Cowboy Bebop means a lot to me. The anime started airing in 1998 and at the time, the medium was extremely niche in the United States. Largely underground, VHS bootlegs were traded much like music concert bootlegs. You had to know someone. I did. In high school, a classmate ran an anime business out of his bedroom. Probably the first internet marketed business I ever encountered. Not thinking anything of it at the time, it was super illegal. He’d duplicate legit releases (that cost a fortune at the time, it was like $40 for 3 episodes of Dragon Ball Z on one VHS. That show has over 200 episodes) and sell them. I think he would also download the earliest fan subs from forums (oh, the days off BBS and listservs) and sell those. It took forever for English translations to be done by the companies that bought the Japanese rights to distribute the shows elsewhere. Plus, a lot of people hated the English dubs that came out and wanted the most accurate experience with the original Japanese voice actors with English subtitles (which is still true today).

Cowboy Bebop was the first anime I ever watched, along with the likes of Ninja Scroll, Trigun, and Ghost in the Shell. As a 17-year-old who already loved animation, action movies, and sci-fi, seeing the animation and storytelling that was being made on the other side of the planet was mindblowing. There was nothing like it being made in the US. There are some exceptions, one could argue Heavy Metal, but that was from 1981 so animation for adults was really rare here (I could even throw Cool World from 1992, but I think you get my point). Not too long after this, the Adult Swim block of anime started on Cartoon Network which started the mainstream emergence of the genre in the US.

Cowboy Bebop immediately stood out. There was a ton of hyper-violence in anime for action/horror fans (and let’s face it, predominantly boys), but Bebop took a different approach. Sure, people are blasting guns at each other and beating each other with fists and feet, but the presentation is so cool. Set in the distant future, Cowboy Bebop follows a rag-tag team of bounty hunters as they scrape up the money to fight another day while also dealing with their individual sordid pasts. In a world set in the year 2071, the vibe is entirely 1970s. The tech on the ships is very dated, think of how Alien is set far into the future but the displays and such are very analog with big switches, knobs, and levers, and low-resolution monitors that only display 3 shades of green. Most episodes jump around genres, from film noir, sci-fi, Hollywood summer blockbuster, and a whole lotta Westerns. It’s a really eclectic show that pulled from a lot of different inspirations and pop culture. Every adventure feels unique and the character-building is engrossing.

A good example of what’s loved about this series is the main character, Spike Spiegel. They immediately show you that this man is the coolest guy ever. He’s dressed in a simple blue suit with a yellow button-down shirt and a loose tie, his hair more of a messy mop than a selected hair-do. He’s tall and thin, effortlessly charming, often dry and funny. And he’s completely badass. He’s an incredible fighter, a fantastic marksman, and he can pilot a ship through hell and back. He’s also extremely loyal when it comes to his friends. The guy used to be in a notorious crime syndicate and escaped it without the love of his life. He both runs away and toward his past through the series.

The soundtrack is also stunning. If you’ve never heard jazz before, it can make you a fan. If you hate jazz, it’ll make you realize why someone could like the genre so much. Bebop is the first TV show soundtrack I ever paid any attention to. There are a lot of cinematic touchstones in the series, so that’s not too surprising. Just about every episode feels like you’re watching a movie. And there’s only 26 of them, along with a movie, Knockin’ on Heavens Door that was released in 2001. The experience is much like a supernova. It was suddenly here and gone with everyone lucky enough to see it talking about it for the rest of their lives.

So that brings us to Netflix’s live-action adaption of Cowboy Bebop. I wanted this desperately to succeed because I’ve wanted more Bebop for 20 years. Adapting anime to live action is really difficult…what works in animation doesn’t work with real actors. You can get away with far more exaggerated style and caricatures. For the most part, I really liked what they did to bring the anime to life. Changes were made to make it different, and that was necessary because you can’t remake the show. It’s just impossible as well as pointless. You can’t match the level of cool that was pulled off. What they wanted to do was expand the Bebop universe in a way that respects the original, while making a new generation of fans. It sorta worked. Not well enough apparently because a season 2 is not happening.

