Cowboys & Aliens

Cowboys & Aliens - Dir. Jon Favreau (2011)

Cowboys & Aliens has one of those high-concept titles that tells you exactly what you're going to get. Just like Snakes on a Plane had snakes on a plane, Cowboys & Aliens has cowboys and aliens. It should have been a cool mish-mash of Western and sci-fi genres, but, again, like Snakes on a Plane worked better as a joke on paper. Based loosely on a graphic novel published by Platinum Studios, Cowboys & Aliens had all the makings of a successful summer blockbuster. It had two renowned leading men together for the first time in Daniel Craig and Harrison (James Bond and Indiana Jones!). It had a talented director with a proven track record in Jon Favreau (Iron Man). Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer were among the producers. Credited screenwriters included Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman (Transformers), Damon Lindelof (Lost), Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby (also of Iron Man), and Steve Oedekerk (Kung Pow: Enter the Fist), who was attached to write and direct way back in 1997. Hmm…okay that last one was odd, but you can hardly hang the film's failures on a singular man.

Cowboys & Aliens opens with an unidentified man (Craig) awakening in the desert with no memory of who he is or where he came from. There's also a bizarre bracelet attached to his wrist. After killing a trio of assailants, he makes his way to the small town of Absolution where we learn he is a wanted outlaw named Jake Lonergan. The whole town lives in fear of local cattle baron, Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde (Ford), whose sniveling son, Percy (Paul Dano), has also arrived to drunkenly shoot up the place and bully the barkeep Doc (Sam Rockwell). When the Colonel learns Percy and Lonergan have been arrested, he rides into Absolution with the intent of taking them both. Just as the six-shooters are about to be drawn, mysterious lights flash in the sky. The aliens have arrived on crab-like vessels destroying everything below and snatching up innocent people left and right. Among those taken are Percy, Sheriff Taggart (Keith Carradine), and Doc's wife Maria (Ana de la Reguera). Lonergan discovers his bracelet is actually an advanced weapon capable of detecting the aliens and destroying their ships.

Lonergan and Dolarhyde reluctantly form a posse to rescue their people and stave off the alien invasion. Among their group include Doc, Dolarhyde's Native American servant Nat Colorado (Adam Beach, the Sheriff's grandson Emmett (Noah Ringer), the gruff reverend Meacham (Clancy Brown), and a mysterious woman named Ella (Olivia Wilde). Eventually they are all forced to team up with a tribe of Apaches and a band of ruthless outlaws in a final showdown with the extraterrestrials.

The film starts with a strong first act mimicking all the standard tropes of the Western with the taciturn hero and Mexican standoffs. Favreau does his best to ground the story in some semblance of reality even after the outlandish introduction of space invaders. Then, things start going off the rails. The momentum built up at the beginning drops into a second act lull as the plot takes its time to develop its thinly drawn characters. The narrative is clumsily dotted with flashback sequences of Lonergan's fuzzy past. Ford is initially cast against type as a gruff and slightly racist antagonist, but he's Harrison Ford and can't stay that way the whole movie. He's significantly softened with two cheesy subplots of Dolarhyde acting as a surrogate father to Nat and Emmett. The movie also gets taken down a notch with the early loss of Paul Dano, who served as an excellent whipping boy to Craig's Lonergan. Despite her insane gorgeousness, Olivia Wilde appears only as a functionary character to deliver helpful exposition and act as a deus ex machine to defeat the aliens. Also wasted are great character actors like Keith Carradine, Walt Goggins, and Clancy Brown.

Favreau is a solid director with a knack for handling large ensembles, but he's not the flashiest when it comes to action. His finales (both Iron Man movies, for example) tend to build up strong and then fizzle out towards the end. Cowboys & Aliens suffers from an anti-climatic finish as the final battle between the humans and aliens becomes monotonous and easily forgettable.

While classic Westerns like The Searchers served as inspiration, Cowboys & Aliens (with its wooden dialogue and silly plot contrivances) recalls the B-movie productions of Roger Corman. There is an underlying irony beneath the pedestrian narrative about our nation's history of genocide and Manifest Destiny, but don't think for an instance this movie is an allegory for American imperialism. Cowboys & Aliens isn't a game changing genre bender. It is summer entertainment. Mindless escapism in its purest form.

