COWBOYS AND ALIENS (Dir. Jon Favreau, 2011)
When I first heard about the summer movie concept of fuckin' James Bond and Indiana Jones (Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford respectively) fighting aliens in the Old West, I was all 'sign me up', especially since it was being helmed by IRON MAN's Jon Favreau. But less than halfway through this messy overly formulaic film, massive boredom set in.
It started out promisingly with Craig waking up in the desert with a strange piece of artillery clasped to his wrist.
Craig is a man who can't remember his name, obviously because of an alien abduction as we see in quick fleeting light-filled flashbacks, and we follow him as he can takes out a crew of wranglers on the trail, on his way to the protypical wild west town of Absolution.
The town's sherrif (Keith Carradine) arrests Craig, along with the trouble-making gun toting brat Paul Dano the son of a ruthless cattleman (Ford) who acts like he owns the town, because he does.
Ford demands that his son be let free, but before they can sort anything out the town is under alien invasion, with a bunch of figher jet type spaceships laying waste to property and literally lassoing away various townsfolk.
007 and Dr. Jones, sorry Craig and Ford, form a posse to go after the aliens and get back their loved ones, and we get a long dull stretch full of old timey philophizing and poorly constructed character development.
When we finally see the aliens, like in a close-up shot stolen from ALIEN, it's disapointing how generic they are. They're the same green scaley disgusting man-creatures with hidden orifices and tons of teeth. Minus the multiple legs they look like the Skitters from the new show Falling Skies or from hundreds of other alien attack scenarios from T.V. and movies.
The profusely predictable plot concerns infiltrating the alien's headquarters, hidden in the picturesque terrain, which by the way is beautifully shot by Mathew Libatique (IRON MAN, BLACK SWAN), to save the abducted, with a ginormous battle climax in which cowboys join forces with Indians and outlaws to bring down the intruders from outer space.
It's not Craig or Ford's fault - nor love interest Olivia Wilde's, or Samuel Rockwell as a sensitive saloon owner - it's the undercooked treatment given to overdone material. The special effects are fine but far from mind blowing (they make the claim that the aliens don't see well except when it's dark so we get a lot of murkiness), and when the alien's motivation for world domination is revealed it's in one or two flimsy throwaway lines.
Craig's stoic beefiness matched with Ford doing his gruff old man routine to greater effect than his last few films, does make for some fanboy pleasing moments, but they aren't enough to make this anything more than a barely passable popcorn picture.
More later...
CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE (Dirs. Glenn Ficcara & John Requa, 2011)
At the beginning of this ensemble rom com, after an opening montage of the feet of restaurant patrons playing footsy, Steve Carrell is told by his wife of 25 years (Jullianne Moore) that she wants a divorce. This sets off a chain of vignettes that are more about clichéd silly lust than what the title wants us to think.
This is a simple-minded movie more concerned with setting up cheap gags than actual character connection. Like in the scenario where Carrell befriends a womanizing Ryan Gosling at a bar.
Gosling assigns himself as Carrell's wingman, so, of course, there's a shopping mall montage where Carrell gets new hip clothes and a snazzier haircut, and before you know it he's a success with the ladies. This kind of sequence should've been retired the second the '80s ended.
Meanwhile, Carrell and Moore's 13-year old son (Jonah Bobo) has a crush on their babysitter (Analeigh Tipton) who he's over-texting, Moore is fending off the further advances of a sleazy co-worker who she had an affair with (Kevin Bacon, who's really getting around this year), and a seemingly unconnected Emma Stone is pining for Josh Groban as a dorky lawyer.
There are 2 twists that are revealed in this material - one which you can see coming if you are paying attention, and the other is of the "oh, come on!" variety. I won't spoil what they are, but I will say that one of them involves Marisa Tomei as a squirmy, and completely unconvincing woman that Carrell has a one-night stand with.
The cast defintely has plenty of comic chops (as in EASY A, Stone has a way with one-liners), and there are some juicy jokes here and there in CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE, but I cringed much more than I laughed. It contains a lot of talk about soul mates, but that's just audience pandering talk. I never believed it ever really cared about matters of the heart.
In one scene, Carrell watches sadly as Moore drives off and it begins to rain. Carrell: "That is such a cliché." It sure is, yet at least in that moment the movie owns up. If only it did at its other dishonest cloying turns, then maybe it would be a movie with a soul instead of a big screen sitcom that might as well have a laugh track dubbed in.
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I saw this film last April at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham and really love it. I saw it again this weekend at the Colony Theater in Raleigh where it will play through next week. It is also playing in the Triangle at the Galaxy Cinema in Cary.
PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES (Dir. Andrew Rossi, 2011)
Andrew Rossi's new documentary poses the question: are we witnessing the death of print media due to the internet, or are we just in a transitional period in which institutions like the New York Times will figure out how to adapt to the changing technological landscape and ultimately survive?
This film convincingly argues the latter, but it's going to be quite a struggle in the face of online competition such as the bloggosphere and Wikileaks.
Rossi's unprecedented access to the media desk of the New York Times for a year (2009-2010) has us listening like a fly on the wall to key players including Executive Editor Bill Keller, blogger turned Times writer Brain Stelter, Media Marketing Editor Bruce Headlam, and Baghdad bureau chief Tim Arangoand media and culture columnist David Carr who steals the movie over and over with his dead on acerbic comments.
We learn about the "New Times Effect," in which what the Times prints one day will set the agenda for what every other news outlet prints the next.
We learn about how Judith Miller's false reporting of Weapons of Mass Destruction damaged the Times' credibility.
From old grainy footage we learn about the newspaper's history, especially in clips of Allistar Cooke visiting the Times from the program Omnibus in 1954 I'd sure like to see more of.
As I said before Carr steals this film, but he also symbolizes the fight that the Times has left in it. One particularly amusing scene has the former crack addict turned media columinst vaporizing (his word, not mine) a blogger opponent at a SXSW panel.
PAGE ONE is a masterful piece of infotainment that captures a turbulent time for the Times. Since we're still in that time it really shouldn't be missed by anybody who has even a passing interest in the state of modern print media. Or by those who love an extremely well made engrossing documentary.
More later...
