Paper reviews and other reactions

[Germangirl]

First real review I read, VERY positive AND its the Hollywood Reporter :D
Trending_World Trending World News
First Review For Jon Favreau's Cowboys & Aliens Hits…It's Good! http://bit.ly/rnUC8r


The Bottom Line

It sounds kooky on paper but on the screen cowboys and aliens make beautiful, fun music together


This comic-book movie from Jon Favreau spends a gratifying amount of time on its characters and actors rather the visual FX.

SAN DIEGO — Fusion is everything in gourmet cuisine these days, so why shouldn’t filmmakers mix and match movie genres no matter how crazy? Cowboys & Aliens— well, the title says it all. Taking the idea from a Platinum Studios graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, this film from Jon Favreau shrewdly blends an alien invasion movie into a western. The key to its success lies in the determination by everyone involved to play the damn thing straight. Even the slightest goofiness, the tiniest touch of camp, and the whole thing would blow sky high. But it doesn’t.
our editor recommends

If you were to assess the mix, it would be about 70% western to 30% alien invasion. Which is pretty bold given that aliens are all the rage and the last western to make a lasting impression was probably Clint Eastwood’s1992 Unforgiven. But that’s where shrewdness comes in: You expect space invasions; a western is a tricky thing to pull off.

A big hit here at its Comic-Con world premiere, the Universal release lowith its target audience, all in ample supply this weekend in San Diego. oks primed to round up box office gold But you suspect this is one monster movie that may reach even older audiences who would love to slap on chaps and get rough and dirty with a good, old-fashioned western. Well, here’s that opportunity. Nor does it hurt the movie’s appeal to an older crowd that the film unhesitatingly pairs two mature stars, Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, to go up against the aliens.

Nevertheless, as the first of undoubtedly a bunch of copycat genre mash-ups, some of which are bound to be horrendous, Cowboys & Aliens is a solid success. For a tent-pole, Comic-Con movie, this one devotes a gratifying amount of time to character and achieves most of its success because Favreau has intelligently cast his film and let his actors do their thing. As good as the visual effects are, you walk away from the movie with a memory of actors’ faces, lines of dialogue and actions that speak more to character than to shock-and-awe.

And another thing: That wrist accessory worn by Craig should be a merchandising stroke of genius.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review ... iew-214687
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Another good one, Sylvia found. I try to keep them in this post. Deadline is one hell of an important one, too.

2011 Comic-Con: 'Cowboys & Aliens' Reax

At the COWBOYS AND ALIENS premiere on Saturday night. Adam Beach won himself a fan for life when he showed up without a plus-one and gave away his extra ticket to a fan who had been sitting in the bleachers since 1 PM. Inside a refitted opera theater, director Jon Favreau came out to a standing ovation, brought all the cast and producers onstage, and made them take a bow to the folks who pay for the tickets. He compared the movie to that one last present you open on Christmas day that's still a bit of a mystery, and let the fans know they could be honest with their feedback.

This was an important event: all the Universal bigwigs were there, including Adam Fogelson and Ron Meyer. Once the movie started, the fans were vocal when they wanted to be. Mainly any time an act of violence happened. Daniel Craig punching a guy till blood flies, for example, or an alien throwing Olivia Wilde into the air. Craig's cool wrist-laser device was also well-liked. But the movie is most effective when Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig are onscreen together. Craig plays a good guy with a bad past, while Ford is kind of a bad guy (mostly because he lets his twitchy, psycho son played by Paul Dano do whatever he likes) who actually has a heart. They meet in the middle, metaphorically; but any scene of them staring each other down or hitting each other's faces was well-received. As was almost any moment of Ford yelling, which he does a lot (and his Southern accent disappears when that happens). Nonetheless, this is Ford's best work in a long time.

Fans were also quiet for long stretches, though. Unfortunately, this isn't a Ford-Craig mismatched buddy movie – Craig ends up teaming mostly with Olivia Wilde (whose character arc is ludicrous, but to say more would be spoiling), while Ford hangs out with way too many supporting characters nobody cared about, despite the sentimental score's attempt to make you feel something.

Massive cheers at the end, though. Whatever the faults, the highlights seem to outweigh any misgivings in the fans' minds.

