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Thread: COWBOYS AND ALIENS (Jon Favreau 2011)

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    COWBOYS AND ALIENS (Jon Favreau 2011)

    Jon Favreau: COWBOYS AND ALIENS (2011)
    Review by Chris Knipp


    BUTT OF COURSE: DANIEL CRAIG IN COWBOYS AND ALIENS

    Far from home

    A specter of sleaze hovered about the long-displayed posters of this movie. It even seemed this might be a gay cowboy flick, the way the image lingered on a gunlinger's tight butt. Be assured however, this teaming up of the director of Jaws and ET and the man who recently helmed the Iron Man movies has high production values. It's just the concept that's cheesy. There's probably a genuine Western in here somewhere wildly signalling to be let out. The 1873 Arizona Territory town and the saloon where people congregate between gunfights on the main drag and the sheriff, the barman-doctor, the brave little orphaned boy, the tired but beautiful young woman, all look and sound right. Into this world steps a lean and gnarly desperado. His name is Jake. We know him as Daniel Craig. Many of us prefer to think of him as James Bond. We might prefer not to follow him here. Though saddled with a bad case of amnesia and a futuristic wrist bracelet he can't even knock off with a rock, he comports himself with sullen dignity and invincible machismo. So does Harrison Ford, as the richest rancher in the territory, saddled with Paul Dano as a son. Equally dignified are Keith Carradine as the sheriff and Sam Rockwell as Doc.

    For half an hour Favreau and his admirable cast cook up the feel of a real Western. But -- spoiler alert -- this is a movie about cowboys and aliens. And sure enough, aliens they are, right out of that cheap but feisty movie from South Africa that garnered so much attention a couple of years ago, District 9. But they looked the same in J.J. Abrams' Super 8. They're all standard issue now. This time they are not stranded and alienated, like the insect-like monsters in Neill Blomkamp's ironic genre flick. They've come to nineteenth-century America for the gold. "It's as valuable to them as it is to us," someone with the inside dope helpfully explains.

    If you ask me, the real invasion is computer-generated imagery. It eventually invades this (potentially) decent cowboy movie the same way it tore up J.J. Abrams' story about Eighties kids making horror movies. Of course Hollywood tends nowadays to be very often about genre mash-ups -- both for variety and to appeal to multiple audiences. But this one is just mashed; it's a wrecked Western, one that's ridiculous without being funny. Jon Favreau's humorous touch, so evident in his recent forays into Marvel Comics territory with the Iron Man movies, is sadly lacking here -- unless you count Dano's histrionic showing off as Harrison Ford's spoiled, trigger-happy son as humor. This is a movie that might have succeeded as camp or surrealism but instead simply falls flat, degenerating into one of those battles that so often overtake American summer blockbusters to make up for the lack of a coherent plot and justify the big budget.

    This movie reportedly cost $160-$200 million. That's a chunk of change and it gets you something. It bought a lovingly distressed frontier town, a fine set of costumes, an alien space ship worthy of the Black Fortress from Krull, and aliens with a finer outer gloss on them than Blomkamp's as well as an ability to morph into creeping grasping claws to scare the bejesus out of wide-eyed young Emmett (Noah Ringer, who was brave enough to survive The Last Airbender). But it can't buy narrative clarity. Good storytelling isn't about money; it's about economy. And that is best achieved when a movie has not taken a dozen years and a dozen writers to produce as this one did.

    Jake wakes up not knowing who he is. We know he's Daniel Craig in the wrong movie. Unfortunately our knowledge doesn't progress much from there. The aliens send what look like large mechanical dragonflies to drag people away to their space ship where they're kept in a trance. If they are freed, the captured victims have lost their memories. Sometimes.

    But why? What happened to Jake? What do the critters use gold for? Where do they come from? How did they wind up in the nineteenth century? And what are we doing watching this movie? All questions that remain unanswered as we stagger out after a lengthy and numbingly pointless battle between the frontiersmen led by Craig, Carradine, and Ford and the insect-like monsters, who can, luckily for the CGI team, readily blow things up and shoot flames. I kept wondering what Harrison Ford must think of all this. He keeps the air of an authentic curmudgeon throughout Cowboys and Aliens' whole two hours of running time. But this is a man with a reputation for not putting up with nonsense. Then again though, he put up with the Indiana Jones job, so he was up for this. You may not be. As for me I'm just hoping there's no sequel, though the ending ominously hints that one could be on the way.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-30-2011 at 02:53 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
    Of course Hollywood has always been all about genre mash-ups.
    Well, Hollywood is 100 years old.
    I remember enjoying Westworld (1973) when I was a kid. It's the first "mashup" I remember watching. There are older ones, I'm sure, but not that many unless one adopts a very broad definition of "mashup" movie.

