Cowboys & Aliens

Yep. Here it is: probably the film I've been most excited for this summer, the absolutely ludicrous Cowboys & Aliens. From the second I heard the title, I knew it was going to be brilliantly fun, then when I found out that not only would the usually faultless Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde have roles, but also attached was movie legend and the man pretty much every bloke would give his right arm and kidney to be, Harrison Ford. And just to make it even more perfect, it's directed by John Favreau, the man responsible for the fairly fantastic Iron Man films. Yeah...this film had a huge amount of hype to live up to.

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Luckily, it lived up to it. Take that, suspense!

Right from the off you find yourself absolutely loving Daniel Craig's Jake Lonergan character, a typical rough, tough, sweaty, dirty, knuckleslinging cowboy you'd want to find in any good Western movie. We're gradually brought into the story almost through Lonergan's eyes, as he tries to unravel the mystery of the strange metallic bracelet he has suddenly found attached to his arm. Even though we all know the idea of alien meet cowboy situation is off the chart crazy, we sort of just go along with it, in a very good way. We accept it, because the characters are genuinely surprised by the appearance of alien activity. And it's through Lonergan that we get to this point, as he slowly unearths the answers to more questions surrounding both the bracelet and his lack of memory from the starting point of the film.

Olivia Wilde fills a role which is somewhat familiar to the Western genre yet again, albeit with a fairly massive twist. She plays Ella Swenson, the mysterious traveller who seems to know too much about our heroes and their situation, far more than said heroes know themselves. And the twist...nope. It's a goodun, if a little predictable when you're watching it, but you'll have to go see it...Totally worth it mind.

And then of course, there's Sir Harrison of Ford. We may all remember him for being Han Solo and Indiana Jones, and rightly so, but his role as Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde is one that he seems to have been made for in his more senior age. He's another Western standard - the crotchety war veteran, still feared and still with a great deal of power, although he has a much more tender side to him, which is brought out through his relationship with his son and closest companion. Ford does everything you want him to, from gunslinging to great tongue-in-cheek lines, his overall performance is very much impressive...and as much as I enjoyed the fourth Indiana Jones film, there's something satisfactory about him getting his own back on some aliens who may or may not have been involved in Indy 4.

Oh, there's also Sam Rockwell in it too, playing Doc, the saloon owner of the town in the middle of the alien dilemma. Doc is basically there to provide a bit of comic relief, which Rockwell manages easily, as well as getting across a bit of a more serious side, dealing with the disappearance of his wife early in the film.

The story is a good one, nice and simple really. You could easily just replace the "&" in the title with "VS" and you've got the top and bottom of it. But like I rambled on about before, even though you know the concept is more than a little insane, at no point do you really think about it as such. It's all done with an honest sense of humour - it knows it's a bit ridiculous - but it's just about serious enough to make you think...well what would it be like if cowboys stumbled across aliens? The film just gets over the alien factor by applying that oh-so American, and particularly cowboy mantra of  "Yep, that's a massive problem that I never thought of...but it needs sorting". And even more American, that problem is sorted with guns. Lots of guns. And possibly the coolest weapon ever to imminently hit Toy'r'Us shelves in the form of Daniel Craig's bracelet deely.

And just to prove once more that Favreau is a director of genuine talent, not only does he make sure that the characters develop gradually, not only does he secure a sense of humour about the film, but he ensures that the special effects do not become overbearing and cheesey. All too easy it would have been to make the aliens absolutely horrendous to look at - and they still are pretty weirdy - but Favreau reigns it in and gets the balance right between scary alien and farcical. So basically, nothing as truly disturbing as this. There's also a bit of a new take on alien weaponry, other than just lasers and various beams, there's a extremely shiny array of mysterious metallic rope lines, weird spaceship things, and a heap of supernatural lights going on.

I guess all in all, the film embodies everything you can find in Independence Day, but with a bit less cheese in it. And I mean, come on...you know you all sort of want to see Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford shooting at a big bunch of aliens with old school pistols and shotguns, right?

