'Cowboys and Aliens' is smart and lots of fun!

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Starring: Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, and Adam Beach
Director: Jon Favreau
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When an aliens start terrorizing an isolated area of the American Southwest in the 1870s, outlaws, cattle-ranchers, settlers, and Apache Indians join together with a mysterious woman (Wilde) and an amnesiac who has somehow gotten his hands on one of the alien devices (Craig) to defeat them before they conquer Earth.

"Cowboys & Aliens" is an action-packed genre-bending mix of Western and Sci-Fi as a landscape populated with Western archetypes becomes the setting for an epic adventure tale told through one of the smartest scripts I've witnessed in years.

Although this is a movie that's primarily about aliens blowing the hell out of cowboys and visa-versa, a lot of thought and care went into just about every character that appears on screen that's not just part of the background. Even minor supporting characters get little touches that give them more depth and life than some main characters in recent allegedly character-driven movies--including one of the alien invaders. And the actors all rise to the level of this superior material, with not a single bad performance among them.

The most remarkable character and performance in the picture is given by Harrison Ford. His Colonel Dolarhyde starts out as the stereotypical, psychotically evil ex-Army officer cattle-rancher strong man, but by the time the film is over, he is completely transformed into a sympathetic character who is the most fully developed of all of them.

Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde are basically, well, Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde. Both characters that they play are of such a nature that their physical appearances are very important, and both of them are perfectly cast in their roles... Craig for his craggy, weather-worn looks and Wilde for her ability to seem mysterious by just standing around. The fact that neither one of them was the first choice to play those parts is a sign that the Movie Gods were watching out for this film. They're both so perfect I can't imagine this film being as good if they hadn't been in it.

"Cowboys & Indians" deserves to be counted among this years best movies, whether measured by quality or box office receipts. I highly recommend going to see it, even if you're a stingy bastard like me who goes to matinee screenings. This is the kind of movie that Hollywood needs to make more of..

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'The Big Empty' is an apt title

The Big Empty (2003)
Starring: Jon Favreau, Rachael Leigh Cook, Joey Lauren Adams, Daryl Hannah, John Gries, Adam Beach, Bud Cort, Kelsey Grammer, and Sean Bean
Director: Steve Anderson
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A struggling actor (Favreau) is promised money to pay off his overwhelming debts if he go to a small town in the Mojave Desert and wait there with a blue suitcase and bowling ball bag until a man called Cowboy (Bean) comes to claim them. As he waits for his contact, he interacts with the odd inhabitants of a small truck stop... and eventually witnesses what may or may not be alien abductions.

"The Big Empty" is a film full of quirky and interesting characters, portrayed by a cast of talented and charismatic actors. It's got lots of great-looking cinematography that takes full advantage of the locations, perfect pacing, and a minimalist score that comes and goes at the absolute right moments.

Among the actors of particular note are Jon Favreau, as the Everyman drawn into a bizarre situation involving murders and space aliens; Daryl Hannah, John Gries, and Adam Beach are funny and at times more than a little sinister as the small-town folk who may have spent a little too much time in the desert sun; Rachael Leigh Cook is perfect as a teenager who may not just seem like she's some sort of alien but who actually might be one; and Kelsey Grammer and Sean Bean cut mysterious figures who may or may not be involved with aliens visiting Earth, if not actual aliens themselves. The interaction between all these characters is fun to watch, the dialogue is sharp and well-crafted, and you will become drawn into the mysterious swirling through the plot: Just what is in the blue suitcase and what exactly has our hero gotten himself involved in?

Unfortunately, for all the great characters, great writing, and great technical achievement that leads up to the climax of the film, writer/director Steve Anderson chooses to provide absolutely no hints whatsoever as to the ultimate point of the story. We are given some clues--the duster-wearing weirdo character played by Sean Bean identifies himself as someone who helps people "move on," the suitcases [because as the film heads to its climax, one suitcase multiplies into a dozen of them] contain "whatever you need"--the number 11 appears over and over--but Anderson chooses to not provide anything substantial to link these elements, and in the end viewers are left more annoyed than intrigued by the film's ending. As the end credits start to roll, the entire movie takes on a feeling so hollow that one wonders whether the title refers to the desert, the frustration of the main character's drab life, or the box holding Anderson's ideas for what his story meant.

And that's a shame, because the sequence in the desert that makes up the movie's climax is one of the weirdest and most fascinating bits of "aliens walk among us" bit of story telling I've ever seen on screen. However, Anderson's unwillingness to provide any sort of real conclusion ends up undermining everything he's created.

In fact, in some ways, the bonus features on the DVD are almost more interesting than the film itself. Anderson's alternative audio track film commentary is fascinating and interesting, both on the film and on the cut scenes among the bonus features. Particularly interesting are the cut scenes that would have made the desert climax less mysterious (so cutting them was the right thing do do), as well as an alternate ending that would have gone a long way to restoring the magic of that desert scene to the film's final moments (and which might even have made the lack of solid meaning more acceptable because it's so abstract. If you have any fascination whatsoever with the process of filmmaking--be it the creative, technical, or business part--this DVD is one that you want to check out, no matter how flawed the main attraction is.

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