Full Movie Reviews
Rating of
2/4
Cowboys & Aliens
worleyjamers - wrote on 06/29/2013
I actually liked this. I found the concept extremely interesting, I had no idea what to expect from combining two polar opposite genres, the Western and Sci-fi, but overall, this worked I thought. This film is much more Western than Sci-Fi, and I think that one of the best things about it. The characters, story, setting, scenery, cinematography, dialogue...it's all very western, which I really liked. Aliens capture some civilians, and some citizens go to the rescue. It's simple and it worked. The characters are completely likable, and the cast is brilliant, all giving good performances. Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Paul Dano, Olivia Wilde...they were all excellently cast, and they deliver! The cinematography and costumes were good. And the special effects were good! So …
Rating of
2.5/4
"Cowboys & Aliens" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 11/14/2012
An outlaw with total amnesia teams up with the local townsfolk, his old gang and the last surviving members of an Apache tribe to rescue their people stolen away by body snatching aliens. I have to say that the little kid inside of me loved the idea of matching six gun toting outlaws against flying saucers and the set up to Cowboys & Aliens actually lives up to the idea really well. Daniel Craig makes an extremely charismatic tough guy with no name and the opening scenes as he tries to discover what happened to him are great. It does lose its way a little as the aliens creep more and more into the story but it throws itself into the preposterous premise with such abandon you can't help but get carried away by its sheer enthusiasm. It would have been a more satisfying experience if we'd …
Rating of
2.5/4
Saddle Up!
MovieMike - wrote on 12/22/2011
Not since the series, ‘The Wild, Wild West’ (Robert Conrad) of the late 60’s has there been a solid Hollywood attempt to mix the standard cowboy western with something approaching science fiction. ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ makes a solid effort with this cross-genre action picture. Played as a straight up western from the start, the film manages to stay true to those roots throughout most of the story.
Directed by Jon Favreau (‘Iron Man’, ‘Iron Man 2’), ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ has the look and feel of a stock western movie, complete with enigmatic drifter, an overbearing cattle baron, and a puppet sheriff. Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (both with previous writing credits for TV’s sci-fi series, ‘Fringe’) crafted a script that quickly lays out the main …
Rating of
2/4
Cowboys & Aliens review
alec96 - wrote on 10/08/2011
I was really looking forward to seeing Cowboys & Aliens, but the movie just didn't work very well. It was a big disappointment. The movie has a great cast. Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, and Paul Dano. The movie also has a pretty good director, Jon Favreau. He is best know for his comedies like elf, and his superhero movies, like Iron Man one and two. This is no superhero movie, and there is really no comedy in this movie. So this is a different type of movie for him. You know when you heard about this movie, you really wanted to see it, I mean it's a western with Sci-Fi thrown in. That seems cool. It is sort of cool, but that idea needed to be in a better movie. You probably already know the plot from the title. It's Cowboys vs Aliens, well that is what the …
Rating of
1.5/4
Enough with the bugs....
trophywife - wrote on 09/19/2011
Some things just aren’t meant to go together: steak and grape jelly. Bermuda shorts and black dress socks. Your grandmother and Facebook. And for good measure, let’s throw in Cowboys and Aliens.
From the moment I saw the previews of this one, the only thing that kept rolling through my mind was “What the ….? Are things so bad that Indiana Jones is just signing on to ANYTHING?” Yes….yes they are.
THE GOOD: So we have a man named Lonergan (Daniel Craig) who wakes up in the desert with a nasty gaping hole in his side, and a weird iron bracelet on his wrist. He has no clue who he is or how he got there, but one thing that’s not in question is that he has fighting credentials. He can take out a whole group of armed cowboys with only a small amount of grunting. He …
Rating of
2.5/4
Mediocre, Yet Still Entertaining
mitchellyoung - wrote on 08/08/2011
This is an extremely frustrating film, a movie that creatively combines two popular genres but suffers from a lack of focus and originality that plagues the entire film. The movie starts out promising, with a wordless and extremely bad-ass introduction to Daniel Craig, but, the pace of the film becomes clear soon after. Brutal and engrossing action sequences are often followed by long periods of dialogue and, for lack of a better word, "walking" scenes that drag to no end. The performances are strong across the board. Daniel Craig channels what he does best - kick ass - and Harrison Ford is gruff and angry, totally bypassing his Indiana Jones persona. Paul Dano also stood out to me as a wormy wanna-be outlaw (at least for the first half of the film - the character, like several …
Rating of
2/4
A Mashup Mishap
Chris Kavan - wrote on 08/01/2011
Another in a long line of 2011 films that has "mediocre" written all over it. This one, however, burns me a little more because I had such high hopes for it. Jon Favreau directing - Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig and the new "it" girl Olivia Wilde. The trailers intrigued me - what could go wrong?
For once the critics (at least the few I skimmed) got this one right: as a mashup of western and sci-fi films, it falls short on both counts. In fact, I would say this is a straight-up action movie that happens to contain elements of westerns and sci-fi, but nothing more. Just because you where hats and ride around on horses, does not a western make. You can throw in all the aliens you want too, but it never has that sci-fi feel of say District 9 or Aliens.
One problem I had is it never felt …
