Cowboys & Aliens

This is a comic-book movie with an ampersand in the title and it feels a lot like a comic book we would not be interested in reading because the characters and the dialogue are flat and 2D, like in a not particularly outstanding comic book, but it’s an OK comic-book movie, as, on the jet-powered heels of the Iron Man flicks, director Jon Favreau continues to step down in class with regard to subject matter and character while he steps up in box-office blammo big bucks, so it’s a fair trade, and we’re hoping he’s being an excellent whore in order to have the financial freedom to go back to being involved in stuff like Swingers and Made, but how you gonna keep ’em down in the Indy Flicks when they seen them bright Hollywood lights, huh? Daniel Craig has squinty, slitty eyes and he looks like somebody sucked all the juice outta his face, and he is perfectly fine as the guy who can lie out in the hot sun unconscious all day and then kick the asses of three guys who have guns on him and jump off the ground and tackle a dude off a horse, and it’s a hundred times more bullcrappy than anything he’s done in a James Bond movie, but Favreau knows you’re on his side, so you want it all to happen, just like you want Harrison Ford to be able to do all the bullshit stuff he does in the film, like acting and having a Big Scene with emotions and stuff that he can just muscle his way through because he’s Harrison Ford and the audience wants it. And another thing, why does every intelligent invading Alien Species have to be so bestial and easy to ultimately, uh, spoiler alert, eh? When the real-deal Bad Aliens hit this rock, it’ll be over in 20 minutes. Also Keith Carradine kept making us hope the movie would turn into Deadwood Ampersand Aliens, but it never happened, and sure, we’ll go see the sequel when it comes out, what the fuck, the last 45 minutes of this one moved along pretty good, and like the way the spoiler-alert weapons work, you don’t have to think, you just let it happen, and Olivia Wilde totally looks like an alien. Keep an eye on her.

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