First and foremost, I really like the cast. John Cho as Spike, Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, and Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine. I think Mustafa does the best anime-to-live character portrayal of anyone on the show. Not only does he look just like Jet, but he accurately matches his speaking cadence and body language. Everything that I like about Jet, Mustafa does. In general, I think everyone does a fine job with what they’re given. It’s the changes that skew things. Before going into that more, let’s look at the rest of the production.

The set design is largely excellent, the Bebop spaceship, in particular, is a phenomenal achievement. The level of detail is crazy and beautiful in its worn out and broken down charm that mimics its crew. A lot of effort was put into making the world of the animated Cowboy Bebop real. The only knock in this regard is there are a few scenes where it looks like they are on a tiny set where the illusion of being in a living breathing environment is lost. Shot very close up, you never see much of the sky or a wide shot that shows depth. The CG set extensions, when they do them are very good. In fact, the CG work is really good as a whole. Space scenes are a real knockout, the ships and movement look really good. Every time they put you in the pilot seat with Faye or Spike in their respective spacecraft is awesome. Spike’s ship operates like a motorcycle and the excitng and forceful way he flys around from the original series is faithfully recreated and often looks real.

The series is also well directed. One of my favorite scenes is at the casino where the fight ends up blowing a hole in the building clear through to outer space. Really cool camera work with the change in pressure of the room. Just about all of the big battles are shot well. The fight choreography is good, but it’s clear the actors needed more time to train. Or more stunt actor replacement, there are a few slow and sloppy movements that don’t sell the fights well enough.

The soundtrack also rocks, as to be expected because they were able to bring in original composer Yoko Kanno.

Anime Bebop, as mentioned earlier, is 26 episodes. Around 22 minutes each. This Netflix adaptation is 10 episodes, around 45 minutes each. So the run time is pretty different and this Netflix run was never designed to cover everything the original does. It takes the basics, skips some things (leaving out main character Ed for example), and changes/expands some character stories. All of which I think is necessary for an adaptation. I got a big kick at seeing each character from the show appear. Depending on how much you hold Cowboy Bebop up on a pedestal will affect what you think of the changes. And if you’ve never seen the anime, you likely won’t care.

The show always feels odd because the aesthetics and navigation of the story are very anime. In copying what they show looks like, the direction does too. That can get messy because, as I said earlier, you can do and get away with a lot more in animation. So it constantly feels like the show is on guardrails. Too afraid to do too much differently, a slave to the source material. It can feel like the showrunners are afraid of offending Cowboy Bebop fans by simply making an adaptation. But when major changes are made, they are rolling the dice. It’s kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. With the complaints I’ve seen, it makes me wonder if going even further into making a new Cowboy Bebop with its own strong identity would have been more successful.

Quite a few stories from the original are used, the original material mostly comes from expanding ideas. A good example is that Spike and Faye spend more time together alone than they did in the anime. So their dialog is completely new. I loved this because my biggest wish has been to see more of my favorite characters together. And it made me think about how compressed the anime is. It moves very fast. In reality, they’d be on the Bebop all the time because space travel is pretty slow. It’s not like Star Wars or Star Trek where every ship has warp speed capabilities. You have to travel to jump gates (and pay for it) to travel to other planets fast. And you’d want other people to be on your ship or you’d go crazy from being alone all the time. Anyone you’d travel with, who wasn’t a bounty at least, you’d want to be able to have at least a decent relationship so you can socialize with them. So seeing Faye and Spike do that, along with Spike and Jet discussing things and bumping heads over important decisions was welcome.

It can fall flat at times though. Faye isn’t integrated onto the ship too well. She’s very antagonistic at the start (just like the anime) and for some reason Spike and Jet just let her hang around with them for no reason. Faye’s backstory was also changed. She can’t remember her past because she was put into cryosleep because she was sick. In the anime, a con man wakes her up and leads her on, who she then tracks down when she discovers his ruse. In the adaptation, it’s a con-woman who says she was Faye’s mother and she tracks down Faye. I have no problem with this as it’s still an interesting story and a lot is left on the table for Faye to find out about who she was. My problem is that Faye behaves differently. In the anime, while she questions her past, she still feels comfortable in her skin and with what she’s doing now (mainly scamming people). Netflix Faye is more childlike. It’s like they told Danielle to play Faye closer to her coming out of cryosleep and act like she’s having side effects from it. She doesn’t know stuff that others take as common knowledge which is used to play for laughs but it doesn’t work because that’s not Faye. She gets too goofy at times.

