Ben Kingsley's Mandarin is inspired storytelling, and uses Kingsley himself brilliantly, a wicked commentary on the terrorists in the first one.

14. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
I think this follow-up to the breakthrough first volume is a letdown, but redeemed significantly by the famous "Mary Poppins" take on Yondu, who ends up stealing the show.

13. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
I'm a big fan of the Mar Webb Spider-Man movies.  I like them more than the Raimi trilogy, and more than the MCU Spider-Man, which tries so hard to be socially relevant it's borderline painful.  I just watched this one for the first time.  Redeemed mostly by Zendaya, who's actually mostly wasted.  A minimalist turn worked better the first time.

12. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Everyone is calling this one of the best movies of the year.  Yeah, no.  It's as slapdash a conclusion to the Thanos saga as they could've conceived.

11. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
A version of Spider-Man that tries so hard to get it right that it's almost an amazing backfire, with the worst casting of Peter Parker in a movie to date (yeah) but with at least one great sequence (Peter finding out Michael Keaton is the bad guy).

10. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
In which the Avengers steal Cap's thunder.  But it's also the third best Avengers team experience!

9. Ant-Man (2015)
Paul Rudd takes what might have otherwise been a fairly generic MCU movie and makes it his own.

8. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
I think Thanos in his big spotlight is nearly botched, but all the superheroes in their dramatic assembling around him is rousing, with the highlight being Captain America's dramatic return, with one of the few great scoring moments of the MCU.

7. Thor (2011)
What makes this one compelling is proving instantly that Loki is the early breakout star of the MCU.

6. The Avengers (2012)
Classic original assembling of the original team, the narrative template for the rest of the cycle.

5. Captain Marvel (2019)
I actually think the lead character is the weakest aspect of the movie, but everything happening around her (except for the inexplicable ability to give Nick Fury a believable hairline) is gold.

4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Pitting Cap against Hydra, which was posing as his own country, was narrative genius, and produced the best action sequence of the MCU when he realizes what's happening inside a crowded elevator, and he's entirely on his own in the fight that follows.

3. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
Even if it leads to the wobbly logic that resolves the Thanos saga in Endgame, this is the perfect handling of solo mythology in the MCU.

2. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
This is what it looks like when Avengers is recalibrated with entirely new characters.  And the results are brilliant.

1. Iron Man 2 (2010)
I know this goes against nearly all prevailing MCU logic, but without Iron Man 2, the entire thing crumbles.  This is the movie that humanizes Tony Stark.  It's the brilliant introduction (and arguably best use) of Black Widow, and the best villain(s) in the whole cycle, with logical motivation and flawless execution, knowing exactly what to play off of and expand from what has come before.  Nothing that came after it even comes close.  And despite what fans like to say, it's going to be the easiest single movie to revisit in the years ahead to explain the whole phenomenon.

Ranking Star Wars

Hey, so this has been pretty popular recently, in an internet endlessly obsessed with ranking things.  (Hey, I do it, too, and have many lists here, but without pictures.  So nobody cares.)  Here's my worst to first:

12. Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
In their rush to prop up the narrative that anything's better than the prequels, fans latched onto the later TV series, but...this is the bottom of the barrel.  Period.  In animation particularly, the need for art becomes paramount.  A lot of animated flicks try to skirt by on adventure or jokes, but if there's nothing to hang it on, sparse characterization or minimal effort in storytelling, the results fall flat.  And this is as flat as Star Wars will hopefully ever get.

11. Rogue One (2016)
Those same fans latched onto Rogue One because it was everything they wanted Star Wars to be, and to my mind, this can be summed up as: embarrassing.  A true bastardization of the saga, with as flat an understanding of the source material as Clone Wars.  Although ironically, the thing I originally liked least is the one element I like now, Ben Mendelsohn's showy turn as an outright mustache-twirling Imperial officer. 

10. Solo (2018)
Here's where I quit griping (I'm disappointed when fans grumble about seemingly the bulk of a franchise), because I actually really like Solo, but I'm finding it hard to rank the saga entries themselves, so it's just easier to get this out of the way.

9. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
What???  Invariably, this is the one everyone else picks as the best of the franchise, and here I'm ranking it as essentially the worst?  Thematically, it's an entirely interstitial piece; where it isn't introducing bold new ideas (Yoda, Lando, Vader-as-dad) the story is actually mostly in a holding pattern, with all the key players struggling to accomplish something and having no idea if they're actually making progress.  It's literally Star Wars with no real idea of where it's going, but attempting gamely to set itself up for something bigger.  That's the definition of a game-changer, but not necessarily in glowing terms.

8. The Last Jedi (2017)
In contrast, Last Jedi makes bold creative decisions while attempting to ensure its characters are making definitive progress, too.  While Empire Strikes Back makes a lot of heroes look hapless, at least it's easier to root for Yoda than for Luke in Last Jedi, although conversely it's easier to root for Rey in Last Jedi than Luke in Empire Strikes Back.  And for all the criticism Rian Johnson has received, he's easily the third best director of the saga.

7. Attack of the Clones (2002)
Fans have been ripping on the dialogue and chemistry on display in Attack of the Clones for years, but artistically it's probably the best George Lucas ever delivered, the most streamlined of all his interests and instincts.  But as cool as Yoda is in action (the initial reaction to the movie loved this aspect, but it's since been completely forgotten), it's a little disappointing to know it rests entirely on his shoulders to pull off what the two other prequels achieve so effortlessly in lightsaber dueling.

6. The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
The final film in the saga is an excellent summation and synthesis, as well as radical reinterpretation of everything that came before it, confidently exploring the concept of redemption that felt like an afterthought previously.

5. Return of the Jedi (1983)
The later Pirates of the Caribbean franchise feels like an outgrowth of the thrilling onslaught of enthralling action that the original climax of the saga essentially is.  It might as well have been the literal template.

4. The Phantom Menace (1999)
The first of the prequels ends in breathtaking fashion with the spectacular lightsaber duel between Darth Maul (the perfection of a concept in minimalism created for Boba Fett), Ob-Wan Kenobi, and Qui-Gon Jinn.  I happen to love Jar Jar, thank you.  But no acting tops Liam Neeson in the franchise, whose performance here led to a career renaissance, regardless of  what fans think.

3. The Force Awakens (2015)
The introductions of Rey and Finn were the best in the whole saga, and Han Solo still manages to steal the show, and proving that J.J. Abrams was a worthy successor to George Lucas.

2. A New Hope (1977)
The sheer boldness of the first film will always top Empire Strikes Back in my book, an astonishing vision that sprang forth from the simple idea of trying to update Flash Gordon.  Mission greatly exceeded, Mr. Lucas.

1. Revenge of the Sith (2005)
It was the vision George Lucas had from the moment Star Wars solidified in his mind: how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader.  The prequels extended that vision to three films, but by the third it focused not on the epic clash between Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the seduction of Palpatine, in the single best dramatic sequence of the saga: a conversation at an opera.  Then of course Skywalker and Kenobi clash, and the inevitable happens, and the acting in the franchise reaches its zenith.  So yes, the prequels reign supreme.

Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

rating: ****

the story: The saga concludes.

review: This will be another film from 2019 I hesitate to call an out-and-out classic.  (True story: when I was picking up the recent home video release of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I heard it referred to as the movie where Bruce Lee gets his ass kicked.)  Because I really like Rise of Skywalker, but I'm not immediately prepared to go all in.  Sometimes a movie will leave you with that kind of impression, right from the start.  Sometimes it takes a while.  Some of my all-time favorites are like that.  My appreciation for Tarsem's The Fall has grown even from a hugely favorable initial impression. 

But what you want to read about is Rise of Skywalker.  The Star Wars saga has quite an interesting backstory to it at this point.  I'm not talking about the films but how they've been accepted by fans over the years.  Empire Strikes Back sort of instantly, for most observers, became the franchise favorite, but it didn't make as much money at the box office as A New Hope.  Fans instantly derided Return of the Jedi as a shameless conclusion to the original trilogy, festooned with nonsense teddy bears and sudden revelations like Luke and Leia actually being siblings all along.  But fans forgot these facts by the time the prequels came around.  Over the years, the prequels became pariahs.  But the saga continued.  J.J. Abrams launched the sequel trilogy with The Force Awakens, but it wasn't until Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi that fans, who were already thinking Force Awakens echoed A New Hope too directly, started to grumble loudly.  We live in a #notmy[fillintheblank] era, so of course a fan community already discontent over the prequels had begun suggesting Star Wars was over.