Rating: ** (*****)

Meek's Cutoff

Meek's Cutoff - Dir. Kelly Reichardt (2011)

Critics have jumped at the chance to label Meek's Cutoff as a "Revisionist Western" or a "Feminist Western." Some have even snidely referred to it as a big-screen version of the edutainment computer game, The Oregon Trail. I'll jump on the bandwagon and call it an 'Anti-Western' as director Kelly Reichardt has crafted a de-romanticized look at westward expansion and frontier folly. All of this is wrapped in timeless themes of xenophobia and national imperialism.

Based loosely on actual historical events, Meek's Cutoff follows a small group of settlers in 1845. They have broken away from a larger group to follow their guide, Stephen Meek (an unrecognizable Bruce Greenwood), across the Oregon High Desert along a supposed shortcut. What was supposed to be a two week journey has stretched to over a month as the pioneers' supplies dwindle. Among the group are: Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) and her older husband Soloman (Will Patton), the ultra-religious William & Glory White (Neal Huff & a squeaky voiced Shirley Henderson) and their son Jimmy (Tommy Nelson), and young couple Thomas & Millie Gately (Paul Dano & Zoe Kazan). Tensions mount as the wandering settlers try to decide whether Meek has intentionally led them astray or is he simply incompetent. The possibility hope arrives when they capture a lone Indian. Meek wants to kill him outright, but Soloman and Emily believe he can lead them to much needed water.

Meek's Cutoff is a challenging film with long stretches of silence and scenes of the characters endlessly walking the bleak terrain. It will try even the most patient viewer so much so that New York Times critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis penned an article entitled, In Defense of Slow and Boring, which also referenced divisive films such as The Tree of Life and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. It may be a hard pill to swallow, but Meek's Cutoff skillfully conveys the hardships and tedium that came from this era of Manifest Destiny. Reichardt stays through every painful step of everyday tasks before the advent of modern technology. Grinding coffee and churning butter are a pain in the ass. One scene features Michelle Williams firing a warning shot with her rifle, and then almost farcically going through every laborious step to reload. It makes you wonder how past generations ever got anything done.

Throughout it all, Reichardt (working from a script by frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond) manages to subvert every trope expected of the Western genre. The film was shot in the old aspect ratio of 1.37:1, commonly referred to these days as fullscreen. As such, the characters are framed in a claustrophobic manner that accentuates their positions of being trapped by the landscape. The beautiful Monument Valley of John Ford's oeuvre is replaced by dry, acrid land bereft of any beauty. Reichardt also keeps the audience at a distance as the picture opens with a series of long shots as the settlers go through the arduous task of crossing a shallow stream. The first bit of intelligible dialogue doesn't occur until approximate seven minutes into the movie. The story is told from a female's perspective with Emily as the lead character. Reichardt places her audience into their point of view exemplified during a sequence where the men try to decide what to do with Meek. She shoots them from an extreme long shot, but stays with the women (their faces hidden behind deep bonnets) who watch from a distance and speculate on a conversation they are not privy to.

Reichardt uses only natural lighting during the production. Night scenes are lit simply by a crackling campfire, which gives off an eerie highlight of orange across the actors' faces. Michelle Williams stands as one of the top actresses working in Hollywood today and gives another stellar performance.

Meek's Cutoff caps off an unofficial Pacific Northwest trilogy by filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, which also includes Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. Thematically, all three movies have much in common. Old Joy was about two friends (vestiges of the 60's counterculture attitude) on a camping trip and coming to grips with the disparity in their lives. Wendy and Lucy was a heart wrenching tale of a woman and her dog making their way to Alaska amidst the crushing weight of the economic crisis. All three were about the people who have fallen through the cracks of society. Meek's Cutoff won't be to everyone's taste, but those with strong enough convictions will find a powerful drama and a successful exercise in minimalistic cinema.

Rating: *** (*****)

Knight and Day

Knight and Day - Dir. James Mangold (2010)


I’ve made it known that I am able to set aside an actor’s or filmmaker’s personal life in order to enjoy their work. Despite his general craziness in real life, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Tom Cruise’s output over the last few years such as the Mission: Impossible franchise and Minority Report, one of the best films of the past decade. And who can forget his profanity-laced performance in Tropic Thunder? Cruise is an actor who enjoys working in big-budget, Hollywood pictures. However, you can’t help but feel that his couch jumping antics have dulled his star power.

Cruise attempts to play up his action hero persona in Knight and Day alongside his Vanilla Sky co-star, Cameron Diaz. Diaz is June Havens who runs an auto body shop in Boston and is flying out of Wichita after picking up some parts. She bumps into Roy Miller (Cruise) at the airport and winds up on a plane full of assassins. Miller dispatches the passengers, crew, and even the pilots before landing the plane in a cornfield.