Speaking of goofy, let’s talk about Vicious. Played by Alex Hassell, Vicious is Spike’s nemesis. They share the same past, the one that Vicious stayed in with Spike’s love, Julia. In the anime, Vicious is one of the most popular character tropes. A quiet boogeyman that everyone is afraid of. He’s kept largely in the shadows to make him as mysterious as possible. Trench coat, long white hair, a gun or sword always in hand. He’s trying to take over the Syndicate through force and Spike is (likely) the only person who can stop him. In 1998 this wasn’t the biggest trope, he was part of that first wave (if you know Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7, there ya go) but today his look is played out. He’s a villain with no personality. The changes for him on the Netflix show are the most disappointing. They went too far in the other direction, making him a wide-eyed, manic cartoon character. No mystery, no nuance, far too heavy-handed and campy.

Now for Julia, I liked how they changed her story. Just like Vicious in the anime, she’s kept in the shadows and is mysterious. So much so, I consider her a ghost. You mostly see Spike pine over her, losing the love of his life is his deepest scar. You never find out what she’s like or why Spike loves her. He just does. That’s not interesting. Julia, played by Elene Satine, is given much more to work with on Netflix. She gets way more screen time and has a greater effect on the plot. Her arc goes in a new direction that I really wanted to see where it would go. Elene actually looks quite a bit like the anime Julia, so that was neat too.

The other fumble is with Ed. She shows up in episode 9 of the anime and is kept for the end of the adaptation. She’s mentioned in passing somewhere around the halfway mark and the setup for her introduction is completely different from the anime. She has a huge fan base and for me, she’s my least favorite. She’s entirely a cartoon character. Really easy for her to get annoying. They showed nothing but her worst traits in this adaptation. That type of character simply doesn’t translate into live-action. Do you remember the movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, when Jim Carrey tries to get info from a mental institution? He spikes his hair in all directions and dresses weird: combat boots, jean shorts, a pink tutu, and a white undershirt. He then proceeds to run around jumping off of furniture, with the final attention-getter of smashing his head into a seat. Take Jim Carey and replace him with a teen girl. No thank you! If they were to get a second season, I’d want them to change her to be much more grounded. You can have a character be eccentric and unique without being obnoxious and a distraction.

I wanted Netflix to succeed with this, to make another smash hit show. I had a great time watching this and I think they had their heart in the right place. They even translated the Big Shot show faithfully! What was wrong could be corrected and this universe could have been expanded with more great storytelling. It didn’t find its footing completely but I’ll be damned if they didn’t have both hands on the ladder.

See You Space Cowboy.

A stacked cast and a smart script makes The Harder They Fall one of my favorite movies of 2021. Not many westerns are made these days so as a genre picture, it stands out from the crowd even further.

The Harder They Fall is about Nat Love. His mother and father are killed in front of him by the pistols of the notorious gang leader, Rufus Buck, when he’s a young boy. When the story picks up years later, Nat is an outlaw and a bounty hunter. When he finds out that Buck has been rescued from being a prisoner by his Crimson Hood gang, Nat turns to his own Love Gang to go after him and stop him once and for all.

This movie doesn’t do anything new for the genre. It’s got the same stakes: revenge and a lot of money at stake. It’s a fusion of modern cinema aesthetics (it looks super slick and clean, the action scenes are very rambunctious with a camera eager to fly around to catch everything), with some throwback mixes of Spaghetti Westerns and Blackspoitation films. This is the kind of movie that I’m sure Quentin Tarantino liked and will appear on his best of the year list. So while it doesn’t do anything that new, it does everything really well.