And while Favreau talked a good game about fans and filmmakers interacting, the talent departed quickly afterward, while fans enjoyed hot dogs, quesadillas, free beer and wine under a giant alien drone replica. (Andy Serkis, who isn't in the movie, did hang out for a while).

http://www.deadline.com/2011/07/2011-co ... ore-149551
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ComicConBooks referring the the HR review
http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/ ... um=twitter
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..and Variety
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117945693/

[Germangirl]

MOVIES—Opening this week:
Cowboys and Aliens (2011)
It's not coming up on the average Joe's lists of comic book adaptations they've been anticipating this summer, probably because it doesn't come across as one (it's based on the 2006 Platinum graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Fred Van Lente, and Andrew Foley). Film pundits are giving mixed messages about this film's potential success—because no one went to Jonah Hex, does that really mean that graphic-novel-based sci-fi/westerns are nonstarters? But at the end of the day, I think word of mouth is going to build strong, if not massive, audiences for what looks so far like a smashing film from Jon Favreau (Iron Man), especially as Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig seem perfectly cast as old dogs of the West forced to put aside their antagonism in the face of a brutal alien invasion. http://scifi.about.com/b/2011/07/24/thi ... -aug-1.htm

[Sylvia's girl]

Red5Aggie: @RealRonHoward Was there and enjoyed it! I thought the aliens would make the film but it was Daniel Craig as the cowboy who I liked best.

[calypso]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/ ... 0520110724

For the premiere of his new shoot-'em-up epic "Cowboys & Aliens," Jon Favreau presented a screening almost as big and bombastic as the movie itself, invading the San Diego Civic Theatre with a horde that included Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard.

"In case you don't like the movie, I'm gonna say that this is how you felt about the film," Favreau said in reaction to the thunderous applause that greeted him, before dragging the aforementioned assemblage onto the stage and launching into a heartfelt assessment of the evening.

"We have all the people who've been working on the movie interacting with the fans," Favreau noted. "These are real people who've been working really hard on this, and they're on pins and needles waiting to find out what you think."

The results of their collective labor, "Cowboys & Aliens," is pretty much summed up by the title -- despite its fantastical premise, this is an action flick, from head to tentacle. Based on the 2006 graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, the film (out July 29) stars Daniel Craig as Jake Lonegan, a robber with a past that's an enigma even to him, following an alien abduction that leaves him with a fuzzy memory and a mysterious bracelet on his wrist. After waking up and stumbling into a nearly-abandoned mining town, he finds himself joining with the local townsfolk to fend off an invasion of aliens intent on blowing the place up and abducting its remaining citizenry -- "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" meets "Independence Day," in a nutshell.

It's not a film that will be lauded for its emotional complexity. But it does offer wall-to-wall action -- the first five minutes offer a shooting, a stabbing and a face-pummeling -- and it would be a visual feast even without the presence of Olivia Wilde, full of explosions and oozing ectoplasm dripping from wounded aliens. And Harrison Ford's portrayal of menacing cattleman Woodrow Dolarhyde is particularly engaging.

Not entirely out of this world, "Cowboys & Aliens" is nonetheless right on target when it comes to delivering the thrills.

[Germangirl]

...and more. There is one or the other negative among the comments, but mainly its positive

YodaJediGeneral bryan
@JediMaster_OPS cowboys and aliens is a must see!

guy_needham Guy Needham
@eleanorarr it's such a good way to spend a Sunday. Ajkah can't wait for Cowboys and Aliens.

Askanamimator Ask an Animator
HR Review: Cowboys and Aliens a success because director Jon Favreau has let his actors do their thing.

icRidiculous Nicholas Ridiculous
popcorn and cowboys and Aliens...nothing better than that...can't wait.

Nidhi_Pillai Nidhi Pillai
#Cowboys&Aliens Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga

PGSLE Peter Gardner
Looking forward to seeing "Cowboys and Aliens" Tuesday.

thomaswmooreiv Tommy Moore
Cowboys & Aliens: Sounds stupid, looks amazing. I think James Bond and Hans Solo can handle themselves.

NickChilds Nick Childs
RT @joe_hill: COWBOYS & ALIENS is a perfectly crafted action film, full of humor and character and unforgettable beatdowns.

curlykew Heidi
@joblocom Is Daniel Craig the only reason Cowboys and Aliens is awesome? B/c truly, he skeeves me. Keep convincing me.

LucyintheSky15 Marina
I Wanna see cowboys and aliens

shaundavid Shaun David
I'm hearing good things about Captain America, and good early reviews of Cowboys and Aliens. May have to watch both.