Then of course Rise of Skywalker comes around and is announced as the finale of the Skywalker saga.  Not necessarily Star Wars itself, but the saga as it revolves around the Skywalkers.  (Do you want a spoiler?  By the end of Rise of Skywalker, the concept of revolving around the Skywalkers sort of gets a new definition.  But I think it still technically completes the saga as we know it.)

Now, we also now live in a world where Baby Yoda exists.  Maybe this is enough to bring back some of those skeptics.  I think one way or another Star Wars goes out with a bang, not just in the movie but as a cultural experience.  I don't really care what the public perception is.  I love Solo.  (And still am ambivalent at best about Rogue One.)  But it's nice to think Star Wars can still compete with the MCU.

I think Rise of Skywalker is infinitely better than Avengers: Endgame.  I think it absolutely schools the Thanos finale.  Where Endgame plays at trying to have resonance for a whole franchise, Rise of Skywalker speaks to unanswered questions for eight previous films spanning more than forty years, and does so brilliantly.  It doesn't attempt to resolve everything.  In the finest Star Wars tradition, it introduces new mysteries, that need never be resolved.  I mean, we'll never really know who shot first, after all.  (Thanks, George!) 

If Last Jedi was unconventional, Rise of Skywalker dips immediately and enthusiastically back into A New Hope, and revisits Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.  Fans who only want to interpret things negatively will consider the results as nothing more than the original trilogy in a blender, a shameless rip-off.

But it's so much more than that.  J.J. Abrams is not George Lucas.  He's not Kershner.  He's not Marquand.  His sensibilities are as much informed by Star Wars as they are Peter Jackson and Harry Potter.  He's very much a modern blockbuster filmmaker, and crafts his movie around moments and ideas that didn't exist in the saga previously.  His Jedi have the ability to heal, just as George Lucas eventually built up the Sith to have the ability to create life itself (the disputed origin of Vader).  Rey has powers we've never seen before.  I've seen this sort of thing done with existing mythos before.  Green Lantern comics, for instance, which in the '90s I was thoroughly convinced had all the grandeur of Star Wars, before they ever went full epic in the new millennium.  Again, some fans will have problems with this sort of thing.  I think it rings true.  The Force now resides, effectively, in a handful of individuals at best.  And by the end of the movie, by the end of the saga, has shrunk even further. 

I think the mythology is given its due.  I think the characters introduced in Force Awakens are given fitting roles to play, and have fitting arcs.  Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, and even Domhnall Gleason turn in trilogy-best performances.  Original trilogy actors abound!  And deliver.  Everything delivers.

Even though I didn't like the movie itself, Return of the King had a killer, memorable climax when Sam tells Frodo that even if he can't carry the ring, he can carry Frodo.  I don't know if Rise of Skywalker has a moment like that.  I don't know if it needs to.  Last Jedi had a rousing moment, when Rey and Kylo Ren strike down Snoke unexpectedly, and that's a tough moment to beat in this trilogy, and so it's not really worth trying to compete against.  Instead, Rise of Skywalker is filled with reflecting back on everything we've learned, everything we've experienced over the course of three trilogies.  There isn't a Vader who seems far from redemption, or two Jedi being torn away from a treasured brotherhood at stake.  Rey and Kylo spend the entire movie going over their Last Jedi experiences.  Kylo's best moment is a direct riff on a scene in Force Awakens, a quieter and perhaps as a result, more affecting echo.  And that's sort of the whole movie. 

It knows, as with the best stories, that the ending reflects back on the beginning.  We last see Rey in the most perfect place possible.  I think if the results aren't perfect, they're as perfect as they could possibly have been, especially since George Lucas isn't at the helm, and because Abrams sort of swooped back in at the last minute.  That's some kind of magic.  And that's always been Star Wars in a nutshell.  You don't have to worry about what the fans think.