The revenge story is set up from the first scene and that leads to a great reveal at the end. Every character that shows up gets a great intro and later, their time to shine. The cast is really big, some of the biggest and best Black actors in the business right there. They each fit a great role in the story and stand out in their line delivery and costumes. Everyone looks different and has their own quirks. In just 2 hours I got a good feel for everyone and when their death came about, it felt meaningful. That’s a great achievement from the pages to the screen. There are a ton of great lines and plenty of memorable scenarios. The script pulls out every kind of emotion to set up and follow through with scenes that keep everyone in motion. Sadness and sorrow, anger and opportunity, excitement, suspense, danger, relief, compassion, greed, morals, and companionship.

I’ve never heard of director Jeymes Samuel, he’s done some work in the industry in the music department before this. He met the right contacts doing that because he got his shot to make this movie in a big way. There was a serious budget for this movie, it all shows up on the screen. He directed the hell out of this and despite using modern music for a movie that is set a hundred years ago, I think those choices work really well. I had so much fun watching this. I was engaged from start to finish and I liked every character. The sides are drawn as good vs evil, or maybe not so bad vs evil. The bad guys are cool and are more than just bad for being the sake of being bad, there’s depth and reasoning behind what they do. So much right happened with this movie that the entire production team needs to work together again. I highly recommend The Harder They Fall as it’s from an exciting new filmmaker that could bring us more great movies.

Revenge is a dangerous road to travel.

Set in 1990s Los Angeles, Lisa Nova comes to town with her short film under her belt looking to make it big as a movie director. She meets movie producer Lou Burke who thinks her short is something special. The quality of her short film shows that she has a lot of talent and he makes a deal with her to start her Hollywood career. Not long after the ink is dry on the contract, Lou steals her project to turn her short into a feature-length film. A furious Lisa then runs into one more terrible person called Boro. Boro sees this young, strong, angry woman as a tool, not a person. She offers Lisa revenge and Lisa is eager for her help.

Brand New Cherry Flavor is nuts. That’s the easiest way to explain the whole show. By the end of the first episode, you know this is a revenge tale. What you don’t know is how far down the mouth of madness you’ll see Boro take Lisa. Boro is a witch, and what Lisa doesn’t recognize until it’s too late is that Boro also has an agenda. She isn’t being helped. she’s being exploited. And that’s after Lisa is exploited by a scum bag movie producer, so Lisa’s anger blinds her. Any rational thought is thrown out the window until it’s too late to stop (spells have very strict rules). Even faced with doing things that are far from normal, Lisa continues down the rabbit hole Boro opened. The first side effect of Boro’s spell is an alarming one that no one could ever see coming: vomiting kittens. By that I mean Lisa gives birth to kittens by painfully throwing up. Kittens that Boro then comes to collect for…her own use. If there is an upside, it’s only one cat at a time.

Regurgitating kittens isn’t the craziest thing that happens either. Spirits/demons, assassins, zombies, body horror, and assorted scorned people also come into play.

The intriguing thing about New Cherry is that everyone gets their own backstory that makes you reconsider how you view them. Lisa isn’t as innocent as she looks. She’s got her own out-of-bounds reason that she shows up in LA on her own. Lou is set in his ways, doing anything he wants to leverage his place in the industry. It’s brought him great success, so why would he stop? Roy is a huge movie star that’s trying to stay a huge movie star. Behind the scenes, he’s a mess, but his Hollywood image portrays a man who has everything going for him…and there is something about Lisa that draws him back to her one crazy event after another. I guess helping to dispose of a body is a great relationship builder.

Take these people (and a few more, I’m leaving quite a few out), introduce a witch who is a master at pulling strings, and watch as their lives turn into a complete nightmare. Revenge rarely goes well and the force of destruction often ends up much larger than ever thought possible.

In terms of overall storytelling, New Cherry hits all the staples of the genre. What it lacks in originality, it picks up in wild scenarios that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Half the time you’ll wonder what’s going to happen next, if anything could be more shocking than what you just saw, and if anyone is going to survive. New Cherry isn’t for everyone, it’s very adult and frequently gruesome, the special effects are really well done–they look real. If you can handle the insanity, you’re in for a wild ride.

Director/Writer/Producer Mike Flannagan is Netflix’s go-to guy for horror. This is his 3rd show for the platform and it again shows off his carefully crafted takes in the genre.