AdrianGabeChen Adrian Chen
@melissabernais cowboys and aliens look amazing

comments to the deadline review, which was positive:
• Favs is an A-list director. He had to catch a plane with Ron Meyer. Screw the fans. It sounds like this movie has serious problems and pacibg issues that are magnified when Ford is onscreen. This movie’s failure will be identifiably the tiping point for the comic book movie genre, and possibly the current Uni and Dreamworks regimes. Heads have to roll if this fails.
Comment by INterested Observer — Sunday July 24, 2011 @ 8:27am PDT Reply to this post
• INterested Observer:
I don’t know how you got those observations from that article. I have friends that were in the audience for the premier… and they said quite the opposite. They laughed, they cried, they jumped, and in the short review of one of them “it was amazing.”
I have friends at ILM that have seen long clips and have used the same word.

This is not a comic book movie. This is a graphic novel move, and not a very good graphic novel at that.
I’d bet that this rises WELL above it’s roots and will do quite well.

GoIntoTheStory Scott Myers
1st review of "Cowboys & Aliens" (THR) and it's a pretty big thumbs up http://bit.ly/qyiILL?

tricky44 Nick Styne
Goodbye Comicon. Cowboys and Aliens was so much fun last night.

actresskathy Kathy Krantz Stewart
@
@cwboysandaliens I can't WAIT to see the film Cowboys and Aliens!!!! Kathy )

poodlepower says: Cowboys & Aliens: Film Review - The Hollywood Reporter http://t.co/zqX5mUr Good review - looking forward to seeing this one. - 16 mins ago

MNYCx MNYC
$PDOS Nr.1 on iHub all day. Huge buzz and great reviews of "Cowboys & Aliens"

PlatinumPDOS Platinum Studios
Great review from io9! http://io9.com/5824187/cowboys-and-alie ... ke-you-cry http://fb.me/TVWNI5sx

[calypso]

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/m ... ewyorkpost

Aliens: the final frontier
Sexy cast, crazy concept raise hell in the old west

By MANDY STADTMILLER
Posted: 12:58 AM, July 24, 2011

Every once in a while during the filming of “Cowboys & Aliens” last year in New Mexico, director Jon Favreau would get a tap on the shoulder. It was Indiana Jones.

“Harrison [Ford] would fly to work in his helicopter,” the 44-year-old director tells The Post of the surreal nature of shooting the craziest, sexiest movie of the summer, which opens Friday with not just Han Solo, but James Bond, too.

“You’d get a tap on the shoulder asking if you wanted a lift home. That was a thrill for all of us. I think there are people who just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to fly with Harrison Ford.”

And to think that Favreau almost didn’t even offer Ford a part in the $180-million action-adventure sci-fi Western mash-up. Favreau only reached out to actors he thought were realistic choices for the role of Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde, the iron-fisted cattle baron with a dark past.

“We quickly dismissed the possibility of it being [Ford] because it’s a supporting role,” he says. Then a mutual friend told Favreau, “ ‘Well, Harrison’s a picky guy, but it might be worth a conversation.’

“When he walked into my office, I was in pre-production so my walls were covered with artwork of designs and with lighting studies and illustrations of key frames of moments in the plot of the film,” Favreau adds. “And when he saw how much attention was paid to the aesthetic of the classic Western, he said he [had] wanted to do a Western for 25 years and people just don’t make Westerns. Especially on this scale.”

The film is set in the New Mexico Territory circa 1875, where fear grips the inhabitants of a trouble-plagued town called Absolution. When a mysterious visitor, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig), turns up, townsfolk are none too kind. But after an alien attack, the outsider turns savior.

Along with Dolarhyde, Ella (Olivia Wilde), saloon owner Doc (Sam Rockwell) and his wife Maria (Ana de la Reguera) and the rest of the residents — including outlaws and Chiricahua Apache warriors — Lonergan unites the town against a terrifying enemy in the sky.

The very idea of cowpokes battling ETs has been floating around Hollywood ever since Scott Mitchell Rosenberg published his graphic novel “Cowboys & Aliens” in 2006. The preposterous plot with huge cinematic potential brought a surge of A-list contributors, and not just the cast. Steven Spielberg signed on as executive producer with Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and 13 others pitching in.

Originally, the lead role was slated for Robert Downey Jr., but Craig’s casting led to an emphasis on bare-knuckle action sequences. His fighting abilities, mastered as Agent 007, pushed the film’s fight scenes.