As with all spy movies, there’s a MacGuffin at the center of it all. In this case, it is a perpetual energy battery (AA-sized) code-named the Zephyr. Miller claims to be a CIA agent who was double-crossed by his partner Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) who hopes to sell the battery to a Spanish arms dealer (Jordi Molla). The CIA claim Miller has gone completely off his rocker and cannot discern from reality and delusion. Shanghaied on a globe-trotting adventure, June finds herself falling for Miller while questioning the truth about him.

Knight and Day certainly had potential to be something different. I didn’t expect Cruise to poke fun of his personal life, but he doesn’t attempt to ridicule his on-screen persona either. He simply coasts by on the same jittery charm he’s always had. The film doesn’t attempt to lampoon the familiar tropes of the spy thriller. Instead, it simply revels in them, employing cliché after cliché.

The latest entry in this year’s rash of action/romantic comedy hybrids, Knight and Day kicks off with the rom-com staple of the meet cute before bouncing back and forth from genres. Compared to similar movies like The Bounty Hunter and Killers, Knight and Day does action bigger and better. Credit goes to director James Mangold whose diverse filmography includes Kate & Leopold, Walk the Line, and 3:10 To Yuma. Mangold keeps the film from really dragging even if the action sequences come off as lightweight Jason Bourne. Once the action subsides, we’re left with comedy and drama that fall flat. The banter feels contrived and the plot lacks any element of mystery. As if Tom Cruise could be anything other than the hero.

Cruise’s character may be defined, but they can’t seem to make up their mind about Diaz. One moment she’s a spastic mess shrieking in fear, the next she goes into John Woo mode while straddling Cruise as they rip down the streets of Barcelona on a motorcycle.

Though first-timer Patrick O’Neill is the only credited writer, the script was passed through the hands of nearly a dozen other writers, including Mangold himself. Knight and Day is the kind of utterly conventional picture that comes from filmmaking by committee. Dull, toothless, and forgettable.

Rating: *

Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are - Dir. Spike Jonze (2009)


”Let the wild rumpus start!”

Sorry, but Where the Wild Things Are was never a huge part of my childhood. In fact, I only just read it the other day. Honestly, I waited until after I saw the film to check it out from the library. Still, I approached the film adaptation with some trepidation. It’s always difficult to translate these classic children’s books, particularly when they’re only a dozen or so pages long. Filmmakers tend to pad out the film’s length with lowbrow humor and mugging lead actors. Look at what they did to poor Dr. Seuss. Thankfully, Spike Jonze has stayed true to the spirit of Maurice Sendak’s much-beloved book. Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are is a soulful, intelligent meditation on the difficulties of childhood. It is a refreshing change from the sugar-coated junk food that passes as family entertainment these days.

Max (Max Records) gets crushed within his snow fort by his sister’s friends while she stands by and does nothing. His mother (Catherine Keener) ignores him in order to spend time with her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo). Max dons his iconic wolf costume and stomps on the kitchen counter, demanding to be fed. His tantrum culminates in Max biting his mother. The boy runs away from home and finds a tiny sailboat which allows him to travel to an island inhabited by the Wild Things each representing a different aspect of Max’s psyche.

The de facto leader of the monsters is Carol (James Gandolfini), the most temperamental of the creatures and quickest to anger. Max and Carol bond quickly over their shared passion of feral destruction. Carol is constantly at odds with K.W. (Lauren Ambrose) who had briefly left to be on her own. There’s the easy-going Ira (Forest Whitaker) and his girlfriend, the somewhat domineering Judith (Catherine O’Hara). The other Wild Things are: Carol’s right hand man, the avian-esque Douglas (Chris Cooper); low self-esteem sufferer Alexander (Paul Dano); and the taciturn and intimidating Bull (Michael Berry Jr.).

Max’s time with the Wild Things is marked with mischief, adventure, and sorrow. The monsters are sensitive, but it’s never forgotten that they could eat Max with no hesitation. The work gone into creating the Wild Things is simply wonderful, suits from the Jim Henson Company enhanced with CGI. This is where the film truly begins and happens. The opening act is a nice touch, but it isn’t as if it were necessarily to inform the audience of the difficulties of growing up. The indie hipster soundtrack by Jonze’s then-girlfriend Karen O tends to become an ill-fitting distraction at times. In the end, Jonze’s offbeat sensibilities have crafted a film that can speak to the heart of anyone, regardless of age. Where the Wild Things Are never speaks down to the audience and portrays children as the complex creatures they are.

Rating: ***