Midnight Mass is about a small, isolated island community in the US (I’m not sure where–there are no distinctive accents I picked up on). The kind where you take off and never come back when you turn 18 or you live there forever. There are only a few hundred people who live there so the families who stay tend to have roots that go way back. There’s comfort in the community, its slow pace, the simple way of life, and its tiny parish.

We first meet Riley Flynn, who comes back home after spending 5 years in prison for drunk driving and killing a young woman. He has to start his life over and has no other place to go. At the same time, a new priest named Father Paul comes to take over the parish from the Father who has fallen sick and is getting treatment on the mainland. Riley’s traumatized by what he did and his family has been coping with the public judgment they’ve received since he’s been away. His younger brother wants things to go back to normal, his mother tries to make that happen, and his father is the most outwardly ashamed of his son. Riley has a lot of questions and doubts about himself, but when he discovers his first girlfriend has moved back recently, he’s able to reconnect with her and open up in ways he can’t with other people.

At the church, Father Paul is welcomed with open arms by Bev Keane, a devout believer in Christ who has worked under the previous Father for years. She’s full of faith and ready to cast judgment on anyone in her line of sight. Shortly after Riley and Paul arrive, strange things start to happen on the island, which is quickly followed by miracles. The miracles are attributed to Father Paul and this creates a fervent renewal of faith in the community, one Bev is ecstatic to see and is eager to foster.

Midnight Mass is a slow burn. That helps and hurts the show. Riley is set up first and that’s done really well. His integration back into his family is awkward and painful, as is his dealings with guilt and shame. Father Paul is more of a mystery: where did he come from and how much does he know about what’s going on? Instead of getting intense right away, Mike Flannigan plants the seeds at the very start–something is off here, quite a few people are dealing with their own trauma and the community has its own scars and divisions bubbling about. There’s more here than just Riley and the side eyes he gets. Paul’s introduction is odd and there’s something off with him. He’s a charming guy and Bev is such a powerful and cunning presence that she often takes attention from him. As each episode oozes along, crumbs are dropped down, gathered up and it all comes together in beautiful chaos.

Knowing anything more than that will ruin things too much. It’s not a scary show. It’s unsettling and creepy. There’s a constant and growing feeling of paranoia and dread that occasionally fades away, only to come back with a new understanding that makes you think this isn’t going to end well. The escalation of horror and intensity is really well done. But I wouldn’t call it horror until the end, it’s much more driven by drama. Religion takes center stage from the very beginning and the growing secret of the bizarre events drives the story.

My biggest problem with the show is that it feels too long. Some episodes could use a few minutes cut out. There might be enough to cut to make this a tighter story by cutting it back by an entire episode. There are a lot of monologues that feel like sermons even when it’s not taking place in a church. Since the show is so steeped in Christianity (if you’ve attended mass before I’m sure you’ll get some flashbacks) that isn’t too surprising. As the monologues start to increase in number, I couldn’t shake the feeling of “how much is this necessary?” But, it doesn’t feel out of place and the biggest and most important ideas in the show come from these moments. That said, it can feel like the characters aren’t talking any longer, the writer behind the words becomes the speaker. That’s a disappointment as it takes away from being engaged with what’s being said and comes off as overwriting.

But the positive side of this is that the payoffs are awesome. When stuff happens in Midnight Mass, it pops off. There is some absolute mayhem at the end of this story that combines with fantastic plot beats and character arcs that are completely satisfying. The last 2 episodes in particular are phenomenal. For everything moment I didn’t like, I saw something that I did—and more–and that’s what kept me engaged and coming back for the next episode. I just had to know what was going on and how it was going to end. For me, these keystones in storytelling are really strong.

My final praise is aimed at the cast. Strong and believable performances from everyone, the highlight for me being Kate Siegel, Zach Gilford, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli, Annabeth Gish, and Hamish Linklater. Everyone gets their moments to shine in this dark and brooding tale. I got attached to a few characters and their path between faith and organized religion is the most personal and unique aspect of the show. Can it be a little stuffy and slow? Yes. But it’s ambitious and doesn’t pull any punches so I think Midnight Mass succeeds in conveying complex ideas that will make you think about it for a while.