“He’s so quick and stealthy and dexterous and he practices a lot,” Favreau says. “He works with his stunt team — they’ve been through the Bond films together so they have a shorthand. When he demonstrated what he could do, it changed the way we designed the stunts. Each time he fights, it hits like a thunderclap.”

Ford also possessed a hidden talent, horseback riding, that gave Favreau more options. “His backstory is he’s a colonel in the cavalry and so he does lot of his action on the back of a horse, and he’s still every inch the action star that he was,” Favreau says. “So he’d ask for the explosions to be set close to him. [In one scene] he had us put the explosion right on his ankles. He wanted to be right in the same frame with the explosion and hit the deck himself.”


If two hunky leading men weren’t enough, Olivia Wilde arrived to ratchet up the sex appeal.

“There’s a lot of great tension between Olivia and Daniel,” Favreau says. “There’s one scene that we filmed where she’s scripted to be completely naked, and it’s where they’re in the Indian camp. Perhaps we should have explained that to the Apache background performers.

“She had been rehearsing in a robe, but when we finally did the take, she did it without and she was surrounded by [extras],” he adds. “You have never seen a better [reaction] from a group of stunned background performers in your life.”

Wilde is also a skilled rider who impressed everyone by tackling a bold stunt that makes her appear to be aducted by aliens from the back of a horse. Using a slack line attached to two 135-foot cranes set a football field apart, Wilde was plucked upward in the air using a 12-foot, four-part ratchet connected to a harness worn under her dress — all while riding at full gallop.

Even the secondary actors embraced the wild spirit. Rockwell spent an entire day making de la Reguera miserable. “The day we shot a fight scene, he was mean to me the whole day, giving me faces,” she says. “It worked. I just felt bad the whole time.”

If the actors quickly found their comfort zones, the filmmakers took years to produce a credible adaptation of the graphic novel. Producer Howard said the earliest versions were campy, something he asked to be changed.

“It’s difficult to be satirical about the West,” Howard tells The Post, “because it’s no longer about that week-in, week-out genre staple that it once was, particularly to younger audiences. I felt like you can have a lot of fun going at it straight.”

Howard’s idea of fun went like this: “What would happen if 75 or 80 years before Roswell was supposed to have occurred, there was some other earlier encounter? And Steven took to it.”

The thrill of receiving a “master class” from the greats was not lost on screenwriter Mark Fergus, who recalls “bizarrely” pitching Spielberg an altered version of his own movie, namely “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” meets “The Searchers.” Howard participated in that conference via speakerphone — except the speaker didn’t work. So Fergus first talked to Spielberg, who then repeated what he said to Howard.

“I remember explaining why a race of aliens might harass our humble planet in the Old West, and I came up with a dense, convoluted explanation,” Fergus remembers. Then Spielberg made a tidy translation: “Aliens are using Earth as a gas station.”

“Yes,” Fergus laughs. “That’s what I meant!”

Favreau also recalls first meeting with Spielberg and realizing that hanging over his conference table was a sled that said “Rosebud” on it — a key memento from “Citizen Kane.” “I was with the biggest personality in Hollywood,” he says, “standing under the most famous prop in Hollywood.”

One of the most significant contributions of the movie actually came from Spielberg himself.

“He had this image of a gunfighter walking into a saloon with an alien blaster on his wrist,” Favreau says. “It’s become the iconic symbol [of the movie]. It makes the whole concept plausible because aliens versus cowboys — if the cowboys don’t have some sort of an edge, it’s a pretty one-sided fight. But Daniel Craig’s back story and the fact that he’s been abducted and has access to some alien technology helped level the playing field.”

And if any actor can make the outrageous seem relatable, it’s Ford. “Between ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Blade Runner,’ he’s played many of the iconic figures” that have defined sci-fi and action films, Favreau says. And directing him was one of the biggest thrills of Favreau’s career.

“I remember being an usher at a movie theater in Queens at the RKO Keith’s when ‘Return of the Jedi’ was playing there,” says Favreau. “And ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.’ So to go from the kid who was an usher at the theater with Harrison Ford on the screen and then to actually be working with him a few decades later. That’s the American dream. You know what I mean?”