Wyatt Earp (1994)

rating: *****

the story: The life of lawman Wyatt Earp.

review: Recently I watched a slew of westerns.  It's part of my blood, something I inherited from my dad, one of those John Wayne partisans.  Wyatt Earp wasn't part of the lineup (two DVD sets totaling fourteen films, plus Tombstone) until I added it in (plus another viewing of Colin Farell's American Outlaws, which I'm ready to agree is mostly a misfire).  I'm glad I did.  It's now probably my favorite Kevin Costner movie.

Made at the tail-end of Coster's golden age, just before Waterworld destroyed his (hugely) popular career, a hotstreak that included The Untouchables, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, JFK, and The Bodyguard, it was shot and released at the same time as Tombstone, which was released first, got all the praise, and all but canceled out any interest in Wyatt Earp.

A horrible travesty.  When I finally got around to seeing it the first time, Dennis Quaid's Doc Holliday made an immediate impression on me as a wonderfully sensational acting clinic, the best I'd ever seen from Quaid.  The problem everyone else who's bothered to see the movie seems to have is that Val Kilmer had already stolen Tombstone in a charismatic (and arguably his best) performance of the same role.  But as entertaining as Kilmer's Doc is, Quaid's is unquestionably better.

The same can be said of every other element.  Don't get me wrong about Tombstone's Earp, Kurt Russell, who's frequently highly magnetic in his film appearances.  It's just, Costner by definition has so much more to work with.  His Earp is basically an antihero.  If this were 2019, Wyatt Earp would be the angsty DCEU to Tombstone's MCU.  Or in other words, Tombstone is in every sense the Disney version, the glossy traditional Hollywood take (and even feels in most respects as if it were released far earlier than 1993, an instant anachronism, as it were), and Wyatt Earp is the western as it might've become if it had landed better.

Indeed, it's one of those movies that just seems to become more timely as the years progress, and therefore timeless.  It could just as easily have been that uneasy cinematic response to Black Lives Matter that never really happened until years into the movement (and even then most directly in a movie that's actually set in the past, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman), with an Earp who's as celebrated as he's reviled, frequently criticized as too violent in his pursuit of justice, even as events sometimes seem to prove his methods justified.  That's what Tombstone and Wyatt Earp most have in common, trying to give the true history of the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral, have the heroes be less obviously heroic.

Wyatt Earp traces the whole arc of Earp's life (could almost be the ancestor to all those later movies that begin with a familiar character's childhood where previous depictions hadn't).  Gene Hackman, who appeared in two other westerns during the same period, Unforgiven and The Quick and the Dead, both in fairly villainous roles, plays Earp's dad, a tough but loving father that draws out far greater nuance from Hackman, and puts his impulses to good use.  He sets the tone for a family saga that drives the women crazy later in the movie (though the script, for such a long movie, doesn't really have much for the likes of Mare Willingham and Catherine O'Hara other than love and exasperation), though it gives good parts to brothers played by Michael Madsen, Linden Ashby (who has only one other notable role to his credit, Mortal Kombat's Johnny Cage, which he nailed), and a young Jim Caviezel.

The supporting cast is bursting with talent besides!  Also featured, among others, are Bill Pullman and Tom Sizemore (in a role that doesn't merely require him to be a tough guy, for a change) as Ed and Bat Masterson, respectively, Mark Harmon as someone other than Gibbs, and Isabella Rossellini, who completes the excellent portrait of Doc Holliday as his frustrated lover, Big Nose Kate, plus Jeff Fahey as the head of the troublesome Clantons.

Earp's arc as a troubled lover is highlighted, his losses and triumphs, his yearning to escape the spotlight (one almost has the sense that the sentiment could also have been Costner's).  The running time is entirely justified.  This is an epic that tells an epic, but also completely human, tale.  Costner isn't the romantic hero he so often was in this period, but the complete opposite, a man ground down past such illusions into messy real life, struggling to do the right thing, and not always succeeding.

Watching it again, especially in the context of so many other westerns, it's a revelation, especially set against, once again, Tombstone.  Its only real competition, for me, against so many others, was The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (which is even better).  The western, it seems, was only getting better with time.  The more art infused, the less artifice, therefore justifying the genre's outsize placement in film lore.  Directed by underrated icon Lawrence Kasdan.