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    Good edit. I should just say mashups, not genre mashups. On second thought I should rewrite the sentence. I might add that the combination of genres is common to all times, really. Remember Polonius' description of the players in Hamlet?

    The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
    comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
    historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
    comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
    poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
    Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the
    liberty, these are the only men.

    Mashup is, in my mind, not a vary favorable word, however. The mashing nowadays often goes astray when it involves masses of CGI-created mayhem, especially given the precisely timed and controlled violence that is the essence of a good Western.

    Modified version:

    If you ask me, the real invasion is computer-generated imagery. It eventually invades this (potentially) decent cowboy movie the same way it tore up J.J. Abrams' story about Eighties kids making horror movies. Of course Hollywood tends nowadays to be very often about genre mash-ups. But this one is just mashed; it's a wrecked Western, one that's ridiculous without being funny. Jon Favreau's humorous touch, so evident in his recent forays into Marvel Comics territory with the Iron Man movies, is sadly lacking here -- unless you count Dano's histrionic showing off as Harrison Ford's spoiled, trigger-happy son as humor. This is a movie that might have succeeded as camp or surrealism but instead simply falls flat, degenerating into one of those battles that so often overtake American summer blockbusters to make up for the lack of a coherent plot and justify the big budget.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-30-2011 at 01:20 PM.

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    One writer in an academic book I found on Google (Bary Keith Grant, Film genre reader III) argues that pure genres are rather difficult to find "within Fordian Hollywood cinema." He gets it that the essence of the "mashup" is the desire to appeal to multiple audiences. As various critics have been saying, Cowboys and Aliens is a sci-fi movie for people who don't like sci-fi and a Western for people who don't like Westers, but the trouble is, it pleases neither audience. But the "hybridization" of films is probably inevitably destined to increase in a world of greater competition. Did that step up in the Seventies when hybridizations apparently grew, Mr. Film Historian? In the early days of Hollywood, there was less competition. Now can I get away with that generalization?

    On a lighter note here's a revealing if somewhat obvious video mashup of two movies on the same theme, No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits. “Funny, side-by-side comparison of the movies ‘Friends with Benefits’ and ‘No Strings Attached.’ Same formula, same characters, and even the same camera angles.” Though the new one has been getting better reviews, this makes me nostalgic for No Strings. Yes, I like the lead actors in the latter more.

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    A blog called Chip Street under the heading "Westerrn Genre Mashup Movies Revisited" broaches the topic of Western hybrids and though the writer doesn't think of West World, he comes up with Johah Hex (cowboy bounty hunter out to get a futuristic terrorist), Priest ("priest disobeys church law to track down the vampires who kidnapped his niece") and The Warrior's Way ("A warrior-assassin is forced to hide in a small town in the American Badlands after refusing a mission" -- evidently a samurai-cowboy combo, of which we could give other examples).

    Wikipedia has an article on "Sci-fi Westerns" and in its Film segment lists these:

    The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956)
    Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966)
    The Valley of Gwangi (1969): Early 20th century cowboys catching T-rex.
    Westworld (1973)
    Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982)
    Indiana Jones (franchise) (1981-2008)
    Back to the Future Part III (1990)
    Wild Wild West (1999)
    Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004): A frontier town discovers monsters.
    Serenity (film) (2005)
    Ghost Rider (2007)
    Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

    So there you have three before Westworld. But of mashups in the early days of Hollywood's 100-year history I have none yet to offer. I am sure there are those who do.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-30-2011 at 01:57 PM.

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    I enjoyed reading these posts. Thanks. Good stuff. I think you're right about a lot of things, including that comment about the 1970s. I was thinking about how silent comedies set in the Old West could possibly be called "mashup movies". There were reportedly many such movies, mostly one-reelers. The about-to-be-released set "Treasures from the American Film Archives 5: The West" includes a sample.
    Some people may find the glorious Bride of Frankenstein (1935) funny enough to call it a "horror comedy"...
    I probably prefer to reserve the term for clear examples like Westworld and (probably) the others listed in your post in which there are enough conventions from both genres for the term to be validly applied.
    Shame that this latest one is a bust. I appreciate a good multiplex movie once in a while. Happy with the Potter closer and counting the days to the new Apes movie.

    Can't remember the thread in which we discuss noir and its derivatives so I'll post here that I forgot to mention a personal fave in this neo/pseudo noir category: Verhoeven's Basic Instinct. It is lurid, shallow and exploitative but it strikes me increasingly as absolutely perfect in every respect, the artistry or rather, the skill involved at every level of production is outstanding. Sharon Stone received a well-deserved Golden Globes nomination. Oscar snubbed her. And what a score!