[Sylvia's girl]

Cowboys and Aliens will blow you away and make you cry

Annalee Newitz —
Jon Favreau introduced the Cowboys and Aliens premiere at Comic-Con last night by telling us that it would be like the surprise Christmas present under the tree that you kept shaking, trying to figure out what was inside. And it turned out to be unexpectedly awesome. He was right — his new flick really was like a nice present after a summer film season of sequels and adaptations that didn't give us anything we didn't already expect.

Spoiler-free first impressions ahead!
In case you were holding your breath and crossing your fingers for an eye-peeling, heart-pounding flick to make the summer end in a bang - yes, this movie is definitely awesome. It's packed with gorgeous imagery, down-and-dirty action, and an amazing, nuanced performance from Harrison Ford. Though the whole cast was terrific, I really felt like this was Ford's film. As a grizzled old war vet whose toughness has alienated his only son, Ford managed to strike the perfect chord of badassery mixed with kindhearted regret. Who thought that a movie about cowboys, Indians, and villains fighting creepy-ass aliens would also pack an emotional punch? I didn't. And so when the tearful moments came — right in the middle of battle — it was a pleasure to feel more than just bloodlust.

Not that there wasn't plenty of bloodlust, and cheering for the good guys to band together against a common enemy. Though the aliens themselves weren't terribly different from a lot of other creatures we've seen zooming down from space in other movies, their mission on Earth was wholly original and offered a clever twist on Western themes.

The spaceships looked great, right down to their lasso-like alien tech; and the alien ship was gorgeously designed to look look like something right out of the craggy landscape of Arizona. Truly, this was the Weird Western done right. Favreau and his team blended their alien invasion and Western imagery seamlessly, in a way that you may have imagined but probably haven't seen done well before.

The plot was, as producer Roberto Orci told us last year at Comic-Con, a play on classic John Ford Western The Searchers — except this time, the aliens have abducted the people our heroes love, and the Indians are allies.

The ensemble cast worked terrifically well, with Adam Beach stealing the show as Ford's surrogate son who has always been more likely to follow in the old man's footsteps than his loutish blood kin. Sam Rockwell and Olivia Wilde are also fantastic, and there's a slightly cheesy but nevertheless cool twist with one character that really put the flick into X-Files-y goodness territory.

I'm not going to tell you any more than that. Just see it, fer crissake. And if you're the kind of person who cries in movies, like me, bring a hankie too.
http://io9.com/5824187/cowboys-and-alie ... ke-you-cry

[Germangirl]

VenessaRiley Venessa Riley
5 more days for us movie goers til Cowboys and Aliens

NoreenOT Noreen O'Toole
Cowboys and Aliens was epic! Had a blast. Can't wait to see it again!! #sdcc http://lockerz.com/s/123294176
9 minutes ago

TheaHarrison Thea Harrison
Some of us have talked abt going to see Cowboys and Aliens on opening day. We all live in separate time zones, so we probably can't sync...

Shtuperman Robert Bojorquez
oh what is this i hear? cowboys and aliens IS FREAKING DOPE?! skeptics can go die. #dontbehatin #jonfavreauisbetterthanyou

Mr_Brainwash Chris
I'm really excited for cowboys and aliens

JonathanAdams Jonathan Adams
This review of "Cowboys and Aliens" makes me definitely want to see the movie. io9.com/5824187/cowboy…

nccudoctor Bryan Burns
Cowboys vs Aliens comes out this Friday and its gonna be awesome.

Shoshi Yolanda Shoshana
What's the word on Cowboys and Aliens, good or bad? I say as long as Daniel Craig walks around with no shirt on. It's a "fine" film!

@betsysalt Believe me if I could dream about Daniel Craig who recently married Beautiful OVER 40 YEARs OLD Rachel Weiz,I would. #stupidbrain

terrymarkw Terry Weber
@mtomasetti plus it has Daniel Craig in it...

DiehardSpook Shaun Greenhaff
@MrsMickJagger Daniel Craig and HARRISON FORD! directed by Jon Favreau! If Im not there on day one I will be sad!

_glenbishop Ilona Lesznik
thr liked cowboys and aliens #thisisagoodsign

Patricia9802 Patricia
@RealRonHoward --We are all so excited for Cowboys and Aliens to come out! My son is counting the days.

badex Taiwo Badejo
Am wet in anticipation of Cowboys and Aliens @Jon_Favreau
Ellimac25 Camille Powell
Won tickets to watch cowboys and aliens Tuesday! And the change up monday! Yay for free movies!