4/5 - It's great, extremely entertaining, acted, directed and almost everything elsed very well. Only thing that lets it down somewhat is the fact that the story is guilty of going a bit wishy-washy, major details sometimes arise and are just taken on board, rather than speculated over...or even reacted to in some cases.

Nonetheless, this film is one of the most fun things you're likely to see at the cinema this year. Just make sure you go see it without taking it too seriously. It's a good story, but it wants you to know it's trying to entertain, and it manages it with great ease.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

This year is the year that those clever people over in movieland finally decided to exorcise the memory of that abomination that was Tim Burton's reboot of the classic Planet of the Apes, and good lord they've struck gold.

Yep, this week I went off to see Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, Rupert Wyatt's attempt to eradicate scenes like THIS from history...We can forgive, Tim, but we'll never forget.

In all honesty, I can't ever really remember being that in to any of the original franchise, other than the original, and after Burton went all hill-billy-cop-in-the-basement-from-Pulp-Fiction with the attempted rebooting, I never really had much urge to look back over them. What's more, I was mainly swayed by one of my mates being extremely amused by Draco Malfoy saying "stupid monkey" in the trailer. It turned out to be a pretty damn good decision, this is how you reboot a series, please take note, anyone involved with Superman Returns, Rob Zombie's take on Halloween and The Pink Panther Steve Martin atrocities.

This film some how manages to allow you to get past the admittedly amusing vision of monkeys taking over San Francisco, and forces you to genuinely empathise with the ape characters as if they were members of Tom Hanks' boys in Saving Private Ryan. Seriously. It's a bit weird.

Looking at the cast, James Franco puts on a nice and honest portrayal of a man simply in too deep with professional and family crises, solid but unspectacular, allowing us all to focus on the key action - the apes themselves. Unsurprisingly, like all of the cleverest movie bigwigs, when ROTPOTA (which for some reason amuses me) needed a genius of the motion capture world, they hired Andy Serkis to play Caesar, the first ape to successfully respond to Franco's viral cure to Alzheimer's, and whose intelligence increases rapidly as a result. I really don't know what else I have to say about Serkis, I'm pretty sure I've never seen him letting himself down in any film, in any guise...though I haven't see Burke And Hare, mind you. I actually forgot the chimp was an actor in a mocap suit for a good period of the opening hour of the film, it's pretty impressive.

The nearly show stealing performance, however, belongs to John Lithgow, yep, him off of 3rd Rock From The Sun, playing Franco's father, who is deteriorating through Alzheimer's. For a man we pretty much only associate as being a bit of the comic fool, if not being a pain in Sly Stallone's mountain climbing backside, Lithgow puts on a display of a man declining mentally that really is stunning. His character is basically the catalyst that brings on the change in the world of the apes, and it's only right that Lithgow, a man we're used to seeing playing the lovable idiot, falling to pieces, which just makes his situation that much more soul destroying.

Oh...and Tom Felton is in it too, probably proving that he's odds on to actually have the best career after the world of Harry Potter. He's actually pretty good, even if he is proving that America still loves casting us British folk as the bad guys - the other 'villain' character, Franco's boss, is also played by a Brit, David Oyelowo - but I suppose we can forgive it...because let's face it, we are fairly convincing dastards.

The plot is a strong one, as said before, it's surprisingly convincing...you don't feel too daft following and loving it. The CGI is pretty great too, there's only one or two of the apes that you can honestly tell are computerised, even though we all know they're all fake anyhow. And, best of all, the film sets itself nicely up for a sequel or two, even throwing in a lovely little treat for us sci-fi nerds out there in the form of mentioning the first manned mission to Mars, which will link nicely into one of the astronauts coming back to a world ransacked by the apes.

All in all, this will take some serious beating by the other sci-fi films coming out this year, though I have really high hopes for Super 8 and Cowboys And Aliens, no word of a lie, this film is pretty top notch.

5/5 - I don't really like giving things top marks, particularly when dealing with the stigma of a sci-fi movie, but I honestly can't think of anything wrong with this one. Acting was great all round, plot was great and effects were brilliant. So yeah...full marks indeed. Go see it!

P.S. This one has a minor role for Brian Cox, who is also awesome. Hoorah.