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    Glad you enjoyed. I aim to please and stimulate discussion. Don't know about the early Hollywood one-reeler Westerns. Probably good fodder for analysis along these lines. As I said, I mean "mashup" (whose musical origins I know little of) as a pejorative term for cross-genre or hybrid genre, and think the latter are very widespread, though the mixture of high and low we find in Shakespeare is not available in Racine (Spanish equivalents? Don Quixote is comedy, but also sad; any great book works on many levels). Don't think I've ever been a fan of Verhoevan -- or able to stay away from him. Maybe with Basic Instinct you should also consider the role of Joe Eszterhas.

    This is not the place you referred to which was recently but here is one long-ago Filmwurld discussion of film noir: http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.p...lm-Noir-top-10. I don't think I agree with all Videohound's list. I don't see how you could consider Manchurisn Candidate or Betty Blue noir. Or Silence of the Lambs or Taxi Driver. However, there are contemporary noirs listed there that we forgot recently. Verhoeven's Basic Instinct definitely has many elements of film noir. I don't know what The Grifters is but I admire it a lot. And coming from the pulp pen of Jim Thompson makes it a prime candidate for noir status. This makes it occur to me that Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me is noir, and I'm pleased to notice that Casey Affleck has a new movie, Tower Heist, though whether it will be any good or not I can't predict.

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    Our more recent noir debate began after you posted about the new Italian film La doppia ora/The Double Hoour in the Best Movies of 2010 thread here.

    Obviously sci-fi can be noir as evidenced by the great Blade Runner. And Philip K. Dick is a sci-fi writer who is also noirish.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-30-2011 at 09:53 PM.

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    That old member wpqx posted a very nice list, although I would invert the top and 10th choice with Out of the Past ending at #1. Nice to see how long we've been "toiling" at the leaf.
    The great Blade Runner indeed. It's going to be among my first Blu Ray purchases along with The Searchers and A.I.. Still waiting for the Vertigo Blu-ray which is badly needed because the DVD transfer is mediocre.

    Yeah, it's unfair to call it Verhoeven's Basic Instinct because of Eszterhas's script, faithfully followed, and the immense contributions of the composer and the DP. This film aches for reappraisal. It has been underrated mostly on moral and political grounds, perhaps justifiably so, but it's unfair to neglect how perfect it is formally or esthetically. It takes a great deal of skill from a lot of people to make a movie so compulsively engaging and entertaining, so "well-made".
    To include Manchurian Candidate and Taxi Driver on that list seems too much of a stretch like you say. By the way, Taxi Driver is also morally dubious and ideologically incoherent (unresolved issues between Scorsese's Catholicism and Schrader's Calvinism perhaps) but still so "good" in many respects as to be considered an absolute must-see by just about everyone. I feel the same way about The Birth of a Nation, and about Basic Instinct.
    Last edited by oscar jubis; 07-31-2011 at 10:16 AM.

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    Fortunately Filmleaf/Filmwurld is pretty completely searchable now, it would seem. Google can find many of the site discussions and specific films now.

    I don't know about Basic Instinct -- I don't think I've ever watched it. But I know about it. Maybe I did watch it. Anyway I know about Joe Esterhas. He's not an attractive personality (hence the "moral and political grounds" on which B.I. is disliked) but he certainly knew how to crank out some effective screenplays (I thought of several less nice words) I guess I loved the silly Flashdance, which he apparently wrote. I remember Music Box, directed by Costa Gavras. Full of corny stuff, but compelling actors are involved. Watchable. Sure, movies are team efforts, unless one person did them all. I just watched an excellent no-budget film in which Richmond Riedel is the producdr, director, cameraman, writer, and editor. It's called Target Practice. I'll put my review of it here soon. Riedel is an experienced Hollywood editor, and has also sold some screenplays and is good at writing. He seems to know what he's doing as a director too, so maybe he'll get to direct one of his scripts with a real budget one day. Anyway, the writer is often as essential as the director. Esterhas' mark is all over Basic Instinct, I'm sure.

    As for Taxi Driver, the last time I watched it it did seem incoherent, but it has a powerful, obsessive quality that De Niro's performance carries through well. I guess there's something iconic about it but not altogether in a good way. Certainly an ugly side of American culture is depicted there. A failure to reconcile Scorsese's Catholicism and Schrader's Calvinism is a likely culprit behind the incoherence, and an American attraction to the glamor of insane violence.

    I'm more comfortable praising Blade Runner. It's fun, and unexpectedly good. It wasn't taken very seriously but it's the kind of movie you can watch over and over again. I believe I had a special edition laser disc of it. It's atmospheric and it's fun. It was the first time I saw a screen "dystopia" that was really interesting. Sci-fi worlds used to be sterile. This is one that's funky and fun. I broke down several scenes frame by frame. The design of the city and all the scenes is marvelous. There is some controversy about the voiceover, but since that underlines the private eye sensibility I favor that version.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-31-2011 at 11:12 AM.

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