LZinkhon Levi R. Zinkhon
Cowboys and aliens, solid movie platform

Manisha_93 little brown rainbow
Daniel craig and his wifey are such a good looking couple. They look like real secret agents
court_woods Courtney Woods
I need to go see Cowboys & Aliens. Daniel Craig is the man.

Immikesheridan Mike Sheridan
Cowboys and Aliens is getting great early reviews. Looking forward to talking to Jon Favreau and Harrison Ford next week. I heart Favreau!


entermygarden dale
Cowboys and Aliens coming soon--get ready for some awesome action with some awesome cast and crew!

hannahbanananut Hannah Levin
Can't wait...."@BRENDANWAYNE: Cowboys and Aliens really rocks yfrog.com/h41bslrj"

ehbootyshorts Tylerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
@LinearRanger And Cowboys and Aliens will beat both next weekend :v It was obvious Potter was either gonna come Second or First.

[Germangirl]

entermygarden dale
Cowboys and Aliens coming soon--get ready for some awesome action with some awesome cast and crew!

hannahbanananut Hannah Levin
Can't wait...."@BRENDANWAYNE: Cowboys and Aliens really rocks yfrog.com/h41bslrj"

ehbootyshorts Tylerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
@LinearRanger And Cowboys and Aliens will beat both next weekend :v It was obvious Potter was either gonna come Second or First.

joe_hill Joe Hill
A day later and I'm thinking Cowboys & Aliens is the best Harrison Ford film since Raiders. That good.

iTunesTrailers iTunes Trailers
Just left the premiere of Cowboys and Aliens. Great movie trailers.apple.com/trailers/iphon…

nevpierce Nev Pierce
Really pleased to hear positive word about Cowboys And Aliens. Adore westerns. Psyched to see it soon. Yes, I just said psyched. I'm not 14.

Maryanimated MaryanneB
Wakin up early tomorrow to get t-shirt makin supplies with @Aprilqot We need special outfits for the Cowboys and Aliens midnight show. <3

melaniemakeup melanie inglessis
Ok.. So Cowboys and Aliens ruled!!! Go see it this Friday!!!

tokome Philip de Leon
To be honest, I think I just want to see Cowboys and Aliens just because Daniel Craig is an all-around bamf.

I_Need_Minions Janice ~ R.S.
Why does a movie that features Daniel Craig as a cowboy have to have frakking aliens in it??

ThatVanessa That Vanessa
I HEART Daniel Craig!!! - RT @vlc411: I have a new celebrity crush: Daniel Craig.

joshuastecker Joshua Stecker
by RealRonHoward
@RealRonHoward Really dug the flick. A lot of fun to watch. #SDCC

Surprisingly, both Variety and the Reporter have given this rave reviews. If the critical consensus continues to be positive, I can see this film quickly moving from possible bomb to huge hit.

Attended the premiere and the film is a strong, fun, summer, popcorn ride.
Looking past the over-hyped, over-stimulated Comic Con audience that Favreau plays to so well, the cowboy/western half of the film is solid, the aliens stuff feels very similar in some respects to the treatment of material in Independence Day 4 and Men In Black.
Any gravitas or depth needed in this kind of movie are masterfully brought to bear by Ford and Craig in their roles and that makes them are easily as compelling as all the effects/creatures.
It’s somewhere in here where the Cowboys part meets the Aliens part that Favreau found an alchemy that works, and with this story premise I’d challenge that any filmmaker/creative would be hard-pressed to conceive of a way to actu“Skews old.”

[Germangirl]

Cowboys and Aliens
When you first heard about Cowboys and Aliens did you make a semi-logical jump and say, “Oh good god, Favreau is going to make another Wild, Wild West. Or even worse, Jonah Hex! Someone stop him!” And why not think that way, with the desolate American western landscape, pioneer town backdrop, tumbleweeds aplenty combined with the promise of a full alien invasion replete with lasers, spaceships and a Daniel Craig wristband that makes him a quasi-superhero. It’s full on genre merge and that’s dicey territory.

But Favreau seems to have eschewed the steampunk nonsensical found in Barry Sonnenfields’ Razzie Winner and made a movie about what would actually happen if aliens attacked a Western town. If someone can make that premise not appear totally laughable, and actually produce something watchable, well the battle is half won.

Favreau’s built up more than enough industry directing cred to warrant the benefit of the doubt. In fact, his forays into directing have been positive across the board with Iron Man (94%), Iron Man 2 (74%), and Elf (84%). Some early reviews (not on Rotten Tomatoes yet) have been positive and although he’s got an Englishman in Daniel Craig riding around the western landscape killing ET’s and rolled out Harrison Ford’s old bag of bones for turn across the big screen, it looks like a positive venture all around. Just make sure there isn’t a giant mechanical spider. The Rotten Watch for Cowboys and Aliens is 75%.
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/This-Rot ... 25878.html

[Germangirl]

http://themoviebit.blogspot.com/2011/07 ... w.html?m=1

Boomerang124 Gary gray
Here's another good review for cowboys and aliens http://bit.ly/nXrn99

[caramel]

Wonderful to see all the positive responses to the viewing so far!

[caramel]

http://themoviebit.blogspot.com/2011/07 ... w.html?m=1

Boomerang124 Gary gray
Here's another good review for cowboys and aliens http://bit.ly/nXrn99

Totally agree about OW being vacant. She did give that impression to me in Tron. Mediocre indeed.
But on the positive, I am extremely happy about all the great reviews the movie and DC are getting

[Sylvia's girl]

Some reviews up on Rotten Tomatoes..at the moment scoring a
fresh 80.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cowboys ... =862990183

[Sylvia's girl]

Movie Review: COWBOYS & ALIENS - A Great Classic Western... with Aliens!

Cowboys & Aliens is the first film I've ever been to where I actually got to attend the world premiere. As most of you probably heard, Jon Favreau had the world premiere for the film during San Diego Comic-Con 2011, and it became a huge geek fan event. Favreau did this all for the fans as a way of thanking them for all the support they've given him over the years, and I was extremely lucky enough to have been able to attend.

Cowboys & Aliens is a film I've been excited about seeing since Favreau showed off the first footage of it at last years Comic-Con. I've been following it very closely since the film's been announced, and I just got more and more excited about it as the release date approached. I'm a huge fan of both the sic-fi genre and the western genre, so mixing these two elements together just seemed like a great idea to me. Its Cowboys
fighting off aliens! How can that not be an entertaining film, and if anyone could pull this film adaptation off properly, it was Favreau.

In my opinion, Favreau ended up delivering one hell of a fun flick. He created a gritty dark hardcore western with an alien invasion element that took the film to a whole new level of awesomeness. If you would have taken out the whole alien element of the film, and turned the aliens into a gang kidnapping murdering ruthless bandits, the film would have been just as good as a regular old school western. The fact of the matter is the story was solid, it was exciting, I had a great time watching it and I don't think anyone other than Favreau could have pulled it off so well.

It's safe to say that this film is more of a western than a sic-fi film, and that's what I really liked about it. There aren't many good westerns getting made these days and I think that's a shame. So when I see a solid film like Cowboys & Aliens I can't help but get excited about the possibilities of what can be done with this genre to give it a fresh new life. There was a good balance between the drama and action in the film, but if you're expecting non-stop action this movie won't give it to you. This film has an actual story, character development and there's some fun humor added for some extra flavor. Yes, of course there is action, and the action sequences are amazing, I'm just saying that the film isn't one action scene after another. They take the time to tell the story, and that's a good thing.

I really loved the old school western grittiness of the film, mixed with this crazy torturous looking alien technology. The special effects in this film were great, and the alien creature designs were very menacing looking, these things were hardcore, big and badass. These are aliens I would not want to mess with, and while watching the movie I couldn't help but think how awesome it would be to see these aliens go to war with Ridley Scott's Aliens, and Predator, because I think these new aliens could give them a run for their money.

Unsurprisingly, the acting in this film was fantastic. You can tell everyone gave a hundred percent. Daniel Craig was a complete badass in the film and you can't help but love how he portrays the character. It was awesome seeing Harrison Ford play a ruthless cowboy. Olivia Wilde was both beautiful and great in her role, and Sam Rockwell is always fun to watch up on the big screen. Everyone else were great in their roles!

Cowboys & Aliens was truly entertaining, but I also don't think it's a movie for everyone. I like these kinds of movies, but I can see how some people might not buy into this kind of world. I noticed when the trailer would play in movie theaters the general audience would kind of blow off the film off with a laugh. But for those of you who read GeekTyrant, if this is a film that you've been looking forward to, then I don't think you'll be disappointed in what Favreau has created. If for some reason you think the film looks stupid from the trailers that have been released then you might just be pleasantly surprised.

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